I read 4 books by this guy so far and I'll probably read a few more. I reallise that it's in his best interest to present everything in these books as controversial because that makes them sell better, but seriously, I used to go to church every sunday for years and from just one of these books I've learned more than I did in all of those sessions combined. On audiobook they're about 10 hours long, and I read the basic bitch introductory ones not the ones for people who know what they're doing. What the fuck was the point of church then?I'm seriously at a loss here, the guy specifically says multiple times he doesn't write these books to attack christianity, and I believe him, but since he grew up protestant and I grew up catholic, I think we have vastly different outlooks on this. If a protestant doesn't like what his local church is doing, he can just go to a different one, or more likely, live with the knowledge that there is some church out there that's probably doing things right but you just can't be asked to find it.But as a catholic? If your local church is fucking up THIS MUCH, that just means they're following orders and the institurion is either fucked or at best extremely ineffective and corrupt.Seriously, is the church deliberately withholding information from the general public? At first I thought they're just inept at teaching, but if you think about it, if they just told everyone to read a book or two at church and then not do the mass then people would learn way more in a few months than they do in years. You could go to church for 60 years and never find out Jesus had a brother named James, not to mention important shit like Luke using Mark as a source. Am I missing something? They should be told the same things in seminary that he was.
The catholic church is the same organization that lobbied against mass literacy. Not only that, for like a thousand years they held masses in latin, a language only they understood at that point, specifically so that people don't know what the bible actually says. You REALLY thought they had your best interest at heart knowing this? They killed people over saying the earth rotates around the sun for fuck's sake. Their strategy is that the less you know, the better.
>>24882181This guy is a fraud and a dishonest charlatan. Read Brant Pitre's books for an eloquent and elegant response to Ehrman's lies.
>>24882196Can you give one example of a lie that he tells?
I'm not even Catholic, but pretty much all critical scholarship of Christianity from the 20th century to present is complete and utter horseshit.
>>24882202what makes you pretty sure of that?
>>24882181>I reallise that it's in his best interest to present everything in these books as controversial Almost everything that he says in the books is uncontroversial mainstream biblical criticism. With the exception of a couple of things like his Jesus-as-an-angel early Christian Christology or his left to rot on the cross and received a dishonorable burial in an unknown grave theory. Though even then, those views are not really crazy, out there, theories.>Seriously, is the church deliberately withholding information from the general publicI sort of felt similarly to you when I first started reading Biblical history written by actual scholars. Shouldn't we be given the objective facts and then decide for ourselves what makes most sense ? But after speaking to Catholic priests I realized that even they have no clue about any of this. I don't think its deliberate or anything. I think the Church simply ignores and denies the conclusions of contemporary scholarship and then refuses to teach something they simply think is wrong. At the end of the day, the Church is not an academic organization. They way they see it, they are teaching you biblical history. But they are teaching you biblical history as influenced by the Holy Spirit i.e. by God himself.
>>24882215>But after speaking to Catholic priests I realized that even they have no clue about any of this.Don't they teach this stuff in seminary?If they don't, what are they teaching?
>>24882205Back then there was no printing press.. every work had to be copied by hand, and mistakes were going to happen in basically every text, religous or not. That’s normal. But with the New Testament, you’ve got thousands of copies, and over 99% of the differences are tiny stuff like spelling, word order, or obvious slip.. the minor nature of the mistakes actually show how well it’s been preserved. If anything, that bolsters the Christians claims, and it shows that modern scholars who freak out over every tiny variant are exaggerating the problem. Why don't the varinces in works of Greek philosphy get this sort of treatment? Because all these academics are secular, view belief in the supernatural as a trait of stupid people, and have an axe to grind.
>>24882222variances*
>>24882222To add, there's two reasons to devote your academic life to textual criticism of Christian manuscripts..1. You believe in God and want proof2. You don't believe in God and want proof
>>24882222>Back then there was no printing press.. every work had to be copied by hand, and mistakes were going to happen in basically every text, religous or not. That’s normal. But with the New Testament, you’ve got thousands of copies, and over 99% of the differences are tiny stuff like spelling, word order, or obvious slip..Ehrman says this almost verbatim in his books.> the minor nature of the mistakes actually show how well it’s been preserved. Shows this how? Let's say there is an original, and then someone makes a copy, the original gets lost. Now someone makes a copy of that copy, the first copy also gets lost. Someone makes 10 copies of the only book that exists at this point, the copy of a copy. Even if the 10 new copies all agree with each other, every mistake, every deliberate change the first 2 scribes made is present in all known copies.Now let's say someone makes a fucked up copy that's full of erros, and that's the copy that makes it to Rome. All the books in rome from that point forward will be fucked up because of this, but they all agree with each other in their mistakes. That is proof that the book is well preserved?You're trying to play word games with numbers here by emphasising the 99% figure. Let's say I went back in time and wiped those 99% of changes, so that only the serious ones (THAT WE KNOW ABOUT!) remain. This would mean there are no spelling errors or word order changes, just the major things like the longer ending of Mark. Would that make the problem worse? According to your logic, it should, because now 100% of the problems are serious. But if you think about the problem logically, the number of serious errors stayed the same. Just because most corruptions are not serious does not mean the ones that are serious are somehow deminished by the existence of the non-serious.>Why don't the varinces in works of Greek philosphy get this sort of treatment?Because there isn't a denialist narrative like there post I'm replying to right now. Nobody says we for sure have the works of Plato as he composed them. Homeric scholarship openly questions if there even was a Homer. But the new testament is treated like a holy cow.Let's not forget the 99% figure is achieved by comparing ALL manuscrips, where as manuscripts from the 13th century aren't telling us much. The earliest manuscripts have the most variants.
>>24882241You don't expect someone who is an expert on assyriology to believe in ancient assyrian gods. You don't expect someone who is a classicist to believe in the greek gods. You don't expect someone who studies comperative religion to be a bhuddist a hindu and a muslim all at once.But for the new testament, there MUST be something going on, you can't just choose to study what is arguably the most important text for the past 2000 years of european history? You MUST have an alterior motive? Really?
>>24882181He's a BLM knee-bending cuck
>>24882200The biggest lie he tells is that Jesus never claims to be God in the Gospels. Also he claims that we don't know who wrote the Gospels and pushes the dates of their writing well beyond 70 AD. All of these lies are debunked by Brant Pitre in his book The Case for Jesus.
>>24882218They're mostly taught theology, some languages and a bit about modern day church operation. Studying the historicity of the bible is either something historians get into or a specialisation in religious studies with which you can't become a preacher.
>>24882260>The biggest lie he tells is that Jesus never claims to be God in the Gospels.Well if you frame it like that, yeah... He says he never claims to be God in the SYNOPTIC gospels, which is factually correct, you can read them and see, he never says that about homself in those.> Also he claims that we don't know who wrote the GospelsWe do? News to me. Did the authors sign their names somewhere? >and pushes the dates of their writing well beyond 70 ADWhere?
>>24882260Especially the late dating of the gospels is funny. It just hinges on Jesus not being God so he can't predict the destruction of Jerusalem, so it must've been after. No matter how much the text points towards it being written by people who were there.
>>24882272He never says that in his books though? I know because I read them.Why does criticism of Ehrman always amount to making shit up? It doesn't take a miracle to predict something like that - I'm making a prediction right now, the US governement will collapse. Give this prediction a hundred years and see if I'm right.
>>24882272>>24882260Give me ONE quotation by ehrman where he says the gospels are written after 70 BECAUSE jesus predicts the destruction of the temple. ONE. Could be from a book, could be a radio interview, a blog post, anything.Why are you lying?
>>24882260>The biggest lie he tells is that Jesus never claims to be God in the Gospels.he says this for every gospel except for John, which is factually accurate>and pushes the dates of their writing well beyond 70 ADHe only says this for the gospel of JohnVery sneaky of you to group them together like this then act like he's an idiot because he makes the very surface level and incredibly obvious observation that the gospel of john is different to the other three.
>>24882282>It also appears that the Gospel writers know about certain later historical events, such as the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE (possibly Mark, in 13:1; almost certainly Luke, in 21:20—22). That implies that these Gospels were probably written after the year 70.From Jesus InterruptedI'm not lying, you are just a dumb nigger
>>24882266So the things they're tought about are mostly things they can't transfer onto the congregation, and the things they could transfer to them get them barred from preaching? Does this not sound like control of information getting out to you?
Forget the apocryphal works they're hiding down there, they got UFOs under the vatican dude
>>24882285>he says this for every gospel except for John, which is factually accurateIt's just not. Jesus uses in all gospels terms for himself that are only used for God.>He only says this for the gospel of JohnNow you are just lying.>There are reasons for thinking Mark was written first, so maybe he wrote around the time of the war with Rome, 70 CE. If Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source, they must have been composed after Mark’s Gospel circulated for a time outside its own originating community—say, ten or fifteen years later, in 80 to 85 CE. John seems to be the most theologically developed Gospel, and so it was probably written later still, nearer the end of the first century, around 90 to 95 CE. These are rough guesses, but most scholars agree on them.
>>24882300No. The point of Sunday service is reflection of God, what he did for us, how we can serve him and to be in a Christian community. Not to learn history and deal with academic criticism. Most people that go to church don't care about that and if you do you can study it yourself. The role of a preacher/priest is first and foremost to be a spiritual teacher. And so they must be educated in that, though of course it is better if they themselves study such criticisms.
>>24882308>>24882298>>24882282I don't get it, is wikipedia lying?I don't get it, is wikipedia lying?
>>24882277>>24882272>>24882260see >>24882330>>24882327>The point of Sunday service is reflection of God, what he did for us, how we can serve him and to be in a Christian community.And you don't think understanding the bible is important for this?
>>24882332No. Most christians don't read the bible, and that's not the point of the religion. The point is serving God through his church. Studying the bible should be done on your own time since it's not conducive to that.
>>24882330No, Wikipedia just uses the scholarly resources. But the scholars based the late dating mostly on "Jesus can't have predicted it", which is dumb.>>24882332Not really. Understanding the message of the bible, and thus theology, is. Getting into a discussion about whether the early or the late dating of the gospel is correct won't help with that at all. And 99% of Christians will never have a discussion about it.
>>24882181He mostly reports mainstream Academic Bible studies. That said, Academic Bible Studies is a very poor subject with very low intellectual standards.I think many people see the words "mainstream researchers", "science" and so on and think they are dealing with people who uncovered old texts that disprove how Christians interpreted the Gospels. But this is not the case at all. They have the same material as everyone else and basically just create novel interpretations of it.As an example: someone (who Ehrman respects by the way and who is often shilled on /his/) created the theory that Jesus actually wanted to create a secular dynasty to remove the Herodians from the throne and that James was his successor.Problems: nobody is ever shown as treating James as royalty in any materiap whatsoever. When a Pharisee got James killed because the old Governor died and the new Governor was not there yet, the Herodian King and the Roman Governor got extremely pissed off and punished the Pharisee. "This is a Christian invention, James was actu-...". Nope, this comes from a Jewish historian.Another example: they had something called the criterium of dissimilarity. It discounts something as said by Jesus if it is compatible with 2nd Temple Judaism and the beliefs of Early Christians.I would like you to stop for a while and to reflect about how fucking retarded this is. Using the same criteria, we can thus come to the conclusion that Marx was not a Hegelian, since that was somewhat common in 19th century German and was not a communist, since his early followers were communists.We can thus come to the conclusion that Marx was a free market Capitalist and that Milton Friedman and the Chicago school were the true heirs of Marx.
>>24882360Also, I have unironically seem this argument being used before as an evidence to say Jesus didn't claim to be God, since Early Christians believed Jesus to be God they invented it.
>>24882360That's not how I understand criterium of dissimilarity.The way I understand it, it doesn't refer to what's compatible, but what would serve their purpose, and most importantly doesn't mean anything that is compatible as necessarly not from jesus, it just means that if something is not compatible, it's that much more likely to really come from Jesus. I think, in this way, it makes sense.For example Jesus's baptism: early christians would find it uncomfortable that Jesus was baptised by someone else, since that would make him "lesser" to that someone. Why would they invent this story if it works against them? Meanwhile, all the stories tryign to explain this, like John jumping in the womb, you can see how this doesn't help, since those are stories christians would make up.Your Marx example isn't great because it deals with a modern figure we know a lot about, but even then: Marx's racism. Leftists will understandably try to downplay his racism. Let's say we find some letter, preserved by leftists and not marx's opponents mind you, that contains racist anecdotes. Would a leftist make those up? If anything they would try to hide this or erase it. Therefore, it's likely to be real.
>>24882377You are confusing the criterium of dissimilarity with the criterium of embarrassment.
>>24882377Also,I think your post does show (other than a confusion on which criterium is which) a kind of uncharitably negative view that wouldnt be accepted in a neutral setting. "Anything "bad" about Jesus is true, anything "good" is a Christian forgery".I wouldn't really think this way about Socrates or Buddha or Mohammed.>Your Marx example isn't great because it deals with a modern figure we know a lot aboutIt is a good example exactly because of this. Because this dumbass criterium doesn't work well with historical figures who are closer to us.
>>24882390no i mean it doesn't work because we for sure have writings that are definitely written by marx to compare them with, where as we have nothing authored by jesus himself, only later stories from oral tradition
>>24882192The Catholic Church was never against mass literacy. It just didn't make any sense, and they didn't have the resources (cheap, mass produced texts), to make sure everyone could read and write in pre-industrial society. Hence it also didn't make sense to translate the Bible into thousands of different vernacular languages across Europe, before the standardization of the big national languages, if the only people taught how to read were taught to read Latin.
>>24882398I don't think you got the point.
>>24882411 there was a papal bull in 1713 that straight up says reading is not and should not be for everyone. I could go on but this should be enough. I mean honestly, don't kid yourself, if they wanted people to read they wouldn't lobby against translating the bible out of latin, come on.You're making it sound like the poster is saying the church didn't advocate for mass literacy hard enough early enough, what he is saying is that the church was taking deliberate action to keep it low, which is factually accurate, as shown above.
Another example of the problem of Academic Bible Studies. The claim they Gospels were internally anonymous because they don't identify themselves in the text. For example, Mark doesn't start with "I, John Mark, aim to write this to..."But... most every book is the same.Plato doesn't start his dialogues identifying himself.JK Rowling doesn't start her books with "I, JK Rowling, will now tell the story of a young wizard"Shakespeare doesn't start his plays with "I, William Shakespeare, will now tell the tale of two lovers in Florence"So, by the definition of Bible Academia, Plato's dialogues, Shakespeare plays and Harry Potter are internally anonymous books.
>>24882454>Plato doesn't start his dialogues identifying himself.True, and they acknowledge this.>JK Rowling doesn't start her books with "I, JK Rowling, will now tell the story of a young wizard"It's on the cover and she filed copyright for it.>Shakespeare doesn't start his plays with "I, William Shakespeare, will now tell the tale of two lovers in Florence"We famously do not have Shakespeare's own scripts, if those even existed at all, we only have reconstructions done by his company and friends shortly after his death. Not only that, but they were published with the name attached.It's completely unwarrented to cite modern examples because there are MANY ways to identify yourself as an author, and the gospels don't identify themselves in ANY way. Also I'm pretty sure it will say "by j k rowling" on the first page or some such.
>>24882454>gospels don't say who wrote them>no mentions of the alleged authors until the second century>they're not anonymous because uhhhh they just aren't okay?let's not forget the obvious problems of assigning books written in greek to illiterate arameic speaking peasants
>>24882465I'm using the exact same rationale they do to claim the Gospel are anonymous.The writers don't identify themselves in the body of the texts.So, using their standard Harry Potter, Shakespeare's plays, Plato's dialogues were all written anonymously.So is the Lord of the Rings, of course.By the way, the Gospels were in the genre of Greco Roman biographies and none that I can think of ever had the author identifying himself in the main body of the text. We can thus conclude using the same standards that all biographies were written anonymously.It is time to recognize that their argument to claim "Gospels were internally anonymous" is stupid, since this is true for pretty much all books.
>>24882488
>>24882488Explain to me how they aren't anonymous without resorting to word games and technicalities. Authors sign their own name onto non-anonymous books, go to any book store and look at the fucking cover you retard.
>>24882488You're being deliberately obtuse by pretending identifying yourself as the author of a book can only be done in the main body of the text. Do you expect the "by mark twain" do be in the middle of the book?
>>24882482>gospels don't say who wrote themThe point is that with very few exceptions, almost no books ever do that in the main body of the text. They do so in the titles, just like the Gospels.>no mentions of the alleged authors until the second centuryThey are fairly well attested for materials of that period, to be honest. The last Gospel was written in 90-100 AD. Irenaeus who was a direct disciple of a direct disciple of an Apostle says matter of factly as common knowledge who wrote them in 170AD. And there was a complete agreement over this, even in geographically distant regions.>books written in greek to illiterate arameic speaking peasantsAre you sure they have written books to illiterate people?
>>24882490>>24882494We also have something similar in the Gospels>>24882498>You're being deliberately obtuse by pretending identifying yourself as the author of a book can only be done in the main body of the text. Do you expect the "by mark twain" do be in the middle of the book?That's the argument of Bible Scholars. That's not my standard, that's THEIR standard. That's what they mean by internally anonymous. And that's why I say they are stupid. You seem to be agreeing with me that this standard is idiotic.
>>24882501>They do so in the titles, just like the Gospels.The titles that are NOT found in any early manuscripts, and are only first mentioned in the second century.Nice try.>Are you sure they have written books to illiterate people?I was talking about the problems of assigning the books TO AUTHORS who couldn't fucking write and spoke a different language. You're starting to piss me off with these,
>>24882506>The titles that are NOT found in any early manuscripts, and are only first mentioned in the second century.>Nice tryWe don't have early manuscripts with the parts where the titles would be.The earliest complete manuscripts we have are from a later era and they all contain the title where the title would be.Using your same standard we should also doubt Plato's authorship.>I was talking about the problems of assigning the books TO AUTHORS who couldn't fucking write and spoke a different language. You're starting to piss me off with these,Mark was an assistant and scribe for PeterMatthew was a tax collector. Tax collectors had to be at least decently educated.Luke was the Greek Doctor of Paul.John was not well educated in his early days, but he had 57 years to learn how to write before 90AD. He also could have access to people to write for him.
I think it is interesting how Atheists are so hellbent on defending this stupid discipline."Internal anonymity" is a stupid criteria. And instead of defending this bullshit criteria they try to argue other ways on why the Gospels would be anonymous.Instead of just saying "Yeah, internal anonymity is a really stupid argument, but there are good points in this area too".Frankly, all of this shows that this is an area of charlatans that are in it to oppose Christianity.
>>24882527>I think it is interesting how Atheists are so hellbent on defending this stupid discipline.The majority of Biblical scholars are Christians.
You have to be incredibly deluded if you think degenerate contemporaries dressed in suits supersede tradition
>christians ITT hopping up and down in a rage that a milquetoast boomer who is completely standard in his scholarship points out that their religion isn't true
>>24882817>be proven wrong>"umad"
>>24882822No non-christian was proven wrong in this thread.Christianity is a false religion and nothing Ehrman says is controversial. Jesus didn't rise, he's never coming back. You're going to have to come to terms with this.
>>24882829>didn't read the thread but pretended he didAtheist ""morality""
Ehrman is such a fucking midwit. He only has a career because fedorafags think he gives an air of academic credibility to their basic bitch Wikipedia opinions. Even a mid-tier apologist like Jimmy Akin managed to upstage him in a debate.
>>24882829Shalom.
>>24882254The entire "Skeptic Community" is pozzed .
