Rewriting the bible

[Aractus]

As I've said many many times, a vast array of what Ehrman has to say is fringe ideas well outside of general scholarly thinking, even among most other critical scholars.

Ehrman is not the central authority for critical scholarship - far from it!

[Mothonis]

OK, well if you won't point out a single thing I said wrong, I can't defend myself to you. If you just tell me I'm wrong, then that is of no help I'm afraid. Point to any specific part, and I'll try my best to find supporting evidence. Otherwise, not much I can do.

If there's nothing you can say, fair enough, I acknowledge you totally disagree and would be against changing the bible.

(You didn't answer any of my questions though.)

Again it is all wrong. I just said everything you put in the op does not reflect the truth. That means if you want answers from me you need to justify your claims. Otherwise know from the same authority you made your claims, I have dismissed them.

---

Making someone demonstrate their claims is a troll filter. Why should I put in the work if your not willing to do the same?

You cant name anything can you

[Aractus]

^ Well, he doesn't need to, I already did it for him.

[Mothonis]

^ Well, he doesn't need to, I already did it for him.

Its very christian like, let others do the thinking for you

[Aractus]

Ah, but there's no need. They can have that much, but they can also have all the actual criticisms as well including the fact that the ONLY time in history that it appears the OT could have been written is from around the 6th-7th centuries BC, starting with the Pentateuch, and that almost nothing in the Pentateuch is historically based whatsoever. It's not until we get to much later kings that there is any historical validity to the OT.

The NT is much more historically valid (particularly the book of Acts and Paul's undisputed epistles), however the synoptic gospels all represent a regression of proto-Mark, and while they do have some events that can be said to at least have some historical validity, much of them don't - such as the nativity in Matthew and Luke.

The one thing I will agree with Ehrman on is that following the crucifixion that some of the disciples came to visit the tomb and found it empty, encountered each other, and got confused and had some kind of shared hallucination where they believed that they had seen the risen Jesus. What however had probably happened is that the man who owned the tomb (said to be Joseph of Arimathea) had already removed the body and had it buried in the ground. He may have been known to some of "the 12" but not to all of "the 12", and this could have resulted in most of the original disciples who knew Jesus to be aware of his mortality, but for the relatively few who didn't to become convinced that he had risen. At some point they passed on this story and others believed them. Paul knew some of these disciples and the family of Jesus, and Luke the author of Luke-Acts. Luke likewise knew those same disciples, and Paul, and may have known the family of Jesus.

The fact remains, and this fact is difficult to explain, that if both Luke and Paul knew the family of Jesus why did they believe Jesus had risen? Well the obvious answer is that perhaps neither believed that a bodily resurrection had taken place. Paul's writings make sense if he was not aware of the theory of an actual bodily resurrection. On the other hand, Luke may not have included the parts about Jesus rising from the dead originally and it could have been added shortly after his gospel was written. That explanation however has no evidence, and scholars do believe we have Luke-Acts in their original form as written by the single author. So it could be that Luke got it wrong, that by 61-62 AD or whenever Luke-Acts was written he had come to believe this bodily resurrection story, probably because he'd seen it already written down in proto-mark, and so he had written it down as well.

[Minimalist]

As I've said many many times, a vast array of what Ehrman has to say is fringe ideas well outside of general scholarly thinking, even among most other critical scholars.

Ehrman is not the central authority for critical scholarship - far from it!

He's about the foremost historical critical scholar of early xtian texts going.
He should stick to that field instead of trying to find a "historical jesus" but he knows his shit when it comes to the documents themselves. He is not out on his own there. He is speaking of the culmination of 300 years of study....which you'd know if you read the book.

I have an electronic version of it if you'd like to PM an email address.

[Aractus]

He's about the foremost historical critical scholar of early xtian texts going.

No he isn't, he's just one, and much of his assertions are fringe ideas even among critical scholars.

He should stick to that field instead of trying to find a "historical jesus" but he knows his shit when it comes to the documents themselves. He is not out on his own there. He is speaking of the culmination of 300 years of study....which you'd know if you read the book.

Ehrman claims that the original NT texts are all altered to the point that the original texts are unrecoverable; most critical scholars do not agree with this.

Try this:

• Clever publicity pays! So much so, in fact, that by means of an attention-getting, controversial title and subtitle, a book about textual criticism of the Bible (one of the drier subjects of Biblical science) has become a New York Times best-seller. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
  
  Ehrman has already written several successful books on the Bible, among them the companion volumes The New Testament: A Historical
  Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, and The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader (New York: Oxford UP, 1997 and 1998). Thee present volume is written in the same spirit: informative, critical, yet ultimately respectful of the sacred texts.
  ...
  The treatise as a whole contains a good deal of stock-in-trade information as well as a number of enlightening insights, many of which will surprise the non-specialist, for whom the book was written. For these features the reader will be grateful.
  
  At the same time however, Ehrman’s methods may raise the hackles of more knowledgeable readers. He spends a good deal of time pointing out the inconsistencies, indeed the contradictions, to be found in the Bible. But there is nothing really new in this regard, except for the fact that many readers have deliberately or unknowingly overlooked them.
  ...
  Ehrman is conflicted on how we can get back to anything like the original text, the text the original author actually wrote. Not surprisingly, this lack of a letter-perfect “original text” does not seem to have alarmed either simple believers or scholars (and especially scholars) for millennia. Do we really fret about not having the original texts of Homer or Cicero or Plato? Do we not understand them well enough without such texts, from the entirety of their massive works. “It is an enormous problem,” says Ehrman. Not really!
  ...
  Similar comments can be made about the Markan ending (Mark 16:9–20), about which Ehrman makes much ado. Any annotated version of the Bible or one-volume commentary will inform the reader that these verses are a later addition by an unknown scribe intended to complete a perceived lack of coherence in the verses that precede it. But again, so what?
  ...
  In conclusion, these observations, singled out from many others that could be made, are not meant to denigrate Ehrman’s contribution, which contains much of value. His own odyssey of conversion from naive Fundamentalism has made him an enthusiastic apostle of Biblical criticism. But the content of his criticism is not really as earth-shaking as it is made out to be. “Misquoting Jesus” is too harsh a judgment.
  
  Bernas, Casimir. 2007. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Vol. 42 Issue 2, pp. 211-213. ISSN: 10626549.

I have yet to see any academic or peer-review material that contains praise from any other biblical scholar for Ehrman's more extreme claims.

The book is as the above scholar points out intentionally sensationalised and some of his claims are exaggerated for publicity.

[robvalue]

Thank you Minimalist for helping to back up my case. Ehrman was one of the first sources I would have gone to.

If that is the most damaging review of his work, it doesn't seem to actually deny anything. Saying something is exaggerated isn't the same as calling it false. It sounds to me like an apologetic trying to discredit him through wordplay. This review appears to be saying that "who cares if changes have been made?" That's hardly grounds to dismiss the changes. It even admits to one forgery in the review. Equating it to Homer or whatever is ridiculous, Homer isn't meant to be some innerrant word of god.

I wasn't claiming the whole bible has been rewritten or that a large percentage is forgeries or errors, just that a significant enough amount of such things exist as to put paid to the idea that this is identical, or even close enough, to the original texts. If this really was "gods word" then it would be perfect. If he has no interest in his words being preserved accurately, then he is either a dickhead who enjoys people argueing and even killing each other, or he's not there.

Most of the stories in the bible are fictional anyway, with only die-hard literalists ignoring all the scientific and historic evidence. None of the gospels were written by people who were even alive when Jesus died, and we don't know who wrote them either. And it's pretty unlikely Jesus even existed in the form described (a man). The Paul guy never once mentions him being a man, instead having visions of a celestial jesus, a mythology that had already been floating around. The two somehow get married as the son and holy ghost.

If anyone else wants to jump in on my side and provide some more evidence, I'd appreciate it. I'll keep looking for more sources. I'm sure (as I can be) this stuff is correct, I thought it was common knowledge, so I've not had cause to dig stuff up on it before. It's talked about as fact by all the shows I watch, and they don't mess around or allow any errors that a theistic caller could use against them. And Matt Dillahunty is a freaking bible expert, having studied the bible for 20+ years and almost became a minister. He has said how one version of the bible has notes in it, mentioning mistranslations, noting forgeries and etc. And he refers to the fact that the virgin birth was added to the jesus story well after it was originally written. There's many other instances of them going back and fluffing things up (adding December 25th and such) he has mentioned. He knows his shit, and I would challenge anyone to go argue the toss with him about these points. Call into the Atheist Experience or write them an email, or on their blog.

And oh yeah, there's several versions of the bible.

Anyhow, I see no good reason to keep in passages that are immoral, untrue or both. If christians want to cling onto the parts condoning slavery, they either really think slavery is OK or they have a gulf of cognitive dissidence that they aren't able to come to terms with.

Just keep the apple debacle from the old testament, then jesus can die in the new testament for the apple and everyone is happy again.

I've watched many more videos online by people such as Richard Carrier ripping the bible to pieces for accuracy, authorship and "cribbing".

Sorry if I'm making christians angry, I don't mean to. This change would help everyone, particularly christians. I've lost count of how many times people have tried to rationalize the old testament with utter nonsense arguments. Or just plain gone along and said, "good enough for god, good enough for me" while their moral compass clearly loses a fight to their brainwashing. If all this stuff was gone, it could no longer be condoned, and it would represent what the new "liberal christians" really want it to be. As long as that shit is in the book, and you worship the book (that is basically what is happening, the book is an idol) then you give validation to that horrible shit. I know you think the book has some sort of magical power to be correct, but to an atheist it's just a poorly written history book coupled with science fiction and stitching together mythologies of the time.

If you're not a liberal christian, and are considering all this as heresy and blasphemy and such, then I understand that there's no way you're going to agree with anything I say no matter how many sources or arguments I produce. So best just move on.

I've only attacked the bible so violently like this in this thread to back up the premise of my suggestion, as it has been noted that I'm totally wrong. That wasn't the intent of the thread, I just wanted to discuss how things could be made better going forward for everyone. I do attack it for fun at other times, though.

Last point; the bible was compiled from a larger number of books, people having decided over a period of time which to keep and which to exclude. That's about the biggest fuckery I could imagine.

[abaris]

The one crucial point Ehrman fails to make in all his books and presentations is, that there have been political reasons and political pressure to change the bible over and over again.

Christianity wouldn't have gotten that far without sucking up to the Roman Emperor. All through the 4th century there were concessions being made and the book as it is today, has been compiled at some time between the council of Nicea and the end of the 4th century. They left out what hadn't been opportune anymore and they changed early Christianity quite radically.

Many early christians were strict pacifists and banned anyone doing military service from their ranks. They also were against capital punishment and refused to deliver criminals to justice.

[robvalue]

Good points. Indeed, christianity has been malleable and will need to continue to be so if it is to survive.