Bart Ehrman, Scholarship, Presuppositions

Bart Ehrman, Scholarship, and the Nature of Academic Engagement

This morning, I finished reading Bart Ehrman's newest book on remembering Jesus. It was mildly interesting. I didn't find it to be nearly as good as some of his previous works were, but it had just come out, and it has been my practice for quite some time now to keep up with what is being written so that we can interact with it in a meaningful fashion.

That's really what I think scholarship is about, is knowing your field and being able to communicate to others what developments are in that field, so on and so forth. And obviously, Ehrman is very relevant to apologetics.

He is the leading English-speaking critic of New Testament Christianity. I clearly believe that his series of books, his popular-level books, are specifically meant to cover the entire range of undercutting any meaningful Christian commitment at all.

And I do believe it's directly relevant to the fact that he is an apostate, that he abandoned the faith, and he is utilizing that background that was his as the last doctoral student of Dr. Bruce Metzger as his entree.

And when unbelievers want to find an apostate to talk to, Bart Ehrman is the best person to talk to. And so, as most people know, we have reviewed every book, every one of the popular books as they've come out.

We have reviewed a number of debates that Ehrman has done. We have engaged very deeply with his criticisms on a number of things. Not quite as much on the problem of evil, because quite honestly, his work on that was very shallow, very poor.

It did not show really any meaningful understanding of historical Christian theodicy and issues related to that. And we pointed out that Dr. Ehrman, on one side, wants to avoid having to deal with theological issues.

On the other side, he's constantly making theological claims. He wants to have the proverbial cake and eat it, too. And so we've engaged in a lot of criticism. But of course, as we've done it, we have allowed him to speak.

We have quoted him. We have played the quotes from the debates, and they weren't edited or anything like that. We let him speak because, well, that's why we do what we do. Well, as I said, I finished the new book and had already planned on doing some segments.

I mentioned the Last Dividing Line. This again illustrated it'd be really good to go through all the Gnostic Gospels, but especially particular ones, Thomas, and especially the Podi Evangelium of James.

I mean, that has relevance in so many areas, Roman Catholicism, so many of the early Marian dogmas developed out of the popularity of that work. And if you actually read the whole thing, you're just left going, wow, is that different from the actual Gospels, the canonical Gospels?

But we had, as it may, had already decided, especially to look at one particular section from the book, when on my way in to the office today, a friend of mine sent me a screenshot or a message that had been posted by a Muslim apologist.

And this goes back, however, to, I guess someone was digging through here, and Ijaz Ahmed was digging through stuff, and found this quotation from almost two years ago. Now, I don't follow Ehrman's blog all that much.

People send me stuff, there are people who follow it. But I don't remember ever having seen this. But Ehrman said on April 28th, 2014, he's not a, speaking of me, he's not a scholar because he does not have scholarly training, does not have scholarly credentials, and never publishes any works of scholarship.

My aversion to him is simply rooted in the fact that he does not seem to be a nice guy. I have no problem with him being a committed Christian believer, but when someone is that offensive, I tend to take offense.

Bart Ehrman's Blog Comment and the Charge of Offensiveness

Now, I don't know what came before this. I have seen people go on Ehrman's blog and lie their teeth out about what I had allegedly said about Ehrman. One thing I'm 99 certain of is that Bart Ehrman does not take the time to listen to any of the critiques we've done.

He did not, when we debated, if he Googled my name two weeks out, I'd be surprised. He had not read any of my books. You have to understand that the Ehrmans of the world, the John Shelby Spongs of the world, they do not believe that conservative Christians, believing Christians, he describes me as a fundamentalist, so he doesn't even differentiate between, you know, there's a lot of fundamentalists that certainly would, but he doesn't differentiate between anyone, for example, who believes in inerrancy, it's just simply a fundamentalist.

So whether you're King James only, independent fundamentalist, Baptist, or R .C. Sproul, you're all just in one camp, and they don't care to differentiate, it's irrelevant to them. And so it's a lot easier to just throw everybody into this one pile and just treat them in that way, and that's what Ehrman does.

I don't know what came before this, this citation. And so maybe somebody had just, because like I said I've seen people just horrifically lie about me to him, and I would imagine he'd just believe that.

So he may have been deceived here, I don't know. I don't know what he means by being offensive. The fact of the matter is that I attempted to be kind to him when we debated the night before, I saw him in the lobby of the hotel we were all staying at in Florida, and he was sitting there drinking alone, watching a basketball game.

I would imagine the Tar Heels had something to do with it, he's obviously very big into that. So I went up to him and introduced myself. He gave me immediately the feeling like I was interrupting. So I kept it short, expressed my appreciation of him coming, looking forward to the debate, and I let him know that during the day the next day, before the debate in the evening, I was going to be doing a presentation on his favorite textual variants, specifically the angry Jesus variant Mark, Hebrews 2 .9, Chorus, Chorus, in other words I was going to be addressing the very heart of what we were going to be talking about the next evening.

And it was clear to him that I've taken the time to read his materials, and I've read his books. I took so much time before our debate to listen to him, bought courses online, and listened to hours and hours and hours, not just of debates, but lectures from his perspective.

I think I have all of his books, even to this day. I may have one or two only in electronic form now, but I think I pretty much have a fairly complete hardcover library of his works as well. Anyway, I had taken the time.

He recognized that. Did you think he came? No. Because Bart Ehrman doesn't think that we have anything meaningful to say. We are irrelevant. We don't fit into his realm of scholarship. And if he were honest, he'd admit that anybody who would even consider the idea of divine inspiration...

And by the way, may I say something to my... I hope my Muslim friends, Ijaz, the rest of you guys, listen up here. You are a hypocrite if you utilize this man's material. Because you must understand, if you for a second would say you believe that the Quran is inspired, that its text is inerrant, if he's consistent, he's going to dismiss you just as quickly as he dismisses believing Christians.

In fact, the two groups that are pictured in the Quran, having conversation with one another, Ehrman would say they're all nuts, and would not consider any of them to be meaningful critical scholars. So one of the things I was going to mention, by the way, well, let me finish this story first.

So I invited him to come. He didn't bother to come. He didn't bother to come. He was treated with perfect fairness. The debate was completely on time. It was exactly what he was told it was going to be.

He was paid well for being there. And why he would say I'm offensive, I guess it's because I stood toe-to-toe with him. And it's interesting, when he posted years later, I'm not sure what the date on this was.

Let's take a look at it. I don't see what the, it doesn't have the date here. But this was from the Bart Ehrman blog. When he finally posted the debate video, he said, I wasn't sure whether I should post this debate or not.

Frankly, it was not a good experience. I normally don't have an aversion to people I debate, but James White is that kind of fundamentalist who gets under my skin. To be fair, he would probably not call himself a fundamentalist.

Then again, in my experience, very few fundamentalists do call themselves fundamentalists. Usually a fundamentalist is that guy who is far to the right of you, wherever you are. Someone on the blog can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe White does hold the absolute inerrancy of the Bible.

If so, given what else I know about him, I'd call him a fundamentalist. In any event, he's a smart fellow and came to the debate loaded for bear. But it's good to see me at not my best as well as at my best.

Now, I think that's about as close as Bart Ehrman would ever allow himself to get to admit that that was a fair debate and that he didn't just wipe the floor with the person he was debating either, because I came loaded for bear.

Well, that's what he said when he posted it, anyways. And again, there was nothing. We did not have any interaction after the debate. I did not see him. He left. I gave him a tie. What he says I'm offensive about, I'll be perfectly honest with you.

Given that and what he says elsewhere, I think he finds it offensive when anyone actually believes what he used to believe, because remember, he's an apostate. So I think he finds offensive people who believe what he used to believe and yet who will stand up to him, not in a mean-spirited fashion.

Anyone who watches that debate with even a modicum of fairness knows that it was handled exactly the way it should have been. There was no mistreatment. All you got to do, folks, is compare it to what we're watching in the Republican presidential race right now, and it will look like it was a love-fest.

Anyway, so I was a little surprised when I saw that quotation today. I wondered what it was really all about. But what it reminded me of is the fact that a lot of the comments I was going to make about Ehrman's new book, and I'm not talking about this one, I'm going to be speaking about that in South Africa, but the new one on memory.

It's really focused upon memory, and we'll talk about it more a little bit later on. I'm going to look at one example of it in a moment. If you're a Muslim, you must understand that if you quote from this book, you are a hypocrite on a level that is next to impossible to begin to define.

The only kinds of Muslims that will be quoting Bart Ehrman on this book will be those who are hypocritical or ignorant. Now, those are strong words, but anyone who's read it knows exactly why I just said that.

Because the thesis of the book has to do with attacking the idea that there can be any accurate memory or memorization over time of something like the stories of Jesus. Think for just a second, guys. That is the end of Hadith.

All the Isnaad chains in the world, Ehrman would laugh them to scorn. It's the end of Hadith, and it's the end of the Quran. If you're going to be consistent. Now, you may not care about that. You don't care about truthfulness.

Hey, in today's world, consistency, even in political leaders, believe one thing one day, something completely different the next day, and no one seems to care. So if you want to go that direction, fine.

But my comments are really only for the serious practitioners of dawah. Those would be the only ones I could really talk about. If you use this book, realize that you are destroying your own credibility in the process.

Because if you're going to be even slightly consistent, you're going to have to apply the exact same battery acid criticism to your own text. But, the other thing I want to point out is Bart Ehrman, because he believes his own press, simply doesn't listen to the side, and he ends up, he's making some big blunders.

You know, I used to say Bart Ehrman is almost always factually right. But, it's the application where he goes off. That's starting to change. Because, look, the fact of the matter is, he's left his field of actual graduate level work.

You know, he said things in here about Paul, and about certain texts that demonstrate a naive level of understanding of what has been written about these texts and understood about the theology behind these texts for a long, long, long, long time.

You know, I had always thought Paul was this, and then I started studying this book, and I discovered Paul thought that. And you're like, you've been teaching how long, and you're just now coming to stuff that is normally discussed in most seminary classrooms?

That's odd. And I want to give you two examples. One came from a recent debate that Ehrman did. In this debate, let me bring it up here, it became self-evidently clear that Dr. Ehrman does not understand the Doctrine of the Trinity.

He does not have what I would require of my undergraduate students understanding the Doctrine of the Trinity. Okay, now, as far as I know, Dr. Ehrman has never taught systematic theology. He looks down upon me.

I'm irrelevant because I didn't go to the right schools. But the fact of the matter is, I've taught systematic theology around the world. I've taught the Doctrine of the Trinity in Kiev by candlelight when the local nuclear power plant had fire.

And when it comes to theology, I've written significantly deeper material than anything Bart Ehrman's ever produced. And it's painfully obvious that the man does not understand the Doctrine of the Trinity.

And this came out in this section right here. Let's listen to the exchange and then talk a little bit about it. Yahweh? God of Israel? You know, Paul, by the way, doesn't say that Jesus is equal to God of Israel.

Well, he calls Yahweh. He is definitely not Yahweh or any author of the New Testament. Yahweh and Jesus are different beings in the New Testament. What's the latter half of the Philippians poem say? He's honored.

He's put at a position with Yahweh. That doesn't make him Yahweh. He is definitely not Yahweh. Okay, so Romans 10, when he says, Paul thought Jesus was the Lord. Look, if you think that Jesus was Yahweh, you've committed the heresy called civilianism.

No, no, no. Which was a third century heresy that said that Jesus and Yahweh were the same being. It was condemned as a heresy in early Christianity. Okay, so there's Ehrman. And when he's asked, you know, what about that Romans 10 citation?

It comes directly from the Old Testament. He was referring to Isaiah 45 at the end of the Philippians hymn. Every knee will bow to who? To Yahweh. And confessing the name of the Lord in the Old Testament is Yahweh.

It is painfully obvious that Ehrman has never worked through the citation of Psalm 102, 25 -27. In reference to the sun by the writer of the Hebrews. He hasn't worked through John's identification of Jesus as Yahweh in John chapter 12.

Something from Isaiah 6. The text will vary in the Greek subject. He doesn't know these things. If he had read my book in the Trinity, he would. But again, he doesn't think that we have anything meaningful to say.

And by the way, may I point something out? People who study what other people believe to represent them accurately, that happens to be real scholarship. Once you embrace a worldview where you don't think the other side has anything meaningful to say, may I suggest that's not really good scholarship?

Just in passing. Anyway, he doesn't understand. And we could go through from Justin Martyr onward. Early church fathers identifying Jesus as Yahweh. But he's speaking of his opponent committing the error of Sabalianism.

So, let's check Ehrman's scholarship, shall we? Dr. Ehrman graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. One of the greatest denizens of the Princeton Cemetery. Which these days, you can learn more theology from the Princeton Cemetery than the Princeton Seminary.

But anyway, one of the greatest names ever associated with Princeton. One of the greatest scholars. Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. B .B. Warfield. Tremendous scholar. I have learned so much. When people talk about being dependent.

Standing on the shoulders of giants. Wow, there's one of the giants. Does that mean I agree with everything? No, no, no, no. Once you grow up, you understand you can really appreciate what people have to say.

Even if you don't have to agree with everything they say. Anyway, B .B. Warfield. B .B. Warfield. You would think that someone with a M .Div. Ph .D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Might have some level of familiarity with Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield.

Let me read just a short quote from B .B. Warfield. Speaking of the New Testament writers. They do not then place two new gods by the side of Jehovah. As alike with him to be served and worshipped. They conceive Jehovah as himself at once.

Father, Son, and Spirit. In presenting this one Jehovah as Father, Son, and Spirit. They do not even betray any lurking feeling that they are making innovations. Without apparent misgiving, they take over Old Testament passages.

And apply them to Father, Son, and Spirit indifferently. Obviously, they understand themselves and wish to be understood. As setting forth in the Father, Son, and Spirit just the one God. That the God of the Old Testament Revelation is.

And they are as far as possible from recognizing any breach between themselves and the Fathers. In presenting their enlarged conception of the divine being. You see, end quote. You see, Bart Ehrman does not understand the difference between being and person.

Does not understand that Sebalianism was a denial of the existence of three divine persons. And he is assuming Unitarianism and speaking about Yahweh. Now that is a theological mess. I have had many a beginning theology student in the same mess that Dr. Ehrman finds himself in.

Even after writing books like this. But we have been able to clear up their misconception. Now, I said as soon as I saw this debate. I would be happy to debate Bart Ehrman on the thesis of his own statement.

Jesus is not Yahweh for any New Testament writer. I will debate that against Bart Ehrman with absolute, complete, 100 confidence. Of winning that debate. Without the slight, and that is not arrogance.

That is just recognizing when someone does not know what they are talking about. That is not arrogance. Dr. Ehrman would be ill advised to take up that challenge. No matter what the honorarium offered him would be.

Because he is wrong. And I have a feeling that if he actually took the time. To read Warfield. To read Hodges. To read even some of the works he himself has edited. Going back into the time of the Christological controversies.

He would discover that he was in error. And something tells me he would probably go. You know what? I was wrong about that. I would like to think that he would be willing to do that. But it says a lot.

When the leading critic in the English language. Does not even understand the central doctrine of the faith. That he so confidently denies today. And so there you have one of the examples. Where when you do not take the time.

To listen to the other side. You end up making some pretty obvious mistakes. Here is one from the book. And here is the Kindle version. Of Dr. Ehrman's new book. And let me read a section for you. I first realized this myself many years ago.

When I was a graduate student at Princeton Theological Seminary. One semester Gerhardsen's teacher. Harald Reisenfeld. Reisenfeld. Was in town giving a lecture. In his talk he argued a position that was in line with the views of his more famous student.

He actually had originally given the idea to Gerhardsen. Jesus' words and deeds were passed along as they had been committed to memory. The morning after his lecture I had breakfast with Reisenfeld. And I told him that I was puzzled by something.

The accounts of the words and deeds of Jesus in the New Testament. Are at odds with each other in numerous places. How could they have been memorized? I gave him an example. In Mark's Gospel a man named Jairus.

Comes up to Jesus and tells him that his daughter is very sick. He would like Jesus to come and heal her. They head to Jairus' house but they are unexpectedly delayed. Before they arrive she dies. Members of Jairus' household come and inform him that there is no longer any reason for Jesus to come.

Jesus tells Jairus not to fear. They continue on to the house and Jairus proceeds to raise the girl from the dead. It is a terrific story, very moving and powerful. The same story is found in the Gospel of Matthew.

But with a striking difference. In Matthew's version Jairus comes up to Jesus. And informs him that his daughter has already died. He would like Jesus to come and raise her from the dead. Matthew 9, 18 -26.

So I asked Reisenfeld, how can Matthew's version be right if Mark's is right? Either the girl was already dead when the father came to Jesus or not. Reisenfeld's response was stunning and has stayed with me until today.

Since he was convinced that the stories about Jesus were memorized by his followers. He believed Matthew and Mark were describing two different occasions on which Jesus talked with Jairus. And brought his daughter back to life.

The first time Jairus came to Jesus before the girl had died. The next time it happened she had died already. Jesus raised her from the dead twice. I realized then and there this theory of disciples remembering precisely the words and deeds of Jesus simply didn't make sense to me.

Well, I'll be perfectly honest with you. Doesn't make any sense to me either. Not that form of it. I'd never heard of anyone saying this before. I'm sorry, I'd never heard anyone suggest that these are two different incidents.

Because they're obviously the same incident. But what bugs me about Ehrman and this goes back to his lectures and he did this with other incidents in the Synoptic Gospels in his lectures to his students is he only gives this kind of really weird interpretation.

He doesn't give the meaningful consistent interpretations of conservative Bible believers who still believe that the Bible is inspired. Now, again, I'm not a scholar according to Ehrman. No matter what I say is going to be irrelevant one way or the other.

And the very fact that I would argue this point makes me a non-scholar from this perspective. But this is one of the primary examples that I have used. I've been teaching through the Synoptic Gospels for years.

We've only got like four pages left. And we're almost there. But I utilize... Dr. Ehrman says that the Christians just sweep these things under the rug. Well, the students in my class probably wish I did sweep some things under the rug.

We would have been done a long time ago. But I don't sweep these things under the rug. And in fact, people who were at the G3 conference, not this past year but the year before, this is from my G3 presentation.

What I'm putting up on the screen right now. I used this exact example. And ironically, Dr. Ehrman, he must he must know that there are better answers. Does he? I'll be honest with you. I don't know. He doesn't seem he doesn't seem to be listening.

He doesn't take them into consideration. But let me just point out Matthew uses 139 words over only 8 verses to narrate this entire event. Mark uses 379 words over 22 verses to narrate this event. So Matthew's version is 37 the length of Mark's about 1 third.

Or Mark's version is 2 .7 times longer than Matthew's. So isn't it rather painfully obvious that Matthew is greatly shortening the story? He does and this comes out rather plainly I think when we look at this particular section right here.

In Matthew 9 -18 while he was saying these things to them a synagogue official came and bowed down before him and said my daughter has just died but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. So that's the first encounter.

While the synagogue officials and Mark named Jairus, notice he names him came up and seeing him fell at his feet and implored him mercy saying my little daughter is at the point of death please come and lay your hands on her so she will get well and live.

Now if you just kept these two together and you didn't take into consideration that one is 1 third the length of the other you didn't take into consideration this next screen right here. Mark has while he was still speaking they came from the house of the synagogue official this is the woman with the issue of blood has been healed your daughter has died but Jesus overhearing what was being spoken said to the synagogue official do not be afraid any longer only believe.

It's not in Matthew. So what has Matthew done? Matthew has telescoped the details so as to make it a much shorter story because his focus is upon what? That when Jesus and Jairus arrive at the house they know that the daughter has died.

Now you'll notice that before I went to this I talked about what's the difference between Ipsissima Vox, Ipsissima Verba and Ipsissima Intendebunt most of the discussion is between Vox and Verba are the writings of the Gospels MP3 recordings or are they what the spirit intends to communicate and the author intends to communicate in the author's context so it's not that we have not responded to these things it's not that we have not said yes this is clearly a difference here it's not a contradiction it's telescoping we do it all the time.

I guarantee you that if you compare the material in Ehrman's Orthodox Corruption of Scripture with the similar material in misquoting Jesus he will do the exact same thing and if you listen to his lectures I've caught him doing the exact same thing where he likes to tell a lot of the same stories but he doesn't always tell them the same way.

Does that mean he's lying? No. If he's in a debate he's got to tell it faster than if he's in a lecture where he has more time. He gets to make that choice and so did the writers of the Gospels they get to make that choice too and Matthew telescoped it, Mark gives us more information.

It is unfair then for Ehrman to constantly be talking about all of the alleged contradictions and misstatements in the Gospels especially when he doesn't even seem to show himself to be aware of meaningful and yet still believing interpretation of these texts and that's the danger folks.

That's what happens when you start believing your own press so much that you don't think you can learn anything from anybody else. I'm very thankful that I still get to learn things from people. I've learned things from Bart Ehrman.

I can read Bart Ehrman's books and I can glean things from Bart Ehrman's books but Bart Ehrman doesn't read the books of people who believe the things that he himself has now abandoned now. I'm not going to Bart Ehrman to learn theological truths.

He has nothing to teach me but I just ask just the honest person in the audience what demonstrates true scholarship? The ability to learn someone else's perspective and to interact with it meaningfully or to close your mind to all those things and only listen to one perspective.

Sadly there are a lot of people in our day that probably would disagree with my understanding but I think most people recognize the difference. So there you go. I am sorry if Bart Ehrman was offended at our debate I don't think that's what he was talking about he said I came loaded for bear but I just don't think that's what he was talking about.

I just have a feeling that in light of the fact that I've seen people lying to him on his blog about things that are just gross lies just flat out falsehoods. I have a feeling that's probably what he was responding to.

The Trinity, Yahweh, and the Charge of Sabellianism

So I'm going to hope that that's the case. So I want to close with this Dr. Ehrman if you want to send me anything that you feel where I've been offensive to you in an unwarranted fashion not that we disagree.

I can't imagine you'd be offended that I identify you as an apostate because you once made a confession of faith that's called apostasy. Is it really offensive to you that someone would stand toe to toe with you and say you're wrong.

I would certainly hope not. I don't know why you'd do debates if you think you'd be constantly offended. So I do want to say Dr. Ehrman that if you stand by what you said in the debate with Dr. Bass that no New Testament writer identified Jesus as Yahweh.

Why don't you prove that I am not a scholar and debate me on this subject and prove me wrong. I mean that would pretty much be it. You've got to admit the debate we did the people who listened to me and are in agreement with me go hey that was a good debate y 'all did a good job.

So if I'm so bad and such a fundamentalist then it should be fairly easy to demonstrate that I'm wrong. The fact of the matter is if you were to start studying that you would discover that I'm not wrong.

But if you stand by that then you have an open challenge to debate that thesis. And if you come to the conclusion sir that you were misinformed that you had not done sufficient study that you're simply wrong.

Then why not come out publicly and state that I would challenge you to do that as well. Well folks I hope this has been helpful to you. I hope it's been useful to you. And I appreciate the time you've taken to watch it.