Meet Bart Ehrman: A One-Man God Fraud Squad

[cleanhippie]

Nearly half of the New Testament is a forgery, according to a world-renowned Bible scholar whose new book fingering the forgers is making evangelical Christians as mad as — well, hell.

--snip--

As an undergrad at Chicago's Moody Bible Institute in the mid-1970s, Ehrman was "an extremely zealous, rigorous, pious (self-righteous)" evangelical who followed the school's draconian rules — no smoking, drinking, card-playing, dancing, movies, or beards — because Bible verses seemed to support them. Unlike most college students, unlike nearly all young Americans, Moody students didn't question authority.

--snip--

Studying for his PhD a few years later at Princeton Theological Seminary, poring over each part of the New Testament in its original Koine Greek, the born-again young scholar remained "passionate about my studies and the truth that I could find." But what he found instead were errors. Contradictions. Self-defeating arguments. Historical inaccuracies. And worse.

"The New Testament (not to mention the Old Testament, where the problems are even more severe) was chock full of discrepancies. ... I wrestled with these problems, I prayed about them. ... Eventually I came to realize that the Bible not only contains untruths or accidental mistakes. It also contains what almost anyone today would call lies."

Lies. Not just fact-twisting fabrications but the composition of entire books by obscure authors who claimed to be the Apostles Peter and Paul and other spiritual celebrities but weren't.

http://www.alternet.org/story/150734/meet_bart_ehrman%3A_a_one-man_god_fraud_squad?akid=6906.200602.Dkhv8l&rd=1&t=2

[RandomThoughts]

1. There is also a very concentrated attempt

to get people to think they are in hell, you see that in many places also.

I have noticed repeated usages of that lingo in many areas.

shrug,

I am due beer and travel money, and many experiences, so that can not be correct.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. And yet bigots of the highest order point to that book and shout

their hate, certain that their contempt for their neighbor is somehow divinely dictated.

[1monster]

3. Interesting article. I meant to get the Gospel According to Judas, but forgot

about it and never saw it in the local bookstore.

I'll have to order it and this new book...

[xchrom]

4. Those of us in liturgical churches have been dealing with this for some time.

Ts interesting to watch unaffiliated evangelicals deal with this.

[struggle4progress]

5. Recently picked up a couple of Ehrman's books:

Lost Christianities and Lost Scriptures

Lost Christianities is a sort of introduction to ancients debates, while Lost Scriptures is a sort of source-book, containing various non-canonical writings. Many of the texts mentioned in the first
are provided in the second, so it's not a bad combo: read a few pages in the first, then see if one can find a mentioned text in the second

It's often clear why the non-canonical texts got short shrift: in the Acts of John, for example, John finds his bed filled with bedbugs, which he orders out, and so the bedbugs all dutifully leave the bed and line up by the door until morning