Jayrok

Interesting, thanks JW.

Here is a link to a debate between Ehrman and James White on Misquoting Jesus:

Link to Debate

The transcript is in .pdf format on the page.

Here is a short clip of James white discussing Ehrman's newest book, the subject of this thread.

James White on Jesus, Interrupted

One thing I found interesting in their debate and this video is Mr. White accuses Dr. Ehrman of venturing away from his field of expertise, textual criticism, and wants to get more involved in other areas where he is not a leading expert... It's true Ehrman adds some of his thoughts and views of what he believes happened, but says it is his opinion in his book.

But in the debate, White tells viewers all about how the early Church operated and handled information and documentation, etc.. as if he was now a world renowned expert in early century history. It's ok for him to offer his opinions on theology or history but when Ehrman does it he "wanders outside his area of expertise" so his comments should be striken from the record.

Jayrok

Hi,

No, Ehrman doesn't state anything about money being behind all the silence. He gives a couple of ideas on why the layman doesn't know of the views of serious scholars around the world regarding the Bible.

He says one reason could be because scholars who, like himself, spend their professional lives studying the Bible have not done a good job of communicating this knowledge to the public. Another reason could be because pastors, who learn this stuff in seminary, have not shared any of it with their congregations once they find positions in the church.

The latter I can guess is because many church members would have varying reactions. I've seen congregations run a preacher out of the church for controversial material.

In fact, when I began questioning my faith I went to my pastor and he told me if he taught some of the things he really believed in his Sunday school class, they'd run him off. He didn't really believe in a literal hell and this church is in the deep south of the USA. Imagine that.

So it might not be because of "power" as much as job security for some pastors. You don't want anyone in your flock to question their faith, they might leave and cause others to leave. The church wants to grow after all. Maybe that is why the Roman Catholic Church didn't allow their parishoners to own their own Bibles.

The average Christian reads his Bible in a devotional type of way also. He doesn't read it from a critical stand point and when you read the NT in a devotional way you won't find any contradictions.

Ehrman states that the layman has no clue what has been said by scholars about the Bible for the past two centuries. He claims this book is his attempt to "let the cat out of the bag."

I think one of his motivators was the questions he always gets from his students about "why doesn't more people know about this stuff?" So he figured he'd write a book.

rlogan

Thanks.

= money, and the power associated with being a "man of God".

I am not saying this is the kind of power Dear Leader has in North Korea, nor the kind of money Bill Gates has.


It's just so simple I am frustrated by the lack of recognition for how obvious it is. Preachers know. They don't speak about it. The reason is simple.

You question faith and you're out of a job. Yes absolutely, people fear death and have additional reasons for believing in a God.

So there is money to be made. Humble exercises of power - speaking every week before your flock. Baptisms, weddings, funerals, diddling the altar boys...

razlyubleno

But I doubt it's about money.

Perhaps I'm just being naive (it's been known to happen), but I think clergy are generally a little more noble than to be in it for the money. I figure the reason they keep biblical scholarship to themselves is they don't think it's important. Have faith in Jesus Christ, and voila, you're saved... Why add text-critical stuff to the mix? As soon as you tell the laity, "By the way, huiou theou could very well be a later scribal interpolation..." you're playing with fire, in terms of faith. You're supposed to be cultivating faith, not seeding doubt. So you, the clergyman, stand up in front of your congregation, and you stick to the basics, damn it. Nevermind about papyri fragments and NA27s and nomina sacra and scribal errors due to genitive chains. Basics: Our lord Jesus Christ who died for our sins...

razly

rlogan

You're the second to indicate as much.

But where does this "supposed to" come from? Who is dictating this?

The butcher is "supposed to" provide meat to people that want to eat it. His customers are the source of this dictate.

So do you mean there is a similar market for people to be lied to and thus the preacher is providing a market service, and truth really isn't a concern?

Because when you start to talk in terms of "noble", then it seems to me these people in seminary damn well ought to be asking some tough questions.

So I respectfully disagree with the "nobility" claim. Money motivates the butcher, not some noble principle. And I don't meen shameless unbridled greed - but just making a living.

I think it is the same with these people in seminary. I am not saying it is some gigantic, spectacular greed beyond the pale - no, just that making a living in this trade requires ignoring basic contradictions.

You stuff them away and live with congative dissonance. You rationalize it in one way or another.

Why is it so difficult to accept? People do their trade for money. It isn't the exclusive objective. But to ignore that it is central, with religion too, is misguided I think.

razlyubleno

Cultivation of faith, I think is implicit in the job description of a preacher. Even if that description is only theoretical, I'm still pretty sure it's there in the minds of most people.

The butcher provides meat in exchange for money, and he makes no claim to any kind of egalitarianism. It's purely an exchange of service for money. The preacher, on the other hand, makes a claim to providing a kind of egalitarian edification of the soul, a spiritual service for which the greatest reward is in the work itself; in theory, money is ancillary, and is fed back into the system so that more preaching may take place. This is better analogous to the behaviour of non-profit organisations, for which money is used not to buy houses and boats and DVD players, but rather, to continue the existence of the organisation. I disdain your analogy to the butcher.

It's only a lie if the preacher knows he is telling a falsehood. This is an important point. But indeed, there is a demand for false information, however unwitting. It's closely related to confirmation bias, in that people desire reinforcement of what they already believe, much more so than they desire critical analysis of it. But that's not to say that clergy are intentionally in a supply/demand relationship with the laity. A preacher may indeed be out of work if he can't find anyone to preach to, but that's not to say he wouldn't still like to preach. I very strongly suspect that if a law was passed that didn't allow preachers to earn money from their trade, many of them would still do it for as long as they could find an audience. A butcher, obviously, doesn't fit into the same mold.

Not quite. It's exact details that aren't really a concern, and the basic information that would allow the laity to discern the truth is hidden. But the reasons for this, as far as I can tell, amount to little more than convenience. What preachers preach is necessarily not the full story, since they are tasked with giving rudimentary courses in theology, not intermediate-level courses in text-, source-, or whathaveyou-criticism. Those academic/scholarly/universityish topics would obscure the point they're trying to make to a lay audience. It's quite legitimate for them to come to their own conclusions first, and then espouse those conclusions without launching into detail about their rationale.

As an anecdote, my younger sister has argued with me about chemistry from time to time. She'll tell me something she's learned from class, and since I can't help myself, I'll say, "No, that's not even true in some cases. It's just a rule of thumb." But you can't tell a highschooler about wave-particle duality and expect to gain any traction. They are fed a diet of simplifications and rules-of-thumb, and after many a frustrating talk with my sister, I know why they do it that way. Highschool is a particular context, and it's not the appropriate context to be mixing physics into discussions of electron orbitals; you apply a gloss of simplification, and if the student progresses to university, those simplifications will be slowly stripped away. Ultimately, information needs to be tailored to its audience, and this is all I see preachers as doing. I don't often feel the need to cry foul over it.

Depends entirely on your definition of "noble." I wasn't supposing any kind of objective nobility on the part of preachers. I think a certain amount of shirkiness can be compatible with a self-perceived sense of nobility, specifically in those cases where the end can be seen to justify the means. In this case, "saving souls" would be the noble end-result, and anything leading up to that point would be seen, at worst, as a white lie, and certainly not (in most cases) as simply a way to make cash.

Your terminology is mixed, then. Cognitive dissonance operates on a different level to lying.

Doesn't this strike you as a rather wide-ranging statement? Volunteer workers obviously provide a counter-point. Médecins Sans Frontières are in a supply/demand relationship with sick and injured people, but that's hardly to say they're in it for the money.

razly

rlogan

Idle speculation, and it isn't fruitful on the basis of it's vagueness. We are speaking about contradictions preachers know well enough from Seminary. So you have to make your speculation relevant. "Cultivation of faith", whatever that actually means, does not require lying or deceiving.


*yawn* Preachers earn a salary on contract for specific duties. You can crow on all you want about egalitarian garbage, but that's clearly twaddle when preachers are on salary. Sure, they claim this B.S. about how spiritual salvation is so noble.



Sheesh. trying to skate on the thin ice of lie by omission. Stick with the point please. preachers do not inform us about contradictions. Why.

Because it is contrary to their interests. One of which is clearly money.

Agreeing with me while pretending not to.

Clearly ludicrous. State the number of preachers that return all of their salary.

On the contrary - we are talking about issues absolutely essential to the very core of Christianity - like whether Jesus even existed or not as a flesh and blood person.

Amazing the lengths you are going to in order to excuse it.

Don't be patronizing to a PhD please. Little matters like whether there was a Jesus or any disciples, whether texts were forged, etc. is hardly some high-level principle of such fine detail it is not worth mentioning. It calls into question the entire canon.

Rationalization does not change the economic interest. You cannot deny it until you show me how many full time preachers do it with zero compensation.

Please look up the term. Obviously you do not understand the difference between the act of lying vs. the mental gymnastics one has to do in order not to admit it.

Haw! Uh, yea - as an economist I'll pretty much have to rely on my own professional experience on this, as opposed to this wild handwaving and smoke-blowing.

Vlunteering is clearly not at all what I am talking about since I specifically referred to people practicing their trade, and most specifically of all preachers who earn a salary on contract.

Your way of pretending preachers are not earning salary I guess is to say that some people volunteer for the Boy Scouts on week-ends and wealthy doctors making megabucks take occasional trips to impoverished countries.



You really shouldn't make yourself look so silly.

cheers though.

razlyubleno

Yes, clearly. Obviously. Forgive my obtuseness.

I offered what seems to me a viable explanation. If you don't like it, well that's cool, but don't act as though I didn't try to answer it. I went to quite some effort, actually.

No comment on any of this.

That's cute. But credentials don't magically make your arguments infallible, and they're not even particularly relevant in the context of online discussion. There's a reason why you don't know what my experience is, or what my credentials are, even though I could muster something a little less tangential than "economics;" the fact is, it just doesn't matter. Respect is earned, and certainly isn't something to be demanded by the bare notion of academic accomplishments.

And as much as I might have been hand-waving and blowing smoke, I did so in good faith, and you've reciprocated with little but arrogance and vitriol. I hope for everyone's sake that you're just having a bad day.

razly

andrewcriddle

I would be surprised if the preachers who (rightly or wrongly) present a simplified version of things to their congregations have any doubts as to the real existence of Jesus as a flesh and blood person.

Most people including most academics take the historical existence of Jesus for granted. (Many on this forum would argue that they are wrong to do so, but that is a different matter.)

Andrew Criddle

bacht

This matches my experience, there are a couple of ministers in my family. They have to simplify their messages to congregations or they're dismissed (I saw it happen in my church years ago).

I would guess that most congregants attend for emotional gratification rather than intellectual stimulation. A few might do some reading outside of church, but the majority have neither the time nor the curiosity to really dig into the literature, especially the dry academic stuff.

It seems like most people, whether Christian or not, assume that Jesus was a real man during the Roman period. This would be the "common sense" view on the matter: why would a religious institution be built on a phantom?