The truth according to Bart D. Ehrman
November 26, 2012 at 9:48 am
(This post was last modified: November 26, 2012 at 9:49 am by Aractus.)
Chas has informed me Ehrman has discovered a vast quantity of facts regarding early Christian text alteration 
...
Some background information. I'm not that familiar with Ehrman's work. He's a Biblical Scholar, one that's lost his Christian faith, and he seems to specialize in textual criticism. So it should come as no surprise that he aims to locate the textual variants and work out which is the correct reading.
Ehrman doesn't mind sensationalizing his work, and it seems also doesn't mind making claims that are well beyond the scope of his are of expertise (textual criticism).
Ehrman basically has no problem claiming that the book of Acts and some of the Epistles are deliberate forgeries. This goes way beyond the scope of textual criticism, and these claims need to be backed up by evidence or dismissed as uninformed gibberish. It is also well outside of general scholarly thought and theory on these matters. Don't get worked up, that on it's own doesn't mean it's wrong - but just like the "flying spaghetti monster" you can not prove a negative, and this is no different. To substantiate huge sweeping claims of forgeries, there should be some clear evidence.
Ehrman seems to cite a lack of self-identified authors for the four Gospels as his "evidence" that they are forgeries and attributed to disciples. This claim rests on the assertion that authorship attribution came at a later date, however every manuscript we have, which contains the beginning of the book (ie the first leaf), of the Gospels contains the titles. The Greek titles look something like this:
Now if Chas or others want to inform me on more of "Ehrman's facts" I'll be more than happy to discuss them.
...Some background information. I'm not that familiar with Ehrman's work. He's a Biblical Scholar, one that's lost his Christian faith, and he seems to specialize in textual criticism. So it should come as no surprise that he aims to locate the textual variants and work out which is the correct reading.
Ehrman doesn't mind sensationalizing his work, and it seems also doesn't mind making claims that are well beyond the scope of his are of expertise (textual criticism).
Ehrman basically has no problem claiming that the book of Acts and some of the Epistles are deliberate forgeries. This goes way beyond the scope of textual criticism, and these claims need to be backed up by evidence or dismissed as uninformed gibberish. It is also well outside of general scholarly thought and theory on these matters. Don't get worked up, that on it's own doesn't mean it's wrong - but just like the "flying spaghetti monster" you can not prove a negative, and this is no different. To substantiate huge sweeping claims of forgeries, there should be some clear evidence.
Ehrman seems to cite a lack of self-identified authors for the four Gospels as his "evidence" that they are forgeries and attributed to disciples. This claim rests on the assertion that authorship attribution came at a later date, however every manuscript we have, which contains the beginning of the book (ie the first leaf), of the Gospels contains the titles. The Greek titles look something like this:
- EUAGGELION
TO KATA MATQAION
EUAGGELION
TO KATA MARKON
EUAGGELION
TO KATA LOUKAN
EUAGGELION
TO KATA IWANNHN
Now if Chas or others want to inform me on more of "Ehrman's facts" I'll be more than happy to discuss them.
