Thanks for all the Literature Bart and Co.

After watching those Ehrman lectures I was wondering to myself how I might pastor people who came to me distressed after reading a book like ‘Misquoting Jesus‘ or far less scholarly literature like the ‘Da Vinci Code‘. So I did some searching around to see how many people have written academic responses to these sorts of works but written them at a popular level – as Ehrman himself does. Now we all know about the glut of literature written in response to the ‘Da Vinci Code‘ but what else is out there?

What I noticed, without having read much of it at all, but through reading reviews by other top scholars, is that there seems to be a whole lot of really decent literature out their refuting people like Ehrman, Price, Pagels and of course Mr. Brown.  Top evangelical scholars like Darrell Bock, Daniel Wallace, NT Wright, and others have written quite a few works. And so in once sense I’m glad that Ehrman and co. wrote these books because its made a whole lot of good Christian scholarship, in this area, available to so many more people than we previously had. As has always been the case in history, the church is writing theology for each occasion and there is some quality coming out.

Bart Ehrman on Youtube

I watched all 10 parts of agnostic, Bart Ehrman’s, Stanford lectures entitled ‘Misquoting Jesus’. I haven’t read the book but I found him quite fair and entertaining in the lectures. I don’t agree with him on a number of points – some of them rather crucial points to his whole argument – but I did find him engaging. From what I could pick up it seems that Ehrman would take issue with many of the findings of some scholars who come out of more of a classic liberalism when it comes to the dating of some of the original New Testament books. He seemed to come out a lot more conservative on that issue than I thought he’d be.

There’s nothing earth-shattering in his presentation and he says that himself – he’s not bringing new things out onto the table he’s just popularizing textual criticism for a wider audience. His work probably could cause a lot of anxiety in certain Christian circles that aren’t taught to think a little beyond the status quo. I suppose I should warn people, if you’re evangelical that is, to exercise a bit of caution if you’re planning on watching the material – don’t denounce Christianity and run out and follow him just yet. Maybe read a little further in the subject. You never know you might find that there are a fair number of quality evangelical scholars who might also have something worth saying.

Check out Ehrman’s wiki page make sure though that you read the transcript of a debate he had with William Lane Craig in 2006 or read Dan Wallace’s critique of Ehrman’s book.