Thread 24681190

Thoughts on this guy? It seems like half the people that know who he is hate him, or at least call him a liar, but I've yet to see any actual falsehood that he's ever published.

I have next to no frame of reference when it comes to scholarship so I can't tell without external works... Is there actual controversies surrounding this man, or are all his "critics" just the people he criticises unable to give real answers? I've tried to find books that try to answer his, and from the sinopsis and the way they're talked about, they're all seemingly focused on the theological implications as opposed to calling him a liar... but then turn around and call him a liar, despite never pointing out lies.

I don't get it. Give me a straight answer, is he saying the truth or not? Are his books reliable sources of information?

>>24681190 (OP)
>is he saying the truth or not?
No, not in the petersonian sense.

I have heard biblical scholars complain that his books written for laypeople sometimes oversimplify specific points for the purposes of presenting a cohesive narrative, but these points of contention may be too esoteric for most readers to comprehend anyways. I have also heard complaints that, while he represents the consensus of NT scholarship, the consensus he represents is slightly conservative and not up-to-date with modern developments. All of this may be due to said scholars seething that he is bringing critical analysis of the Bible to the public's eye, which apparently is something that many people do not like for whatever reason.

Obviously evangelicals and born again 4christians will bitch because he, along with every biblical scholar in the last 300 years, says that the events in the NT did not take place word-for-word, but the man has a doctorate in theology and has taught at UNC for decades, so you can decide for yourself whether he's legit or not.

Now the real question is, who's the Ehrman of the OT?

Good books, all those who say otherwise are butthurt christcucks who can't refute him

He presents academic consensuses in a sensationalist way to sell books

>>24681190 (OP)
This is your second Ehrman thread fag. Why do you feign ignorance to shit the board up with christfag threads?
>sinopsis
Freudian slip for you pal.

>>24681324
>All of this may be due to said scholars seething that he is bringing critical analysis of the Bible to the public's eye, which apparently is something that many people do not like for whatever reason.
Why are scholars like this? Surely the whole point of their job is to bring more education to the public.

>>24681190 (OP)
He’s made a living by popularizing the mainline theories of Biblical criticism. Almost everything he says about the Bible’s text and its origins is just flatly true, and there’s no real way around it. Some people think this is theologically unsound, some people think you can ponder it away. Maybe you can, idk. I’m not up on theology.
>>24681324
No shit, I went to one of his classes at UNC. It was his final lecture of that semester, and the classes are open to the public. I lived in Chapel Hill for a few years after college. On the class’s request he discussed why he isn’t a Christian anymore. Gave us the whole deal on his theological journey, etc. He said he couldn’t get over the problem of evil and it finally broke his faith.

>>24681324
Basically to get published in a lay press and appear in Borders or Barns and Noble you have to be edgy and anti-Christian. Now it’s ok to be a historian and come up with un orthodox views about Jesus the historical figure don’t felt me wrong but this guy made his primary career pandering to the left wing atheist crowd that started as rebellious anti-Reagan youths that hated the old people of the 80s and into the 00s with the new atheist types.
The main issue with Ehrman is he is more interetddd in the edgey thesis being argued than presenting the truth. The case in point is Jesus Apocolyptic prophet of the new millennium. The title is exactly what you expect a publisher to want around 1999. The thesis is partly 30 years out of date and partly 10 years out of date but he presented it anyway bc it shifts units to normies. And he then did more and more of these types of edgy thesis despite KNOWING BETTER about where current scholarship was and what was honest to his reader.
White and Fredrickson being much better and more honest presentations of NT scholarship.
Ehrman is also pretty entertaining as a speaker and did do a good text book of the field. He’s just not an honest guy when he’s not writing for an academic journal. He’s chasing a bag

>>24681668
What's edgy about understanding Jesus as an apocalyptic preacher? That's been the de facto perspective in academia for a long time now as far as I'm aware. It's hardly a controversial title, either. Does the edginess come into play because he's the first to present these ideas clearly to normies? Are you a butthurt academic who looks at Ehrman's books like we look at Rothko paintings, thinking "I could've done that and made all that money?"

>>24681688
You got filtered and you’re probably a retard

>>24681688
see >>24681520

>Ehrman presents academic consensus to the general public
>this is somehow a bad thing
>this is somehow an unreliable thing

He gets owned and criticised for being dishonest very regularly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iaQ_b20wns

>>24683042
>god actually doesn't want for people to know what his commandments are okay?
???

>>24681668
>. The case in point is Jesus Apocolyptic prophet of the new millennium. The title is exactly what you expect a publisher to want around 1999. The thesis is partly 30 years out of date and partly 10 years out of date

What's out of date about it? Genuinely asking, but that was my understanding as well. (haven't read the book, going by the title alone)

I mean Jesus was definitely an apocalypticist if we go by the gospels, one of the first things he says is that the time has been fulfilled and all that... Jesus claiming to be a porphet is also not controversial... new millenium because we date the millenium after him... I don't get it. What's out of date here?

>>24683552
Thr whole notion of Jesus being an "apocalyptic" prophet is misguided at best. We have his words, precisely. We know what he meant. It was a metaphor.

>half the people that know who he is hate him, or at least call him a liar
Only seething assmad christians do desu

>>24681190 (OP)
I looked up criticism of this guy and came across this
https://www.apologetyka.info/ateizm/a-conversation-with-chatgpt-about-bart-ehrman,1738.htm

>>24685884
>a-conversation-with-chatgpt-about-bart-ehrman,1738.htm

>>24681957
be nice, tao

>>24683552
Jesus the Catholic/protestant/orthodox version was certainly a guy with apocolyptic messages in his ministry but was also doing a lot of other things and the Messiah bit was the important one.

The NW scholasticism is attempting to use the Bible and figure out what Jesus was if you only use evidence that is ‘credible’. Ie, a priori the miracles are thrown out. They also use 3 criterion to determine if biblical claims are likely true or false. Very basically:
1. Is it embarrassing for Christians (like the women being first to the empty tomb, since women are stupid gossips it’s damaging to the credibility that the people who saw it empty are women.
2. Does it make sense given the era it was written. for example, in an extreme sense, Jesus talking about an iPhone isn’t credible. This applies to things to regarding Jewish thought and tradition of the era. If Jesus was ranting about speaking truth to power and respecting pronouns we’d know it’s fake because it wasn’t an idea a 1st century Amorite would have.
3.multiple attestation: how many people said it from differnt sources.

The thesis of APotNM is that Jesus was a crazy homeless guy ranting about the imminent end of the world, which can be extracted from the Bible but BART sort of waves away the exorcisms and the teachings that were pretty radically against current Jewish teaching, such as love your neighbor. And don’t stone people over minor infractions of the law etc. he also has to explain why Rome would crucify a homeless looney etc etc.

The field has long since left this behind and focused on Jesus as an exorcist/healer. Jesus as a Jewish irredentist.
To put it lightly the Apocolyotic prophet just requires to much cherry picking and waving away and broad interpretation to make work and was more interesting as one of the first critical attempts to find a ‘real’ Jesus that lead to more credible explanations of Jesus teaching.

>>24686518
>the teachings that were pretty radically against current Jewish teaching, such as love your neighbor
Loving your neighbor is/was a fundamental teaching of the Torah. Israelites were supposed to treat anyone in their land as one of their own, and refrain from doing unto them what they would not want done unto themselves. This is attested to throughout the OT, in the Mosaic laws and in the teachings of the prophets. In fact, I've heard it argued that this is one of the key beliefs that set Israelites apart from other societies of the time. Now, did people follow this rule during the time of Jesus? No, hence His teaching to do as the Pharisees say, but not as they do. Jesus' teachings got to the heart of the Mosaic laws and uncovered their underlying morals, thus interpreting them in a more universal sense, but in general, none of Jesus' teachings were radically against the morals of Hebrew society at the time.

>>24686518
>BART sort of waves away... ...the teachings that were pretty radically against current Jewish teaching, such as love your neighbor
More recently Bart has written a book (not yet available to buy) arguing that Jesus may have more or less invented/popularized altruism in the west, at least in the sense of a truly universalised (among humans) self-sacrificing effort to care for others.
https://ehrmanblog.org/the-origins-of-altruism-my-next-book-as-it-stands-now/

I'm not sure how he squares that thesis with the story of the non-Jewish woman who is called a dog and expected to beg for crumbs though.

>>24686604 (cont.)
It's actually funny that Christians would think of him as anti-Christian when, imo, for a well-studied non-believer, he's about as sympathetic as they could hope for.

>>24686630
>>24686557
>>24686518
I don't see why he couldn't be both?
Guy who says the world will end soon but also does some exorcisms in the meantime?

>>24686630
>for a well-studied non-believer
he's an apostate, which is way different from merely being ignorant

>>24686630
He’s not sympathetic. The problem of evil is old meme and doesn’t do anything to historical analysisz he’s also knowingly spreading bad info

>>24686604
Well you see he really is allowed to cherry pick facts that defend his latest thesis and ignore ones that work against it . It’s his critical method I think is bad/dishonest. The APofNM is just an example

>>24688767
>The problem of evil is old meme
this is like saying the earth being round is an old concept and therefore invalid

>>24688774
not him but I still don't get how anything said ITT is an argument agaisnt jesus being an apocalyptic prophet.
at best you can say that there was more to him than that, but even modern christians from the catholic propaganda department (i mean this in a kind way) outrght say christianity isn't concerned about making things better because what's the point if it'll all end soon, and that's in modern times, when it serves them to downplay this as much as possible because "2025+ years ago a guy said the world will end any minute now" isn't a great selling point

https://youtu.be/oQwsla0ljrY?feature=shared&t=363 (6:03)

>>24688767
name 1 book where he mentions the problem of evil anywhere else than the prefice where he just gives some background on himself

>>24681190 (OP)
>daily Ehrman thread
>same pretense of just asking questions
What’s your game christfag? How can you be this assblasted by the most lukewarm textual criticism there is? Why are you deathly afraid of what any good seminary teaches?

Here's a video of him getting owned
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=053M39xjK68
and here's a video where his jewish masters does as his masters tell him to and promote islam
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4pbyhxdiMOU

>>24688793
See Kant and realize the world moved on from the HACK Epicurus about 30 seconds after he died

>>24688804
Basically you take the NT and strip away everything that isn’t attested in more than one spot, that isn’t embarrassing to Christianity, ie it’s there despite it being awkward to explain, and everything that doesn’t make sense in the context of 1st century Palestine and then you read the narrative and explain Jesus ‘historically’.
Telling of impeding doom doesn’t get you famous or crucified by Rome in 33AD or explain the rest of the story. That’s the problem. It’s cherry picked you see.
To make to work you have to write off the stuff that downplays the eschatology. It’s just not convincing. It’s really the ‘first quest’ Schweitzer thesis in 1906 repackaged to be sold in popular book. NT wright, Paula Fredrickson, Crossan. All better and a little more serious looks.

>>24688906
He doesn’t believe in Christianity because of the problem of evil which isn’t really a useful argument when developing a christology but it certainly informs the one he wants to create.
>>24688912
This is true. A lot of the influential ones are Christian’s doing good work.

>>24681622
>He said he couldn’t get over the problem of evil and it finally broke his faith.
It's funny how this is always what it is for figures like this. Darwin was the same way.

>>24681190 (OP)
I don't read anyone with that "hairline."

>>24690174
The problem of evil is a 1-Hit KO to standard Christianity for anyone who has their rational mind and their conscience in working order at the same time. The only Christianities that had any hope of escaping it got left behind and condemned as heresies a long time ago.

>>24684816
>We have his words, precisely.
What we have are copies of copies of copies of copies of stuff someone who never personally met Jesus wrote down more than 50 years after his death.

>>24690295
Absolutely. The mainstream church painted itself into a corner 1700 years ago, and modern Christians are still essentially forbidden from engaging with these concerns that everyone has about their religion. It's not just an issue for autistic nerds, cognitive dissonance creates discomfort in everyone. Making the trinity and the idea that God is 100% good and 100% directly in charge their hill to die on presents a serious issue for anyone who is trying to use Christianity as a means to understand the world.

A lot of Christian leaders have started to figure this out and are trying to break the cycle, but they're fighting an uphill battle due to how entrenched this idea of "heresy" is.

>>24681190 (OP)
His voice really annoys me as well as his persistent gay little laugh when nothing he's said is all that funny. Also his podcast is so tedious, it feels like the same five mini lectures over and over fronted by that woman with the gaudy revolving glasses.

His scholarly work is mostly sound though.

>>24691105
>come to /lit/
>talk about podcasts instead of books
>>24690268
>come to /lit/
>talk about fashion instead of books

>>24690169
First of all, you are nearly incomprehensible. I had to read your post 4 times just to understand that you are in fact trying to say something and not just stringing words together like a markov chain. I find it shocking that someone that comes to the LITERATURE board has such a poor grasp of the english language.

Secondly, your point SEEMS to be that Ehrman's claim that jesus was an apocaliptic preacher can't be true because that alone wouldn't get him crucified, to which I ask you AGAIN, point me to where Ehrman says Jesus' only activity was preaching the apocalyptic message.
AS PER EHRMAN'S WRITINGS, and as per the criteria you layed out, Ehrman believes Jesus travelled to Jerusalem in order to reach more people, got in trouble with the authorities and then got crucified. That alone should be explenation enough for most people, woah, a cult leader gets in trouble with the authorities, IMPOSSIBLE.
But, again, as per his writing, he thinks the gist of the biblical narrative about Jesus being accused of claiming to be the king of the jews was correct. He thinks this because he thinks the story of Jesus telling the apostles that they would each rule one of the 12 tribes of Israel likely goes back to the historical Jesus, on the grounds that if the story was made up later, they would not have Jesus promise something like this to Judas, as it demonstrates he lacks foresight. He argues that since they would be ruling the 12 tribes, who would be ruling over them? The messiah.
Ehrman believes Jesus wasn't planning a revolt, but rather thought the apocalypse THAT HE PREACHED ABOUT would bring in God's kingodom on earth, and in said kingdom he would be the messiah ruling Israel. This distinction would be academic at best to the romans, who would gladly crucify a troublemaker.

Explain to me what's "cherrypicked" about this narrative. That the historical Jesus was probably from nazareth, preached an apocalyptic message off the back of John the baptist's movement, hijacked the movement once he died or maybe even earlier, travelled to jerusalem to reach more people, still preaching an apocalyptic message, got in troubbe with the authorities and got killed. Explain where the contradiction is.

Sidenote:
>Telling of impeding doom doesn’t get you famous or crucified by Rome in 33AD
Explain john the baptist then.

>>24681190 (OP)
Check this thread and others we've had. Erhman presents highly speculative theses as "scholarly consensus" (a weasel term in his usage since he excludes most Christian scholars) and makes frankly embarrassing claims about his ability to deduce things like the Apostles' opinions about Christ during his lifetime with any accuracy.

He also has this habit of presenting all his findings as some sort of conspiracy, even though fundamentalists are actually a very small minority of Christians and an historically new phenomena. This plays into a larger corrosive friction in modern society where secular individuals increasingly only understand Christianity through its real life strawman instantiations in fundys. Suffice to say, the Church Fathers are not some sort of "deep cut" that are hidden from Catholics and Orthodox, who represent a solid majority of all Christians. They are encouraged to read them and many of these works are on various heterodoxies and cite them at length, so the idea that stuff like gnosticism is covered up is ridiculous. One cannot read a Catholic or Orthodox history of the early Church written for practicing Christians without mention of these, or of Origen and Clement, etc.

>>24691374
growing up in a catholic country, i can say this is absolutely wrong, and unlike you i have evidence
nearly every scholar agrees that mark was first and matthew and luke copied mark, this has been basically proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, but the catholic masses are still to this day lead to believe matthew was first.
I don't understand how you can frame the church hiding knowledge from the general public as some schizo conspiracy theory when this is the same organization that mandated the bible to be read in a dead language so the congregation doesn't know what it actually says.

>>24691374
Please tell me, what did the church do to heretics such as the lollards?

Gnostic texts have absolutely been victims of a coverup, we know this because... well.. if they weren't, where are they? The gospel of judas basically only exists in 1 manuscript from the Nag Hammadi library, which was likely burried to hide the books from mobs burning them.

>>24691374
>Erhman presents highly speculative theses as "scholarly consensus"
Not really, no. He presents bog-standard Biblical crit theses as "SECRET INFO CHRISTIANS DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW" to sell books. It's sensationalized pop-bible crit, but the core info's accurate. Has he said some out-there shit? Yeah, sure. Does this invalidate his main claims? No, the only people who doubt those are retarded KJV-only fundies or imageboard trads who larp as intellectuals.

>>24691431
Gnostics were anti life
And plenty of ancient texts have been lost
>>24691498
Ehrmann is pseud in so many words

>>24691374
wow good thing he wrote a book on exacly this topic!
https://archive.org/details/TheOrthodoxCorruptionOfScriptureTheEffectOfEarlyChristologicalControversiesOnThe

Nearly all of history is made up bullshit, especially things that "happened" 2000 years ago. You are basically reading fan fiction when you read a history book. The discipline of history if peak pseudoscience, right up there with economics and psychology.

>>24691431
>Gnostics were attacked by orthodox theologians and their works condemned 1,600 years ago.
>Therefore the modern Church is covering them up.
Just lol. The Gnostics went extinct while Christianity was still a persecuted minority and were hardly a thing even when the Arians were at their height. They died out because they were never particularly widespread. Their books didn't need to be suppressed, just not copied. Copying books was extremely expensive and time consuming and just being condemned as not worth copying was enough to destroy any record of a text.

>>24691498
I didn't say anything about his mainstream claims. I mentioned his ridiculous claim to have reached through the Gospel and correctly divined the attitudes of the Apostles during Jesus' life and his claim, made in no uncertain terms in an NPR interview, to have correctly psychoanalyzed the author of Revelation to determine that he "made Jesus God" in order to one up Roman Emperor's claims of deity.

>>24691619
>and correctly divined the attitudes of the Apostles during Jesus' life
where does he say this
>nd his claim, made in no uncertain terms in an NPR interview
so not found in any of his books then, got it!

so an author's books are all rubbish because he once said some things you disagree with in an interview, great detective work!

>>24691632
He makes these sort of highly speculative claims about the beliefs of people during which we have no contemporary sources all the time.

See: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-the-earliest-christians-believe-jesus-became-god/

Yet Saint Paul's letters are often considered the earliest Christian works and Saint Paul clearly does not think Christ is a Hercules type figure. He has him as the origin and sustainer of all creation.

>>24691688
i can't read your source

paul is noted to have disagreed with james on numerous points

>>24691697
>Paul is a reliable witness when he says he had an argument with Peter and co.
>Paul is unreliable when he says they settled their disagreements and agree.
Hmmm...

>>24681190 (OP)
There's been a couple books about his writings. One in response to Did Jesus Exist? and the other one to How Jesus Became God

>>24691707
do you consider the Epistle of James to be reliable?

>>24691707
>>24691688
name 1 time paul says jesus is YHWH

>>24691835
Paul isn't writing in Hebrew. He uses the Greek equivalent from the Septuagint, as do the Catholic Epistles. James also calls Jesus lord from the outset. So do Peter's letters, etc.

>>24691865
lord is not the same as god

>>24690295
That’s hardly true at all and is handled over and over in different modes from Augustine to present day.

>>24691341
Yeah bro it’s an online forum not a god damn thesis and I’m writing way more than I’d like to but I’m trying to answer a question I have some actual education on.
Bart Ehrman just glosses over the part where Rome crucified a traveling hobo. Being a schizo wasn’t a crime.
I already typed out a list of other thesis that are better accepted today.
It ignores for mostly not good reason other than ‘Christian’s like it’ the healing the ethics, the pro Romanness etc etc .
Just read more books. I’m just telling you what most think.

Not good. He doesn’t even stand by it so idk ehh you are so pro it.

>>24691875
How do you think YHWH is rendered in the Septuagint?

>>24691341
Why does Jesus also foretell his resurrection all the time too? This fact feels inconvenient.

>>24688912
>assblasted by the most lukewarm textual criticism there is
lel so true

Even Apocalyptic Prophet is lukewarm. Jewish nationalist insurgent(s) spun by Hellenic Jews into a gud boi who dindu nuffin is the truth-- but nobody has the balls or brains to call it out.

It's going to take probably 20 years before we have a mainstream scholar calling it an ethnopolitical crock of hasbara shit birthed in Alexandria, but we will get there, I have faith.

>>24692095
>Bart Ehrman just glosses over the part where Rome crucified a traveling hobo.
I just said, he think Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, king of the Jews. Idk how more bluntly I can put this, they saw a guy claiming to be the king of the Jews trying to recruit people to follow him so they killed him because he was a troublemaker, idk what the big deal is.

>>24692095
according to the biblical narrative he gets crucified between 2 small time thieves, and john the baptist gets executed because herod's wife held a grudge against him. Clearly, execution wasn't reserved for special cases

>>24694766
>according to the biblical narrative
That's the problem. What if it's not actually written by a contemporary eyewitness but is fan-fiction composed for decades by a bunch of ideologues as much as a hundred years after the fact? People find it very hard to accept that what they deeply believe in is just a big bunch of agenda-driven ancient lies. They can't handle it.

>>24691374
maybe "most Christian scholars" need to do better scholarship.
I've read some of the modern Catholic scholars, like Brant Pitre and Scott Hahn. They know the scholarship but dance around it. A good example is >>24691391
If "most Christian scholars" want to be taken seriously, they need to take some Ls. Like on Marcan Priority. They don't even have to be Qtards, just accept what a fucking high school kid with a GCSE in koine Greek can spot from a mile off.