Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Bart Ehrman on the Web

Over at ETC Peter Williams has an excellent interview with Bart Ehrman.

One can also read a debate of Bart Ehrman vs. William Lane Craig on the resurrection.

My main point of contention with Ehrman is that he maintains (at least in his SBL lecture last year) that "we cannot talk about the Word of God because we do not have the original words", and yet, he continues to write historical books about Jesus, Paul and Mary Magadalene which is only possible if the textual tradition has some integrity and if the autographs in some way corresponded to historical people and events. Ehrman the textual critic cries that "the Emperor has no clothes" while Ehrman the historian is holding a fashion parade with Jesus, Paul and Peter on the cat walk.

1 comment:

David Shedden said...

Michael, you are smart enough to know where Ehrman is coming from though. Is not his main problem 20thC inerrancy, which, because of textual criticism, is founded on the assumption of a perfect original autograph which is beyond our reach?

We evangelicals use textual critcism to determine what we think is the 'text' of God - the classic example is Mark 16. Parallel to the quest for the historical Jesus, evangelicals are involved in a quest for the (inspired) historical text.