Bart Ehrman Is At It Again! Are There Forgeries in the New Testament?

I recently picked up a “Collector’s Edition” of U.S. News & World Report titled “The Real Jesus”. The articles cover a number of interesting subjects, including Christmas, Jesus’ trial, archaeological discoveries, and Mary and Martha. Towards the end of the magazine is an excerpt from Bart Ehrman’s book Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them). I haven’t read the whole book, but the excerpt is about forgeries in the New Testament world. Ehrman gives some background on forgeries and some reasons why they happened. Then on page 80 of the magazine, he makes this statement:

“From a historical perspective, there is no reason to doubt that some forgeries very well could have made it into the canon.

Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus Chapter 3

We are reading through Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus and analysing it in some detail.  We will pick up where we left of with Misquoting Jesus–Chapter Three.

Throughout Chapter 3, Bart Ehrman gives us a quick history of the different texts and manuscripts we have of the New Testament, and how these manuscripts have affected translations of the New Testament.  The first fact that we ought to look at is that by Ehrman’s own admission, we have 5700 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.  Some of these manuscripts are partial manuscripts the size of a credit card, some are collections of more than one book, and a few even contain the whole New Testament. 

Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus-Chapters 1 & 2

We are reading through Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus and analysing it in some detail.  We will pick up where we left of with Misquoting Jesus–Chapter One.

In the first chapter, Ehrman gives an introduction to Judaism, Christianity and then Christian Scriptures.  While there are not many controversial ideas in this chapter, at least when compared to the last, Ehrman still makes one significant mistake that someone of his stature should know better than.  In the process of explaining Jewish history, Ehrman makes the statement that just as there was only one God, “so, too, there was only one Temple…they (Jews) could perform religious obligations of sacrifice to God only at the Temple in Jerusalem.” (p. 18)

This simply is not true for at least one major reason: The Jews, Judaism and Jewish sacrifices predate the Temple. 

Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus–Introduction (Answering the Critics #3)

We are going to take a more in-depth look at Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus than we have in our other “Answering the Critics” posts.  We will take the book one or two chapters at a time.

Bart Ehrman begins his Misquoting Jesus in a very different way than one might expect—with an introduction which tells the story of Ehrman’s interactions with the Christian Church as he was growing up. 

Is the Bible a Trustworthy Source of Truth?

One place that many, many people have found Truth is in the Bible.  But is the Bible a trustworthy source of Truth? 

In order to explore that question, I will be starting two different series of posts.  One series, called “Making Sense of Christianity”, will explore many different subjects and how the Bible addresses or intersects with them.  How does the Bible deal with women?  How does it coincide or come into conflict with archaeology?  How does it line up with historical fact?  Many issues including these will be addressed, and as they are addressed, we will discover what these findings say about the trustworthiness of the Bible.

The second series, called “Answering the Critics”, will examine the writings of some prominent authors who have questioned the historical reliability of the Bible and Christianity–people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Bart Ehrman.  As we are examining each author, we will discover whether what they are saying is accurate, and who is more trustworthy–the author or the Bible.

I am looking forward to both these series, and if you have any ideas for either of them, or maybe questions about the reliability of the Bible, feel free to leave them in the comments!