Scott Engle of St. Andrew UMC in Plano, TX posts many of his sermons and classes on the web at http://www.thebibleacademy.com/. He is teaching a series now about the dramatic license often employed when Hollywood portrays biblical history. This last Sunday, he talked about his perspective on the work of Bart Ehrmann. He also discussed why he believes the current translations of the Bible are more accurate than previous versions. In fact, he said that no one today should use either the King James Version or the New King James Version. Both are based on a Greek manuscript translated by Erasmus from Hebrew in the early 1500's. At the time, only a handful of original Hebrew manuscripts were known to exist. Today, we have over 5,000 which have been used to update the English translations.
Scott sounds a little like Gomer Pyle. If you can get past that, he presents logical, scholar based arguments about how our current Bible came to be and why we should trust its message.
1 week ago
Very kind of you, Hodie. I'll listen to it when I can get into my sound proof booth.
ReplyDeleteI listened to about 15 minutes of the good doctor and sort of gave up. Therefore, it's not really fair for me to criticze him. That said, he did not come off to me as being in the same league with Ehrman in terms of scholarship. He's certainly informed but I would recommend listening to one of Ehrman's courses from the Learning Company on the New Testament to compare. Ehrman does not prosletize (sp) regarding his lack of faith, but just presents the historical Jesus and the formation of the canon in what I thought was an objective manner.
ReplyDeleteYou might should try skipping to later in the audio. He talks more about Ehrmann farther along in the class. I need to listen to some of Ehrmann's courses. But, Scott comments in his class that Ehrmann is currently not well respected in the academic community.
ReplyDeleteWith due respect to Scott, I think Ehrman is feeling the effects of true believers who are not pleased that he has jumped the reservation. I'm not an Ehrman groupie, but after reading his books and listening to his courses, I take him fairly seriously. He seems to me to be reasoned in his approach and not given to hyperbole.
ReplyDeleteFair comments. I will withhold further views until I have read some of his work.
ReplyDeleteI listened to one of Ehrman's lectures at Stanford. I also found a fairly lengthy blog by Ben Witherington which contained the following:
ReplyDelete"As I remember Bruce Metzger saying once (who trained both Bart and myself in these matters) over 90% of the NT is rather well established in regard to its original text, and none of the remaining 10% provides us with data that could lead to any shocking revisions of the Christian credo or doctrine. It is at the very least disingenuous to suggest it does, if not deliberately provocative to say otherwise."
I have read enough Ehrman so far only to realize that he is a brilliant scholar and an entertaining speaker. I also don't fully agree with his conclusion that the textual differences in the various translations should invalidate my belief in the resurrection of Christ, the holy trinity, and "Love God, love your neighbor as yourself" Christian fundamental.
It's good to challenge thought processes. I will keep reading.
How is "90% of the NT rather well established in regard to its original text" when we know that ALL of what we have is copies of copies of copies of copies, etc.?
ReplyDeleteI think Ehrman has concluded that Mark is, for various reasons, the most "valid" (my word) of the gospels, with Q second (inspiration for Matthew and Luke) and John bringing up a very distant last or the least reliable. Certainly, Mark and John are fairly far apart in what they convey.
I think I do recall Ehrman saying, though, that he thought John's telling of the trial of Jesus to be maybe more reliable.