Culture,  Theology/Bible

Bart Ehrman on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”

Bart Ehrman has been making the media rounds with the publication of his new book Misquoting Jesus. Recently, he promoted his book on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” (click here and scroll down to “Bart Ehrman” to stream the video). (HT: Daniel Streett)

I reviewed Misquoting Jesus on this blog a couple of months ago. In that review I made the observation that Ehrman often mixes in higher critical conjectures that do not have anything to do with the manuscript tradition per se. This serves his polemical purpose of undermining the reliability of the Bible, but it does not help the lay reader who is being introduced to the discipline of text criticism for the first time. The unhappy result is that many will mistakenly conclude that the discipline of text criticism somehow discredits the veracity of the Bible when nothing could be further from the truth.

In the “Daily Show” interview, Ehrman again conflates the conjectures with the criticism. He says that he believes that not only are the scribes who copied the Bible human, but so are the authors who produced it. In other words, not only are the manuscript copies of the Bible flawed, but so are the originals.

I refer the reader to my original review for a response to the contentions Ehrman made in this latest appearance. There are also a number of other helpful reviews online that have been coming out. Here’s a list:

Craig Blomberg

Denny Burk

Scot McKnight (forthcoming)

Mark D. Roberts

Jim Snapp

Daniel Wallace

P.J. Williams

Ben Witherington

2 Comments

  • revnace

    Life hit me… I didn’t get your email address. Love to catch up “Dr.” Denny. Congradulations.

    Hey, we you really want to be cool and published just renounce everything, join the “left”, and go on tour with Derek. The “right” will always be there for you.

    One more thing, isn’t it amazing how fired up people can get over a Christian Artist compared to abortion?

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