avi

From which source does Ehrman pluck these numbers?

The earliest source I know of, explicitly referencing MMLJ is Irenaeus, mid second century.

What about the Augustinian hypothesis? The Griesbach hypothesis, Q, Farrer hypothesis, and so on...

Where is this "overwhelming textual support", mentioned by President Roberts? We don't even know with certainty, which version (MML or J) of the myth was published first, nor in which language (Irenaeus and Origen supposedly both claimed (if free of interpolation!) that Matthew was written first in Aramaic, and then translated into Greek.)

How can Ehrman claim to know when the Gospels were written? What source is he using to make that claim?

avi

Toto

Ehrman is using the standard "consensus" which holds that Mark was written a little before 70 CE and the other gospels one or two or three decades later. This is based on Jesus' prediction of the destruction of the Temple, which is assumed to be attributed to him based on what were then fresh events.

IMVHO, I think the basis of this consensus is that 1) it is the earliest date that can be attributed to Mark without invoking a supernatural explanation and 2) it is late enough for skeptics to claim that the earliest gospel is not based on eyewitness testimony, so secular academics have no pressing need to claim a later date. It is the "consensus" based on these two powerful opposing forces, not because of any real evidence.

spamandham

There are a *lot* of people who have never actually studied the Bible in any meaningful sense, but simply accept that it is inerrant because they've been told so. For people in this category who are not also hardcore Christians, I think there is benefit to deflating inerrancy propaganda. So yes, I think there is societal benefit to pointing these things out.

mountainman

It is a consensus based upon the 16 centuries of devolved historical authority of the 4th century "Christian State" church --- A consensus for which there is absolutely no evidence. The consensus and all the sedimentary deposits of earlier consenses were always "tenured by the church itself". Its a ridiculous state of affairs. Who let the C14 boys into the church party?

Doug Shaver

Toto, my opinion on these matters isn't worth much, but such as it is . . . I think your analysis is spot on. It's an excellent precis of my own thinking.

rhutchin

The Bible (and church) can be attractive to people for reasons none of which have to do with a desire for salvation or a concern about sin. Church can, for example, be a cultural thing where a child goes to church because the parents did. The extremes seem to be confident whether believers or atheists. The mushy middle is the problem.

Pointing out errors in the Bible can help sort out the mushy middle. The thought of errors in the Bible may inspire some to become more studious and search out what the Bible says while leading others to renounce that which they never believed and proclaim themselves free from religion.

No person should go through life playing church and trying to straddle the fence but should be challenged to be that which they want to be. Pointing out alleged errors in the Bible helps to do this (I think), so I think it is good.

Johnny Skeptic

Yes, and some other secular factors also influence why people believe what people believe, such as gender (women tend to accept theism more than men do), and geography.

Are you saying that the Bible contains errors other than obvious copyist and scribal errors?

Indeed, it is good for people to find out that the Bible contains many reasonably provable errors, and many other suspicious claims, and that there is not any credible historical evidence that Jesus said anywhere near everything that the Gospels say that he said.

The false global flood story immediately discreds the Bible in the opinions of some people. Davis Young is an evangelical Christian geologist. He does not believe that a global flood occured. He has basically said that Christians do Christianity a disservice by promoting the global flood story since it is obvious that a global flood did not occur. Of course, a localized flood does not make any sense either.

Mars Man

Throwing in my five yen worth (because the five yen coin is a lucky charm here), I'm of the position that pointing out errors in the Bible, and about the Bible are more beneficial overall, in the long haul. One very minimum area which might 'come to light,' is the fact of the collected and forced together documents not actually being a single volumed book in the first place--as seems to often be preconsciously presumed.

As it seems to have been mentioned above, somewhere (to the best of quick read recall) pointing out errors will demonstrate a number of classes of errors, and making that knowledge available is a positive-minded thing (open frankness and pragmatic honesty). For example, According to Luke' misnomer of the name of the city that the two men were to have been traveling towards after the reported resurrection event, and how that relates to one very possible model for that motif--Jacob's ladder's story. Another example of a different class would be the failure of the predicted parousia (along with which the tenet of the resurrection was very tightly bound).

While I fully agree that the exercise would not 'move' some, at a single sitting (or over a life time) the increment of the knowledge would likely nudge society leaning over the longer period of time. I always hold the corollary of 'freedom of religion' to be 'freedom from religion' (where I hold the word 'religion' to be a 'theist based religious belief system')

Solo

I have bolded the interesting part. Bultmann was the theologian who grasped the underying issue of Jesus' sayings as "community property". It is sad though, how little conventional theology pays attention to the issue of "Confucius says" since Bultmann.

Many of the things attributed to Jesus were common folk wisdom. Some of them, no doubt, were locutions of wise people in the communities, reflecting on the experience of the Spirit. Crossan, e.g. observes that the'foxes have holes...' is the only 'son of man' saying for which there is multiple attestation. And yet, it appears to be so generic saying of the common Spirit experience...i.e. the tendency to wander around and feel indifferent to finding one's place in the world, that it could have been actually said by anyone touched by Weltschmerz. It is so generic in fact, that it could be used to illustrate equally the Thomasian gnostic 'be a passer-by !' and the unsettled living at the edge of the apocalypse by the Jerusalem ecstatics and the Paulines.

The history of Stalinism is a useful tool in reading out the tendency to attribute common sayings, adages and anonymous aphorisms to a god-like leader. Stalin's Collected Works numbered thirteen volumes, and we now know (eg. through Roy Medvedev's books on the era) that Stalin did not write almost any of it. The only genuine Stalin's writing (which had to be heavily edited because of his poor command of Russian grammar) were his pamphlets and columns in "Iskra", Lenin's pre- and post-October bolshevik newspaper. But the army of scribes who put together the volumes (the content was revised several times between 1937-1953) spared no effort to include pronouncements on absolutely everything, in printing out Stalin's speeches (written by his speechwriters), essays, and treatises, often by academicians who disappeared before their work was appropriated by the leader. Everything - starting from peasant proverbs ('gratitude is the sickness of dogs', Georgian), to Proudhon ('Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak'), to Lenin ('The capitalist will sell you the rope with which to hang him') was written up as Stalin's own original ideas. The only exception would be Lenin's quotes which were usually attributed to the founder of the Soviet state, but even that, as shown in the example above, was not always true. Khruschev in his memoirs recalled Stalin's cynicism when someone (I believe Malenkov) quoted in a meeting from his writings: 'I am not sure whether I was quoted right,..check with Lavrentii (Beria)').

Jiri

Red_Geranium

Agreed. Similar story here, actually. I reached a point in my late teen years when I decided that I really had to know whether my beliefs were true in any verifiable way. For many reasons, I had reached the conclusion that simply believing something on faith or because of tradition was a bad idea. So...I set out to find empirical evidence to support the claims of Christianity and the bible. Afterall, my religious tradition taught that the Bible was a reliable source of history and science. It made claims about reality that could be supported or contradicted.

At the time I thought that, if the Bible really is the true word of God, then the facts will support its claims. It can't be proven false if it's true; so I wasn't worried about being "deceived" or mislead into giving up "true" beliefs. What I found was the following: science, history, geology, archaelogy and many other areas of study directly contradict many of the Bible's claims or at least fail to support them. Science was what put the first big hole in my beliefs.

I also learned that the history of Christianity and the Bible were much messier than I had previously though. In the process of learning how the Bible came to exist in its current form(s) I came across some articles/books about discrepancies and errors in the Bible, some of which I had seen and some of which I had not noticed before. To make a long story short, I realized that many of these discrepancies couldn't be explained - at least not plausibly - while still maintaining the belief that the Bible was the word of God, even if interpreted metaphorically. After lots of careful thought and research, I realized that I could no longer honestly call myself a Christian although it took a few more years to make the journey to atheism/agnosticism.

So, in answer to the question, I say: Yes, it can actually be beneficial to point out errors in the Bible. Most people are somewhat set in their beliefs and are not willing to reconsider. However, for those of us who, for whatever reason, aren't content to blindly believe our religious traditions, seeing or hearing about shortcomings of the Bible or other holy book can really be an eye-opening experience.