Sam Harris

wahoo - 07 July 2009 10:09 PM

Clay is right.

Sinaiticus is nothing new.  And neither is the info in “Jesus Interrupted”.  I have read quite a lot of Ehrman’s work.  He’s a bright guy.  But he has his biases just as any other researcher in this field.

And we’ve already gone full circle.

Back to the top, if you want to play on the merry-go-round for a while ... sometimes it sure is a tight loop though!

wahoo - 07 July 2009 10:09 PM

Eudomonia, have you ever read N T Wright?  If so did you read his work with an open mind?

Because if you read it with an open mind you’ll clearly agree with Wahoo here ... eh?

Byron

Oi, you’re like a broken record eudemonia. 

As I’ve said before, many bible scholars have recognized Ehrman is very knowledgeable in his subject area.  However, they all say the same thing.  Ehrman is a bit of an alarmist about NT text criticism and seems to want to scare Christians into believing the Bible isn’t what they think it is.  Is the Bible that we read today the same inspired word that God gave to the NT writers?  No, it has variations, different spellings or sentence structures, probably even some minor add-ons.  Again, scholars know and teach it in their schools, but without all the shock factor that Erhman feels necessary to add to it.  The reigning consensus is that no significant NT doctrine or truth is called into question based on textual variants and interpolations.  I think Erhman takes pleasure in his kind of biblical “fact finding” because he came from a fundamentalist church that believes every t crossed and i dotted is exactly as it was written in the first century A.D.  And you’re right, it is unfortunate that pastors and teachers aren’t communicating better with the lay folk so they’re better prepared (and less alarmed) when someone like Ehrman comes by.  However, if you get yourself a nice study bible, you can find much of this information in print, right along with the text. 

Clay, will not have the courage to read any of Ehrmans work.

You need to settle down dude.  I already told you I’m reading the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, which is part of my personal library.  I know you want to have the intellectual upper hand here, but you’re starting to sound ridiculous.

clayforHim648 - 08 July 2009 01:48 PM

Oi, you’re like a broken record eudemonia.

Awesome!

Now that’s funny!

eudemonia - 08 July 2009 01:17 PM

Entirely correct. The information brought forward by Bart Ehrman in ‘Jesus Interrupted’ is nothing new. That is the exact point that he makes in this book. For over 200 years now, Theologians have known about the horizontal, critical-historical interpretations of the bible that expose it’s fraudulent, conflicting, nature and content.

Every mainstream divinity school in the world today teaches this. Modern ministers, pastors and priests, of course, do not teach this to their congregations, thus people like Clay and Wahoo continue on with their ignorance about the bible and it’s supposed ‘truths’

It is the biggest and oldest propangada program in human history, and almost all educated clergy people know it.

Wahoo, I do not believe you read this book and if you did, you did not understand it. Nothing in this book was Bart Ehrmans OPINION. He states this over and over. It is commonly accepted historical knowledge.

Clay, will not have the courage to read any of Ehrmans work.

Eudemonia (McReason?),

I have read quite a lot of Ehrman - even his works from 10 years ago.  What is OPINION is that there was an orthodox coverup.  The facts are that there are manuscript differences - many of them.  But most are very minor and no important Christian doctrine is challenged by them. 

Pretty much all experts in this area have bias.  Ehrman is as biased as his Christian counterparts, like Dan Eallace, Darrell Bock, Craig Evans, etc. 

I have read all the arguments and choose to believe.  You (I assume) have read them and have chosen not to believe.  As best as I can tell the only difference is that you claim that your position (and your experts) is unbiased, which I dispute.

I think the Codex Sinaiticus dispute was settled on this forum by Roger Pearse, wasn’t it? Anyone remember him? October of last year - I checked back! Basically he said that if the oldest surviving copy of the Bible is incomplete or incorrect by present-day standards, all that means is that the copy is incomplete or incorrect. Just because it’s the oldest surviving copy doesn’t mean it’s definitive, which is what everyone seems to assume.

Fond regards to all

Dirk