EmpiricalGod

Have you read any of his material? I have read three of his books, and i am unable to see the "bashing" of Christianity you mention. I find the books do not have over opinionated statements. The information he delivers stems from his research and not based on emotions or prejudices against christianity. Perhaps you can back up your statement? Or better still, show how his statements are incorrect even if he does have a deep hate for his former faith.

Roger Pearse

I'm sorry that you do not like what I had to say, but I don't feel under any obligation to write an essay on the subject.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

EmpiricalGod

You don't need to, but admitting that the only bashing that is going on is you bashing a biblical scholar, whose material you haven't read.

You dismiss his arguments based on emotional disagreements, not the actual content it self, it doesn't help your case.

chrisengland

Hello
Roger I think it would be better if you gave some quotes from Ehrman to back up your statements. Just a little.
I do feel people on here both atheists and Christian may make statements without anything to back them up with.
I would imagine I do the same some times.
Chris

Amaleq13

Roger's views of and familiarity with Ehrman can be found in this previous thread:

Bart Ehrman on the Bible

Sheshonq

Of course he doesn't. For Christians, it's a win-win game.

If a skeptic criticizes the bible, they complain that the skeptic is "on the outside" and doesn't really understand the text. So the skeptic's criticisms of the text are thus ignored and dismissed.

But if the skeptic is a former Christian, then he's a "renegade out to bash his former faith". The criticisms of the text are again ignored and dismissed.

Either way you work it, Christians only respect what other Christians say about the bible. Why would Roger want to change such an airtight circularity as that?


Roger asked on the other Ehrman thread:

You will appreciate, I'm sure, that arguments which one side rejects and the other refuses to justify have little weight.

How ironic that his own comment has come back to bite him in this current thread.

mens_sana

Perhaps you should read a short paper by a conservative text critic. Do these lines interest you as far as his background is concerned?

First, I want to affirm with all evangelical Christians that the Bible is the Word of God, inerrant, inspired, and our final authority for faith and life.

The author is Daniel B. Wallace, Ph.D. , Associate Professor, Dallas Theological Seminary — and the link to his very interesting paper is just below. It should help your further study in this area considerably.

Nimes

Interesting to see Roger Pearse bashing Ehrman, one of the most qualified textual critics in the world today, seemingly from a position of not having read any of his works. Ironic really, particularly because Ehrman is also one of the foremost experts on the pericope in question in this thread, having written an article "Jesus and the Adulteress" in NTS 34 (1988) - which irritatingly I can't find reproduced online. Here's an article which quotes extensively from it (although disagrees with Ehrman's position).

Gamera

I'm curious why the OP feels the need to "save" the pericope's "authenticity" (whatever that means). I'm a Christian, and the apparent fact that the pericope comes from a distinct tradition from the texts in which it appears, doesn't shock or disturb me in the slightest. It's a beautiful little narrative (one that captures the essence of Jesus' teachings in my opinion), but the meaning of the gospels is hardly dependent on this mise-en-scene and if it had never gotten into the texts I suspect Christianity would sail on.

By the way, as noted above, I suspect it is the very economy and beauty in which the pericope captures what was considered the essense of Jesus' teachings that led to it migrating into the gospels from some other tradition, perhaps oral, perhaps textual. This arguably tells us something important about how the early church understood Jesus.

So, ironically, the fact that the pericope appears to be imported tells us more about the meaning of Jesus to the early Christianity than if it were part and parcel of the gospel texts. Thus, if sugarhitman had his way, the narrative would mean less, not more, to Christianity. So as a Christian I'm defending the fact that the pericope meant so much to the early church that it was inserted into the gospel texts, where it clearly did not originate.

James Brown

I take an different view. I see the pericope in conflict with other Gospel narratives of Jesus' view on Jewish law, such as not coming to do away with the law but fulfill it, etc.

The Deuteronomic penalty for adultery was death. Where the fellow caught in adultery was, I don't know, but for the woman at least, she was properly bound for the stoning. Jesus, called upon as an impromptu judge, didn't question the facts of the case. Instead, he questioned the motives of her accusers. When they slinked away (for often speculated, but essentially unknown reasons) he lets her off with a warning.

Let's move this milieu to a modern-day example of a capital crime: first-degree murder (in Texas, for instance). A man is hauled before a judge and accused of first-degree murder. The prosecuting attorney claims it was two people who performed the murder, but the other person's whereabouts are unknown. So the judge stares hard at the prosecutor and asks leading questions about kickbacks and the prosecutor's most recent election campaign. The prosecutor recuses himself from the case and leaves the courtroom. The judge then looks at the accused and asks, "Is there anyone here to bring a case against you?" The accused replies (via his defense attorney, of course), "No, your honor." The judge then says, "Neither do I. You're free to go; don't murder anyone anymore."

Would we look upon this with pathos and beauty? Would we praise this judge as a man of far-seeing wisdom and compassion? Some would, maybe. My courtroom analogy may be all wet, and feel free to correct me if I'm looking at this from the wrong angle, but I don't understand why this story "captures the essence of Jesus' teachings" when he clearly taught that the very law which his own Father God decreed was valuable and holy, not something to be discarded at random in order to make a ethical point.