Isn’t it Ironic…Ehrman attacked by Scholars on the Left
For most of his academic career, Bart Ehrman has busied himself with attacking the beliefs of evangelical Christians. Having come out of an evangelical background, Ehrman seems bent on fixing what he sees as the major theological, historical and biblical problems in the evangelical world. I have reviewed some of his books, here, here, and here.
However, after the publication of his most recent book, Did Jesus Exist?, Ehrman has begun to experience something that I would imagine is entirely new to him—attacks from scholars on the left. Indeed, Ehrman is now the recipient of scholarly attacks from those more radical than himself. As Ehrman defends … Continue reading...
10 Misconceptions about the NT Canon: #2: “Nothing in Early Christianity Dictated That There Would be a Canon”
Note: This is the second installment of a new blog series announced here.
Contemporary challenges to the New Testament canon have taken a number of different forms over the years. For generations, scholars have mainly focused upon the problem of the boundaries of the New Testament. The perennial question has usually been “How do we know we have the right books?” But, in recent years, a new challenge has begun to take center stage (though it is really not new at all). While the validity of the canon’s boundaries is still an area of concern, the attention has shifted to the validity of the canon’s very existence. The … Continue reading...
Early Jesus Notebooks as Aides-Mémoire
Michael Bird has recently posted a very helpful analysis of the interplay between written and oral traditions in early Christianity. Unfortunately, modern scholars often pit these two modes of transmission against one another, as if early Christians could only have used one or the other.
But, we have every reason to think that both would have been used–and would have interfaced with one another–from the very start. Written notebooks/codices would have been aides-mémoire for recalling oral tradition. Moreover, as eyewitnesses (the “living voice”) began to die out, early Christians would have wanted to preserve their voice for later generations.
Thus, written traditions did not exist in opposition to oral … Continue reading...
New Blog Series:10 Common Misconceptions About the NT Canon
Over the next month or so I plan to write a new blog series on 10 common misconceptions (or misunderstandings) about the origins and development of the NT Canon. These are misconceptions that are not only held by the average layman, but are often shared by those in the academic community as well.
It is always difficult to know how such misunderstandings develop and are promulgated. Sometimes they are just ideas that are repeated so often that no one bothers (anymore) to see if they have merit. In other cases, these ideas have been promoted through popular presentations of the canon’s origins (e.g., The Da Vinci Code). And in … Continue reading...
Did Early Christians Believe that Jesus Would Return in Their Lifetime? Implications for the Canon
One of the most-oft repeated ideas about the earliest Christians is that they believed that the Kingdom of God would come (apocalyptically) within their own lifetime. In fact Schweitzer famously argued that Jesus himself thought the world would end in his own lifetime; of course the world didn’t end and Jesus died disillusioned on the cross saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).
In recent years, some have suggested that this belief in early Christianity would even have affected the development of the canon. If Christians thought the world would end in their own lifetime, then, it is argued, they would not have been interested … Continue reading...