RE: [SPAM]Re: What Bible?

I'm listening to his lecture - which runs 12 hours. I am in hour 3. He
begins the lecture by discussing differences in current beliefs - no
judgement, no commentary - just what people believe. So far, his lecture
continues in the same vein.

Regarding the firs review: Tolerance implies judgement. One can only be
tolerant, when someone is tempted to be otherwise - else the word has no
meaning. A scholastic survey course of what people has believed has no room
for judgement, therefore no room for tolerance.

There is faith, there is blind faith and there is the ignorant sticking to
what one has been told that makes me have want to have the skulls xrayed to
see if there is any brain matter inside.

My study is done with prayer - but it has scientific method to it. I am
looking for unbiased facts.

Debbie Mann
(765) 477-1776

  -----Original Message-----
  From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
Behalf Of Janice Matchett
  Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 12:52 PM
  To: Mervin Bitikofer; deborahjmann@insightbb.com
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu
  Subject: [SPAM]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 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 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 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 20:56:03 2006