# Dawkins makes another innocent mistake: The Gospels **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 21, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877 "2009-04-21T19:03:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/21 "2009-04-22T02:56:49Z")
> [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](#): > > I studied the New Testament at a Catholic university in a course taught by a priest and I was presented pretty much the same story that ITR is attacking Dawkins for. Not to be dim here but to clarify, You’re saying a priest at a Catholic University taught you what Dawkins is claiming to be true? The priest agrees with Dawkins and taught it in class? ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/22 "2009-04-22T02:58:59Z")
> [@](#): > > A typical example of Wikipedia being wrong. Early Christian writers including Irenaeus and Origen referred to a “gospel of Thomas”, but we don’t know whether they were referring to the Gosepl of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or something else entirely. **DtC** basically already addressed this, but since I said I’d return to respond to the rest of your post, I’ll just repeat what he said, Irenaeus didn’t reference Thomas by name, but rather quoted a story from it. And in general, it doesn’t really matter. Dating of all the gospels is pretty hazy and open to many different interpretations. But Dawkin’s view (at least going by what in the OP, I’ve never read his book) seems to be at least consistent with the consensus scholarship. There were more then four gospels bouncing around over the 3rd and 4th centuries that were taken seriously by at least some proto-Christian communities, several of these were probably written around the same time period as the canonical gospels, and at the end the Church decided to just keep the canonical four and tossed/repressed the rest. His saying the selection was “more or less arbitrary” I’m sure glosses over a ton of scholarly research and speculation, I doubt the chosen four were randomly pulled out of a hat. But from Dawkin’s perspective the grainy details don’t really matter, from the secular prospective several gospels entered the marketplace of religious ideas at the beginning of the second century, none of which had any obvious superior claim to holy revelation over the next, and by th end of the 4th century, the canon had been wittled down to the four. Of course I’m sure you could construct a timeline within the range of dates where this wasn’t true (though the dates given by the OP seem to be outside even those broad ranges), where the canonical gospels largely proceeded other texts, but that’s basically just a guess, and it seems silly to take Dawkin’s to task for not subscribing to one of many possible guesses about the timeline of the gospels. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/23 "2009-04-22T03:06:43Z")
I blame Constantine, who, politically, was more interested in a set, more-or-less consistent, canon than one that let everybody have his say. Thus my claims that the Nicene Creed was written by lawyers assigned to shut up the Gnostics. I mean, just read it. Lawyerese hasn’t changed in thousands of years. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/24 "2009-04-22T03:13:50Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > I blame Constantine, who, politically, was more interested in a set, more-or-less consistent, canon than one that let everybody have his say. Thus my claims that the Nicene Creed was written by lawyers assigned to shut up the Gnostics. I mean, just read it. Lawyerese hasn’t changed in thousands of years. I’ll just note that, personally, I would say that Christianity is a sect of Gnosticism. They weren’t shutting up Gnostics; they were shutting up _other_ Gnostics. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/25 "2009-04-22T03:49:01Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Any guesses on whether this will be like a recent thread by **ITRC** that he basically abandoned after being seriously challenged with evidence? I think you mean **EVERY** thread **ITR** starts in great debates. ---
**Author:** ![Fantome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Fantome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fantome)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/26 "2009-04-22T03:59:29Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > I think you mean **EVERY** thread **ITR** starts in great debates. Seriously. If there isn’t a rule about doing this repeatedly, there oughta be. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/27 "2009-04-22T04:17:09Z")
The exact timeline and relationship between Gnosticism and what eventually became “orthodox” Christianity is pretty hazy. There are some arguments that Gnosticism was originally a Jewish movement that pre-dated Christianity (or at least pre-dated Pauline Christianity(. I will grant that Dawkins is too cavalier in saying that the Canonical Gospels were chosen “arbitrarily.” They were chosen methodically, not capriciously, but that method was driven by political and _a priori_ theological motives, not by any kind of scientific, critical analysis of historical reliability or “authenticty.” They are also probably the earliest narrative Gospels, though consensus on this is not unanimous. There are arguments for instance, that an earlier embedded “Signs Gospel” can be found in John, and John Crossan (a leading historical Jesus scholar, and co-founder of the Jesus Seminar) argues that a portion of GPeter (which Crossan calls the “Cross Gospel”) pre-dates Mark and forms the basis for the Passion narratives in the synoptics. There were unquestionably 1st Century sayings gospels (notably Q and Thomas, and Papias via Eusebius – speaks of others). In any case, at least 3, and possibly 4 of the Canonicals were conglomerations of earlier works, but they had gained the most acceptance and popularity by Constantibe’s time, were the most theologically acceptable and were no-brainers for the Canon. This, of course, does not mean that they are reliable as any kind of journalistic history, and none of them were written by contemporaries or associates of Jesus (or of his disciples), nor do they even CLAIM to be. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/28 "2009-04-22T04:33:02Z")
And yet, you’re a heathen and a blasphemist whose very words rape and abuse the Words of God. 😉 (I probably told this before, but…) I have taken to using WMBI, the voice of the Moody Bible Institute (url=http://www.moody.edu/), as the station of choice for my alarm clock. It is not only strong, with its tower only three miles from me, but so theologically offensive that it wakes me from the soundest sleep to say, “That is bullshit,” before I hit the sleep button. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/29 "2009-04-22T04:38:30Z")
Ironic that the Moody Bible Institute produced Bart Ehrman (when he was still a fundy). ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/30 "2009-04-22T04:59:38Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Not to be dim here but to clarify, > You’re saying a priest at a Catholic University taught you what Dawkins is claiming to be true? The priest agrees with Dawkins and taught it in class? Interesting that you ask this question since I’m currently reading Bart Ehrman’s lates book. [Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)](http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061173936/Jesus_Interrupted/index.aspx), in which Ehrman explains exactly that. What Dawkins is saying (though in far less delicate, and somewhat careless language), is not radical, but is essentially an iteration of what has been well known and taught in most all mainline Catholic and Protestant seminaries for decades. Ehrman says that most everyone studying for a collar goes through the historical-critical method, and knows this stuff, but that once they get out of school and start ministering, they revert back to traditionalism and basically don’t talk about it. He thinks a lot of them are uncomfortable with it and just bury it after college. He’s said that he’s even had seminary students tell him, “if my beliefs conflict with the facts, so much for the facts.” In any case, this stuff has long been known and taught in seminaries. If you really scratch just about any well-trained Catholic priest on the subject, he’ll tell you he knows about it. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/31 "2009-04-22T13:07:26Z")
> [@Fantome](#): > > Seriously. If there isn’t a rule about doing this repeatedly, there oughta be. {shrug} If it’s intended as testimony the inability to defend the points has quite the opposite effect. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/32 "2009-04-22T13:24:03Z")
I would like to raise an objection to the use of “another” in the thread title, particularly if it is intended to refer to the several prior threads by **ITR Champion** on the subject of Dawkins. Despite his claims, I don’t think one of them has actually identified a mistake by Dawkins - not any sort of even modestly meaningful one, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/33 "2009-04-22T13:29:15Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Interesting that you ask this question since I’m currently reading Bart Ehrman’s lates book. [Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)](http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061173936/Jesus_Interrupted/index.aspx), in which Ehrman explains exactly that. What Dawkins is saying (though in far less delicate, and somewhat careless language), is not radical, but is essentially an iteration of what has been well known and taught in most all mainline Catholic and Protestant seminaries for decades. Ehrman says that most everyone studying for a collar goes through the historical-critical method, and knows this stuff, but that once they get out of school and start ministering, they revert back to traditionalism and basically don’t talk about it. He thinks a lot of them are uncomfortable with it and just bury it after college. He’s said that he’s even had seminary students tell him, “if my beliefs conflict with the facts, so much for the facts.” > > In any case, this stuff has long been known and taught in seminaries. If you really scratch just about any well-trained Catholic priest on the subject, he’ll tell you he knows about it. Interesting. In the Ehrman link I posted he acknowledges that the information he publishes has been around for centuries and known in scholarly circles. The problem, as he saw it, was that it wasn’t made readily available to the average person. That was largely due to the fact that presenting scholarly work to the average joe in a form they can digest is not easy. Ehrman seems good at it an I’ve enjoyed his books. He also gets some questions about non scholarly works such as Dan Brown and a few others and he clearly prefers and recommends books that have been properly vetted. Anyone can publish a book {he says} and it may be difficult for the average person to decide which book on the shelf has merit. He suggests we check the background of the author. I was also interested to hear him dismiss the idea that the council of Nicea decided what the official canon would be. On an unrelated note it occurred to me in reading about the Gnostics the similarities in their concept of “knowing” and the Quakers and George Fox from the 17th century. The concept that we can figure things out without some official conduit such as a church or a priest,or without some “official” writings, seems to persist. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/34 "2009-04-22T13:33:24Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > I would like to raise an objection to the use of “another” in the thread title, particularly if it is intended to refer to the several prior threads by **ITR Champion** on the subject of Dawkins. Despite his claims, I don’t think one of them has actually identified a mistake by Dawkins - not any sort of even modestly meaningful one, anyway. It seems to me that while trying to point out flaws in Dawkins argument **IRT** has been successful in finding some minor ones while being even more successful at pointing out the major flaws in traditional Christian theology that have persisted for centuries. Do you suppose that was secretly the goal? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/35 "2009-04-22T13:55:01Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The possible dates for the four gospels are (roughly) as such: > > [Gospel of Matthew](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew#Date_of_gospel) 70-100 CE > [Gospel of Mark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark#Date) 70-150 CE > [Gospel of Luke](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke#Date) 70-150 CE > [Gospel of John](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John#Date) 70-100 CE No, they are not. Even the Wikipedia (!) pages that you link to do not justify those dates. For the Gospel of Mark, can you name me a single serious scholar who does not think that the Gospel of Mark was written by 70 AD? As even the Wikipedia article mentions, there are substantial arguments for it being written before that date. There are no arguments for it being written later. If you want a very at-length discussion, go [here:](http://www.abu.nb.ca/courses/NTIntro/Mark.htm) > [@](#): > > he external, direct evidence is contradictory. There is disagreement about whether Mark wrote his gospel before or after Peter’s death, which took place during Nero’s persecution of the church c. 65. The Gospel of Mark was written either when Peter was in Rome or just after his death in Rome. To be on the safe side a date ranging from 63-68 should be attributed the Gospel of Mark. For the Gospel of Luke, can you name me a single serious scholar who doesn’t believe it was written by 90 AD at the very latest? Once again there are substantial arguments for earlier dates, but no arguments for later dates. Most importantly, Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were a single work, and Acts mentions none of the significant events such as the death of Paul and destruction of Jerusalem. If Luke and Acts had been written late, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t mention these facts. This means that Luke probably was written by 65 AD. [See here for more details.](http://www.carm.org/questions/about-bible/when-were-gospels-written-and-whom) As for Matthew, I’m again unaware of any serious scholar putting it later than 100 AD. John might be as late as 100 AD. But in short, the time scales you for Mark, Matthew, and Luke are wrong about both the starting and ending dates. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/36 "2009-04-22T14:05:24Z")
I have a question. How is it that the actual pieces of the copies of scriptures have one dating and yet the suggested date of writing is different? Does anyone know how that works? How is it proposed when Mark or any of the gospels were written when we don’t have the originals? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/37 "2009-04-22T14:07:37Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Hmmmmmm I suppose it depends on someone’s definition of what a substantial issue is. According to [Bart Ehrman](http://www.bartdehrman.com/) who wrote Misquoting Jesus about this very subject, and qualifies as an expert in the field, there are a lot of significant changes and differences in the many copies of the gospels we have. Sometimes just a one word change in a significant passage can make an important difference on the possibilities of meaning and doctrine. Some of the differences clearly indicate the scribes may have been influenced by their own opinion or the social structure at the time. So, I’d say you’ve made a false statement about what what secular scholars have not found. I haven’t read Ehrman’s book but I’ve read a response to it. From what I read, it seems that Ehrman can only list three lengthy passages in the Gospels that are truly in dispute. Those would be the story of the women caught in adultery, the ending of the Gospel of Mark, and a portion of the Gospel of John. Well, those three things are old news. The fact that those were not found in the earliest manuscripts, but were rather added later, has been known widely for a long time, and any Bible that you buy will have the controversies surrounding those passages clearly labeled. But the important point is the point that was made by Dr. Metzger. The vast majority of the discrepancies between copies of the Gospels are minor. Variations in spelling, presence or absence of the movable ‘nu’ in Greek, using names vs. using a pronoun where it’s clear from context, and so forth. Metzger said specifically that there is “no doctrine of the Church” that is “significantly called into question by textual variants”. And he said that in his book _The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration_, which was co-authored by … Bart Ehrman. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Lance_Murdoch)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/38 "2009-04-22T14:20:12Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Not to be dim here but to clarify, > You’re saying a priest at a Catholic University taught you what Dawkins is claiming to be true? The priest agrees with Dawkins and taught it in class? No Dawkins was unknown at the time I went to college. The process of choosing the gospels we were presented was similar to what he describes. And it’s not like the Church denounces the apocryphal gospels today either. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/39 "2009-04-22T14:41:03Z")
While Dawkins doesn’t properly distinguish the Gospel of Thomas (a collection of sayings) and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (the source of the Little-Jesus-was-a-dick stories), that’s a minor point – they both existed, and were rejected, by the compilers of the final Biblical canon. ---
**Author:** ![spazattak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@spazattak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spazattak)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877/40 "2009-04-22T14:45:36Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I haven’t read Ehrman’s book but I’ve read a response to it. From what I read, it seems that Ehrman can only list three lengthy passages in the Gospels that are truly in dispute. Those would be the story of the women caught in adultery, the ending of the Gospel of Mark, and a portion of the Gospel of John. Well, those three things are old news. The fact that those were not found in the earliest manuscripts, but were rather added later, has been known widely for a long time, and any Bible that you buy will have the controversies surrounding those passages clearly labeled. > > But the important point is the point that was made by Dr. Metzger. The vast majority of the discrepancies between copies of the Gospels are minor. Variations in spelling, presence or absence of the movable ‘nu’ in Greek, using names vs. using a pronoun where it’s clear from context, and so forth. Metzger said specifically that there is “no doctrine of the Church” that is “significantly called into question by textual variants”. And he said that in his book _The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration_, which was co-authored by … Bart Ehrman. Lets not forget the timing of the crucifixion, the timing of peter’s denials and the details of the discovery of the tomb - these are all in disagreement as well. Ehrman agrees w/ the conclusion of there being nothing that calls into question any Christian doctrine, but it does throw doubt on the credibility of the new testament, which is supposed to be the word of God. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dawkins-makes-another-innocent-mistake-the-gospels/493877.md?page=3)