19 of 27 Biblical Books Forgeries! Isn’t That Old News?
Bart Ehrman use to be an Evangelical Christian. His family and many of his friends still are, but he somehow changed his mind. By the grace of god/dog Ehrman has seen the light and now professes to being a “happy agnostic.” It’s not the full monty but non-religious is non-religious. I’m guessing plenty of the religious right-wing wackos are first going to try and point out that he wasn’t ever a ‘real’ christian because he didn’t know the real god/dog and that’s why he left. It’s the same argument you hear about Hitler, who was a self-proclaimed warrior of the Christian god/dog, but Christians will now say that he wasn’t really a Christian. Convenient, no? So be it; it’s not the first time a theist attempted to wipe away reality by disregarding it.
His new book Jesus, Interrupted is a review and debunking of some commonly held myths about the bible and its stories. For those of us non-believers, the entire thing seems comically obvious to be a load of crapola. But for others, there seems to be some sort of benevolence given to a book that’s really old. For some reason, other books like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Rig Veda, or the Bhagavad-Gita don’t have the same importance though they are much older then the bible. Ehrman, doesn’t believe the bible to be infallible though and that’s a good start.
Some of his choicest findings, as CNN reports, are:
Doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and heaven and hell are not based on anything Jesus or his earlier followers said.
At least 19 of the 27 books in the New Testament are forgeries.
Believing the Bible is infallible is not a condition for being a Christian.There’s no proof Jesus physically rose from the dead, and the resurrection stories contradict one another…
Erhman, as a former Evangelical, doesn’t discount the biblical stories all together. Nor has he reached the skeptical and cynical point where it seems so unbelievably obvious that much of the bible is just simply a story and not based on anything that took place, so he does give the writers the benefit of the doubt when he explains his version of the resurrection,
“My best guess is that what happened is what commonly happens today when someone has a loved one die — they sometimes think they see them in a vision,” Ehrman says. “I think some of the disciples had visions.”
None of this is news, as biblical scholars would agree that there have been an abundant amount of scholarly attacks against the infallibility of the bible and Christian scripture. No one that is religious is going to see this or read the book and then think to themselves, ‘OMG, did I have it all wrong?” What it does do though, is to promote the debate and the cracking open of the Christian mythology that seems to bind the minds of men and women. Someday, hopefully, mythology will be mythology and society will simply enjoy reading what fools humans were in the past.
Anyone who has taken a course in the history of Christianity (from a real divinity college or university) learns that the the New Testament is mostly made up and that the doctrine we now generally follow was also made up well after Jesus’ lif. The divinity of Jesus and the emmaculate conception were codifed some 300 years after Jesus’ death.
Jesus never said he was God. He was a very spiritual Jew, who told us that we could be spiritual and close to God without all that silly Jewish Law. That’s why he was such a threat to the ecclesiastical authority of the day.
Originally, Christianity did not require that we accept that Jess was God. This is a product of the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. Jesus showed us how to live a spiritual life (as opposed to a pious one). We are supposed to emulate him, not worship him. His teachings are very much like those of The Buddah and other Eastern philosophies.
Most fundamentalist Christians don’t understand that their religion’s doctrine was designed to manipulate them, not save them. But they have invested so much of themselves into then into the falsehoods, that they rebel at the thought that they may be wrong. It’s quite sad that they’re lives are wasted on strict adherence to dogma, when it could be spent seeking spiritual enlightenment. And so they live their lives in self-imposed ignorance and strike out at anyone who challenges their comfort zone. And the true essence of Jesus’ teaching is lost to them. How sad. I cannot see how this can be called salvation. The kingdom of God is in the here and now. Jesus told us this. Too bad so few listened.
Thanks for the history lesson. Very informative.
Man you are spot on I couldn’t have put it better myself I have always had an issue with cult following of christianty but not with the morality of it.
I agree, the dogma is crazy but the watered down message of love thy neighbor is great. I’m looking forward to when people can just love each other without having to have a figure head with all the attached dogma.
Bard Ehrman as all ‘agnostics’ plead that they can not know anything and then make absolute statements regarding some subject. In his case, he makes statements to ‘prove’ that the gospel accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion can not be ‘conflated’ because of the different perspectives of the authors. My response would be, ‘how do you know that?’ Who set you up as judge and jury on how to interpret the bible? I listened to his reasoning why, and well, it is flawed because he has no demonstratable proof for his statements (he can’t go back in time and see what happened). All new testament scholarship is based on circumstancial evidence which can be interpreted a number of ways and theories which may be true or not. Since we can’t go back to that time and see what really happened, we can’t make any type of absolute judgments on anything. So Bart’s statements are actually just opinions. I can come up with several reasons why someone would combine the gospels. Does not mean they are right, just means they are my opinion.
Yeah, except you haven’t written and published 20 books on the subject.