In our professional capacity, we hold strong opinions about certain members of our professional guild, none more so than Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Simultaneously we respect Dr. Ehrman's erudition and deplore what we see as his recycling of tired, misstated summaries of scholarship in books that sell well as college texts and popular nonfiction.
This week the estimable ToTheSource says nearly everything we've ever wanted to say about Dr. Ehrman's work. In sum, Ehrman misrepresents his assertions entirely. They are matters neither hidden from the church nor believed by a consensus of scholars nor the produced by objective scholarship.
When one reads a Bart Ehrman bestseller, one waits for the devastating evidence that destroys biblical Christianity. At the end, when one finds the usual catalog of textual and historical problems, one recalls that such issues have been regularly and satisfactorily addressed by scholars whose faith remained intact even after doing the same kind of study that reportedly destroyed Dr. Ehrman's faith. One even recalls hearing about such matters in church or a church-related college, the very place Dr. Ehrman says the information was suppressed. So one reads again to find the really explosive stuff missed on the first reading. And it's not there, even though the stuff written by the marketing folks at Dr. Ehrman's publisher promised as much.
As the aggressive Robert Funk has passed on to his reward and the clever John Dominic Crossan has eased into retirement, the media and publishing industry have turned to the repetitive Dr. Ehrman as the new doyen of anti-Christian biblical scholarship. We hope that he continues to enjoy his role and urge gentle readers to give his work the attention it deserves.
7 comments:
*thumbs up*
Ben Witherington's been doing a pretty good job on his blog, as well... he recently posted a 6-part review that was quite solid.
Clicky.
I recently heard him on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross (I know, my first mistake). I listened intently as I fixed the family dinner waiting to hear something new from him. What I heard was the same old stuff. To think he lost his faith, how sad. Perhaps the program would have been better if named "Stale Air"?
The dinner, as I remember, was delicious.
Q
I found Witherington's summary of Ehrman's qualifications compelling:
"He has never written a scholarly monograph on NT theology or exegesis. He has never written a scholarly commentary on any New Testament book whatsoever! His area of expertise is in textual criticism . . . He is thus, in the guild of the Society of Biblical Literature a specialist in text criticism, but even in this realm he does not represent what might be called a majority view on such matters."
Right, y'all. And we'll add this: we are suspicious of Ehrman's own account of his loss of faith. As we recall from a CT article awhile back, he went to Moody Instant Bibletoot and then to Princeton Theological Cemetery. He says at the latter they told him about all the problems in the Bible that he didn't learn at the former, which destroyed his faith in an inerrant Bible and so destroyed his faith period.
We find that story implausible. We seriously doubt that he never encountered an apologietic approach to difficulties in the Bible at MBI, and we've known few whose loss of faith was attributable to simple encounter with biblical difficulties.
We also find it implausible that Ehrman lost faith studying textual criticism in Bruce Metzger's department. Textual variants are hardly a problem at all, and Metzger was a superb text critic and a person of deep faith who knew how to communicate that faith to his many students.
Encountering any of the classic problems of Christian theism while experiencing other, more personal crises can precipitate a very powerful loss of faith. But finding out that there are textual variants.
In sum, we find less and less to trust in Dr. Ehrman. Someday maybe we'll know more.
If I'm not mistaken, Ehrman got his BA at Wheaton College (not MBI), which makes your point all the more pertinent.
I appreciate your point regarding the late and esteemed Prof. Metzger. I've said this often to my own captive audiences: How can someone studying under someone as meticulous as Metzger have been shaken so soundly as to abandon faith. I think there is more to it than that.
Funniest comment I heard from Ehrman at the SBL last Fall was during his trouncing of David Parker's book. He criticized Parker saying that a book that claims to be an introduction to a subject cannot afford to give idiosyncratic views. I nearly laughed out loud, and was pleased that when I looked around I saw several other knowing smirks in the session.
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