Bart D. Ehrman, James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was interviewed on Interfaith Voices on May 8, 2007, about his book “Misquoting Jesus.” (listen to audio and mp3).
In addition, Dr. Ehrman gave a lecture as part of Stanford University’s Heyns Lecture Series on April 25, 2007 titled, “Misquoting Jesus: Scribes who Altered Scripture and Readers Who May Never Know.” Download mp4 here.
Very interesting lecture. As someone who has had occasion to go-to-the-mat with mainline Christians over the scriptural supportability of Mormonism’s claims, it’s hard not to watch a lecture like this without a secret bit of schadenfreude. “Those evangelicals think they have a corner on who can belong to the Biblical club, but they DON’T!”
I have to remind myself that these issues are just as problematic for Mormons as for any other group of believing Christians.
However, Ehrman’s assertion that the traditional notion of the trinity is not actually found in the original texts seems hugely important for the whole Mormon question.
Stand To Reason has a podcast about textual criticism and specifically addresses Ehrman’s claims.
There’s also some discussion about Pastore’s salvo against Standing Together.
Thanks for the information Tim. Koukl says that he feels that both approaches, the traditional confrontational apologetics, and the apologetics advanced by Hazen, are necessary.
For those who might listen, Koukl and guest Mark D. Roberts discuss Ehrman during time marker 1:21:42-1:31:14. It amounts to about 10 minutes.
They essentially say that Ehrman argues that we have thousands of manuscripts of the Gospels and two hundred to four hundred thousand variants or corruptions in the text. Kokul and Roberts argue that, because of the thousands of manuscripts we have, there could have been one hundred million mistakes, but there were only two hundred to four hundred thousand variants. In other words, they try to put the number of mistakes in perspective in relation to the number of mistakes which could have been made. That is one response. Secondly, Koukl and Roberts argue that Ehman’s book in a general way, actually shows that we have the resources to find out where the scribes made the mistakes, since Ehrman can identify where scribes made mistakes, and thus, we can trust in the reliability of the manuscripts. Again, it’s only 10 minutes of discussion so they don’t address all of Ehrman’s arguments, and it’s not clear they would agree with Ehrman as to which areas are a result of scribal mistakes or additions.
One question raised was whether inerrancy is a necessary position to have. Koukl says (1:00:00) that though he is an inerrantist, he doesn’t think inerrancy is needed to make the case for Christianity. Roberts answers that in the end, as long as we believe the bible is true in what it teaches, that is what matters. It seems to me that inerrancy is losing its appeal in light of textual criticism. Rather than specifically arguing for inerrancy, the trend is to argue, in a broader sense, for reliability.
Let’s hope so. Count me as one of those for whom “inerrancy is losing its appeal.” The position just seems increasingly nonsensical to me – not just in light of textual criticism, but in light of what we know of basic human fallibility. History tends to be messy, and I doubt the history of the Bible is any different.
Inerrancy seems to be a term that requires a great deal of nuance to hold onto. I would probably say I’m an inerrantist but would want to qualify what and where I think the Bible requires a literal reading.
The resurrection; absolutely
6 day creation; not so much
The universe being 6,000 years old; no way
I would draw a distinction between inerrancy and literalism. Koukl talked about literalism on his show, and didn’t really distinguish it from inerrancy, at least in that episode. Inerrancy is a specific term related to the nature of the text itself, not necessarily whether a statement is figurative or literal. The 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (III)(C) states, “‘[I]nerrant’ signifies the quality of being free from all falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the truth that Holy Scripture is entirely true and trustworthy in all its assertions.” The issue that Ehrman brings to bear is specifically the notion of mistakes in the text.
One caveat is that the Statement also says (E) that “Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission.” In other words, only the original autographs are said to be inerrant, according to this statement, and further more that textual criticism is to be employed by Christians in order to detect errors. Clearly, not every Christian has read this statement or believes according to this statement. It would seem that some Christians do hold that God has promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture.
Thanks for the distinction between literalism and inerrancy. I’ll admit it wasn’t a distinction I was making.
But I’m still a bit suspicious of inerrancy just the same. I’m not even sure I can hold the Book of Mormon as inerrant. I have much less reason to consider the Bible to be so. Too many middle men.
I didn’t watch the interview and have only thumbed through the Misquoting Jesus book at the book store. I found nothing in it that I hadn’t already read about. There really weren’t any surprises for me as there shouldn’t be for any one who has seriously studied the Bible books. I suppose if someone is a complete literalist they would have a problem. Quite a lot of what Eharman brings up in the book is in the marginal footnotes in any good modern study Bible. Some is pure speculation but a lot has very solid support. Side comment to Seth who goes “to the mat” for scriptural supportability of Mormon clams. With the Bible we are able to do this kind of study. Try the same with the Book of Mormon.
Thanks for the comments Russ. Ehrman acknowledges in the lecture that nothing he says is new. What is new is that an academic making textual criticism accessible to the public at large. Ehrman said, “The reality is that most academics don’t know how to talk to a normal human being” (1:18:00-1:19:31). Followed by applause. Ehrman explained,
So, Ehrman is making these things accessible and that is what is new.
Secondly, there are people who do work on textual criticism with the Book of Mormon manuscripts (printer’s manuscripts and original manuscripts, etc). Royal Skousen at BYU has done a considerable amount of work in this area. I would recommend this article to see what it looks like. It’s highly fascinating. Conjectural Emendation and the Text of the Book of Mormon. John S. Welch (not John W. Welch) also has provided his critique on some of Skousen’s suggestions.
I’ve started watching the lecture. It may be a day or two before I finish it.
I never knew this information was not accessable. I suppose it might not be sought out by the average Christian, but , as I mentioned, anyone who has done any serious study of the books of the Bible do find this out.
My comment about being able to do critisim of the Book of Mormon in the same way as with the Bible still holds. The BOM begins and ends with Joseph Smith. No one can go back farther than his dictation to his scribes. So the only textual critisims you can have is did the scribes hear him right, did he read and make sure it was correct befor going to the printer…did he review the grammatical corrections the printer added and approve the printing. With the next printing, which made a lot of changes, was it more accurate than the written manuscript and were the corrections to the first printing correct. Other than that, there is no earlier text to consider. There are no fragments to find and no culture fitting the people of the BOM to refer to. The BOM has no history befor Joseph Smith. The books of the Bible have made their mark. I will take a look at that article when I get the chance, though.
Russ, the point isn’t that it isn’t accessible at all. As Ehrman has pointed out, people have known this since 1707. What is new is an academic explaining these things to a ‘general audience’ who have no knowledge at all about biblical studies or textual criticism, and who are not serious students of the bible. This sort of thing happens quite often. Academics get together all the time for academic conferences and they present papers which are mostly read by their peers, they publish in academic journals, again which are more or less read only by their peers and others in the field. The books they write tend to be quite technical and don’t appeal to a general audience. It might be used as a text book at the university level, but even then that isn’t as wide a readership as being a national best-seller. Anytime an academic successfully writes for the general audience, academics all over look at each other and say, “What’s the big deal? This isn’t new. I’ve presented this stuff at several conferences and written several articles and books about this topic.” That may be true, but they didn’t write for a general audience and that is why they are largely unknown to a general audience. That is why Amazon has over 300 customer reviews for ‘Misquoting Jesus,’ and Ehrman’s technical and academic work ‘The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration’ has barely over 20 customer reviews.
Another example of someone writing for the general audience is C.S. Lewis. Here is a man who could have spent all his life writing technical works for an academic audience, and if that was the case, we probably wouldn’t even known who he was. But because he wrote for the general audience, his works are widely known.
Point taken. I can see that side of it.