Nazaroo

Even when Ehrman behaves, he skews the interpretation of the data in favour of his philosophical position and worldview.

More than one independant review of Ehrman's book has found holes in it you can drive a truck through:

As others have pointed out the "100,000 variants" are for the most part spelling conventions (different in different regions, like Egypt versus Byzantium) and grammatical fluidities like the "moveable nu", a letter that sometimes appears at the end of a word before a vowel in later manuscripts, much like we do in English: "a cat" versus "an elephant".

The majority of spelling variations involve proper names and rare words (as expected) and 90% of those don't affect translation of the work into English at all. Why? Because the names are already 'Anglicized'. Few for instance are aware that "James" is really "Yacobi" or "Peter" is really "Petros" (with a changable ending).





Ehrman essentially exaggerates and misleads the reader about the situation over and over again, for effect.

So really, anyone who supports Ehrman's bullshit and fraud should "be punched in the face and laughed at.". ( - to paraphrase pettingzoo... )

spin

Perhaps you'd like to make a concrete case for your claim. You know, with representative examples from his book to underline your claim, rather than this steam-blowing.


spin

Nazaroo

Well, we can start with Ehrman's misleading babble on the Ending of Mark (16:9-20).

Lets quote Snapp's point on Ehrman's skewed presentation (linked already above: go to page 2):

Allow me to suppliment this example with photos of both manuscripts:

Codex Sinaiticus: Last page of Mark showing empty column left for Mark 16:8 forward:




Codex Vaticanus: Last page of Mark showing blank third column:



And here's a transcript:

douglas

Oh my gosh! Say it aint so! You mean there's a blank space at the end of Mark!

Excuse the sarcasm, but that's like opening up the last page of Moby Dick and saying "Look, it stops halfway up the page! The ending is missing!"

In sinaiticus or vaticanus, is there a gap between the end of Luke and the beginning of John, or between Matthew and Mark? This is a serious question. I honestly don't know.

douglas

Sorry. I couldn't wait. There are many (I stopped counting at 14) "suggestive blank spaces" in Codex vaticanus, so according to this logic we are missing a bunch of text.

Sauron

Ah, from the same hardline Dallas Theological Seminary that supports all the traditional conservative positions. Nice, but predictable stuff. Wallace has created a strawman of Ehrman's position - "none of the core doctrines are challenged", etc. But that was never Ehrman's position, was it?

Someone named PJ Williams posting at a group blog.
Who is ETC and why should we care about PJ Williams' opinioin?

Yes, we know Ben around here. He's one of Layman's favorite references. Of course, Ben also doesn't seem to understand how C-14 works to date artifacts; he thinks that a fire could introduce new C14 into the Shroud of Turin, thus making it appear much younger than it (allegedly) is.

He was also among the first to declare the James Ossuary authentic, and apparently he thinks that God trickles out these articles one at a time to build our faith. Ben also wants to compare DNA testing of the Shroud to the ossuary:

So, I like to say, James is in the box, and Jesus is on the box, because of the resurrection. And perhaps, if we are able to test the bone fragments of the box soon, and compare the DNA evidence to the evidence produced in the '80s about the gene string and DNA derived from the blood samples on the Shroud, we may just have a double confirmation of the artifacts I have discussed at the beginning and end of this essay. Stay tuned.


1. Who?
2. Why should we care?

A minister of a small church in Indiana. Again:

1. Who?
2. Why should we care?

Riverwind

Dallas Theological Seminary is a well-respected school in spite of its conservative leanings. Daniel Wallace is a top-notch greek scholar and textual critic, even among non-conservative scholars. I would, personally, argue that he is much better and more thorough than Ehrman. Wallace's Greek grammar is used the world over, and he is in the process of scanning and making photographs of ancient manuscripts available to the general public.

ETC stands for Evangelical Textual Criticism, a blog that I'm sure many will off-handedly dismiss merely because of its name. However, if one looks down the list of contributors and is familiar in the least with textual criticism, one will notice many very influential names in the business of textual criticism (eg. Maurice Robinson, Michael Holmes, etc.). P.J. Williams has been a major contributor to ETC and is backing off of his participation due to the fact that he is about to become Warden of the Tyndale House. If one is unaware of the Tyndale House as well, then one should probably not be acting knowledgeable in the area of textual criticism.

Sauron

If one is attends a conservative fundamentalist church, or is of the persuasion that foreordained conclusions should be part of higher education. The DTS has as its declared educational doctrine "the authority and inerrancy of Scripture". Their website shows the full text of their “profession of faith.” The site goes on to say that "each year our faculty and members of the boards reaffirm their agreement with this statement".

I wasn't criticizing his Greek; I'm not qualified to do so. Instead, I was criticizing his obvious strawman of Ehrman's position.

Thank you - I didn't have that context.

spin

Impressive response. A gap. That's the sort of evidence which stimulates your pathetic rhetoric regarding Ehrman.


spin

Riverwind

True, and I'm sure this can "color" the scholarship of some to a degree. However, a degree at a secular university is just as capable of "coloring" the scholarship of those who attend. Study under Ehrman, and you will likely come away with quite a different (and not necessarily correct) view of the transmission of the Greek texts than if one had studied under Bruce Metzger at the same school. One must be familiar with and understand the scholarship and not dismiss it because it is secular or because it is conservative. Each comes with its own set of biases for and against (textual transmission in this case).

In other words, one shouldn't dismiss Ehrman's scholarship without understanding it (as he has made some very good studies in the past), and similarly one shouldn't dismiss the scholarship of conservative scholars like Wallace, Robinson, Holmes, and David Allen Black without understanding it (as they have also made some great contributions).

Binary thinking destroys and suppresses good scholarship no matter who (liberal or conservative) is doing the dismissing based on the scholar's worldviews alone.