A Look at Bart Ehrman: Agreements and Disagreements

Note: Given the attention Ehrman has received, this is a long post.

Introduction

This past April I got to spend some time with Bart Ehrman. He was in Columbus for a debate we hosted at The Ohio State University. I personally enjoyed the time with him. Ehrman is the author of more than twenty books, including two New York Times bestsellers: Misquoting Jesus and God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer. Dr. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity. His work has been featured in Time, the New Yorker, the Washington Post and other print media, and he has appeared on NBC’s Dateline, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, The History Channel, National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, the BBC, major NPR shows, and other top media outlets.

The more I have watched and read some of Ehrman’s work, I realize that I agree with him on some things. But there are many areas that I look at his objections and kind of scratch my head and say, “That is such a basic objection that has been dealt with.”

Ehrman is very popular. On our own blog, (this blog) I notice he always pops up on search engines. He is also somewhat of a big hit in atheist quarters.

After all, Bart has supposedly shown that the New Testament is unreliable.
The Orthodox position on the New Testament is the following:

1. The New Testament documents are historically reliable evidence.
2. The historical evidence of the New Testament shows that Jesus is God incarnate/He is the Jewish Messiah. This claim to divinity was proven by His miracles/His speaking authority, His actions, and His resurrection.
3. Therefore, there is reliable historical evidence that Jesus is God incarnate/The Jewish Messiah

So if we can show the syllogism above is not only valid but sound as well, we can move on to the next syllogism:

4. Whatever Jesus teaches is true.
5. Jesus taught that we are to “Take up our cross and follow Him daily” (Luke 9:23).
6. Therefore, people need to “Take up their cross and follow Jesus daily” ( Luke 9: 23).

So If Ehrman can undermine points 1, 2, and 3, people don’t have to worry about points 4, 5 and 6. How wonderful! No wonder Misquoting Jesus has been a huge best seller. If Ehrman is right, you can live your life apart from God and assume you are off the hook! Unfortunately, it is not that simple.

So let’s look at some of Ehrman’s work and discuss the areas of agreement and disagreement. I could cover several areas. But I will keep it to some selected areas of interest. Keep in mind, I do like Bart. I am not picking on him. I have to admit that Ehrman’s book called The New Testament: A Historical Introduction To The Early Christian Writings is a great read. I even told him I loved the way the book is laid out. However, I do have some areas of disagreement.

What Bart Get’s Right

1. Jesus’ existence

What I find a bit hilarious is that some skeptics/atheists who love Ehrman still are unsure about the existence of Jesus and generally say “We can’t know much about Jesus.” Of course, this arrives from lack of understanding about historical method among other things. I still am amazed that some atheists try to punt to mystery religions and the Christ myth as a valuable alternative. Let’s see what Ehrman says:

” What about those writers like Acharya S (The Christ Conspiracy) and Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries), who say that Jesus never existed, and that Christianity was an invented religion, the Jewish equivalent of the Greek mystery religions? This is an old argument, even though it shows up every 10 years or so. This current craze that Christianity was a mystery religion like these other mystery religions-the people who are saying this are almost always people who know nothing about the mystery religions; they’ve read a few popular books, but they’re not scholars of mystery religions. The reality is, we know very little about mystery religions-the whole point of mystery religions is that they’re secret! So I think it’s crazy to build on ignorance in order to make a claim like this. I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it’s silly to talk about him not existing. I don’t know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this.” Bart Ehrman, interview with David V. Barrett, “The Gospel According to Bart”, Fortean Times (221), 2007

Ehrman also says:

“We can say with complete certainty that some of his disciples at some later time insisted that . . . he soon appeared to them, convincing them that he had been raised from the dead.” (Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, pg 230).

We can obviously infer that Ehrman thinks that Jesus existed and was crucified. Of course, Ehrman’s naturalistic presuppositions won’t allow him to say the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for the appearances to the disciples.

So Ehrman is part of the group that grants five well-evidenced facts granted by virtually all scholars who study the historical Jesus: (see See Habermas. G.R. and Licona, M. L. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus):

1. Jesus’ death by crucifixion
2. Jesus’ followers sincerely believed Jesus rose from the dead
3. Early eyewitness testimony to belief in Jesus’ resurrection
4. The conversion of Jesus’ skeptical brother, James
5. Paul, once an enemy of the early faith, became a committed follower of Jesus the Messiah

2. The Suffering Issue:

One of Ehrman’s books is called God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer which attempts to show why scripture fails to answer the question of why we suffer.
Many of us who are philosophy and theology buffs have read books such as Alvin Plantinga’s God, Freedom, and Evil and N.T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God. I think that these books have shown why the Bible and the Christian worldview does have the answer to the suffering issue.

But the problem is that philosophy seems to fall short when someone we know experiences suffering. When someone loses a loved one, I probably wouldn’t ask them if they have read the Plantinga book. So I while I don’t agree with Ehrman that the Bible doesn’t answer the issue, I agree with him that suffering is more of an existential problem.

What Bart Get’s Wrong

This is where we must differentiate between what William Lane Craig calls the “scholarly Bart” and “popular Bart.” As Craig says, “The popular Bart misrepresents this to unsuspecting laymen through innuendo and implication to make them think that the text of the New Testament is highly uncertain.”

When we look at the “popular Bart” we see what we call “freshman level objections.” When I say “freshman level objections” I mean that these are very basic objections that we would hear on a college campus. This is not to insult college students. But many of these objections are rehashed decade after decade. Anyway, here are some of the freshman level objections that Bart throws out to a very gullible public:

#1 Contradictions

Have you ever watched Bart debate? He can be seen on many occasions as looking out into the audience saying, “Which account is right?” “Matthew? Mark? Luke? John?” And then he proceeds to point out what he thinks is some glaring contradiction in the Bible.

How do we respond to this freshman level objection? Sadly, Bart presents this information to the public as if it is “new” news. But the reality is, this issue is “old” news. Scholars have known and written about these issues for decades. The problem with Ehrmam is that he places a hyper-modernist/Enlightenment grid on an ancient text. I know Ehrman is familar with Richard Burridge’s What Are The Gospels? This book has answered alot of the genre issues about the Gospels. But it seems as if Ehrman leaves this out when he is in a popular setting such as a debate, etc. See more here:

Also,one of the issues that help the credibility of the “evidence” is that there are differences in accounts reported by the witness. As my friend who is a lawyer says, “If all the reports were identical with no variation, then there would be a good argument that the witnesses colluded to tell a story. But that is not the case. Although critics accuse that the factual discrepancies make the story less reliable, the opposite is correct. In every courtroom trial, where witnesses testify, variations abound. It often depends on the perception, the angle, the timing and other variables, as to how two witnesses can report the facts differently.”

To read our other post that answers the contradictions issue, click here:

Objection #2: The Telephone Game Objection and Legend

Bart made this objection in a debate with William Lane Craig:

“ The New Testament Gospels were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus death, …. not by people who were eyewitness, but by people living later….Where did these people get their information from?….After the days of Jesus, people started telling stories about him in order to convert others to the faith…..Stories are in circulation year after year, and as a result the stories get changed”

Ehrman goes on to say:

“ Stories based on eyewitness accounts are not necessarily reliable, and the same is true a hundredfold for accounts that— even if stemming from reports of eyewitnesses- have been in circulation after the fact….Imagine playing “Telephone” not in a solitary room with then kids on a sunny afternoon in July, but over the expanse of The Roman Empire (some 2,500 miles across!) with thousands of participants from different backgrounds, with different concerns, and in different contexts, some of whom have to translate the stories into different languages all over the course of decades. What would happen to the stories.”

Once again, this is not a new objection. It has been around for decades. I can’t count the number of books on my shelf that have discussed and answered it. Anyway, how do we respond to this freshman level objection?

First, our own Andrew Lyles has already written a fine post on the telephone game objection: see here

Second, the majority of Ehrman’s objections have been handled in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham and Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy’s book The Jesus Legend: A Case For the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Tradition. Bauckham’s book offers a new paradigm called “The Jesus of Testimony.”

Let me offer some points from the Bauckham book:

1. As Bauckham notes, ” The Greek word for “eyewitness” (autoptai), does not have forensic meaning, and in that sense the English word “eyewitnesses” with its suggestion of a metaphor from the law courts, is a little misleading. The autoptai are simply firsthand observers of those events. Bauckham has followed the work of Samuel Byrskog in arguing that while the Gospels though in some ways are a very distinctive form of historiography, they share broadly in the attitude to eyewitness testimony that was common among historians in the Greco-Roman period. These historians valued above all reports of firsthand experience of the events they recounted. Best of all was for the historian to have been himself a participant in the events (direct autopsy). Failing that (and no historian was present at all the events he need to recount, not least because some would be simultaneous), they sought informants who could speak from firsthand knowledge and whom they could interview (indirect autopsy).”

Bauckham follows the work of Byrskog in defining “autopsy,” as a visual means of gathering data about a certain object and can include means that are either direct (being an eyewitness) or indirect (access to eyewitnesses). Byrskog also claims that such autopsy is arguably used by Paul (1 Cor 9:1; 15:5–8; Gal 1:16), Luke (Acts 1:21–22; 10:39–41) and John (19:35; 21:24; 1 John 1:1–4).

According to Bauckham, “this, at least, was historiographic best practice, represented and theorized by such generally admired historians as Thucydides and Polybius. The preference for direct and indirect testimony is an obviously reasonable rule for acquiring the testimony likely to be reasonable.” Loveday Alexander, in his book The Preface to Luke’s Gospel offers the translations: “those with personal/firsthand experience; those who know the facts at hand.” One of the greatest assets of Bauckham’s book is the reminder that ancient historians thought that history had to be written during a time when eyewitnesses were still available to be cross-examined.

2. In examining the role of testimony in the Holocaust, Bauckham quotes Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel. Weisel says:

” If the Greeks invented tragedy, the Romans the epistle, and the Renaissance the sonnet, our generation [i.e., Jews who Witnessed the Holocaust] invented a new literature, that of testimony. We have all been witnesses and we feel we have to bear testimony for our future. And that became a single obsession, the single most powerful obsession that permeated all the lives, dreams, all the work of those people. One minute before they died they thought that was what they had to do.”

Baukham goes on to say:

” The sense (not a properly one generic one) in which the witnesses of the Holocaust created a new literature of testimony. Is much the same sense that in which the witnesses of the history created the Gospels. Those witnesses understood the imperative to witness to a command of the risen Christ, but the parallel is sufficient to be suggestive. In both cases, the uniqueness required precisely witness as the only means by which the events could be adequately known. In both cases, the exceptionality of the event means that only the testimony of participant witness can give us anything approaching access to the truth of the event.”

Bauckham notes that in studying the eyewitness testimony of people within a courtroom, psychologists have noted that the witnesses who participated were not required to recall the peripheral details of the event, but the gist of the events they recalled. Bauckham quotes Alan Baddeley in relationship to eyewitness memory: “Much of our autobiographical recollection of the past is reasonably free of error, provided that we stick to remembering the broad outline of events. Errors begin to occur once we try to force ourselves to come up with detailed information from an inadequate basis. This gives full rein to various sources of distortion, including that of prior expectations, disruption by misleading questions, and by social factors such as the desire to please the questioner, and to present ourselves in a good light.”

To see the more on the old objection.” We Can’t Trust Eyewitness Testimony,” click here:

3. How important is it that Luke was not a direct eyewitnesses?

As Bauckham said, “Best of all was for the historian to have been himself a participant in the events (direct autopsy). Failing that (and no historian was present at all the events he need to recount, not least because some would be simultaneous), they sought informants who could speak from firsthand knowledge and whom they could interview (indirect autopsy).”

If we look at Luke 1:1-4, we see even though Luke was not a direct eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry, he says the information he received was given to him by those who were “from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” (1:2). Luke decided to write his gospel “after investigating everything carefully.” Luke’s reference to the information as being “handed down” would be understood in a Jewish culture as something a rabbi did when he would “hand over” a body of teaching or legal opinion to his disciple or disciples (Mark 7:3-5). We can conclude that just because those recording the events may have not been direct witnesses to the events, this should not serve as a defeater to the reliability of their testimony of the event itself.

Also, if the Gospel authors such as Luke are so unreliable, how is that Luke’s Gospel shows displays a variety of historical figures that have been confirmed. For example, Luke gives correct titles for the following officials: Cyprus, proconsul (13:7–8); Thessalonica, politarchs (17:6); Ephesus, temple wardens (19:35); Malta, the first man of the island. Each of these has been confirmed by Roman usage. In all, Luke names thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities, and nine islands without an error. (see See Geisler, N. L., BECA, pg 431). Also, In his monumental work called The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, classics scholar Colin Hemer has shown that Luke has also done his work as an historian. There are at least 84 events, customs, people, locations, etc, which have been confirmed by archaeology. Some of them are:

1. A natural crossing between correctly named ports (13:4–5). Mount Casius, south of Seleucia, stands within sight of Cyprus. The name of the proconsul in 13:7 cannot be confirmed, but the family of the Sergii Pauli is attested.
2. The proper river port, Perga, for a ship crossing from Cyprus (13:13).
3. The proper location of Lycaonia (14:6).
4. The unusual but correct declension of the name Lystra and the correct language spoken in Lystra. Correct identification of the two gods associated with the city, Zeus and Hermes (14:12).
5. The proper port, Attalia, for returning travelers (14:25).
6. The correct route from the Cilician Gates (16:1).
7. The proper form of the name Troas (16:8).
8. A conspicuous sailors’ landmark at Samothrace (16:11).
9. The proper identification of Philippi as a Roman colony. The right location for the river Gangites near Philippi (16:13).
10. Association of Thyatira with cloth dyeing (16:14). Correct designations of the titles for the colony magistrates (16:20, 35, 36, 38).
11. The proper locations where travelers would spend successive nights on this journey (17:1).
12. The presence of a synagogue in Thessalonica (17:1), and the proper title of politarch for the magistrates (17:6).
13. The correct explanation that sea travel is the most convenient way to reach Athens in summer with favoring east winds (17:14).
14. The abundance of images in Athens (17:16), and reference to the synagogue there (17:17).
Accurate representation of the Jewish law regarding Gentile use of the temple area (21:28).

3. Textual Reliability

Bart Ehrman’s big claim is that he has supposedly shown in his book Misquoting Jesus that the NT isn’t textually reliable. So we could say this:

1. If Bart Ehrman says the NT is not textually reliable, then it is not textually reliable
2. Bart Ehrman says the NT is not textually reliable
3. Therefore, the NT is not textually reliable

This syllogism may look valid, but is it sound? It is really an appeal to an authority. So let’s look at another authority. Daniel Wallace, a professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary is considered one of the utmost authorities on Koine Greek grammar and New Testament textual criticism.

So what if we say the following:
1. If Daniel Wallace says the NT is textually reliable, then it is textually reliable
2. Daniel Wallace says the NT is textually reliable
3. Therefore, the NT is textually reliable

Bart knows there are many Greek specialists that have responded to his book Misquoting Jesus. They think Bart has made some errors. What a shock. See Wallace’s entire review of Misquoting Jesus herehere:

Another review of Misquoting Jesus is online. It was written by one of my own professors, Dr. Thomas Howe:
A Response To Bart D. Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus

Furthermore, Norman Geisler notes in his book A General Introduction to the Bible that the late Bruce Metzer (who taught Bart Ehrman) said that the NT is copied with 99.5 percent accuracy. Geisler goes on to say:

“NT textual authorities Westcott and Hort estimated that only about one-sixtieth rise above “trivialities” and can be called “substantial variations.” In short, the NT is 98.33 percent pure. Second, Greek expert Ezra Abbott said about 9/20 (95 percent) of the readings are “various” rather than “rival” readings, and about 9/20 (95 percent) of the rest make no appreciable difference in the sense of the passage. Thus the text is 99.75 percent accurate. Third, noted NT Greek scholar A. T. Robertson said the real concern is with about a “thousandth part of the entire text.” So, the reconstructed text of the New Testament is 99.9% free from real concern.

Philip Schaff estimated that of the thousands of variations in all the manuscripts known in his day, only 50 were of real significance and of these not one affected “an article of faith.” Even agnostic NT critic Bart Ehrman admits that “In fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple-slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort of another” (Misquoting Jesus, 55).

Famous British manuscript expert Sir Frederick Kenyon summed up the matter well when he declared that: “The interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established” (Kenyon, The Bible and Archaeology, 288).

Consider the following message: Y#U HAVE WON TEN MILLION. DOLLARS. Notice that even with the error in the text, 100% of the message comes through.

Consider also this message with two lines and two errors.

• Y#U HAVE WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS
• YO# HAVE WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS
Here we are even more sure of the message with two errors in it. In fact, the more errors like this, the more sure one is of the message since every new line brings a confirmation of every letter except one. The NT has about 5700 manuscripts. which provides hundreds, in some cases even thousands of confirmations, of every line in the NT.

As a matter of fact, there can be a high percent of divergence in letters and yet a 100% identity of message. Consider the following lines:
1.YOU HAVE WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS
2. THOU HAST WON 10 MILLION DOLLARS
3. Y’ALL HAVE WON $10,000,000

Notice that of the 27 letters and numbers in line two only 7 in line three are the same. That is little more than 25% identity of letters and numbers, yet the message is 100% the same. They differ in form, but they are identical in content. The same is true of all the basic teachings of the NT. ”

4. Jesus: Just Another Miracle Worker?

As I said, Ehrman’s book called The New Testament: A Historical Introduction To The Early Christian Writings is a great read. However, I do have some areas of disagreement.

In it, Ehrman tries to make Jesus into simply another so- called miracle worker on the same lines of Apollonius of Tyana. Philostratus, his biographer, tells that Apollonius cast out a demon from a young man and ordered it to provide a sign that it had left. A nearby statue promptly fell down. This example sounds like the account of Jesus expelling the demon from the Gadarene man (Mark 5:1–20). Did this account influence the Jesus story? I have already written a post on this subject here:

5. A False Hope

Ehrman has debated both William Lane Craig and Mike Licona on the resurrection. When we had Bart here last April, he said in his debate with Dr. Michael Brown that Brown was offering the world a false hope. You can see the entie debate here: Anyway, some in the audience clapped as if to say, “Amen, Bart is right.” As I already said, Ehrman says the following:

“We can say with complete certainty that some of his disciples at some later time insisted that . . . he soon appeared to them, convincing them that he had been raised from the dead.” (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, pg 230).

But as I said, Ehrman’s naturalistic presuppositions won’t allow him to say the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for the appearances to the disciples. Therefore, in order for him to say it is a “false hope” it will largely depend on his presuppositions.

In Ehrman’s debate with William Lane Craig, Ehrman claims that “he can ‘dream up’ twenty naturalistic alternatives concerning the empty tomb.”

There is a problem with Ehrman’s reasoning. As Mike Licona points out, the “what-if” possibilities without supporting evidence doesn’t challenge hypotheses with strong supporting evidence. (see The Resurrection of Jesus – A New Historiographical Approach), pg 467.

We can stick with the typical naturalistic hypotheses alternatives to the resurrection and show how they don’t meet what Licona calls the requirements of:

1. Plausibility
2. Explanatory scope and explanatory power
3. They are less ad hoc
4. Illumination

See more here:

So I repeat it again. I don’t think it will really matter with Ehrman because as usual, every historian interprets the past in direct relationship to his own Weltanschauung (the German word for worldview). Hence, a worldview will always impact one’s historical method/philosophy of history. Ehrman says the following:

“ Since historians can only establish what probably happened in the past, and the chances of a miracle happening, by definition, are infinitesimally remote, historians can never demonstrate that a miracle probably happened.” (Ehrman 2008:243–244)

In this case, Ehrman is really just repeating what David Hume said which is not much of a shock. Most of Hume’s objections have been found faulty- see here and here:

Conclusion:

Bart Ehrman is getting a lot of attention. His work demonstrates once again that the Church needs to wake up and teach Christian apologetics on a regular basis. It is time to stop “dumbing it down” for the local congregation. Ehrman has talked about his experience at Moody Bible Institute and seminary. Ehrman seems to say the certainty of the whole thing (Christianity) was a big ticket item for him. I wonder what would have happened if he had taken a class on the epistemology (the study of knowledge, truth, certainty) of religious belief. Sadly, most Bible colleges don’t tackle such a topic.

I do respect Ehmran. But I am saddened that he sits before his students where he teaches and tells them his goal is to change everything they know about Christianity. I just want the public to know there are plenty of counterarguments to his work.