How Reliable is the New Testament?

I’ll definitely watch the full debate. I’ve seen another, more recent, debate between these two, and the thing that strikes me is that even Evans’ position is a mile away from the Biblical literalism I was taught. He said essentially that probably none of the words in John’s Gospel were ever said by Jesus – it’s a literary device where the writer described his theological beliefs by putting the words in Jesus’ mouth.

This is the most powerfully I’ve seen Ehrman put it. In the past it’s always seemed like most of the discrepancies were the Dark Ages equivalent of typos. I can see how liberal Christians might not be shaken, but if I’d heard this as a fundy teenager I wouldn’t have slept for a week.

I just finished reading “Misquoting Jesus” and I recommend the book highly.

Totally shameless plug, but my analysis (of their 2nd debate) is here, http://respectfulatheist.blogspot.ca/2012/01/new-ehrman-vs-evans-debate.html

 I’ve seen other debates where Ehrman gets buried. He states facts, and the preacher shouts, and he seems cowed.

This time he has passion.  I liked it.

 I was thinking the same thing.  I imagine this video will crush some people.

You would think that the all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the Universe, in requiring acceptance of his son (also him) as one’s lord and savior to be a requisite in avoiding eternal suffering and damnation, would beam this critical information into everybody’s mind, rather than the minds of a few scribes who then had to write it down in a time when few could read, in dying languages that fewer could understand, that would then have to be copied and translated hundreds of times over allowing much opportunity for error as Dr. Erhman describes.

Also, imagine if you lived in China in the year 200AD. You would have no clue who the hell Jesus was nor would you have any reason to. But apparently you’d go to hell anyway.

Very interesting, I’ll look for more infromation about him.

His points were reasonable, but IMO he spent way to much time making them, and there was too much drama. I prefer scholars to sound a little more… scholarly. He sounds like a preacher.

Like most former fundamentalists turned skeptic, he makes the mistake of thinking that the entire 2000 year history of the Christian faith is
equal to that particular fundamentalist evangelical Protestant tradition
he practiced. 

He doesn’t, but it really doesn’t matter. Fundamentalism as a movement may be only about a century old, but it’s core beliefs – substitutionary atonement, salvific exlusivism, eternal damnation for everyone outside of the fold – reflect what most Christians have deceived most of the past 2,000 years.

The endings of the scenarios of all but the most liberal varieties of Christianity are the same – we all wind up in hell.

“Oh, and if anyone is going to finally kill the ridiculous meme that there was no historical Jesus, it’s going to be Ehrman.”

I submit the above video as exhibit A against historicity. Ehrman makes the case clearly that there are no secular sources on a historical Jesus: no historians, no birth records, no poets, etc. “Zero. Zip.”  The only sources we have are early Christian sources, and Ehrman just spent 15 minutes shredding those as a historically reliable record.

I’m not sure who the audience was for this.  If he was at a venue where most of the audience was fundamentalist, then it might have served him well to sound like a preacher.  They are used to agreeing automatically with preachers but might be suspicious of those who sound like scholars.

I’ve listened to his lectures on CD, and they sound much more scholarly with much less drama.

Because god created us to go there. But hey, his love is deeper than the sea, bigger than the sky, greater than the Rock of Gibraltar, older than time, beyond imagination, longer than Ron Jeremy’s–

Well, you get the idea; cognitive dissonance 101.

 Dr. Ehrman did not say there are no other sources outside the Gospel that attest to the historicity of Jesus, but rather there are no other sources that give us details about the life of Jesus. That a person existed is one thing, and that is attested to by extrabiblical sources. However, the details of his life are another thing. While he does say that the Gospels are “not reliable either”, he certainly was not talking in any absolutes sense that they are completely unreliable and many of his other works indicate. Plus he is refering to the life of Jesus and not merely his existance.

Note that there are some extrabiblical sources such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of James, and the Gospel of Peter, just to name a few. I don’t see it as a problem that he does not mention them in this debate since the argument is the reliability of the NT and not the historicity of Jesus. Further, Dr. Ehrman was talking specifically about the books in the new testament and not “early Christian sources”, in general. There are dozens of non-cannonical sources which are independant of the gospels.

I think you are incorrect in your claim that “Ehrman just spent 15 minutes shredding those as a historically reliable record.” You are making the fallacious jump from “not inerrant” to “unreliable”. Dr. Ehrman is simply pointing out that we cannot know for certain what was in the original autographs. This is most certainly not a claim that they are not reliable at all, only that we cannot know for certain what the original words were.

You also make the fallicious jump from “no Greek or Roman historians” to “no secular sources on a historical Jesus”. Ehrman specifically mentions Josephus, who wrote just 60 years after Jesus’ death. There are many case of historical persons who were first mentioned much longer after their deaths than this. He does specifically say “If you want to know about Jesus, you have to turn to Christians sources”. This is NOT the same thing as saying, “if you want to know if Jesus existed”.

Your apparent assumption that we cannot rely on the gospels at all for anything simply because they are religious text is also fallacious. If historians were to toss out all of the documents that are of religious nature, we would likely have to toss out at least half of what we know of the middle ages. During that time, the clergy were the only ones who could write and most of what they wrote about dealt with the church in one way or another. Further, few institutions outside of the church had the means or desire to preserve texts for long periods of time. Even when there are other sources, simply ignoring a text because it was a religious bias is historiographically irresponsible.

It’s not to be taken *literally* of course, it merely refers to all manufacturers of dairy products.

Name one. Just one, from a secular source written during Jesus’ alleged lifetime.

Sorry, but that’s not how history works.

How much written evidence from a source during Jesus’ lifetime would you expect to see? Pretty much every document we have about a historical figure, which is contemporary with that figure, concerns a monarch, noble, politician, military leader or writer of some kind. Jesus was none of those.

There was no shortage of itinerant preachers in first century Palestine. In each case, there are no contemporary writings. Clearly, asking for such a thing is an unreasonable standard.

There is a simple question here which can help you understand why pretty much every serious historian of the Ancient Near East agrees that Jesus existed: What is the burden of proof that must be overcome?

Let’s just look at the gospels for a moment, and ignore everything else.

The claim that the gospels are 100% historically accurate is a claim about all of the evidence. If there is even a single error in it, the claim is false. This carries a high burden of proof.

The claim that the gospels are 100% historically inaccurate is also a claim
about all of the evidence. If there is even a single part which is even partly accurate, the claim is false. This also carries a high burden of proof.

The claim that the gospels are legend and mythology based on a historical figure is a claim about some of the evidence. Non-existent people don’t say things or do things, so all you need is a single saying or deed which is better explained as having come from a historical figure than not having come from a historical figure, and the claim is proven on balance of probabilities. This carries a comparatively low burden of proof.

Now the first two hypothetical positions are, of course, extreme simplifications for the purpose of explanation. Over the last few centuries, historians developed a set of remarkably good (and related) theories about how we got from nothing to having the New Testament, none of which require Jesus to have been capable of supernatural powers.

If it helps, think of it this way: Mythicists are to history as creationists are to science. Creationists don’t have a comprehensive theory which explains even a large minority of the evidence that we observe in the natural world. All they have is a few minor quibbles around the edges and a big dose of conspiracy theory.

That’s pretty much all that mythicists have, too. This is one of the many reasons why it’s hard for anyone who understands any history at all to take them seriously.

These debaters have not add in comment from xtra biblical sources. there is nothing special about Jesus. there are at least 16 crucified world saviors- Odin Attis Adonis Osiris Mithras et al. st  Paul sucked the best essence of Pagan gods, and through RO reversed osmosis deposited on revolutionary -messianist seditionist Jesus Crucified ala The Passover Plot- a re-Incarnation Plot. Jesus was a Pagan dying-rising Vegetation cum Solar God. 

Jesus was a pagan god resurrected in spring by goddess Isis aka Easter. So plain to see. Have these theologians not read The Golden Bough? Massey, Higgins, Freke n Gandy, Tom Harpur et al? correlate this with 1 Corin 15 n u see the vegetation n season/un connection, n the paganism in Paul. 

Eh, so what they belive isn’t purely Augustinian or Anselmian. It’s close enough. The end result is the same.

1300 years? How do you understand Revelation?

You’re seeing what you want to see.

I think his tone was spectacular. Most atheists that are good at debate don’t show emotion and tend to have the same feel to them. This was a good for an audience who hasn’t been persuaded yet and need to hear the message in a different way.