MrMacSon

I did not comment on Erhman's religiosity - I am well aware he is agnostic-atheist. I am well aware of his previous work, and his standing in the fundie community. My comments are in relation to his latest book and his bias through poor reflection on all the issues around allegations for a historical jesus, including that a historical human Jesus is a christian heresy.

jdl

I believe him when he says he read the books himself. When he employs the adjective "carefully", that's when he's lying.

Joseph

aa5874

Why did Ehrman think he could get away with his statements in his book??? Ehrman seems like he wants to blame the victims.

Grog

DJE demonstrates that he has not subjected his grounding assumption, that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under Pilate, to the same skepticism that he has to the assumptions of the fundamentalist crowd. I have liked Ehrman's work up to now, though I have not considered it particularly groundbreaking. The main themes of his popular works were long part of the consensus. Beating up on the assumptions of inerrantists has been around at least since James Barr's Beyond Fundamentalism. That book was eye-opening to me in the mid-1980's, but now it's the presumed position. DJE fails to live up to its promise to be the definitive rebuttal to mythicism. I enjoy weighty arguments, even when I don't share the conclusions. As far as historicism goes, Thiessen & Merz's "The Historical Jesus" is a much more serious and careful work, without the polemics. It only provides a cursory discussion of the mythicist case, but it is still worth having.

Chaucer

Correction: Ehrman has no standing in the fundie community, and I'm guessing you know that very, very well.

Chaucer

MrMacSon

correction2 - Ehrman has had little or no standing in the fundie community, and has possibly bought some with DJE

aa5874

An historical Jesus cannot be defended. Ehrman must know that and that is precisely why the book is a failure.

Ehrman must have realized that all he has produced are logical fallacies using unreliable sources.

If Ehrman could have made better arguments then he would have made them. He could NOT.

Even if Ehrman removes all the diatribe against those he opposes the book will still be horrible and without substance.

Did Jesus Exist? is the very worst but is the only HJ argument.

I am so happy that Ehrman wrote his book.

NOW HJers have been forever SILENCED--not from outside but from within--from EHRMAN.

Ehrman has ended the Third Quest in disaster

Steven Carr

EHRMAN
In other words, I only rarely use them in this way for the trade books (i.e., the “popular” books – written for a general audience) I write.

CARR
No wonder Ehrman got the very name of Doherty's book wrong and managed even to say that Pliny wrote about Christians in letter number 10.

I suppose if you want something done well, you should get a graduate student to do it for you.

Chaucer

Total bullshit and shameless propaganda. DJE is entirely antithetical to the fundie agenda, and you fucking well know it.

Chaucer

jdl

If the discussion is such a complete waste of your time that your idea of an appropriate counter argument is pure assertion and expletive, then why not just spare yourself the trouble and not post.

Ehrman says himself that people who have been previously uncomfortable with his scholarship might be pleasantly suprised to find him on their side of the court this time. It's not outrageous to suggest conservatives might be reevaluating Ehrman in light of this book. He claims that oral sources can be dated to the 30's, for crying out loud. Don't try to tell me he won't be cited by apologists on that.

Joseph