The Book of Bart (about biblical errors)

[MountainLaurel]

A must-read article about one biblical scholar's journey from fundamentalist to agnostic due to the magnitude of errors he found in his research. This helps answer the question of why fundies are taught so little about the history of their religion and what happens when they start to learn the truth: They have to stick their fingers in their ears and cry "Na-na-na, I can't hear you!" Their entire worlds would fly apart otherwise.

Also, note that he's published a book recently: This should be a good one to add to your reading list.

Where does faith reside? In the soul? The mind, the marrow of the bones? In the long hours of the night, the voices of the evangelical preachers on the AM dial seem to know. Believe, they say. Then daylight comes and the listeners' questions fade.

Bart Ehrman is a sermon, a parable, but of what? He's a best-selling author, a New Testament expert and perhaps a cautionary tale: the fundamentalist scholar who peered so hard into the origins of Christianity that he lost his faith altogether.

Once he was a seminarian and graduate of the Moody Bible Institute, a pillar of conservative Christianity. Its doctrine states that the Bible "is a divine revelation, the original autographs of which were verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit."

But after three decades of research into that divine revelation, Ehrman became an agnostic. What he found in the ancient papyri of the scriptorium was not the greatest story ever told, but the crumbling dust of his own faith.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030401369.html

[WritingIsMyReligion]

1. A rude reawakening....

But I think it really did him good. Good for Ehrman...He was willing to look past his indoctrination and proselytizing, and admit to something new. It hurt him, no doubt, but I think he's better off.

:thumbsup:

[Syncronaut Seven]

2. Fundamentalism = Manufactured Mental Illness.

They snap , then they kill all their children. Seems to happen nearly every week.

I love it when their pastors get on Tee Vee to spin it as "work of the devil". It certainly is.

Edit: sp.

[Peanutcat]

3. Poor guy

I guess he's never seen this site then: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/

[charlie]

4. I'm sure Ehrman

is familiar with the data on that site, long before the site existed. He's highly regarded for his depth of scholarship in Biblical provenance. It's heartening to see one of his books finally charting on the NYT bestseller lists.

[Skinner]

13. That's a great link.

Thanks.

[NMMNG]

5. Interesting

I got my copy of "Misquoting Jesus" last week but haven't started reading it yet. After this article I'm even more interested in doing so.

[MountainLaurel]

6. It's another one to add to my list

Of books to read, which is about 50 deep at the moment. I need to quit my job: It's interfering with my reading, damnit!

[NMMNG]

11. Those pesky jobs have a way of doing that

I wonder if they have a job out there where you do nothing but read books?

[silverweb]

16. I'm with you!

You just said it better than me. Soooo many books, too little time. I wish I could afford to retire right now!

:D

[hunter]

7. Anyone who reads the Bible carefully...

... will come away with more questions than answers. This is true of any intellectual pursuit.

But the intellectual foundations of many "fundamentalist" churches are so flimsy that they must discourage even simple curiousity and science.

[grumpy old fart]

8. His lectures are available on DVD at the teaching company...

http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/6299.asp?id=6299&d=History+of+the+Bible%3A+The+Making+of+the+New+Testament+Canon&pc=Religion

I highly recommend all of the materials at this site, by the way. A great way to get a continuing adult education in many areas.

[MountainLaurel]

9. And also often available at public libraries!

Had to put in a plug there!

:hi:

[El Supremo]

10. I am reading his "Lost Christianities" now

And I am amazed how he completely excludes his personal beliefs. Now after reading this, I can understand him.

I never was a fundamentalist. The Bible is full of contradictory errors. But that doesn't mean that a man named Jesus was not also God. It just means that some people screwed up the message afterwords.

[grumpy old fart]

14. Screwed up what message?

What was the original message anyway? One of Bart's points, though he makes it quite subtly, is that the "message" was created after the fact to make it more supernatural than it was.

[slide to the left]

12. the same thing

happened to my father in law. He was a methodist minister, and studied so much that he lost his faith and left the ministry.

[hunter]

15. That might be an anti-intellectual point of view...

... that studying so much is a dangerous thing.

Knowledge can truly be a dangerous thing, but you don't stop seeking knowledge for fear that things may not turn out the way you want them to.

It is more likely that your father-in-law discovered or accepted that his own personal relationship with the Methodist faith wasn't well founded enough to continue his ministry.

Do you talk about such things with your father in law? You never know, you might learn something.

[NAO]

17. I really enjoyed Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus"

There are more contradictions in the texts of the New Testament than there are WORDS in the New Testament.

Don't even bother talking about contradictions in the standardized English translations of the Bible, all you need to know is that there are hundreds of thousands of contradictions in the MANUSCRIPTS - which are copies of of copies of copies of copies...of the (so called) "original texts".