Re: What Bible?

At 09:23 AM 3/12/2006, Mervin Bitikofer wrote:

Debbie Mann wrote:

>"...'Lost Christianities' by Bart Ehrman. ..."

>I haven't read or studied some of the writings you mentioned (other
>than the gospel of Thomas). .. 'Lost Christianities' sounds
>interesting too. I finished Pagel's work and I think I have a fair
>grasp of her position now. --merv

@@ If you value your time, here are two items you may want to
consider. ~ Janice

[1] A Review of Bart Ehrman's Lost
Christianities http://www.tektonics.org/books/lostehrman.html

Our rating: Thumbs down. Marginally Useless Lost: Heretic. No Reward. |

The curse of political correctness has brought down upon us yet
another tome of self-righteous certainty. It is not that Ehrman gives
what he admits are later Christianities equal chance of being right
-- that question is avoided with the skill of a seasoned politician
-- but rather, he wants to give them equal time to be heard, never
quite telling us why, if they don't have a chance of being right,
there is any sense in hearing from them to begin with.

Ehrman remains a paragon of naivete, clearly insulated from the world
around him as he pursues his scholastic fantasies.

Christianity of the patristic period is said to be "more diverse"
than what is even loosely called Christianity today, a difference by
which those of today "pale by comparison"; clearly Ehrman has not got
on with learning about what is offered by Mormons, JWs, Unitarians,
and the entire lot, for otherwise he would know the absurdity of that
statement. He is too busy rather implying that there is something
wrong in denying the name Christian to someone like David Koresh [1]
or to Arians who denied the divinity of Christ [2], though presumably
he would not happily allow just anyone to affix to themselves the
term New Testament scholar with the same level of permissiveness.

It is not that Ehrman is evil, or ignorant (as a scholar, he deserves
great respect); it is that he follows the steps of Pagels in being so
afraid to offend that he doesn't bother to think his way through his
own presentation. It is not sufficient to whine that there was one
"form" of Christianity that came out the winner; the question is, did
the winner deserve the trophy, and as with his other prior work
(Orthodox Corruption of Scripture) Ehrman is monumentally silent
about this. There is breathing about variations on Trinitarianism,
but not a word about pre-NT Jewish Wisdom theology that backs up the
Niceans. Ehrman even admits readily that the heretics forged books
[9] (while of course accusing the orthodox of doing the same; no
discussion of course, though a note is given to his own guide to the
NT) so he obviously is not incapable of delivering an assessment of
who is (if anyone) actually on the side of truth. It is just that he
does not want to.

The bulk of the book offers sometimes interesting discussions of
partricular heretical stances, and how the world today may have been
different had a heretical variety won out; here there are times when
Ehrman's tolerance becomes so blind that he has to forge a path in
which he wants to appreciate docetists or even anti-Semites in spite
of themselves; in the process I cannot help but be reminded of local
female librarians who were all for unlimited free expression and not
putting filtering on public Internet terminals, a fine and dandy
state of affairs until vagrants parked next to their desks and
started viewing pornography, denigrating to their own womanhood, in
their sight. The stumper for "tolerance" builds a mighty petard upon
which to hoist themselves indeed. Readers may still appreciate
Ehrman's look at these sects. Still and all Ehrman admits that they
all cannot have been right [91] but waves this off as a concern first
because the polytheistic Romans didn't care about such things
(ahem...though Judaism, Christianity's parent, did with a vengeance,
as he also admits); second, by hiding behind a list of questions
about what proper belief actually would be; third, by noting as he
did before that the other groups claimed apostolic succession as well
(never mind that the docetists claiming back to Peter requires the
absurdity of a Jewish, Galileean peasant holding a Greek view of the
material world). Ehrman never gets past, "they thought they were
right" and to "which of them was right". Here's a clue: Completely
missing from Ehrman's bibliography is the quite sensible Hidden
Gospels by Jenkins, who unlike Ehrman, did not shrink from that
crucial question.

A few notes of interest to me. The
<http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html>Impossible Faith maven in
me found some amusement in Ehrman explaining how Marcion's movement
was doomed for precisely a reason I say Christianity could never have
survived (newness). Ehrman makes issue of "vitriolic" attacks by
Paul, et al. (see especially Chapter 9) but apparently has never
heard of <http://www.tektonics.org/lp/madmad.html>challenge-riposte.
He notes some poor answers to heretics by Irenaeus and Tertulian, for
example, on Jewish laws; but this hardly erases much better answers
they were unaware of (rooted in
<http://www.tektonics.org/af/cleanman.html>ritual purity -- not that
Ehrman is motivated for real answers to begin with. Again and again,
his naivete is made clear with such statements as, "...put a dozen
people in a room with a text of Scripture, or of Shakespeare, or of
the American Constiution, and see how many interpretations they
produce." [195] Hmm. I say put in that same room Shakespearian
scholars, or a copy of The Federalist Papers, or material
establishing interpretive contexts, and those "many interpretations"
can take a proverbial hike off the dock.

A bit more naivete in that Ehrman wonders how Ephiphanius would have
had knowledge of heretical rites. He supposes that the details of
such sexual rites as described would have been revealed to a
potential convert; it seems not to occur to him that such details are
precisely what would be prime evangelism material for such a group.
Once again, Ehrman's naivete concerning what cultic groups do today
betrays him into a delusion of the Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
variety. Ehrman's complaint that Epiphanius does not name his sources
[201] ignores that this was a normal mode of operation for ancient writers.

That's all that really needs saying. Like Pagels before him, but with
more depth, Ehrman here dives into the sea of tolerance and ends up
soaking wet with nothing to show for it.

*

[2] Textual Trysts
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nttextcrit.html [Textual Criticism of
the NT: Basic Assertions and Problems] [Advice from Secular Textual
Critics] [Agreement Among NT Critics] [Is Our Faith Affected By
Variants?] [Was There a Conspiracy to Change the NT?] [Textual
Reliability and Historical Reliability] [Case Study: Bart Ehrman]
Received on Sun Mar 12 12:51:59 2006