Todays class was intense. I could sense that most Christians in the class were feeling heated as the claims made were obviously to persuade people into discounting the reliability of the gospels. The very first thing that popped out to me, was that Ehrman in Chapter 5 and the TA made very strong statements about their views, when other biblical historians have just as good counter arguments. Yet, there is not even a hint from Ehrman of Well, this is one of the arguments. or even at worst, A majority of scholars believe this but a minority dont. In fact, the view that Ehrman takes comes from a process called form-criticism and form-criticism itself has been criticized as to whether it is really as helpful as we once thought it to be. Richard Bauckham in his 500 page book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses lays out good evidence for why we can trust the gospels and even that the eyewitnesses themselves may have been involved in their writing. Here is an 8 page talk that he gave concerning his book richardbauckham.co.uk/uploads/Accessible/Denver.pdf Other things that came to mind when I read chapter 5: (paraphrased quotations) The disciples were probably illiterate. Sure, Ill concede that, but almost every scholar on the planet knows that Paul had an amanuensis (secretary) who wrote the letters to the churches as Paul dictated them. Surely, the eyewitnesses could have found such a person! The earliest gospel we have is Mark. Absolutely. But scholars also say that there are signs that there was an earlier version of Luke (scholars call proto-luke) and some document of the sayings of Jesus may have been floating around even earlier. This document (scholars call q) was supposed to be used by both Luke and Matthew in their accounts. If Ehrman believes that Q exists, which he seems like someone that would, he would concede that there was earlier documents than the gospels. Jesus disciples could not have lived to write the gospels. This is just a claim based purely on Ehrmans assumption that they didnt write any gospels. There is some evidence to suggest that Jesus John wrote his gospel. Ehrman throws this away like its obvious but the evidence seems to be on the side of his opposition. (The writings of Papias that Bauckham talks about) And as Bauckham brought up, the Apostles didnt ascend with Jesus. These communities that had the oral tradition still had the presence of the Apostles to clarify their accounts. The churches were few and were probably regularly attended by the Apostles, it was only when the apostles deaths seemed likely did it seem necessary to them to write an account of what they had seen, or like Mark and Luke, write an account for them. It is interesting that the majority of gnostic and heretical traditions that pop up, appear to have been centralized in the second century when it is sure that all the Apostles had died. The Apostles also seem to have been with Jesus for the 3 years of his ministry. It is not a stretch, and rather most scholars would agree with me, that Jesus taught the same sermons multiple times to different crowds (making room for some of the inconsistency between gospels), but the Apostles may have heard all of them. The activity in class with the stories was rather an immature way to prove a point. If the Apostles had heard Jesus so many times, His words were probably burned into their memory. Also, it was known at that time for literate jews to follow around a new rabbi with writing utensils. My point is... When you read the textbook, ask yourself logical questions.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Jan 2014 05:18:51 +0000
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