12AR17-39

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Apologia Report 17:39 (1,131)

November 15, 2012

Subject: Bart Ehrman's latest sensational allegation, NT forgery

In this issue:

ARCHEOLOGY - learning from flawed sources

NEW TESTAMENT RELIABILITY - "a hermeneutic of suspicion versus a hermeneutic of assent"

+ "intentional deceptions used by many early Christian writers"?

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ARCHEOLOGY

Stones and Stories: An Introduction to Archeology and the Bible, by Don C. Benjamin (biblical and ancient Near Eastern Studies, Arizona State University) [1] -- reviewer Todd Bolen explains that "Benjamin's work does not survey the archaeological discoveries chronologically through the Bronze and Iron Ages but instead approaches the field through five schools of thought: Popular Archaeology, Cultural History, Annales Archaeology [a French style of multidisciplinary historiography that de-emphasizes chronology], Processual Archaeology [emphasizing anthropological ties], and Post-Processual Archaeology. For the author, the Bible is just the OT and the Apocrypha, but not the NT, and with the exception of a chapter on Qumran, the area of focus remains in the earlier periods. ...

"Benjamin succeeds in presenting much material that has probably never been included in textbooks on biblical archaeology. ...

"Some of the book's clear strengths are offset by ... weaknesses and may prevent adoption of this as the primary text for an archaeology course in an evangelical college. A significant shortcoming is the lack of systematic treatment that a schools-of-archaeology approach provides. While the student finishing this book should understand the difference between Cultural History and Processual Archaeology, he or she probably will not know the difference between the Bronze and Iron Ages and the major characteristics of each period.

"Benjamin regularly refers to the 'world of the Bible,' as though this 'world' were a monolithic time and place. This approach does not facilitate or encourage readers to make chronological or geographical distinctions. ...

"Stones and Stories will not strengthen the student's confidence in the historical accuracy of the Bible." Further, Bolen reports that "factual errors are common" in Stones and Stories, and he offers examples. He also reviews "interpretive issues [that] raise even greater problems for [its] use as a standard textbook." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 55:2 - 2012, pp404-406.

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NEW TESTAMENT RELIABILITY

The Reliability of the New Testament: Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace in Dialogue, Robert B. Stewart, ed. [2] -- D. Brent Sandy begins his review: "The showpiece of this collection of essays is a transcript of two lectures, one by Bart Ehrman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and one by Dan Wallace (Dallas Theological Seminary), followed by interaction with the audience. Although the lectures say little to each other, the 'dialogue' continues as seven other scholars contribute chapters, some responding to Ehrman and others taking up text-critical issues. The editor includes an introduction, which is actually most meaningful if read last. ...

"For those already familiar with their work, Ehrman's and Wallace's lectures are predictable. The evidence is not a point of controversy; the differences between them go deeper. They both practice a methodology of reasoned eclecticism" and agree that: 1) NT manuscript variants are inconsequential, and 2) that between 2 and 6 percent of the extant early NT manuscripts were written within 300 years of its original composition. "For Ehrman, this evidence demonstrates that the text of the NT cannot be trusted to be accurate. ...

"In Wallace's view, the evidence clearly favors the reliability of the text of the NT. ...

"While it is difficult for anyone to be entirely objective when interpreting the evidence amassed by textual critics, Wallace's faith seems to simplify the issues; Ehrman's doubt seems to amplify them. The difference is worldview, a hermeneutic of suspicion versus a hermeneutic of assent."

Contributor Dale B. Martin (Religious Studies, Yale) "contends that ... 'Bart Ehrman and most American evangelicals are both wrong.' He concludes, 'Ehrman allowed textual criticism to destroy his faith in scripture because he had an inadequate theology of scripture. Most evangelicals mistakenly insist in the reliability of the historically constructed text of the Bible also because they have an inadequate theology of scripture. Martin calls for a theology of scripture that does not depend on the original wording of the text. ...

"David Parker [Theology, University of Birmingham] posits that it would not have mattered to NT authors that later copyists would make alterations in their texts. 'Early Christians were used to the uncertainty of manuscript copies that differed from each other. They lived in fact in a textually rich world in which, if they consulted different copies, they would find different wordings. He concludes that it is actually moderns who live in an impoverished textual world."

Sandy concludes: "Maybe Ehrman's books can work in our favor as a teaching moment - an occasion for us to guide Christians toward a more mature faith. ... Although this book has many highlights, no single element offers a trump card to settle the issue. In the absence of conclusions, readers are left to come to their own." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 55:2 - 2012, pp417-421.

POSTSCRIPT (Nov 28 '12): The contrast between Wallace and Ehrman above reminds us of the contrast between Ehrman and Bruce Metzgar. For example:

In http://www.crossexamined.org/blog/?p=157 we read:

Bart Ehrman was mentored by Bruce Metzger of Princeton University who was the greatest manuscript scholar of the last century. In 2005, Ehrman helped Metzger update and revise the classic work on the topic– Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament.

What do Metzger and Ehrman conclude together in that revised work? Melinda Penner of Stand to Reason writes,

"Ehrman and Metzger state in that book that we can have a high degree of confidence that we can reconstruct the original text of the New Testament, the text that is in the Bibles we use, because of the abundance of textual evidence we have to compare. The variations are largely minor and don’t obscure our ability to construct an accurate text. The 4th edition of this work was published in 2005 - the same year Ehrman published Misquoting Jesus, which relies on the same body of information and offers no new or different evidence to state the opposite conclusion."

Here’s what Ehrman says in an interview found in the appendix of Misquoting Jesus (p. 252):

"Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions - he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not - we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement - maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament."

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http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/06/misquoting-metzger.html

As Metzger explains in his autobiography, his professional collaboration with Ehrman began back in 1993, the year that Ehrman published his monograph on The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Cf. Reminiscences of an Octogenarian (Hendricksen 1997), 150. ...

In his interview with Strobel, Metzger defends the integrity of the NT text as well as the traditional canon, to the exclusion of apocryphal gospels like the Gospel of Thomas.

All-in-all, it’s quite clear that Metzger’s professional collaboration with Ehrman, which antedates the public apostasy of Ehrman, does not amount to a blanket endorsement of Ehrman’s more radical positions. To the contrary, Metzger has clearly staked out a fairly conservative position in direct contrast to Ehrman’s emerging iconoclasm.

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http://ehrmanblog.org/how-my-loss-of-faith-affected-my-scholarship/

In his blog, Ehrman refers to a "long series of posts about my relationship with Bruce Metzger."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1439157316/apologiareport

(END OF POSTSCRIPT)

And then there is this (due just before Christmas): Forgery and Counter-Forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics, by Bart D. Ehrman [3] -- "Many early Christian writers sought to increase the influence of their works by falsely attributing them to well-known figures (or to eyewitnesses of events). Ehrman ... examines a wide array of texts (including several canonical New Testament books) that make explicit or implicit false claims of authorship. He examines how these intentional deceptions were used to enhance arguments against contrary views, many of which were also based on forgeries. His treatment is scholarly and thorough, including detailed notes and frequent discussions of earlier and ongoing debates. VERDICT: This comprehensive study is a valuable addition to the field of scriptural literary criticism and will be very useful to researchers and lay readers in that field. It is both an insightful study of the use and usefulness of forgeries in polemics during the first four centuries of Christianity, and a near encyclopedic survey of the forged texts themselves. - Fred Poling, Long Beach City Coll. Lib., CA." Library Joural, Oct '12 #2, n.p.

For an extensive collection of scholarly and popular evangelical responses to Ehrman's attacks on Scripture, see <www.ow.ly/fiJV3>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Stones and Stories: An Introduction to Archeology and the Bible, by Don C. Benjamin (Fortress, 2009, paperback, 400 pages) <www.ow.ly/fajZk>

2 - The Reliability of the New Testament: Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace i rrrrn Dialogue, Robert B. Stewart, Ed. (Fortress, 2011, paperback, 224 pages) <www.ow.ly/fawfF>

3 - Forgery and Counter-Forgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics, by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford Univ Prs, 2012, hardcover, 624 pages) <www.ow.ly/faCOD>

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