Someone turned my attention to an article by Bart Ehrman, published in the Huffington Post, titled “Who Wrote the Bible and Why it Matters.” The article is essentialy an argument that the Bible contains lies. Specifically, Ehrman addresses individual books of the Bible which claim to have been written by one person and, in fact, were not.
This is called pseudepigrapha, which means “false writing.” It happens when one author pens a work, yet claims it was written by someone else. Examples are pseudepigrapha are many. The Gospel of Thomas, The Letter of Peter to Paul, The Gospel of Judas, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene all qualify. There are dozens of these works, both for the Old Testament and the New. Ehrman’s basic argument is nothing new or extraordinary. He claims that many of the New Testament books are pseudepigrapha. The leading contenders for this designation are 2 Peter and six of the letters attributed to Paul, including the pastoral epistles.
Reasons for suspecting these works are various and complex. However, according to Ehrman, the presence of these works in the Bible demonstrates conclusively that the Bible is full of lies. After all, is it not a lie to write something, and then claim that it was written by someone else? What if I wrote this blog post, but under the author designation, said it was written by Bart Ehrman? It would be deceptive and discrediting. It would be more than an error; it would be a lie. According to Ehrman, here is “the truth”:
“Many of the books of the New Testament were written by people who lied about their identity, claiming to be a famous apostle — Peter, Paul or James — knowing full well they were someone else. In modern parlance, that is a lie, and a book written by someone who lies about his identity is a forgery.”
Anyone reading this article would get the impression that Ehrman is telling his readers something that most others are either too ignorant or too scared to reveal. But he is “coming clean” with a truth that virtually all scholars have already admitted.
The article is by no means a scholarly or balanced argument. In fact, I don’t see any arguments at all, just assertions and appeals to the scholarly masses. And anyone who does not come to the same conclusion is pushed aside as biased and uninformed.
Unfortunately, this is all too common when Ehrman’s “scholarship” steamrolls the unsuspecting public. Time and time again he presents himself as the knight in shining armor, finally making the truth known to the otherwise helpless sheep following those radical (or radically ignorant) pastors and teachers within conservative Christianity. After all, this issue is such a slam dunk that anyone who disagrees with Ehrman’s conclusions is, de facto, a “rabid fundamentalist.”
Here are a few of the problems I find in Ehrman’s article:
1. Ehrman does much to disqualify his voice when he starts the article with these words: “Apart from the most rabid fundamentalists among us, nearly everyone admits that the Bible might contain errors.” At this point, what chance does any alternative to Ehrman’s conclusions really have? Although I hate to invoke argumentative fallacies (they are just not classy and are way overused), this is a classic case of “poisoning the well.” It is an attempt to discredit any alternatives by lumping them together with the most unholy of associations. But from the standpoint of any honest observer, this simply reveals the author’s emotionalism and/or timidity. If and when arguments are not present (or not very strong), just poison the well to achieve the same result. However, this only works with those who are not really seeking the truth.
2. Ehrman sees no need to present any sort of argument for his case. It is true – there are many scholars who agree with Ehrman that many New Testament works are pseudepigrapha, and they have good reasons. But these reasons are hardly as compelling as Ehrman assumes. A good case can also be made that each letter is authentic. I suggest picking up a copy of Donald Guthrie’s New Testament Introduction to see the evidence for and against each book in question. One can not easily dismiss Guthrie as a “rabid fundamentalist.” At the very least, you will get a much clearer picture of the issues than Ehrman seeks to give.
3. The implications are overstated. Even if one were to grant that 2 Peter were a pseudepigraph (and while I disagree, I admit it is the best candidate), what does this do? According to Ehrman, it means that the Bible contains lies. But this is not true. It would simply prove that 2 Peter was a lie. It is not scholarly in the least, in this type of argument, to treat the entire canon of Scripture (or just the New Testament) as one book written by one author (as the title of Ehrman’s article, “Who Wrote the Bible and Why It Matters,” does). Ironically, in such cases, skeptics like to attribute a unity to the Bible which they would never grant in any other situation! The truth is that even if 2 Peter and certain Pauline epistles were written by someone else, they alone would be deceptive. The rest of the books would be untouched.
4. The implications are not stated. Let us assume that the letters in question are not authentic. Let us grant Ehrman’s unsupported theses (just because we like the guy). What does this mean? The implications are rather unremarkable. No cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith is affected in the least. All the major doctrines of orthodox Christianity remain intact, finding their support in the authentic books. I am not saying that these letters are of no value, I am simply saying that Ehrman continually fails to mention, in all of his “pastoral revelations” to us poor unsuspecting people, that the message of the Christian faith is largely unaffected.
Unfortunately, I believe Ehrman’s style is much more “rabid” and far more “fundamentalist” than just about anyone else out there these days, believer or non. But, more than that, I would say his imbalanced treatment of this topic is the only “lie” I can see clearly in this article. Ehrman seems to have sold out the respect and contribution that his level of scholarship could demand, Christian or not. He is increasingly trading in his respectability as a scholar for some sort of crusade against Christianity, in which he may be seeking to solve his bitterness toward his own fundamentalist upbringing. He is a far cry from his mentor Bruce Metzger, and more and more resembles the lack of balance, meekness, and poise of so many in the New Atheist camp. I think a comment in the article from an atheist sums this up well:
“I would love to believe this article on its face. I am an Atheist, after all. But I would also love some references and citations for what are obviously some controversial claims. Otherwise it sounds a bit like Christian apologists.”
I suppose these days Bart Ehrman thinks his own musings are enough of a reference to support his claims.
195 replies to "Thoughts on Bart Ehrman’s Article in the Huffington Post"
Michael, I don’t think everyone is as sanguine as you about the implications of one book containing lies. If one contains lies, how many others? And if one of the others contains a hard teaching, all the easier to write it off as a mistake, of one sort or another.
That’s hilarious considering that Bart Error-man is the most disingenuous “Bible Scholar” I’ve ever had the displeasure of listening to.
What are the implications of 2 Pet being a forgery?
“Michael, I don’t think everyone is as sanguine as you about the implications of one book containing lies.”
Definitely. Bart is not. I often find the same understanding of these things among the most fundamental believers and unbelievers. It’s ironic that the sky falls for both of these but not those in the middle.
I just realized that his article was written in 2011. That makes me feel a bit better that he is not acting as if his claims can go out in such a way. I am sure it was just a provocation for his book.
To put Bart Ehrman even close to an exegete of Holy Scripture is quite ridiculous, even an embarrassment to scholarship itself! He is simply an unbeliever and really quite the apostate as concerns Holy Writ! Just a waste of time!
Btw, the whole subject of the NT pseudonymity has yet to be proven! As so many other great past NT scholars, have actually given better interior evidence for the authenticity of the NT writers themselves! And from the standpoint of Canon, just a waste of time, a false trail!
Btw, the case for the Apostle Peter as the author in Second Peter is actually quite interior, but I will not argue it here.
And btw, “provocation” only works since modernity and postmodernity, it goes along with the idea of “deconstruction.”
I actually like Bart. And he is a good scholar. That’s what makes such imbalance in popular audiences so disappointing.
His stuff on the DaVinci Code was really good.
“What are the implications of 2 Pet being a forgery?”
One might argue it’s a loose thread, that if pulled, will unwind the whole jumper.
If 2 Peter can be nonsense, why not Hebrews, revelation, James, Jude, 1,2,3 John? And so forth.
Bart’s recent lambasting of Christ-mythers is also really good. I think you got the nail on the head when you mentioned the sky-is-falling similarities between fundamentalist Atheists and fundamentalist Christians. For most of us there “could” be numerous errors in the Bible without it effecting our faith in any significant way (I do not believe that there are such errors, but hypothetically speaking). I believe that God chose to speak through inspired, inerrant writ in addition to history, however God could’ve chosen to speak solely through history just as well. If one treats the Bible as general historical documents and throws out all those that are unreliable (according to secularists) and then looks at the arc of history, the actions of the Apostles, the Early Church, etc. I do not believe that my conclusions about the truth of the central tenants of the Christian faith would be any different.
We don’t worship ‘the Book’…but the Living Lord. The Word will find and make it’s own way, in all sorts of circumstances.
This is just one of the problems of believing that every jot and tittle of that Book came down from Heaven wrapped in a big bow.
The Lord uses earthen vessels for His infallible purposes.
[…] by C Michael Patton at Credo House blog 12 Comments […]
Honestly. apparentally you have not kept up with New Testament theology. The truth is that it is not only the so-called rabid fundamentalists that are defending the traditional authorship of these documents but an ovewhelming number of liberal theologians as well. May I suggest that in the future you unload your prejudiced fired gun and let the facts speak for themselves.
Maybe someone should have introduced Dr. Ehrman to J.A.T. Robinson’s work. No one can accuse the author of Honest To God (a liberal manifesto still being echoed today by BE’s own ex-Jesus Seminar pals, and a man who was one of the few people whom C. S. Lewis wrote against by name) of being a “rabid fundamentalist”, but it was his Redating the New Testament that kick-started the modern pushback of Biblical authorship dating among moderates to pre-70 dating (not least by recognizing that famous and influential liberal scholars had long argued for various texts to be pre-70).
I’m far from being a fan of JATR, and he himself didn’t want his book to be more than permission for scholars to reopen dating questions (he quips in the intro about being annoyed that the book will be comforting to conservatives and to “fearful fundamentalists”!) And I’m prepared to allow that BE couldn’t have stumbled by accident into being the virtual heir of Bruce Metzger, dean of Biblical textual criticism — he’s usually pretty competent so long as he sticks to textual criticism per se. But really? JATR and (for example) Adolf freaking Von Harnack are to be classed with “radical fundamentalists”?! The mind boggles.
The Bible, being a compilation of the writings of humans, albeit divinely inspired, contradicts itself, in very human ways, but the message of love survives intact. God does not make mistakes, being omniscient, so Noah’s flood was just another of God’s challenges for our education. Got any other favorite contradictions?
@Jason: I got to meet the great John A.T. Robinson before he died (I was in uniform that day as I remember: RMC, and he took note) certainly no conservative, but what a mind! I would follow the so-called early dating of the NT, as Robinson’s book (which I have). And seeing the great effect of 70 A.D. in his argument. I have many of Robinson’s books, see his last book: The Priority of John, published actually after his death.
Btw Jason, see Robinson’s book: The Human Face Of God (SCM Press LTD, 1973). And though I am most certainly a conservative, it was a well worth the read, (with footnotes). Again he was always provocative!
And btw, the liberal minded Robinson puts guys like Erman in the dust! A true “Christian” scholar! (Though I would of course find much to disagree with, in his Christology!)
Btw, Michael, I would challenge you to read books by John A.T. Robinson, and perhaps especially his: The Human Face of God, with both his books: Redating the New Testament, and the Priority of John!
Btw, I could not disagree more with your assessment of Erman! How can you affirm just blatant unbelief and really no true biblical epistemology, and call it scholarship? Amazing! It seems you don’t see the encroachment of modernity or postmodernity? Btw, I would really agree with our friend Greg, that your epistemology is more worldly, secular, and again so-called modern, than the presupposition of the ascendancy and authority of the Holy Scripture! Sorry mate, but I must disagree here!
And again, there is a big difference between “provocative” and out right “unbelief”!
“What are the implications of 2 Pet being a forgery?”
To me, it would mean that those who voted on the canon were mistaken. And, given that they’re human in the first place, I have reason to suspect that they may have made more. That doesn’t mean they did, it simply justifies closer scrutiny.
One key piece of apologetics that would be affected is the reference to Paul’s letters as “scripture”.
“To me, it would mean that those who voted on the canon were mistaken.”
Wow…talk about buying into the liberal/atheist propaganda.
Michael T, the question was obviously a hypothetical. If 2 Peter was a forgery, what are the implications? Do you mean to tell me that if 2 Peter was, in fact, not written by St. Peter, that this raises no eyebrows for you? Especially given that one of, if the not the most important, reason for the 2 Peter’s inclusion in the canon is the fact that it bears his name (apostolic authority was a big criteria for canon voters).
I think you misunderstand. The idea that there was some type of “vote” on the canon is a myth. One largely propounded by atheist detractors of the Christian faith.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. I most heartedly acknowledge that what i said was a gross oversimplification. There was not *a* vote, but many. And, yes, the canon had, more or less, been agreed upon by then. Nevertheless, I don’t think many would dispute that there were those more influential than others. So take what i said to mean: those responsible for the development of the canon would be wrong/misinformed.
Yes and I Di agree that there would be more significant issues with the issue of the theology of the canon than there would for losing some of these disputed books. However, the Essence of the Gospel message would suffer little, if at all.
I’d agree that the Gospel message would remain unaffected. Interestingly, it is in that respect that the anonymity of the Gospels works in their favor. One cannot accuse them of being “forged” if they don’t specifically claim to be written by anyone.
Well, Michael, looks to me like you are pretty much outgunned by us rabid fundamentalist liberals. Humm. 🙂
A friend I know who was a contemporary of Ehrman’s in graduate work in NC sees him on the Spong trajectory: whatever the brilliance of his mind and his capacity for good scholarship, his career is increasingly built on “what else can I deny about the faith as received while still holding to the faith?” as a means of building popular sensations. The problem is that at some point (a) one runs out of things to deny without leaving the faith, and (b) the spiritual “chickens” of severing communion with those who hold the faith as received, and undermining the faith of other, will “come home to roost.”
One major reason the pastorals are excitedly severed from Pauline authorship is the notion that this will diminish the authority of the not-at-all-feminist requirements for leadership in the assemblies. To the extent that your ecclesiology requires Biblical foundation, diminishing the authority of the pastorals is pretty significant.
I would also say that the consequences of treating the canon as volatile, rather than settled, are pretty serious in many ways. But you’d be right to counterclaim that the Gospel in its minimal form could still be proclaimed.
But what is often missed is that the textual arguments in favor of removing the composition of these letters from the hands of the Apostles themselves usually get us only ONE remove. That is, they do not get us to someone unknown to the Apostle writing something contrary to the Apostle; such spurious letters *did* exist, and were known and condemned. Essentially, we end up with a situation much more common: someone who works as a scribe or editor or compiler pens a response to a problem, or works from notes or conversations, and the final draft is approved by the Apostle. That is, composite authorship adequately accounts for state of the text, dating, and attribution. Is there any case where we need to go further for actual scholarly reasons?
Cheers,
PGE
Fr. Robert, yes I’ve been meaning to get to The Priority of John someday, although I gather it’s ‘only’ an expansion of what he already wrote in RtNT. On my list of things to read!
No, I’m not at all fond of his Christology either, which I have to admit is one reason I’m not in much of a rush to read The Human Face of God. On the other hand, I seem to recall hearing it features one of his arguments for Christian universalism; on yet the other hand I’d rather not base that on faulty Christology. 😉
Yes, despite his own period of Being a Bishop Behaving Badly, JATR stands high above the average of modern detractors. BE rarely cracks the average in my experience. He and William Lane Craig both had good points and problems in their debate over Jesus’ Resurrection, but BE suffered epic failure when he resorted to trying to convince the audience of the real and superior plausibility of an alternate theory that he kept insisting he himself didn’t accept for a minute!
Having said that, I expect Michael was allowing BE credit (as most of his scholarly opponents do, and me for whatever that’s worth 😉 ) on his specific expertise, textual criticism. That’s an ideologically neutral study, and someone can be competent at that while still being ravingly inane and unfair on other topics, even where importantly connected to textual criticism.
@Jason: Yes, old John A.T. R. was quite a mind, though his suppositions and presuppositions were often flawed badly.. to my mind. There are some good statements in his book: “The Human Face of God”. And in spite of his version of liberalism, I expect to see him in “the glory”! Note, in his book on this his “Christology” (if we can call it that?), he quotes many people “theological”. One can see he liked Bonhoeffer’s so-called Christology!
[…] people read articles such as Bart Ehrman’s recent Who Wrote the Bible and Why it Matters (HT: Michael Patton). How does a reader evaluate such claims and […]
I would conclude that if Mr Ehrman has told a lie , that everything he has said must then be a lie also.
Chuck’s comment is full of win. {g}
Very much agree with PGE. Although that does bring up the question of which doctrines we would lose by losing various ‘minor’ epistles, or even major ones, or even Acts, or even the Gospels.
I mean, at what point are we left with only a ‘minimal’ gospel, and what would that look like? Let’s say we dropped the texts disputed as spurious even in early antiquity (much as the Church of the East did and still does), the ones now found toward the end of the NT, along with the Pastorals and Catholic Epistles (where they weren’t among the disputed texts). Keep the Gospels, Acts and the main Paulines. What doctrines would we be missing? Tag out Acts or a random Pauline (non Pastoral) or even one of the Gospels, too (whether Synoptic or GosJohn). Even tag out Acts and one of the Gospels and TWO random Paulines. Wouldn’t we still have enough to derive Nicean-Chalcedonian orthodoxy and all the soteriology variants? How far would we have to go before the ‘full gospel’ becomes a ‘minimal gospel’, and what would a ‘minimal gospel’ look like compared to ‘less than the gospel’?
Seems like a good topic for a post (or a series)… {g}
Let’s put it another way. What if we ONLY had the book of John (which some people do)? Would the Gospel be insufficient? John did not seem to think so.
In this context, our discussion is apologetic in nature, not discipleship.
Incidentally, Michael (& Company) I’m glad Credo House is setting up a course to compete with Bart Ehrman’s “Great Courses” series — I just funded Dan Wallace’s textual criticism course for $600, but would like to spread $200 each toward the next two courses (on the Resurrection and the Historical Jesus) if possible. There didn’t seem any way to drop a note on that, so I decided to try here. {g} (I’ll try in a thread for it, too.)
Not that I haven’t studied a ton on those subjects already (especially the latter two), but I’d like to have the courses on DVD for my family (especially my nieces when they get older) and friends.
Michael; that’s true about GosJohn, but it was written specifically as a ‘total gospel’ text (I expect the other canonicals, too), and wasn’t typically promoted outside a support group of some sort, albeit often limited during times of prosecution.
I rather like the idea that most or all of the gospel can be gathered from the testimony of only one or a handful of texts. But I’m glad we have all we have. {g}
Still, for apologetic purposes, I would think it might be handy to note how much confluence there is between the texts when it comes to how much of the gospel message is spread between the texts. Sort of like a the value of a harmonization study of the four canonical Gospels: large-scale detailed confluence (especially where it’s stereoscopic) points back to shared earlier sourcing of the material. Various authors aren’t just making things up or slavishly copying from someone else.
Btw for those that care, see Fred Zaspel’s nice book: The Theology of B.B. Warfield, (Crossway 2010). It has a nice section on Warfield’s thoughts of Canon, and too his of course classic and conservative Reformed views of “The Self-Attesting Character Of Scripture And The Testimonium Spiritus Sancti.” He also has a nice piece on 2 Peter as a Test Case for apostolicity and canonicity, with both the external evidence and the internal! It seems some Reformed Christians and Christianity, are losing touch with many of our so-called Evangelical Fathers here. Very sad! We are certainly not smarter then they were!
I think the case could be made that even if the authors were not who they claimed to be, it would not effect the integrity of the writings themselves. This kind of writing was not uncommon and furthermore was not considered damning or dishonest as it is today. It only seems shocking to us in the 21st Century. If you told someone in the 1st Century this information they would simply say “So what?” Ehrman hasn’t even begun to show what this means for the integrity of these writings, if anything.
I have however heard great things about Ehrman’s book “Did Jesus Exist” where he takes the historical skeptics, mythicists and liberals to task on their belief that Jesus might not have existed.
Again, the whole case for pseudonymity in the NT has simply NOT been made! It is a supposition by many today, but a hard historical, biblical even theological case has simply not been proven! I would note again Michael Kruger’s book: Canon Revisited, Establishing The Origins And Authority of the New Testament Books, (2012, Crossway). In the end, this simply must be an Apostolic issue, as well as one of God’s biblical revelation! (Acts 2: 42 / 2 Tim. 3:13-17…noting also chap. 4: 1-5, etc. And of course 2 Peter 3: 15-16-17-18!)
And too btw, even the likes of men like the more open minded Anglican Evangelicals, of both Westscott and Hort, did not believe in pseudonymity. See Hort’s defense of Paul’s authorship of the Epistle (Letter) to the Ephesians. And his fine student Armitage Robinson’s Commentary also on Ephessians! (Yes I have both of these… I am an Anglican Evangelical myself! 😉
Fr. Robert, yes I was just thinking about BBW (father of modern inerrancy theory) last night, too. And I agree, the case for pseudonymity in any text is fuzzy at best — sure the style of writing varies between some epistles, but that’s to be expected when different scribes are taking dictation and translating into Greek (to various extents). A large part of the cases depend on 19th century theories of evolutionary development of ‘high theology’; but even back then some liberal as well as conservative studies indicated that the ‘early’ texts had just as ‘high’ a theology. (Which has now come around to being a reason for hypersceptics to date the whole set very late. But in its own way they’re being more consistent to the data that way.)
@Jason: Yes, I am always closer at home with the conservatives, and especially the depth of Reformed Divinity! In fact, the internal evidence of all the NT Books demands our faith, and not just our rational mind, though of course we use our minds. And this is where the so-called evidential apologetic breaks down, at least by itself, for rationalism cannot be the arbitrator, alone. The Word of God is always the moral and spiritual character of God and His revelation, as the Scriptures also convey the great truth of the Person and Work of Christ. Again the Holy Scripture is always Self-Attesting, and his/the authority and Spirit of God Himself, the Holy Spirit. I am really just an old pastor-teacher, and somehow I have always been in love with God’s Word, since regeneration! Glory be God!
To his credit, he does heavily address the implications of 1 Tim. 2:11-15 being a forgery. If Paul wrote it, it makes Paul a misogynist. He also does point out the implications of Ephesians being a forgery. If Paul did not write it the book’s message about standing for truth is a scandal.
I’m not entirely certain if the primary purpose in writing this brief article was to explain or to address his viewpoint that the books were forged although he should have defined what he meant by “fundamentalist” since there are varying definitions of this.
Sorry, but this is just modern/postmodern “dung”, that the Apostle Paul was somehow a “misogynist” (a woman hater) since he wrote 1 Tim. 2: 11-15! I will take this on all day, everyday! Missing the real essence of the section would be verses 13-14!
Fr. Robert,
Umm…hate to break it to you but verses 13-14 are the most misogynistic in Paul’s statement in 1 Tim. 2:11-15.
[…] dated article, titled “Who Wrote The Bible and Why It Matters,” has been eliciting fresh responses from online readers due to his assertion that most scholars, “apart from the most rabid […]
Sorry, but no fair-minded, sensible, reasonable, just person writes what [whoever] wrote in 1 Tim. 2: 11-15.
Also, regarding the case for pseudonymity, I’m wondering what kind of case would be required for it to be proven. It is generally acknowledged (as best as I can tell) that there significant linguistic dissimilarities. This is generally responded to by appealing to different scribes (of some sort). But Eherman’s whole case hinges around demonstrating that this practice wasn’t nearly as common as is usually thought – nor was writing in the name of someone else, which frowned upon even by Christians.
As for the hypothetical of John being the only Gospel, I think that would be spurious and strained indeed, to take the word of only ONE source, and that from 2000 years ago. What, at that point, would distinguish the evidence for Christ from Honi the Circle-Drawer, or Appollonius of Tyana? It would perhaps be more interesting to ask what would the Gospel look like if we only had the Gospel of Mark.
[…] dated article, titled “Who Wrote The Bible and Why It Matters,” has been eliciting fresh responses from online readers due to his assertion that most scholars, “apart from the most rabid […]