One Christian Thought

You go through Ehrman's entire book, and it's just difficulty after variant reading after a problem textual critics have to surmount. Thus, when we realize no doctrine is affected, we really get a feel for how reliable our manuscript traditions are. I said it a long time ago before I read Misquoting Jesus: the only reason Ehrman can say the so-called ending of Mark and story of the adulterous woman isn't original (more in a later post) is because of all the evidence he has to go through! Ehrman, with everything, he argues what is or isn't original  because evidence .  Expanding on that, Ehrman tells the reader modern textual critics are  rational eclecticists . I really like this title, because it says they are being rational and individualizes their specific scholarly work with a big, impressive word which lay people don't learn. And he explains he and his fellow scholars fit the definition because of multiple criteria they use(1). Ehrman argues that sometimes Chri...

How challenging are the variants? Ehrman does tell us what "our current situation" (borrowed from the heading) is. He contrasts the evidence someone in antiquity had, where they evaluated only about one hundred Greek manuscripts, by 2005 we had  more than 5,700 Greek manuscripts . They vary greatly in size, from small fragments about the size of a credit card, to huge and well preserved documents that even can be in their entirety. Some only have one book, others have a collection of them, and rarely is there the entire NT. Moreover, there are "many manuscripts of the various early versions (= translations) of the New Testament." (1) Ehrman points out that, because of our "abundance of evidence," there are a LOT of variants in our surviving manuscripts. No one can name the exact number, nor can anyone be sure they are very close, "because, despite impressive development in computer technology, no one has yet been able to count them all." (2) That...

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why , is a monumental New York Times bestseller by the best-selling author Bart Ehrman. Latter-Day Saints and Muslims, whose scriptures teach the Bible doesn't support them because Christians corrupted it, have found sanctuary in Bart Ehrman's skeptical analysis. But of course also, anyone skeptical of the Bible might find it handy, like an atheist. To get a defense is the reason I actually read it.  If you haven't ran into him before, Bart Ehrman is a famous agnostic New Testament scholar. He is one of Christianity's greatest critics. While reading his Misquoting Jesus , I ran into how early church fathers, like Irenaeus and Tertullian, extensively argued against a heretic named Marcion (1). This reminds me of what I see happening with Ehrman. There is no shortage of books contradicting him, from Truth in a Culture of Doubt: Engaging Skeptical Challenges to the Bible to How God Became Jesus and even the chapt...

Immaterial evolution? In my last post revisiting consciousness , I wrote: "Here I would like to think of what I have come to call 'mere bluster.' An example is something I heard in tenth grade: matter got so complex it made something that's not physical, and humans are so great we were able to make truth. This defies arguments I have made earlier, the best read being  my original post . "As you might have realized, it's just a claim without evidence. If there is no explanation how it is right, why believe it? If both sides cannot explain why they are right and outweigh the other, because there just simply isn't enough information to come to a conclusion, then the objective rational route is agnosticism." The one post before that on the subject , it says:  "Then is the fallacy of applying a physical process to what does not physically exist. Immaterials cannot evolve! You cannot stack what takes up no space on top of each other! They are not there...

 "The death of a martyr can indeed cause admiration and emulation, but it never has had a religious meaning in itself--least of all in Judaism which puts such a positive value on life and has never glorified suffering or death." (1) That came from Pinchas Lapide, the expert Jewish scholar who came to believe in the resurrection (although not Christianity). I think there is a small yet considerable chink in my resurrection argument, and that is if even the Disciples had interpreted Jesus as the Christ before His death. If not, then there seems to be, to say the least, a lot more room for feeling guilty about betraying Him and hallucinating. I mentioned in the post responding to the Disciples hallucinating that Ehrman didn't think Jesus saw Himself as the highest person coming from God. He prophesied the Son of Man, but didn't consider Himself to be as much.  That is why I used the example I did, Matthew 19:28. Ehrman expands on it: "And who would rule over them? ...

You can see the suggested reading plan here . I remember someone (I think America's leading skeptic Michael Shermer) saying (I paraphrase), "You come across people who say, 'Well, I don't really believe in that stuff of the Bible [other miracles], I only believe the main story [the resurrection].' But that's the stupidest part!" Is it really? If it's so stupid, why is the evidence so robust even a majority of skeptical scholars have accepted claims in favor of His coming back to life? I wrote in my post on the possibility of miracles that someone reasonably could believe in Jesus solely because of proof of His resurrection, and then learn about more evidence. The resurrection could prove the Bible inside out, not have to be worked toward by answering other objections. Bart Ehrman included that people in cultures that accept a certain belief (like people surviving death), and feeling guilty, can definitely lead to guilt-induced hallucinations. But he h...

In my four-part blog project titled "Where Does Jesus Get His Authority?" one subject was why God doesn't make a big announcement to the world convincing everyone. Part 2 specifically touched on that, with this shorter post adding on to it, and the conclusion quoting Scripture supporting the idea below. I have defined being an "intellectual" as someone who believes in what they can know, not what they don't. This really considers subjective experience, as what is going on in someone's head isn't necessarily the easiest to tell, if it even can be figured out, and someone isn't putting on a false front.  See, you could get honest, nice, very down-to-earth and intelligent people telling me they had experiences where they knew God had a plan for their life, but I wouldn't take this as proof. Since they are speaking of a personal experience they still could be lying, or subconsciously overinterpreted something because they want to believe it in...