Loading...In my previous post I talked about evangelicals who argue that if I had only had the right understanding of evangelical theology, I would not have left the faith once I realized my (errant) views were problematic. I would say that this is true of the video about me that Kurt Jaros posted a couple of weeks ago, here: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-i-have-an-errant-view-of-inerrancy-guest-video-post-by-kurt-jaros-5/
I have enjoyed Kurt’s video posts on the blog very much and really appreciate him setting the record straight for evangelicals who have misunderstood or misrepresented my views on textual criticism. And I decidedly do NOT think that he has “misrepresented” my views about inspiration (the views of the “young Ehrman”). But I do think he misunderstood them. He inferred from things I said that I must have held views that in fact I did not hold.
The issue has to with the fact that we have so many manuscripts of the New Testament but there are so many *differences* among them. Kurt says that when I was shocked to learn this, it directly led me to reject the inspiration of the Bible. I can see how that is the inference he might draw, but it’s not right.
The way Kurt puts it is this: as a fundamentalist I must have believed not only in the Verbal Plenary Inspiration of Scripture (the view that God inspired the words of the entire Scripture) but the Verbal Plenary Preservation of Scripture (that God had preserved the very words he inspired). And so, once I realized the words were not preserved – since our manuscripts have so many differences in them – I came to think they must not have been inspired in the first place. That, he says, was a serious mistake: the evangelical understanding of Scripture is NOT that God preserved the text, and so realizing that he had NOT done so should have had no bearing on my view that he had inspired it.
The problem is that I NEVER – even
This post is not so important for my experience, but for understanding the real problems with conservative evangelical beliefs, in my opinion. Interested? Join the blog and keep reading! Click here for membership options
Excellent article, Bart. Jean and I love to hear of your journey.
Yes, but, were you really having a serious academic debate over your personal intellectual growth? As you noted Craig did not simply ask when he could have. Ipso facto the real reason didn’t matter in favor of one he could use to attack your thinking and hence your conclusion. Here we come to a question of why. Was it vengeance? After all you no doubt offended and threatened his “tribe”; and, according to one author “ All religious hatred — whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu or other — speaks the language of tribe and clan. And in true tribal fashion, that language is loaded with sensitivities about respect, honor and dignity. An insult or injury to any of these is sensed by all tribal members, and the only honorable recourse is full compensation or total revenge. This is an essential ethic of tribes and clans, no matter their religion.” (See Social Studies: 21st Century Tribes, David Ronfeldt, Rand Corp. https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/r/ronfeldt_david.html) [it’s short].
Without disagreeing with you, I would like to share a perspective—based on my past experience in the Evangelical world—that may supplement and/or modifiy your view. I think that when someone leaves the faith, especially someone who was by all appearances was a sincere believer, it creates a cognitive dissonance. How could someone leave the fold who has experienced the joy of salvation and a relationship with Jesus!? To resolve the internal conflict, they must find an explanation. Therefore, the apostate must have misunderstood the faith, or he never was an authentic believer. More ominously, he deliberately rejected the faith to live a sinful life, including, no doubt, sexual immorality. They simply cannot fathom a sincere intellectual or moral objection to Christianity, otherwise they would have to undertake the disconcerting task of reevaluating their own beliefs.
Oh yes, I completely agree with this!!
Well stated. A former fundamentalist/evangelist who abandoned the faith for intellectually defensible, historical reasons necessarily threatens the foundation of those who remain and must be exposed as a fraud from inception.
I still think you should write your autobiography because your journey is so similar to the one so many of us have taken. Thus, reading your autobiography would be quite helpful to a lot of us and would add a lot of scholarship to our own journeys. Moreover, you have blogged so much on this topic that you have already done a lot of the work.
Bart, Peter confessing Jesus in Caesaria Philippi is found in 3 Gospels… Is it likely that this is something that actually happened? What do you think and what do scholars think?
Yes, it’s in three of them, but two of them (Matthew and Luke) picked up the story from Mark and changed it a bit. Because the story has only a single attestation and since it fits Mark’s own views about Jesus so clearly (it takes the disciples half the Gospel to figuring out who Jesus is and even then they don’t understand) that it’s usually not considered to be a historical account, though very important for the Gospels themselves.
Off Topic here,
I am trying to firm up in my mind a plausible timeline of letters & evolution of ideas within them.
I seem to place all authentic Saul Paul letters & gospels within a plausible timeline but I am struggling with Hebrews.
If we assume that Mark was written early 70’s, Matthew early 80’s & Luke late 80’s while John mid to late 90’s. It shows evolution of who Yeshua was. From a unique teacher to the heavenly anointed elect (Meshiach) to a high angelic figure who got downgraded into a human but then got exalted into a human divine hybrid who also a co-ruler of the cosmos upon obedience to the final elevation of an equal figure to “God” just from the beginning (John).
Where would you place Hebrews writing time then?
The Author ideas were influenced heavily by Paul’s ideas but it also seems to go further than just preexistence of high angelic status Jesus (Paul’s final invention propagated in Philippians ) into the elevation to be the cosmos manufacturer under God’s (his father) directions (Hebrews).
I would think 🤔 of placing it after Matthew/Luke era & before John but somehow how could it miss to allude to Temple destruction?
which would place preferably back toward late 60’s but then timeline doesn’t work because it is before Mark’s adoption view.
What is your view?
My view is that views of Christ did not develop in a linear fashion from this to that to this other, all at the same time in every surviving community. Even today there are many many different views and it’s impossible to say that one is necessariy earlier than another so they can be put on a time line. So to with the New Testament; Paul wrote before Mark but has a “higher” Christology rather than a “lower” one, a kind of transtion from Mark’s to John’s but before Mark was written! To see how to date books like that (or at least get a hint), you might want to look at my textbook: The New Tesatment: A Historical Introduction.
Much appreciated 🙏.
Any idea 💡 gets born (evolve) within a specific area & if it finds traction, it spreads everywhere. If it doesn’t, it survives the confined habitat or die off.
Just like the story of COVID causing virus 🦠 & its subsequent variants .
So for sake of assumption.
If the preexistence was born within Philipie because of Paul’s letter, it took the obsessed followers handful of years to push it further & Hebrews author ✍️ might likely be a Philippian but all of these ideas were confined within the local community.
It took like 20 years or so to gain traction within other assemblies/communities & hence pick from where Luke/Matthew left and lay foundation for the author of John to finalize the elevation.
It would be plausibly reconciled this way.
Impossible to know i guess, but do you think the john author believed that jesus was “born” like matthew and Luke? “The word became flesh” doesn’t really demand how it happened. I know its widely believed that the gospel author is not the author of the epistles of john, but if they were written purporting to be the same author, they argue explicitly that he “came in the flesh”, although another characteristic of the john gospel is to show that Jesus was … God, to put in bluntly. Same obviously with Philippians 2. Jesus is God to Johannine writer and paul. Galatians 4 yes he was born of a woman, but sent from God. Does the John writer also believe this? Jesus was “born” into a fleshly body, of a woman, or that he appeared and disappeared like angels did? John writer obviously believes mary was his mother, surely Jesus was born in the mind of the John writer?
I suppose yes, I think John did think that. But he doesn’t say one way or the other.
In response to Kurt’s post I asked the the following question to which there was no reply.
The concept of “Inerrancy” seems pretty straightforward – no mistakes – but what does “Inspiration” mean? What are the qualities you [Kurt] find in the New Testament that lead you to the conclusion that it is “inspired”?
What’s the best translation into English of “metanoia” in the NT? If it depends on which book and where in a book, I’ll specify Mark:1.15. (If “metanoia” is a noun and the word used in Mark:1.15 is a verb, I’m looking for the best translation of the verb form of the word.)
I think it’s usually translated as repent. From time to time I’ve heard that a better (or at least more literal) translation would be along the lines of “turn around” as in turn around or change your life, eg, return or go back to doing what God wants.
Does “metanoia” have some kind of connotation of feeling guilt for sin as, at least in mind, “repent” does?
Could “metanoia” be stretched to mean something like “wake up” or “come alive”? Or would that be more of a modern interpretation rather than a translation?
Mark 1:15 uses the verbal form of METANOIA, as a second person imperative: METANOIETE (“Repent”). The term in most Greek means something like “Reconsider” or “Have a second thought.” In the NT it typically means “change your mind and do something about it,” almost always in relationship to God. Hence the English translation of “repent”
I don’t suppose there’s any chance that your opponents could simply say that your understanding of Christianity is as solid and thorough as theirs, and that you have simply come to different conclusions ? Why must they always go for the tiresome line that somehow the problem is you ? Either your understanding is faulty, or you’ve misread the text, or you’ve been possessed by Satan etc. Even someone mild mannered and affable like Jaros pursues this argument. It seems rather obvious that your leaving the faith was a slow process, and I dare say you would’ve had plenty of people trying to talk you out of it, plenty of time to think about it etc.
Yeah, never happens….
in Luke 13:6-10 (about the barren fig tree) does the fig tree represent Israel? In the Bible, does the fig tree commonly represent Israel?
In the preceding section, Luke 13:1-5, Jesus seems to be saying something to the effect that simply being Jewish doesn’t mean you aren’t a sinner. You still need to repent. Does that idea continue into 6-10, ie, that the land of Israel (the fig tree) will be destroyed unless the Israelites “bear fruit”?
Yes, probably. Hosea 9:10. Cf., on the fruit theme: Isa 5:1-7
My problem is that even if the Bible was perfectly inspired and perfectly preserved it presents a depiction of a god that I would not want to worship. I appreciate many of the teachings of Jesus and the prophets, there is great poetry and wonderful stories – if only they had left out their caricature of an incompetent god who could only devise a world in which most people suffer in this life and the next.
Yup, that’s by far the bigger problem.
The Bible is clearly written by humans, and it simply shows the human perception and understanding of God or the God experience. It says plenty about humans, acting like a mirror to show the full breadth of human drive, hopes, desires and capabilities. Everything from full blooded, depraved brutality to “loving wastefully”, and “giving yourself away” for others. That’s not God in the Bible, that’s us.
It has many different voices, giving many different perspectives, more like a running debate / discussion than a rule book. it’s a real shame that we humans keep trying to fit the “everything about everything” into our tiny human brains. No human ever has or ever will understand creation in its literal entirety. There are far too many people who will tell you that :
a. god exits,
b. he’s on your side
c. you understand “his” will, and you know how to carry it out
How pathetic is it that we think God helped us land that great parking spot ? What an awful diminution of something beyond grand !
Yes, the Bible is a thought-provoking book but people have turned it into a book of answers, which it is not. Lots of good stuff for thinking people to ponder, lots of bad stuff for people who want to inflict their beliefs on others.
Yes, I agree. As H. Richard Niebuhr said, religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people.
Bart,
You say that you believed that the Bible was inspired after you rejected inerrancy. I have to ask: in what capacity did think that the Bible was inspired? Did you still believe, after rejecting the inerrancy doctrine, that Jesus rose bodily from the dead and left an empty tomb behind?
I rejected the inerrancy doctrine when I was 24 years old. I came to conclude that the Bible had a discrepancy in it regarding the temptation of Jesus. I believed, as a conservative Christian, that Jesus was fully God, and the letter of James says that God cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone. Yet in the synoptic gospels, Jesus (who is supposedly 100% God and 100% man) is clearly tempted by the devil. I concluded that an actual contradiction existed and that opened me up to other contradictions.
However, I renounced the faith after concluding that Mark 2:26 was in error. It took me years to rethink all of the arguments that conservatives put forth for the reliability of the gospels, the arguments for the resurrection, and arguments for the existence of God. I didn’t go through any “moderate” or “liberal” period.
My views went through a wide gamut till I rejected inspiration altogether, from thinking it was true in all that it affirmed, to thinking that there cuold be differences/contradictions in what different authors affirmed, to thinking that it’s basic ideas were inspired, to thinking that it was inspired in the sense that God still used it to communicate even though it was also a very human book, and so on. I wasn’t really an all or nothing guy.
‘Young Ehrman’ sounds like a spin off show. ‘The Young Ehrman Chronicles’…. Who would you chose to play the older version and the young version of yourself in a TV show?
When I was in my 20s I looked like Richard Dreyfuss….
Hi Bart, thanks for responding to my Part 5 video!
I would like to say that in my video I tried to be cautious about attributing what beliefs you held. I did not say that you ‘must have’ held/believed x, but rather, “I could be wrong, but it seems ….” So, I am happy and pleased to have clarification, now, that you had not assented to the belief in VPP. And likewise for not assenting to the alleged necessary causal relationship between inerrancy and inspiration. Nevertheless, it was part of your rationale/thought-process as you explain (and quote the remarks in question!) in the following post here on your blog, so I will go read that and write a comment on that post.
Cheers!
Hi Bart,
Do you think Matthew 19:12 (“Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven”) is more likely to be an authentic saying of Jesus or an invention of the M tradition? And how do you think eunuchs in whichever early Christian communities had the saying would have thought about it? That verse is important for many queer Christians because it seems to speak positively of sexual minorities, and I’m curious about its historical context.
Ah, good question. First thing to say is that “eunuch” in this context has a very specific cultural reference not completely germane to issues of major concern to IBGTQ communities today. In that context, “eunuch” refers to men who are castrated in order to prevent them from making women pregant and to remove from them sexual desire. As it turns out, the second reason was/is a myth, but it was widely thought. The question is whether Jesus in the saying literally means that some men castrate themselves to prevent them from being worried about sexual activity so they can focus on teh kingdom. It was a debated issue over time, and I guess still is. There was a rumor that the church father Origen took Jesus literally and in a frenzy of zeal castrated himself; most scholars appear to think that he really did — my view is that it’s probably just a slander against him (in his own writings he says nothing of the sort and in fact suggests that it’s simply not true). It’s hard to know if Jesus really said it. I’ve never been able to decide one way or the other….
Dr ehrman, in various places when you described your background, coming to the faith etc you then describe life at moody and then finally life at Princeton, where you really, imho, started to become really forced to deal with inerrancy and inconsistency within the NT. The real missing link i have never really heard you comment about is how your views about miracles, i.e. speaking in tongues etc., came to be not a part of your practice. Did you all of a sudden one day say, “i wasn’t actually filled with the spirit, i was …” I’m not sure. If indeed you were filled with the spirit etc did you become un-filled? When? Was it before or after you began to consider the problem of suffering?
For clarification, i am a cessationist and think that anyone who hears the voice of God in their head (or anyone else for that matter) should probably see someone about that lol 😂
But yes, how did the spirit… leave you, to coin a phrase? Gradually or suddenly?
It was over time, while at Moody, when I became convinced that the gifts of the spirit were no longer needed once the Bible was completed.
Dr. Ehrman,
What’s your take on how 2 Tim. 3:16 should be translated? I’ve recently heard it argued that it should be “all inspired scripture is profitable…” instead of “all scripture is inspired.”
Thoughts?
It doesn’t work because there is a “KAI” (= “and”) between the “inspired” and the “profitable” — so it has to be “All Scripture is inspired and profitable” I think people have argued the other translation because that way they could say a verse they didn’t like was not “inspired” scripture….