avi

I simply wonder how many Muslims, if any, are influenced by an encounter with the same errors located in both the Quran and the new testament?

avi

squiz

Roger likes to kid himself that he lives a life full of purpose.

Deus Ex

Pointing out contradictions in the bible did destroy my naive, fundamentalist belief in an inerrant bible, but it took more than that to deconvert me. A liberal Christian won't care much about contradictions; they will feel like God can still work through a fallible bible or a fallible human church.

Doug Shaver

Not to anyone who's made up their mind that there can't be any.

braces_for_impact

I think we can safely say that this very forum, if nothing else, has taught us that for the most part pointing out biblical errancy is fruitless. It may have an effect on lurkers, but that would be difficult to ascertain.

Splarnst

It depends on the believer. Anyone who says "yes" or "no" isn't thinking it through.

DancesWithCoffeeCups

To one who is thoroughly indoctrinated, probably not. However, it was the errors in the bible that led this believer to start questioning the entire package and I was just a yoot! So there is hope!

DCHindley

For me, it was the realization that there were more factors involved in early christian development than you realize if you limit your scope to the bible alone.

I became aware that there were other early Christian writings by reading a book by Hugh Schonfield (it was The Jesus Party, sold in the US as The Pentecost Revolution (or via: amazon.co.uk)) as a college Sophomore. I ended up buying the 10 volume Ante Nicene Christian Library when I was a Junior in college.

I became aware of the pseudepigrapha like 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, etc, from reading a footnote to the RCC sponsored New American Bible. It mentioned a book of "Henoch" that was referenced by the author of the book of Jude. I ended up buying the Pseudepigrapha volume of R H Charles' Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (or via: amazon.co.uk) of the Old Testament when I was a Junior in college.

Once it became clear to me that the Pseudepigrapha had influenced ideas found in the NT, and that the early Christian authors of books outside of the NT present a movement that was quite a bit more chaotic and diverse than the unified picture I was presented with in Sunday School, it was not hard to realize that the books of the bible were written by humans and were not divinely dictated. FWIW, I was no longer a Christian shortly after I graduated college.

DCH

dettus

As if pointing out things in the bible happen in a vacuum. It's not about one particular thing. It's about many different things coming from all different angles. Including, but not limited, pointing pout flaws in holy books.

Toto

Maybe this story sheds some light:

Ehrman, Evans debate Bible's reliability

But it seems that the spur to Ehrman's loss of faith was his discovery of the problems in the text, and Evans was at great pains to claim that the textual problems were not really problems.