Here now is the final post in my series of Favorite Posts from the Past. We are now in year nine of the Blog, and this post came from earlier this year.
Sometimes I am in a feisty mood when writing a post, especially when I am dealing with arguments that strike me as a bit mind-numbing, made by highly religious people of one religious tradition or another, in support of their views. I should probably tone it down a bit, no? In any case, here’s an example of that kind of thing. (I actually have edited this one a bit so it’s not quite so, uh, snarky. 🙂
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I’m always puzzled about why smart people make (and believe) such bad arguments. We see this all the time, of course, in political discourse and family disagreements, not to mention department meetings, but since my field is religious studies I hear it the most in connection with the great religions of the world. Actually, I guess I find it less puzzling than aggravating.
A lot of conservative Christians get upset with me when I push them for evidence of their views, and so I thought I should devote this post to give equal share time to other religions whose self-appointed representatives send me proofs of the superiority of their views, based on hard “evidence.” It is really difficult to believe that someone can actually be persuaded by these claims. Let me stress, I am NOT (repeat NOT) saying anything negative about any of these religions – in this case, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. I’m decidedly not. I’m saying something negative about very bad arguments used to “prove” their inherent superiority to one another.
And one of the striking things is that similar arguments are made by conservative Christians in favor of *their* favorite faith. I too have a favorite faith – even though I don’t personally subscribe to it. But at least I don’t try to use specious arguments to prove it is the “best.”
I will talk about two emails I have received, one today and one tomorrow [note: in this re-post, I’m just doing the one]. Today’s came from a Muslim. If I had a nickel for every time a Muslim has written to me with this same basic argument over the past three years, I could renovate my kitchen.
I preface this by saying I have the utmost respect for Islam – truly and deeply; and for the Quran. It obviously is getting horrible press these days, but almost entirely by people who don’t know the first thing about it. I’m not going to go there – even when you beg me to – because this blog is about the New Testament and the origins of Christianity (centuries *prior* to Islam). But whatever you think about Islam and the fantastic numbers of people committed to it, this particular (common) argument for its superiority is not, well, thoughtful. Here’s the email:
Sir…the Quran is a “living Miracle.” Miracles do happen, as a man could see even if he were blind. The authenticity and sophisticated preservation of the Quran were “miraculous” combined with truthfulness and sincerity of the Shahabas to keep this oral or written revelation in their hearts in their minds and everyday life. Though Torah and Gospel are the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, they are NO MATCH, because they were not preserved. That is because the keepers themselves were hypocrites and disobedient group of men, so their books are filled with contradictions.
OK, what can one even say? I have no idea who this person is and so really can’t say whether they are willfully ignorant or simply caught up in religious fervor, though, of course, those are not mutually exclusive options. (As I’m going to show in a second, a very similar argument is also used by a number of fervently religious Christians.) I’m not even going to go into the question of the preservation of the Torah, which, through the Middle Ages, was every bit as good as the preservation of the Quran. Does that too require a miracle? No, it requires careful copying practices. I’ve known people who can type 80 words a minute without making a mistake. Is that a miracle? Sure, it may seem like it a miracle to the rest of us hackers – at least to me; but in fact it’s just a skill they have. They can type without making mistakes. And does it mean that what they typed was true? Or that it came from God?
The Quran (and the Torah) were carefully preserved because people went out of their way to make sure they were. They developed sophisticated methods of literary reproduction, technologies of transcription. As civilization advanced, new technologies developed. One might think of, well, the printing press. Because the printing press can make sure every copy of every book is completely the same, does that mean that every book that is published is a miracle from God and is more true than, say, books that were copied by hand for centuries, filled with scribal mistakes?
I have posted a number of times about Christians who make this same bad argument about the New Testament. In their case, they have an ever-so-slight disadvantage that the text was not preserved for centuries without being changed. (!) On the contrary, among our thousands of New Testament manuscripts, we have hundreds of thousands of changes – recent estimates put the number at around half a million. So you would think that Christians would not be able to argue that God has miraculously preserved the text. But here’s the kicker: some of them DO!!
It’s flabbergasting, really. But there are fundamentalist Christians who insist that God has miraculously preserved the text of the New Testament from error and corruption. Uh, how can they do that given the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of differences in our manuscripts? They would, in fact, make the same argument if there were a *billion* differences. That’s because their argument is that among all the differences among our manuscripts, God has seen fit to make sure that the *original* reading is also there. Among all the textual variants, the original can still be found. God has made sure of that. All we have to do is find it. It’s a miracle!
Other fundamentalists argue that one particular form of the Greek text is the word for word the original. It goes by various names: the Byzantine text, the Koine text, the Majority Text, the Textus Receptus (these actually are not the same thing, they are variations of a very similar thing, all of which are claimed by one person or another to be “the” original). This is the text (roughly speaking) that is most prominent in the majority of our surviving manuscripts since it was the common text of the later Middle Ages, the basis for the first printed editions of the NT, and in turn the basis for, among other things, the King James Version.
And why this text? Because God wanted to make sure that we today received his inviolable word? Uh, the counter-arguments are pretty obvious, but they fall on deaf ears. If God wanted to preserve his word intact, why didn’t he preserve it intact? Why didn’t he makes sure scribes did their work well? (As, e.g., Jewish and Muslim scribes did.) Well, God works in mysterious ways! Why would God make sure that modern English-speaking people have his word intact, but, that most people throughout Christain history (knowing the text in any of its many many different forms) didn’t? Well, he wasn’t probably as concerned about them, and hey, God works in mysterious ways!
It’s funny how those mysterious ways always benefit those of us living now, in certain parts of the world, speaking a particular language, with particular religious beliefs. Isn’t it just MARVELOUS? What a MIRACLE!
Muslims at least can claim that their sacred text hasn’t been changed since it was first written. At least so far as we can tell. But I have to stress: we don’t have the original copy, so we can’t compare the later unchanged text with the original. That doesn’t seem to matter to the people who make this argument. The later preservation itself is all they care about. And they INFER that it must have been that way from the very first, since it was that way thereafter – that the very first copy had no changes in it. How do they know? They can’t know. They don’t have the first copy or the original it was copied from. So they *believe* it wasn’t changed. It’s a matter of faith. And if it’s a matter of faith, then it is not historical *evidence*.
But even if the first copy of the Quran and every copy after that were exactly what the original author wrote, that would have ZERO bearing on whether what the original copy said was true or not or whether the contents of this book are superior to those of other religious traditions.
Put it in simple terms (WHY don’t people think of this???): there are millions of copies of Das Kapital, and Mein Kampf, and The Wealth of Nations, and The Art of the Deal, and and and. None of these copies differs from each other. Would any sane person argue that the fact we have copies that are all the same is evidence that each and every one of them must therefore be true? Or superior to the others? Or preserved by God?
Obviously not. Then why do they make that argument about their own sacred texts?
OK, OK. We all know why.
Religious narcissism should be considered as the root of all of that bad arguments.
You may want to check this article:
Stille, Alexander. “Scholars are Quietly Offering New Theories of the Koran.” New York Times, 2 Mar 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/02/arts/scholars-are-quietly-offering-new-theories-of-the-koran.html?pagewanted=all
It’s a report of scholars finding linguistic evidence in the Qur’an that show it as a composition of different voices at different times. The problem is that the sort of critical scholarship we’ve long subjected Jewish and Christian texts to is only now starting to be done with the Qur’an and other texts, and is facing sometimes violent opposition.
There is a Florida church about 45 minutes away from where I live that goes one step further. They claim inerrancy for the King James Version. Somewhere, I do not quite remember where or when, I believe I heard an inerrancy claim for the Schofield Reference Bible.
Ah, we held to its inerrancy (well, virtually) when I went to Moody Bible Institute!
Dear Bart,
Thank you for this post.
I am bit confused about something: Jerome produced a Latin translation of the Bible in the fourth century (the vulgate). What was this based on? a Greek version? I also think that Gutenberg bible was the same as the vulgate (I am not sure?), so if the vulgate persisted from late antiquity up until the high middle ages why then are there so many different versions of the bible? For example, I think that the story of the adulterous woman in John was added in the Middle Ages, so if the vulgate (of Jerome) was there and was the official document of the church (and I presume the story was not in it), then how could scribes intentionally add/omit things from it (I am excluding the unintentional mistakes)?
Best regards
Mohammed
Yes, Jerome looked at Greek mss of the NT for producing his version. The Vulgate was used through the middle ages only in the West, since Latin was the language spoken there; in the eastern part of Christendom they continued to use Greek mss.
The Quran is not nearly as miraculous as some of its adherents claim especially regarding contradictions. It may be unchanged from its first copies, but what that means is they never changed all of its problems. The Quran contains a number of grammatical errors, spelling errors, loan words, scientifically erroneous claims, historically inaccurate claims, morally dubious ideas and contradictory claims(Allah is merciful but will send you to Hell to be tortured forever). The dogmatist can always find a way to explain away a Holy Text’s faults. For those willing to engage in more objective analysis, it’s not hard to find issue. From Ali Dashti’s “Twenty Three Years: A study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad,” (1985).
“In the field of moral teachings, however, the Qur’an cannot be considered miraculous. Muhammad reiterated principles which mankind had already conceived in earlier centuries in many places. Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Moses, and Jesus had said similar things” (p. 54).
“Neither the Qur’an’s eloquence nor its moral and legal precepts are miraculous” (p. 57).
Are any of Jesus’ teachings original?
Do you mean are there any teachings of Jesus that cannot be found as given by someone else? The exact wording is often distinct, but the ideas can be found here or there in most cases.
Great post, as always. The vast majority of Muslims believe that the Koran is the pure, unexpurgated word of God. Some modern Christians feel the same about the Bible. But I’m curious to know Dr Ehrman whether the early Christians (ie. those living in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries) also believed that what then passed for the Bible was the holy word of God or just divinely inspired writings?
I don’t think they would have differentiated those two; it was God’s word because it was divinely inspired.
OT question –
In ON MODESTY Tertullian writes
“Thus it follows that we too (must judge) such as ‘sin no more’ (as) ‘bearing worthy fruits of repentance’ “.
As this is a treatise against the pardoning of adultery shouldn’t we take ‘sin no more’ as a quote from the pericope adulterae?
Especially as he then goes on to write “If, however, the Lord, by His deeds withal, issued any such proclamation in favour of sinners … no benefit is hence conferred upon our adversaries … For we now affirm: This is lawful to the Lord alone”
That is, to paraphrase, you may or may not find an instance where the Lord forgives adultery but that has no bearing on present times because the Lord alone is allowed to do that.
Bart,
Just a brief comment: The blog is so much more user- friendly than the earlier one. Thanks.
Thanks!
The underlying argument seems to be “But I want to believe!”.
I especially liked the closing smackdown in this piece! I never really thought about having a “favorite faith,” but some seem more intriguing than the mainstream; Zoroastrians have literal fire temples, heck yeah. Are you willing to talk about your favorite here?
My favorite faith? I’m not sure I have one!
Oops my mistake. I guess things have changed since you wrote the above: “I too have a favorite faith – even though I don’t personally subscribe to it.” Made me curious 🙂
Ah, context helps. My favorite faith is liberal Christianity.
I find it interesting when evangelical fundamentalist Christians attack Mormonism on the basis that there were changes between the first edition of the Book of Mormon to the current edition. Gerald and Sandra Tanner, ex-Mormons turned fundamentalist Christians, once released a book entitled “3913 Changes made in the Book of Mormon.” For them, this meant the Book of Mormon had to be man-made! They probably never took into account the hundreds of thousands of discrepancies in the New Testament though! Lawrence Foster, a non-Mormon historian, criticized the Tanners for taking “a holier-than-thou stance, refusing to be fair in applying the same debate standard of absolute rectitude that they demand of Mormonism to their own actions, writings, and beliefs.” So true (I am not Mormon by the way I just wanted to point out the double standard fundamental Christians often use).
Language is always changing.
It changes across space and time. It’s not absolute. Every day new words are born or borrowed from other languages. How to frame in language something so vast and perfect and unchangeable as God?
And what’s the point to prohibit images of living beings while you depict God with your words? The only Being that could fit into a tiny book would be a small god, like money.
Muslims insist on reading the Quran in classic Arabic, and even Catholics insisted on reading the NT in Latin to preserve its contents.
Both they strive to keep the body of their scripture fresh and alive while no word ever steps in the same text twice.
I get a chuckle out of militant atheism, particularly its blatant pretentiousness – people who put themselves in the seat of God, as Paul said would happen. Such people misuse science – even telling us the universe created itself before it existed, and for no reason at all. And it’s funny to hear them give their selective versions (plural) of biblical history. And hilarious to hear how a post-religious society will make a better world. They can’t see they have faith based beliefs like the people they mock.
I get a chuckle out of militant christian fundamentalism, particularly it’s blatant pretentiousness – people who believe that their collection of writings are somehow the word of the creator of the universe. Such people completely misunderstand current scientific theories and even what the definition of Scientific Theory is. It’s funny to hear them give their strawman versions of what the history of the Universe, from the perspective of science, actually is. And hilarious to hear how religion has done all good things and never horrific things and has decidedly made the world better. They can’t see that they have even more ridiculous beliefs than the people they mock.
Hi Bart,
Something I’ve always found a bit odd is it appears to me that the writers/final editors of the pericope describing Jesus family needing to travel to their birth home of 1000 yrs ago like everyone else in the Empire – they knew this to be a lie. And not even a very good one. They could have just asked Constantine !
So to me it is an intentional lie – something they presented as literally true (how could this be parsed as metaphor?) knowing full well it was not true.
Am I missing something here ?
Of all the bad arguments in the NT this one sits in my top 10 !
Thanks love the new site,
Steve Clark
I’m not sure what you mean about asking Constantine? Regular folk had no more access to Constantine than you or I have to Trump. My sense is that someone heard a story about a census, told it, exaggerated a bit possibly without knowing it, and …. rumors fly, even when no one is lying about it. Sometimes they lie of course, but more often exaggerations just multiply….
Thanks Bart,
That makes sense and I have a follow up if I may :
According to Brittanica on Nicaea –
“It was called by the emperor Constantine I, an unbaptized catechumen, who presided over the opening session and took part in the discussions.”
Would you agree with that ?
But I guess exploring potentially problematic factual passages was not important ?
Was it just accepted that some of the NT was hyperbole ?
TY !
Steve
Ah, sorry, I thought I answered it. Yes, that is factually correct.
Prof Ehrman,
Great post.
Q1. Please, at what point did both the Old and New Testaments become codified into one volume as ‘Scripture/ Bible’ by the Church?
Q2. And was there any council for this? If so, name, please.
1. Not an easy question to answer. Early followers of Jesus always considered the Old Testament to be Scripture. The NT writings were circulated over time; some began to be considered scripture by the early second century or so, more over time. Probably around 200 there was some basic agreement in some churches about a lot of the “New” Tesatment. But there was no real consensus until around 400 or so.
2. The matter was not decided or even discussed at any of the Major (= Ecumenical) councils (certainly not the Council of Nicea!). It was a matter of consensus, not vote, which emerged over time. Some smaller councils and synods did express local opinioin on the matter at the end of the 4th c., e.g., the Council of Carthage. But it wasn’t binding.
The Qur’an certainly exhibits striking textual unity. Two things, though, render this fact somewhat less impressive.
First: Arabic, like Hebrew, is traditionally written in an abjad. There are *seven* standard vowelized versions of the Qur’an. Canonically, *all seven* are divinely attested as infallibly true.
Second: An early leader, Caliph Uthman, gathered up all known variant texts of the Qur’an and burned all the manuscripts that didn’t conform to the (abjad) version he recognised as accurate. Few or no manuscripts predating this purge survive. It’s definitely easier to have all the versions in agreement if all the non-agreeing versions are actively destroyed…