Anyone read this book by Bart D. Ehrman? What do this of his work?
You might want to rephrase that last sentance.
[I have not read the book that you cite. I have listened to the lectures of Prof. Ehrman (The Great Courses) and I have recently read, Misquoting Jesus, by Prof. Ehrman. What do I make of his work?
Once I had a friend who described another friend as a person who had never had an unpublished thought. Ehrman, it seems to me, is a person who has published every thought many times over. He seems to have found a way to present the same material in many different packages.
Nevertheless, he is a scholar and his writings (at least one of them) are worthy of serious consideration. For me, the essence of his message is captured in the Introduction to Misquoting Jesus where he wrote:
“In short, my study of the Greek New Testament and my investigations into the manuscripts that contain it, led to a radical rethinking of my understanding of what the Bible is. This was a seismic change for me. Before this—starting with my born-again experience in high school, through my fundamentalist days at Moody, and on through my evangelical days at Wheaton—my faith had been based completely on a certain view of the Bible as the fully inspired, inerrant word of God. Now I no longer saw the Bible that way. . . .”
In his materials that I have experienced, he carefully documents the reasons for his “seismic change”.
I don’t know much about Ehrman except hearsay, more or less that many of his ideas in Orthodox Corruption of Scripture were roundly trashed by Biblical scholars the world over, so he recycled them in the more layman-friendly Misquoting Jesus without acknowledging any of those rebuttals.
Could you fill us in with some background, Jebus? What are these “lost Chritianities”? Is Ehrman talking about the various forms of gnosticism, or what?
That isn’t true. Ehrman is widely respected as one of the foremost textual critics in the world. His work in Orthodox Corruption (which was simplified for a lay audience in Misquoting Jesus) is not considered to be radical or unscholarly or eve particularly controversial within NT scholarship. He has not been “trashed” or “rebutted” by NT scholars, but only by conservative Fundamentalists, internet apologists and the like. It’s also not true that Ehrman does not acknowledge rebuttals. He frequently engages in public debates with his critics.
Yes. Lost Christianities deals with the diversity of Christian beliefs in the first few centuries, covers the various extinct sects and “heresies” of the period and describes the conflicts between those other kinds of Christianity (some of which were extremely divergent from what we would now think of as “Christian”) and what ultimately became the “orthodox” Church.
I agree with Diogenes. From a Biblical scholar viewpoint, this is not a remarkable proposition. Mainstream scholars have long regarded the Gospels as an imperfect human record of Christ’s ministry. (One of the things the Q thesis demonstrated.) Only fundamentalist scholars insist otherwise.
Joining the gang, there is nothing in it that is being “roundly trashed by Biblical scholars the world over”. He says the Bible is not the inerrant and literal direct word of God. Bibilcal scholars the world over, have been saying the same thing for a long long long time. It is the literalists that are out of the loop.
Sounds like pretty standard material, so far – and you don’t have to step too far outside the doctrinal “party line” to study and acknowledge these ideas. An (small-o) orthodox Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or Historical Protestant believer-student could acknowledge the evolution of the Church through competing schools of thought with no difficulty and study how the specific social/historic context led to those sects, heresies, schisms, etc., while as a believer holding that some divine guidance behind the historic trends muat have steered the Church to winnow out what were the “true” forms of Christianity.
Someone not tied in to the “truth” of the Church can use the material to aid in analyzing religious history from the perspective of the many trends and social forces that lead an institution to change over time, much as you may analyze the changes in political and legal philosophies through time. Subject of course to a critical approach to the readings.
Then there will always be, on the third hand 
, those who take up this sort of scholarship from a POV of insatisfaction that Christianity turned out to be a differet religion than they are convinced it should have, and who hope to find among the “lost Christianities” that idealized “real Christianity” that will fit them and have the sanction of antiquity and primary sources. Their business, really.
If that’s all he says, it hardly rises to the level of scholarship–it’s like geologist saying the Earth is really really old.
Looking at the article about him on Wikipedia, it appears he has good scholarly credentials, and like any good scholar has worked on developing some new ideas in his field of study. In particular, he seems to have written about the relative degree of diversity in the early church (which I know to be a subject of some contention, with some scholars arguing that Gnosticism and other heresies were mostly found among more-or-less fringe groups opposed to a clearly defined mainstream proto-orthodoxy, and others arguing that there was no clearly defined mainstream and that the early church was a hotbed of theological speculation and diversity of opinion–Ehrman seems to be in the latter camp) and about the textual history of the Gospels (an area in which every new scholar seems obligated to have a radical new theory to propose).
Given all this, it is hardly surprising that his scholarly writing would have been met by serious rebuttals–that’s how academia works. If he hadn’t been rebutted, it would indicate either that his writing had nothing original to offer or was so preposterous as to warrant no reply. It’s not unusual to follow a scholarly work with a popular version, but that is hardly the place to continue what is probably a highly technical academic debate that won’t be resolved soon anyway. Barring new archeological discoveries, it will be the next generation of scholars who will decide which of the current positions are worth continued attention and which belong on the dust-pile of academia.
In-teresting. Good to know, and glad I now do…
Heh. He’s the chair at UNC. Damn me for believing…
I’ve been attempting to swear off Wikipedia, and look what it’s gotten me.
Anyway, I must agree I see little to attract controversy (besides perhaps a book with “Da Vinci Code” in the title). What does this guy bring to the table that’s really new? I stopped studying this stuff in 1992, and none of the synopses of his books reveal anything astonishing. I’m actually having a difficult time understanding why he’s obviously attracted the ire of some people, but again I’m just not familiar enough. Really, based on what I heard, and what little I now know, I can’t understand it.
I don’t really have anything to add. I haven’t read this book or anything by the author. I would just looking to see what people had to say about it.
It’s information that has been around for a while that is just now making the transition to the mainstream. His books make it more accessible to the layman like me. I’ve read Misquoting Jesus and am working on the Lost Gospels. There’s a lot of long held Christian tradition accepted as fact by many good and intelligent people that doesn’t fit the factual information available. It’s almost like an Urban myth. Things repeated as “true” so often people just accept it. If the kind of information Erhman offers becomes more mainstream then some of those false traditions will fall by the wayside.
So he sells a lot of books, in other words?
I think Misquoting Jesus is doing pretty well. He did an promotional tour which included a couple of shows on NPR. I saw him on the Daily Show after which I did a little research and bought the book.
Likely the controversy over the Da Vinci code sparked some of the interest. As you said the information has been around. Erhman tells his own story of starting as a fundamentalist and his studies changing his view. It’ll still take several generations for it to become widely accepted but I’m glad to see the process going forward.
For many believers the information he offers is new because they have been so filled with tradition and myth.
For a New Testament Scholar he’s J.K. Rowling.
His media appearances help (NPR, The Daily Show), but another reason he sells well is that he writes very well for a lay audience. He’s not pedantic or dry, he’s good at explaining things. He has humor. He’s readable. He’s “recommendable.”
Ah hah. Goddamn it. I won’t go into all the details, but a conversation among some, ahhhh, in-law relations I fortunately don’t have to deal with so often sprung up because one of Ehrman’s books was sitting on a coffee table. Yadda-yadda-you-can-imagine, so someone who I often disagree with, but demonstrably knows his shit most of the time, made the disparaging comments. I’m ashamed of myself now for being so credulous, and also, given Ehrman’s obvious prominence, for knowing so little about him. I should go pick up one of his books myself.