In this compelling video series Dr. Bart Ehrman points out a number of glaring problems with how the New Testament came to us.
Which raises the question: why is it considered heretical to question the origins of a copy of a copy of a copy, of which we have no original?
During my 20′s, I completed a four-year course of study at a Bible college. I was raised to believe the Christian Bible was the word of God and that I should base my life on it. I figured, if this book demands I base my life upon it, I’d better understand it fully. I studied Koine Greek, the language in which the books of the New Testament were written, and hermeneutics which is the study of interpretation. It seemed the school was preparing us to get to the bottom of all our questions about the authenticity and reliability of the Bible. But the more questions I raised about the obvious inconsistencies in the literature, the clearer came the message that I was acting with impertinence. I was at a loss to understand how honest inquiry could be rude. Before long, I came to understand that “honest inquiry” was allowed just so far. Like a child who learns not to ask “impolite” questions about the crazy old aunt living in the attic, I found there are topics that polite Christians are not supposed to ask.
Family secrets stay hidden for lack of good answers, because of broken things that cannot be fixed, because once certain things are uncovered they can never again be hidden and things can never go back to the way they were. The evangelical and fundamentalist Christian families have such secrets. As I’ve asked unabashed questions over the years, I’ve gotten reactions from believers who express their concern for my spiritual safety and integrity. It’s dawning on me that their fears are not so much about my safety, but about their own. Knowing certain things can make us uncomfortable, so we refuse further inquiry. Jesus reputedly said that knowing the truth will set us free. Judging from the reaction of many who follow his teachings, you’d think just the opposite. I’ve been told I would not have lost my faith if I’d just stayed “in the Word” (Christianese for reading the Bible). Ironically, I lost my faith in Christianity by being in the Word. Not in bitterness, or to justify sin, or in angry reaction against a person or church. But slowly, deliberately, advisedly, with open eyes to what was in front of me.
I’m sad for you for not finding the truth. I find it harder to believe that we randomly evolved based upon the complexity of our DNA. God is love and the books and gospels are man’s way of finding that truth. I pray that you focus your faith to God instead of on randomness. How lonely a place that will be.
Thanks for your thoughts and concern, Art. I spent the majority of my life as a Bible student and teacher. It was that process of study, teaching, prayer and reflection that led me out of the faith.
I feel sad for you because of your doubts. You did not find the truth, but found a way to deny the truth. As many individuals who find flaws in the word, there are those who find grace and blessings in the words of the Bible.
Man ruins what God wants us to do and that is why he sent is son. I’m confident that man has messed it up again because we still focus on our works instead of our faith. I read the word and find glory and grace, and you read the work and disbelieve. That is why I am sad. How you got there does not matter to me
Oddly enough, it is the Muslims who should be more concerned about threats to the ‘book’. Christianity, ostensibly, believes in a person rather than a ‘book’. So, logically (and who ever thought that religious people would want to be logical?) it is attacks on the person (Jesus) which are a threat. Attacks on the ‘book’ are really not important because they don’t affect the ‘person’.
So … intelligent and honest inquiry into a book that is rather patently cobbled together should not be viewed as threatening to their faith. It may be a threat to some of the religious trappings but not to the core faith.
People like Mother Theresa really do hold the ‘book’ in an open hand but seemed to grasp the ‘person’ (whom they discovered in each and every person they met and walked with) with both hands.
When people are thoroughly infected with the small, powerless god of evangelical Christianity, any probing soon touches raw, infected spots and causes pain and reaction. Any honest appraisal of the basic assumptions of this particular religious expression must, of course, lead to alternative conclusions.
Thanks for the post.
I walked away from my faith, and found the opposite. Jesus Christ is both Man and God. He knows our failings and loves us anyway. I do not believe in secrets and can find as many ways to disbelieve than to believe, but that has nothing to do with faith.
How can man describe the majesty of God? How can we even fathom it? I had a near death experience, and knew beyond all doubt that Jesus is my Lord, but now I have doubts. That is part of the physical world we live in. I pray that you find your way back by answering your so-called secrets with a focus on faith. I find a life without faith in Jesus Christ to be worthless.
If you don’t believe, I at least hope you find worth in your life. Jesus Christ can forgive anyone who has faith in a life worth living. Without faith in a creater, nothing matters. Death means nothing, and neither does life. Man creates right and wrong, but nothing matters. We become animals without a purpose and with no meaning but to come and go. I do not look forward to that world, and it appears to be the way we are going.
Thanks Art. You raise a good point: that life seems meaningless without the understanding that there is something beyond our selves to give meaning an purpose. I find purpose in loving people, in learning, in wondering at all there is in this amazing universe. And I appreciate the fact that you and I are reconnecting after all these years. I’m glad you’ve found meaning in faith.
Like Bryan Butler said, Christians believe in a person. I hope that you hold that in your heart. In my near death experience, I was told by Jesus that it was not my time yet. I know that when you see him, you will believe. Doubts are strong, and I have them every day. Sin is tempting and it is a daily challenge.
Without an after-life, we are just a flicker in time, and what we learn is without meaning. A person who loves people while learning in wonder of the universe will be part of the after-life. Look at the word as a way for man to understand the unknowable, God Almighty. He is beyond words, thought and knowledge. I pray that you hold this in your heart as you learn more about the universe.
Dear Art, I find it difficult to believe you when you mentioned that you walked away from faith, Do you mean that you walked away from organized religion like the Roman Catholic faith, or the American Evangelicalism? It is obvious that you are a person of faith in Jesus Christ. There is nothing wrong in your own faith in Jesus Christ, but it is faith, not something we can prove, Your faith in the duality of Jesus Christ, ie. both God and man, this is the only possible through the eyes of faith. Scientific or rational inquiry cannot prove such, It is all about faith, and you are entitle to believe in a God who creates all things out of nothing, who gives you meaning in life,
There are some of us through honesty and rational inquiry, find ourselves on the opposite side of faith, That when we honestly seek the truths in the bible, find ourselves falling further and further away from faith, because of its inconsistency and brutality in a world illustrated and portrayed as God’s perfect Word, I for one, find that claim false. I cannot, for the life of me, to see the answers that it gives to suffering. Ruth and I had a few discussion about the book of Job. I do find the answers about human suffering is absurd, especially in the book of Job. I mean, Job seems to suffer because God has a bet with Satan and the two collaborate to make sure Job suffer, and suffer properly. That Job’s own children were brutally murdered, their lives cut short, and their slaves and animals all died in one horrible ordeal, Yes, the eyes of faith point to how grand God is, and how perfect His will is, but has anyone yet to commemorate the death of so many innocent people and animals in Job??? How can God be glorified when he kills so many and so indiscriminately? To what purpose does Job suffer? Is it to prove that God is right? And so if that were the case, God wins the bet, so that this duality of Goodness and evil are in direct conflict, and this conflicts play out in humanity, but no one ever preached why the innocent children and animals had to die for this divine comedy. Surely God restores Job and doubles everything he owns, but is there a way to commemorate the dead? That is absurd to me, and it makes little sense.
So, to summarize, Art, you are a good person, and a person of faith, and this faith is meaningful to you. But I do seriously question that you are able to step out of your faith and seriously look at this faith in Jesus as a mental and philosophical construct, like something made up. That is my challenge to you, so critically evaluate your own faith as if you were an outsider, and see whether these claims of early Christians make any sense, of a divine birth, of the miraculous and of the death and rising of this saviour figure. These stories contradict each other in details, that is all what Bart Erhman tries to say. He is honest about it, and the early editors of these stories tried to preserve their differences, to illustrate that these stories are not always in agreement as far as the details. A closer examination shows that often we do misquote Jesus. This misquoting Jesus has often been justified in the eyes of faith. I call it what it is, it is a faith. That is all. As the ancients taught, “Now faith is the evidence of things not seen.” And so it is, faith is not something you can provide a concrete proof, that is why it is a belief system, and something akin to made-belief, that is all.
I did walk away from faith out of anger. I have seen heaven in my near death experience and know Jesus is my savior. Call it what you will. I believe in the devine birth and the rising of Jesus Christ which was phrofisied in the Old Testiment.
I am sad that you find so much anger in God who loves us. When I was a child, I was disciplined out of love not evil. That is what God did with the Jews. That is also what the Old Testiment talks about. It took humans away sin and lust and brought us to a manner of living that makes us loving people. I am sad that you found an angry God. I found a loving God. Keep looking, and I hope you find the love in the bible.
Dear Art, you seem to be a genuine human and your experience in faiths and circumstances is worthwhile. As for a personal experience with the living Christ, that is a great claim. I have no way of verifying this spiritual experience, except to add that you have such experience and it is genuine to you. I have no such experience, When I was growing up in a charismatic church, it was full of people who claim to have such and such experience. Some had visions, others prophesied, and some had the experience in heaven and hell. While I do not personally have such, neither will I seek such, for it no longer gives meaning to me and what I am today.
I am, by the grace and love of my fellow humans, been given a place to live and work, and hold a lovely family. I have to work for this way of life, and I am not a man without life struggles. But I find it meaningful to be human, and to live in a wonderful community. I find it puzzling after I walked away from this type pf existential faith, that rests on personal experiences in the spiritual and divine matters. I no longer find this fulfilling or real. Instead, I notice that there is a lot of tension for people to assert such divine grace in their lives, that when questioned, or disbelieved, they have a real problem, and a cognitive dissonance about their ‘real’ experience. I do not feel it is my right to question what had happened to you in your near death experience. I do however, like to point out that I enjoy this life, and I no longer find faith and its answers fulfilling to life’s most urging and difficult problems. I stopped seeking this type of answers a long time ago, I do however, believe in love and justice and peace, and in these immaterial aspirations of human, if you will, call that divine. I see this impersonal immaterial being(s) at work. I appreciate the beautify of the sun rise, and sun set, and as the seasons change, we are indeed blessed with this ‘divine’ grace. I however, no longer look to this thing, to find fulfillment, and I find it puzzling to hold a conversation with my former self, such as yourself, who asserts the reality of this faith. I appreciate the nature and the love of a human community, In this, I will affirm Ruth’s aspiration to love and to live as true humans, and not to seek a mental construct such as faith in order to derive one’s meaning of existing. I find this view not ‘sad’ or dejected. Rather, I see this as the first step to be human and to live a life worthy and examined. When I die, I will find out all this stuff you talked about, whether it is a mental construct, or is it the biblical and ancient way to describe it as falling asleep and be gathered to ones ancient family, where memory is no more (Eccel), and to live fully and to love wastefully and to enjoy, that is the lot of man.
I don’t think I can persuade you to change your personal experience just as you may not be able to change my personal view on being human in this world and all that I can see, is in this human community and the place we call home.
I agree with you, but I am committed to speak my faith without fear because it can save another soul to have eternal life. I see the world that was derived without a faith in Christ as typically disallowing freedom. I truly appreciate the freedom that America’s Christian forefathers provided us. It allows you the ability to doubt and not believe as you so willing do.
I am always sad when someone does not believe in what cannot be proved. The reason why we have Theories is that they are not proven facts, but are based upon facts. They are assertions founded by fact that cannot be proven untrue. Anyone who believes that man can know all thinks too highly of themselves, because we are saved in grace but are all unworthy of this grace. This is also a theory that cannot be proven untrue.
For example, there are many examples of near death experiences that are typically identical in structure. The only way to disprove it is to die like Jesus Christ and come back in three days. I do not expect to come back.
This thread is getting longer, let me start another one, so I can read with ease. I do hope that Ruth will weigh in from time to time about these discussions we have here.
I think the basic problem here about faith, or this form of evangelical faith, is that it is very new and much of it is American. And Art asserts that this freedom we have here is basically a gift from a christian nation. I differ. I think, it goes back to the very human aspirations for free thoughts. Something like enlightenment, when people could ask questions and seek truths about the world and themselves. Religious institutions basically assert when Ruth said about having an aging aunt in the attic, and allows you to go so far, but no more. If one asks questions that shake the foundation of their beliefs, that would be silent, so if you do so in the churches, you would be driven out, if you do so in theological governments such by John Calvin, you would be hung. So muchof this assumption that religion brings freedom, I don;t really buy that. I know there are folks out there that have ;intimate relationship with God the Father.’ They often are the sentinels that harm others and forcefully silencing others. So, this religion and freedom, a lot of times it is hard for devout Christians to swallow.
Faith, as in this form of American Protestantism, and Evangelicalism, often resulted in abuse, either for the mind or for the body. UltraCalvinists abuse many of their church members (see Mark Driscoll and Andrew’s story), sometimes, the more conservative the worse the form of abuse. We have a website where there are folks beaten, sexually molested and in every way dehumanized, all because of God the Father and his son our Lord Jesus Christ and the command to preach and proselytize others.
I would add, personal faith is fine, as long as it is personal faith, held in private and not in a way to publicly propagate/proselytize others. Otherwise, I see Jim Jones and forcing others with this Kool-Aid.
Your opinion? Thanks
Kool-Aid, my God, this is silly. All of the original States in the Union had state church’s. I do not believe I will discuss anymore on this blog because it is reinventing history. Faith is more than personal, and I am said the Lord Ben Chung finds so much hate because of those who abuse the word of the Lord. Jesus Christ never beat, molested or dehumanized anyone. Bye, and have a wonderful life.
I hope and in my penance, I will ask Art my fried to over look my rash comments on faith in action, I came from a tradition which we were in a subculture, and every time they have a word from the Lord, they tried to scared us about the end times.
It is certainly not my hope to cast people of faith as molesters. Far be from it, but I would like to hold the molesters accountable, wherever they are, I do not give a free pass to ministers of the gospel. Rather, I hold them in contempt unless proven wrong,. I have to protect my family and my main source of income from the unfair religious tax that comes with church attendance. I have also been verbally abused a few times in conversation with those who claim to have such intimacy with the Lord, They shun me and perhaps bad mouth me. I do not mind this as long as we call it what it is. Bullying because of faith is genuine, and I see a lot of it.
I see the misquoting Jesus precisely in this light. Perhaps we did have a small town religious teacher, with a common name like ‘Sam.’ And he had a questionable paternity, since no one ever claimed to be his father, neither did he named one. His mother perhaps had some back ground, a few kids with the second marriage. This young man had a way with words, and certainly was able to hold a few folks in his area spell-bound. His friends followed him and supplied his daily needs, uni=til he offended the powers that be in the city of Jerusalem, and in one small operation, they got rid of him and hung him. The mystery came after his death that perhaps some 30-50 years later, they claimed that he is still living. This type of mystery and a new zealous convert named Saul claimed also to have some religious near death experience, which he claimed to have heard this small town folk named ‘Sam.’ He was much better trained and more forceful, he was able to even to push the original friends of this ‘Sam’ around and made a few changes to convert Greeks and Romans. He was so successful, that his brand of faith emerged as the primary winner and he made sure that he had enough organization to push his ‘Mars Hill Church’ discipline. Women were silenced, kept out of major decision making, gays were ostracized, although he taught that they were eventually be eliminated, but he stopped short of killing them himself,.
This is just fiction, but it is worthy of some discussion.
May I ask Ruth to contribute a few words on the subject?
I’m not seeing the connection here with state churches. Roger Williams, president of the Rhode Island colony, strenuously opposed the idea of a state church. He challenged the church-based government in its treatment of Native Americans, and was convicted of sedition for his “diverse, new and dangerous opinions”. The concept of founding fathers being a unilateral Christian voice is just a story, but one that gets repeated often.
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