Talk Back

[Eisworth]

I know of Bart Ehrman through several courses on early Christianity offered by "The Teaching Company" --- a company that has recently attempted to recruit Doug. They do excellent "courses on tape" designed for lifelong learners.

This book is about how the text of the New Testament came down to us in the version we have today. He deals with several cases of verses and chapters that we know were added or changed later on, and he talks about how we can say this with confidence.

I thought the book was tastefully done -- Ehrman himself was raised in a church that took the scriptures literally, but his views changed during the course of his education at the Princeton Theological Seminary. He's not attacking fundamentalists in this book, rather he makes a good faith effort to try to explain things to the "general public".
_________________
Todd Eisworth
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Ohio University

[galactic_dev]

Does he touch on the original writing of the gospels? I had heard that they went through "oral history" for somewhere around 100 years before they were written down at all, thus making it questionable whether Jesus can be quoted at all.

[Eisworth]

Yup, but he also notes that when the Gospels have Jesus saying something that seems strange in incongruous, then this is probably authentic --- the reasoning being no one would put those words in his mouth.

The main examples he uses in this book are things that are fairly obviously later interpolations -- the whole "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" story, the last part of the book of Mark, and even all the misogynous writings attributed to Paul.

It's a good way to introduce your fundamentalist friends to the science of textual criticism....
_________________
Todd Eisworth
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Ohio University