Quotes About Ehrman

Ehrman responded,"Yes, I think this is a real danger, and it is the aspect of the book that has apparently upset our modern-day apologists who are concerned to make sure that no one thinks anything negative about the Holy Bible. On the other hand, if people misread my book—I can't really control that very well" (Williams 2006).

it's not what /Ehrman puts into the book that is so troubling but what he leaves out. And what he leaves out is any discussion of the tremendous resources at our disposal for reconstructing the text of the New Testament.

As New Testament professor Craig Blomberg observes, "What most distinguishes the work [Misquoting Jesus] are the spins Ehrman puts on some of the data at numerous junctures and his propensity for focusing on the most drastic of all the changes in the history of the text, leaving the uninitiated likely to think there are numerous additional examples of various phenomena he discusses when there are not" (2006).

For Ehrman as for Schweitzer, Jesus must be acknowledged to have been a failed apocalyptic seer, whipping up excitement about the imminent end of the world and predicating upon that false prophecy his demand for repentance. Both Jesus scholars showed great courage in refusing to euphemize or sugarcoat the shocking truth.

This is how readers over the years have come up with the famous "seven last words of the dying Jesus"—by taking what he says at his death in all four Gospels, mixing them together, and imagining that in their combination they now have the full story. This interpretive move does not give the full story. It gives a fifth story, a story that is completely unlike any of the canonical four, a fifth story that in effect rewrites the Gospels, producing a fifth Gospel. This

Almost certainly the divine self-claims in John are not historical.

The word synoptic means "seen together":

Eventually incarnation Christologies developed significantly and overtook exaltation Christologies, which came to be deemed inadequate and, eventually, "heretical.

Acts is theological history, while the Gospels are theological biographies, i.e., biographies written with a theological agenda.

This view lost out in the ensuing debates

When his predictions didn't come true, or even close to true, he continued writing books and giving lectures about how now the signs were coming to be fulfilled

Irenaeus was particularly distressed about the widespread presence of Gnostic Christians in the midst of the church.

apostles" (i.e., those sent on a mission)

The approach taken to the Bible in almost all Protestant (and now Catholic) mainline seminaries is what is called the "historical-critical" method.

the followers of Jesus (most of them? all of them?) came to believe that Jesus was physically raised from the dead. That belief is a historical fact.

Philo of Alexandria

And that's one reason why you will not find fundamentalists at the forefront of critical scholarship.

the manuscripts back immediately and return the worthless checks.

the Sadducees, even though in Jesus's day they were the real power players in Judea.

The Christ of Nicea is obviously a far cry from the historical Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant apocalyptic preacher in the backwaters of rural Galilee who offended the authorities and was unceremoniously crucified for crimes against the state. Whatever he may have been in real life, Jesus had now become fully God.

When it comes to Jesus, all we have are memories. There are no lifelike portraits from his day, no stenographic notes recorded on the spot, no accounts of his activities written at the time. Only memories of his life, of what he said and did. Memories written after the fact. Long after the fact. Memories written by people who were not