From conservative evangelical to Biblical professor (and an agnostic)

[grantcart]

Bart Ehrman and I travelled very similar paths. He came from a more certain evangelical background and that gave him the stamina to continue holding up the facade of Biblical innerancy all the way to the time he started his PHD at Princeton Theological Seminary. NPR had a very interesting interview with him:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101389895

From the article and interview it seems that he is trying to make the discoveries at Seminary available to lay people.

I preceeded Bart by a few years at Princeton and we were in the same program. I saw dozens of evangelicals buckle and crumble away,usually by the first semester. He must have been very stubborn to maintain innerancy up to his PHd level.

What one learns at PTS is that even the most commonly held myths about the bible are not founded in its texts. A couple of examples;

1) There are two creation stories in the bible not one.

2) The myth of the virgin birth is not well supported by the gospels.

3) Resurrection appearences are not well supported by the gospels.


All of these positions have been long known and widely held by virtually all peer reviewed respected Biblical authorities. Ehrman takes out to explain this in common language. I look forward to getting his books.


Here is background from wikipedia, it is an oft repeated template of how strict evangelicals become very liberal theologically when they reach solid advanced studies. He now classifies himself as an agnostic, and a much more moral person than the evangelical that graduated from Wheaton and Moody.





Ehrman began studying the Bible and its original languages at the Moody Bible Institute and is a 1978 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois. He received his Ph.D and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied under Bruce Metzger. He currently serves as the chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was the President of the Southeast Region of the Society of Biblical Literature, and worked closely as an editor on a number of the Society's publications. Currently, he co-edits the series New Testament Tools and Studies.

Much of Ehrman's writing has concentrated on various aspects of Walter Bauer's thesis that Christianity was always diversified or at odds with itself. Ehrman is often considered a pioneer in connecting the history of the early church to textual variants within biblical manuscripts and in coining such terms as "Proto-orthodox Christianity." In his writings, Ehrman has turned around textual criticism. From the time of the Church Fathers, it was those denounced as heretics (Marcion, for example) who were charged with tampering with the biblical manuscripts. Ehrman theorizes that it was more often the Orthodox that "corrupted" the manuscripts, altering the text to promote particular viewpoints.

Ehrman became an Evangelical Christian as a teen. His desire to understand the original words of the Bible led him to the study of ancient languages and to textual criticism, to which he attributes the inspiration for an ongoing critical exploration of the basis of his own religious beliefs, which in turn gradually led to the questioning of his faith in the Bible as the inerrant, unchanging word of God. He now considers himself an agnostic.<1><2> Nevertheless, Ehrman has kept ongoing dialogue with evangelicals. In March 2006, he joined theologian William Lane Craig in public debate on the question "Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?" on the campus of the College of the Holy Cross.<3> In April of 2008, Ehrman and evangelical New Testament scholar Daniel B. Wallace participated in a public dialogue on the textual reliability of the New Testament.<4>

He has authored or contributed to nineteen books. In 2006, he appeared on The Colbert Report, as well as The Daily Show, to promote his book Misquoting Jesus. In 2007, he gave a speech at Stanford University in which he discussed the textual inconsistencies of the New Testament, and also took questions from the audience. He has also made several guest appearances on National Public Radio (NPR) including the show Fresh Air in February 2008 to discuss his book God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer.

Professional awards received include the Students' Undergraduate Teaching Award, The Ruth and Philip Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement, and The Bowman and Gordon Gray Award for Excellence in Teaching.

[babylonsister]

1. I need to read this because now religion is

impacting on my life. My stepson has Friedrichs Ataxia, but he doesn't care, because he's found religion. He's 36, mandatory retired, and the walker is going towards a wheelchair, I think. He has 3 kids.

[grantcart]

2. This is from his home page and looks particularly good

http://www.bartdehrman.com/books/misquoting_jesus.htm

the NPR interview is worth listening too.

Best wishes for your step son.

[BurtWorm]

3. You're probably going to have a tough time reaching him where he wants to be reached now.

Especially if you go at him with intellectual arguments against his newfound beliefs. I wonder if you could talk to him about what he's getting out of religion now. If he thinks he's getting comfort, reason is probably not going to look like a suitable alternative.

Is it something fundamentalist he's going toward? (If you don't mind my asking and butting in.)

[BurtWorm]

4. Last spring I was reading similar ideas about early Christianity from another scholar

named John Z. Smith, who teaches at the University of Chicago school of divinity. His background is radically different. He's Jewish (the name notwithstanding) and a former Marxist who began academics as an agronomist studying grasses. He approaches comparative religion the way he approached his former subject, looking for evidence of speciation as opposed to mere variation. Though not well known generally, he's very influential in comparative religion circles--admired and loathed for his foundation-shaking critiques of his field. He thinks religion studies should be more scientific, but they're full of partisans of beliefs and heavily influenced in all areas, including Judaic and Islamic, by the Christians who pioneered them in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Anyway, he talks of Christianities, never Christianity. He thinks the idea of one Christianity is balogna. His work makes one hesitate to agree with any statement like, "Those Christians aren't very Christian." He suggests that Christ is completely unknowable--his life, his beliefs, his words. According to Smith, all statements about Christ must be understood by the filters they're processed through.

[grantcart]

5. Actually the main points that Ehrman is talking to have been well established for

decades and is held by all Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic mainline Seminaries.

Even breakaway seminaries that were based on Biblical innerancy like Fuller (Warren's alma mater) have moved close to this widely held peer reviewed perspective. Your statement "all statements about Christ must be understood by the filters they're processed through" is taught in the first semester of Seminary and is the reason that Schweitzer's "The Quest for the Historical Jesus" is still required reading after 103 years.

It was such a stunning revelation in methodology of Christology that it stopped the discipline for many years.

You can read more about these standards here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer#Theology

[BurtWorm]

6. Smith criticizesSchweitzer in particular

as one scholar who has misled a whole slew of scholars after him by making the claim that Roman Catholic Christianity betrayed the "true," "pure" Christianity of the earliest decades. Smith says those Christianities--and there have always been many Christianities-- are permanently unavailable to us. Any Christian--or any scholar of Christianity--who claims to know the essence of the earliest "Christianity" is blowing smoke.

I remember now that Smith says the whole field of comparative religion is permeated with the Protestantisms of the first CR scholars. Even the Catholics are indoctrinated in the Protestantisms of the CR canon.

[grantcart]

7. the demarcation lines of the early battles between the different "Christian" communities

are well known and a very large amount of original source material is available, more than any other comparable moment in ancient human history.

The gnostic Christians and the essene Christians are particularly well established and continued to be studied by modern scholarship. While Schwietzer's focus on Jesus eschatology has been criticized his works are still in print over 100 years after being published and are still considered a landmark event in the history of Christology.

Christianity had an unusual unifying process that found an institutional consensus (as expressed in creeds and cannonization of the books of the bible) and ecumenical discipline which forced other early Christian sects - the Gnostics being the largest - out of the formula.

Islam's two main sects represent a much greater theological and mystical departure than the difference between Protestants and Christians and can be compared to the gnostic/mainline schism of the early Church.

If you read The Quest for the Historical Jesus you will see that Schweitzer criticizes (actually destroys) all Christologies in the past, making no real distinction between Catholic and Protestant.

Today while there are theological and doctrinal difference between Protestants and Catholics there is very little on Biblical scholarship, Textual Criticism, Higher Criticsm or Historical Criticism. In reality, even in the most liberal Seminaries, there is no real scholarship by Christians on comparative religion. The course I took on comparative was not even taught by full Seminary Professor, his backround was only on Buddhism. There was also very little on Christianity and ideologies and to satisfy my curiousity on Marx and Jesus I had to do an individual study. Could have changed but I doubt it.

[54anickel]

8. Someone here once said that "churches are filled with hopeful agnostics". That stuck with me

and I tend to think that's true for a large percentage of church goers today. They want to believe....but they just don't know. I guess it's something you can't really "know" intellectually, I think it's more of an experiential kind of "knowing" and even then you can't be sure. But isn't doubt part of faith?

[Name removed]

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[54anickel]

10. Oops, looks like I missed something. Sorry if my post pissed off anyone. n/t