Bart Ehrman Strikes Again

Bart Ehrman is out promoting his most recent book Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. As with his previous popular books, Ehrman is on a mission. He is doing everything he can to undermine the reader’s confidence in the truthfulness and the authority of scripture. In Forged, he attacks the apostolic authorship of the New Testament.

Responses to Ehrman are already appearing. Dan Wallace has written a three-part review that is very helpful, and I encourage you to read it here: part 1, part 2, part 3. Wallace concludes with this:

I must conclude with a final observation. The fact that Bart Ehrman has put forth a trade-book rather than a scholarly monograph on ancient pseudepigrapha allows him the luxury of not having to deal with counter-evidence or peer review. Nowhere does he cite E. Earle Ellis, D. A. Carson, Leon Morris, Douglas Moo, Donald Guthrie (except for one note on an article, ignoring his massive work on NT introduction), Andreas Köstenberger, L. S. Kellum, Charles Quarles, Richard Longenecker, Anthony Kenny, Martin Hengel, Alan Millard, K. J. Neumann, David Dungan, T. L. Wilder, Harold W. Hoehner, or countless other scholars whose research disputes his conclusions. To the unsuspecting layperson, Forged looks like a death knell to the NT canon. To those who labor in the discipline of NT studies, it looks like yet another sensationalist book from Ehrman that is heavy on rhetoric and light on facts.

The rest of this review is well done, and his critique is worth the time to read if you are looking for a smart response to Ehrman.

Linked below is a recent conversation between Ehrman and Darrell Bock on Justin Brierly’s U.K. radio program “Unbelievable.” The show description is below the audio.

[audio:http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/6d0adcb0-35d3-4fbc-9263-47785c915d88.mp3]

Sceptical Bible scholar Bart Ehrman’s latest book “Forged” claims that many of the writings of the New Testament are falsely attributed to apostles such as Peter and Paul. He claims that they were not written by them and that a deliberate deception was taking place. Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary responds, saying that the case for forgery is not as conclusive as Bart claims. They examine the evidence for whether 1 and 2 Peter were written by Peter as well as letters attributed to Paul such as Ephesians and 2 Thessolonians.