For those of you who don't check the comments, yesterday Timothy Paul Jones (the author of the book "Misquoting Truth" that I reviewed) stopped by and left a couple comments. One has a link to his web site with some good resources and some helps for folks who would be interested in further study. Check it out if you're interested.
For those readers who ask why Christians always get in such a tizzy and wonder what all the fuss is about regarding Ehrman's work ("why are Christians always so easily threatened?" is a question I get on occasion) let me propose a parable:
Suppose the university of your choice had an environmental studies program. The leading professor in the environmental studies program thought global warming was a complete hoax. She was convinced it was all a sham and she worked hard to publish books and articles that enumerated her reasons as to why.
All well and good, but here's the rub: all the rest of the faculty in the environmental studies department more or less agreed with her. And so, rather than a thoughtful, well-rounded academic experience where students were genuinely invited to weigh the evidence and come to reasonable conclusions, they were inundated with one argument. In fact, the students at the university of your choice often graduated assuming that no one in their right mind could possibly consider global warming an actual threat to the globe that we currently inhabit.
Such is the position we find ourselves in regard to Biblical studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. And so I'm really hoping to circulate this book in such a way that we're inviting anyone who's genuinely interested in evaluating whether or not there is reasonable proof for the Bible's authority and consistency to read for themselves.
It's striking to me that if a university got a professing Muslim to teach on Islam, that would be considered to be a coup. A Jew to teach Jewish studies? Glorious! But a professing Christian to teach on the Bible or church history? Blaphemous. There's no way that they could be "neutral." As if all of life was not a series of faith commitments--be they secular, naturalist, hedonistic, scientific, or religious.
6 comments:
wow, that's terrifying.
Personally, I went to a Christian school (baptist). Obviously the Bible scholars who choose to teach in such an environment care something about truth and the Gospel.
It must be an odd experience to listen to a deconstructionist Biblical scholar who really doesn't believe that any of it is more than literature.
Your metaphor about the environmental studies department hits really close to home for me as a biology/genetics student. Pretty much every faculty member I have come across in my biology and genetics work at VCU accepts naturalism and evolution from the primordial sludge as fact, undeniably proven. And mentioning a Creator being even slightly involved would probably get me laughed out of the room.
The beauty of diversity that even the pop-culture world seems to love is how different ideas can lead to a richer understanding and deeper knowledge. So why do we seem to keep falling into 'one-track-mind' mode?
Is Ehrman really that bad? I've listened to some of his courses he produces with the Teaching Company, and I thought those were fair.
Where Ehrman concluded something different than what a fundamentalist or evangelical would have believe, Ehrman outlined his reasons why and challenged the audience to dispute him.
Megan,
If you come across as a young earth creationist, you might be laughed at as the evidence is against that quite heavily.
But if you profer an idea of theistic evolution or any sort of theistic involvement, I imagine you might find your audience quite receptive.
In response to Royale ...
I don't view Ehrman as "bad," but I do find some aspects of what he says to be troubling, especially when it becomes as popular as _Misquoting Jesus_ has become. Specifically ...
1. His oft-quoted statistic that there are more variances in the manuscripts---he says 200,000 to 400,000, and, though I think he's pushing it in what he identifies as a variant, I'll let that go---than there are words in the Greek New Testament (around 138,000): The impression is (intentionally?) left with the reader that the New Testament manuscripts are in such a bad state that the original text is highly uncertain. In fact, the vast majority of these supposed "variants" are misspellings of words, dropped definite articles, words switched around in ways that are easily noticed, and so on---items that aren't even noticed in a translation. Furthermore, there simply aren't any variants sufficiently significant to call into question anything the typical conservative-evangelical believes about God or about the biblical text.
2. Ehrman claims that the Gospel writers could not have been eyewitnesses. While this is a possibility, he is far too quick to dismiss the three separate streams of tradition (Polycarp through Irenaeus, Papias, and Fragment of Muratori) that connect these documents with eyewitnesses. Furthermore, he doesn't adequately take into account the early dates of the Gospels in relation to the events---compare the span of time between events and Gospels to, for example, the life of Tiberius and the earliest records of his life---and he discounts too readily the possibility of literacy among the Gospel writers.
3. He fails to give adequate regard to the early emphasis on authoritative testimony about Jesus originating in eyewitnesses. No, there was no universal "canon list" until the fourth (perhaps even fifth) century. But there was a "canonical standard" (even though that term wasn't used), and the standard was, "Does this testimony proceed from a believing eyewitness or a close associate of a believing eyewitness?"
Fair enough. Does anyone bring these up in class? If so, what is Ehrman's response?
I think professors are to be challenging. From the CD courses I've listened to by Ehrman, he is just that. People might not agree with him, but he stresses the need to articulate WHY you don't agree with him, as opposed to a glorified "nuh uh, that's not what my pastor said."
Alex,
So what do you think of the role of capitalism for the teaching of Biblical studies? If you don't like the way Ehrman teaches or if you want a more traditional perspective, then I'd say avoid Ehrman or go to another school.
Also, I see your point about Environmental Studies/ global warming, but I don't think it's a fair analogy. I could just as easily say the professor believes in global warming, but his students believe it's a fraud. Then, of course, the students will feel threatened and wish their professor thought global warming were a fraud.
But I don't think that's a fair analogy either, since the convention of teaching Biblical studies v. teaching global warming aren't comparable, as 90% of scientists are in agreeance about global warming whereas, in religion, we have 100s of perspectivies within Christianity and 1000s of shades of gray in between.
In other words, it's very easy for a student of religion to have a different perspective on religion than his or her professors.
As for Judaism/Islam, I imagine it's a lot harder to find experts qualified enough to teach those subjects who were not themselves pracitioners.
For Christianity, we have a lot more "experts" in the USA.
Last but not least, I doubt any the hiring of professor of Biblical Studies at UNC has anything to do with whether or not that person is a professing Christian or not. I don't know the UNC situation at all, but I am skeptical of those kind of claims as they usually are indicative of persecution complexes.
It happens with ID/evolution for scientists all the time. Usually, the person just sucks at teaching.
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