Challenge to atheists: I find your lack of faith disturbing!

[xpastor]

When he [Ehrman] talks within his area of expertise, he's fine. When he starts talking about the early writings being forgeries, and the like, he's off in his own little world where he has barely any peers that would take him seriously. If you want to listen to a real Greek scholar, try Daniel B Wallace, here's one video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jdKFotjGd4

But there are many others, including him debating Ehrman directly.

Why am I not surprised that Dallas Theological Seminary where Wallace teaches upholds the authority and inerrancy of the scriptures, in fact, puts it first on their list of doctrines to which students are required to adhere.

A commitment to inerrancy undermines biblical scholarship as the conclusions are predetermined in advance of any evidence. I know whereof I speak having emerged from the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, aka Misery Synod.

The upholder of inerrancy is a priori prevented from considering the possibility of multiple strands of authorship in a document and is required to come up with the most incredible bullshit to reconcile conflicting narratives of the same event. It ultimately leads to the dishonest translations of the NIV, which does not scruple to insert words in the translation which have absolutely no warrant in the original text.

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... Herods command to have all the newborns slaughtered is recorded in the bible and nowhere else.

Strange that.

Maybe it wasn't all that extraordinary for him to do stuff like that. He wasn't a very nice guy.

How about the slaughter of the Canaanites?
Counter-apologists like to talk about that a LOT.
Historical event or fiction?

Josephus wrote extensively about Herod. He detested him and cataloged every evil deed Herod committed. He never mentions the slaughter of the innocents, which strongly suggests that it never happened.

As for the slaughter of the Canaanites, it is fiction. The evil is not that ancient Israelites committed genocide ca 1300 BCE, the evil is that the Biblical writers produced propaganda ca 600 BCE glorifying genocide, and in so doing created a picture of God as a bloodthirsty monster, whom idiots upholding biblical inerrancy tell people they should worship.