Dr. Bart
Ehrman’s works could rattle the faith of naïve Christians. Hence, those who
debate Christians frequently appeal to Ehrman's works.
This is a
beginner’s guide to comprehend Ehrman, and the scholarly response from Christian
apologists to debunk his attacks against Historic Christianity.
Who Is Bart
Ehrman?
“Dr. Bart
D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill…An expert on the New Testament and the history of
Early Christianity, has written or edited thirty books, numerous scholarly
articles, and dozens of book reviews…Five of his books have been on the New
York Times Bestseller list: Misquoting Jesus; God’s Problem; Jesus Interrupted;
Forged; and How Jesus Became God,” says Ehrman’s website.1
Why Did Ehrman
Renounce Christianity?
Dr. William
Lane Craig, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and
Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University, is a contemporary to Dr.
Ehrman. Craig and Ehrman attended the same college and studied Greek under the
same professor. Craig briefly narrates Ehrman’s apostasy from Christianity,
“Sadly, Dr. Ehrman came to radically different conclusions as a result of his
studies at Princeton University. He pointedly describes how he came to doubt
the doctrine of biblical inerrancy as a result of his studies and how this
finally led him to abandon faith in Christ. Eventually, he became an agnostic,
finally an atheist, and today he is an apostate Christian to all appearances
and writes books against the Christian faith which are enormously destructive
and which have proved very troubling to many Christians who read them and as a
result are filled with doubts about their own Christian faith and experience.”2
Why Did Ehrman Become
Famous?
Ehrman’s
book “Misquoting Jesus” was published in November 2005. Within one week, it was
among the top fifty sellers at Amazon. Within three months, more than 100,000
copies were sold. Ehrman was much sought after by media outlets.3
“Why all
the hoopla? ...Jesus sells. But not the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus that
sells is the one that is palatable to postmodern man. And with a book entitled
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, a ready
audience was created via the hope that there would be fresh evidence that the
biblical Jesus is a figment…More importantly, this book sells because it
appeals to the skeptic who wants reasons not to believe, who considers the
Bible a book of myths…”4 says Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, the Senior
Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and Executive
Director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.
What Are Ehrman’s
Accusations Against Historic Christianity?
Dr. Craig
A. Evans, the John Bisagno Distinguished Professor of Christian Origins and
Dean of the School of Christian Thought at Houston Baptist University, offers a
terse yet highly meaningful synopsis of Bart Ehrman’s attack against Historic
Christianity, “In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman argues that today’s text of the
Bible (and he mostly speaks in reference to the Greek New Testament) does not
exactly match that of the original writings and that some of the changes in the
text were deliberate, at times motivated by theological dogmas. Therefore, we
really don’t know what the evangelists originally wrote. In Jesus, Interrupted,
Ehrman shows why the Gospel narratives cannot be harmonized, nor their
histories trusted. In Forged: Writing in the Name of God, he argues that
several books of the Bible were not written by their ascribed authors. Most
recently, in How Jesus Became God, Ehrman argues that the early church’s belief
that Jesus was divine was not what Jesus claimed, nor what his original
disciples believed.”5
Where Do I Begin To
Debunk Ehrman?
Ehrman is a textual critic, not an
expert in the research of Historical Jesus, says William Lane Craig, “Bart
Ehrman’s area of expertise is the text – the original Greek text – of the New
Testament. He is a textual critic. Although he likes to posture himself in his
books as a historian – an expert or scholar in life of Jesus research – in fact
that is not his area of specialization or training. He is a textual critic who
is someone who works with manuscripts to establish the original text of the
autographs – or the original writings – of the New Testament…Unfortunately,
Bart Ehrman has used his prestige as a text critic to give the impression to
lay people that the text of the New Testament is terribly corrupted and uncertain.”6
Ehrman is a double-faced accuser; he
knows that the New Testament is 99% established yet he attacks the veracity of
the New Testament, “…there are really two Bart Ehrmans that are on
display...the scholarly Bart Ehrman and the popular Bart Ehrman. The scholarly
Bart Ehrman knows that the text of the New Testament has been established to
99% accuracy. That is to say, the original wording of the New Testament is now
established to about 99%. So the degree of uncertainty of the text of the New
Testament is only about 1%. There are about 138,000 Greek words in the New
Testament. Of these, only about 1,400 are uncertain today. 99% are established
with real certainty. Of that 1% that still remains uncertain, virtually
uncertain, bad Bart deliberately misrepresents the situation to lay audiences
to make them think that the New Testament is incredibly corrupted and
uncertain. It is very interesting that when the bad Bart is pressed on this
issue by someone he will come clean and admit this. For example, I heard Bart
Ehrman interviewed on a radio show some time ago about Misquoting Jesus and the
interviewer was talking to him about how uncertain the text of the New
Testament is, all the thousands and thousands of variants that there are…and
finally the interviewer said to him, “Dr. Ehrman, what do you think the text of
the New Testament originally really said?” And Ehrman replied, “I don’t
understand what you mean. What are you talking about?” And the interviewer
said, “The text of the New Testament – it has been so corrupted as it has been
copied. What do you think the original text actually said?” And Ehrman said,
“Well, it says pretty much what we have today – what it says now.” And the
interviewer was utterly confused. He said, “I thought it was all corrupted” and
Ehrman said “We’ve been able to reestablish the text of the New Testament as
textual scholars.” So he knows and when pressed admits that the text of the New
Testament is 99% established.”7
Ehrman argues like a fundamentalist and is
frequently guilty of the fallacy of the excluded middle, says Dr. Craig
Evans, “The problem is that, in his popular books, Ehrman is frequently guilty
of the logical fallacy of the excluded middle, the idea that there are only two
options — either we have every word of the original text or we do not; either
we have harmonious accounts of the teaching and activities of Jesus or we
don’t. Bart Ehrman is arguing like a fundamentalist. It is an all-or-nothing
approach. If the Bible is truly inspired (and therefore trustworthy), it must
be free from discrepancies. But this is not how most seasoned scholars think,
including evangelicals. Nor was it the way early Christians thought.”8
Ehrman will not engage the best critics in
the field, claims Nick Peters while reviewing Ehrman’s latest book, “Jesus
Before the Gospels,” “…he will very rarely interact with those who are his best
critics in the field. In Forged, he spends no serious time on the work of Randy
Richards on the usage of secretaries, for instance. In How Jesus Became God he
barely interacts with Hurtado and Hengel and does not even once mention
Bauckham. So it is that in this book, he doesn’t deal with many of the best
critics out there, such as the work of Walton and Sandy in The Lost World of
Scripture or with the work of Robert McIver in Memory, Jesus, and the Synoptic
Gospels.”9
To
conclude, Ehrman has been more than adequately debunked. This article merely
provides a basic understanding of Bart Ehrman and offers a starting point to
debunk his accusations. The reader can gain deeper insight into Ehrman’s
fallacies upon studying the materials cited in the endnotes and the scholarly
work by the Christian apologists that are in the public domain.
Endnotes:
Websites cited were last accessed on 18th August, 2016.
1http://www.bartdehrman.com/barts-biography/
2http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/the-work-of-bart-ehrman-gracepoint-church#ixzz4H6kIbuVC
3https://bible.org/article/gospel-according-bart
4Ibid.
5http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2014/04/16/fundamentalist-arguments-against-fundamentalism/31725
6http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/the-work-of-bart-ehrman-gracepoint-church#ixzz4H6kaTIwv
7http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/the-work-of-bart-ehrman-gracepoint-church#ixzz4H6l6dm6h
8http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2014/04/16/fundamentalist-arguments-against-fundamentalism/31725
9http://deeperwaters.ddns.net/?p=9181
This article was originally written for Christian
Apologetics Alliance and posted at their website http://christianapologeticsalliance.com/2016/08/18/a-beginners-guide-to-understand-and-answer-dr-bart-ehrman/
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