Bart Ehrman quote from an article- please help refute!

[Agathon]

The other claims made by @HarryStotle must be taken into consideration.

 

[HarryStotle]

Your game theory needs some updating. John Nash generalized game theory to non zero-sum, multiperson games in the 1950s. He won a nobel prize in 1994. An award winning biography of him inspired the Oscar winning A Beautiful Mind in 2001, so it is hard to see how you missed it. The movie actually portrays some strategies for semicompetitive games and cooperative action.

The telephone game is a noncompetitive game. People collaborate in order to achieve a result, and generally fail to achieve it. If you see it as competitive, with some actively interfering to prevent collaboration, you are taking it in a very different manner from how it was presented by Ehrman. Games, as modern game theory presents them, apply to a variety of significant arenas, ie economics, war, collaboration, etc. it in no way trivializes the subject.

Noncompetitive, cooperative or something else, the putative object of the telephone game is not to preserve the original message but to find amusement in how far the original meaning can get wildly distorted by putting severe constraints on how that message is transmitted. For Ehrman to make that the paradigm for how the message of Christianity took on its final form is hardly fair or insightful and, instead, casts the entire process as inherently error producing and unreliable.

He diminishes and, in fact, writes out of the process all mechanisms that might have been, and indeed were, in place for preserving the message intact.

For example, that so many individuals were involved doesn’t necessarily mean the message was distorted, but that a whole lot of careful checking, re-checking and confirming was going on to make sure no errors were introduced.

A detective investigating a crime isn’t content with the testimony of one person but seeks out as many as possible to collect eye witness accounts and then attempts to reconcile these by working out the inconsistencies, to come up with the most accurate and true account. Perhaps that investigative due-diligence was what Luke was speaking of at the beginning of his Gospel when he refers to his effort to write an “orderly” account, i.e., one that worked out all the inconsistencies and falsities.

By casting the process as akin to the telephone game, Ehrman directs attention away from that possibility towards conjuring a kind of confirmation bias in his readers, by comparing the process to a simplistic children’s game. The kind of bias that is clearly at play in Ehrman’s work and writings, and that showed up at least four times in the discussion (above) with Darrell Bock.

 

[Benadam]

I personally believe the Apostles all believed the same thing from the outset. They all knew Jesus is God they all knew God as a Trinity, they all had one faith deeply understood. I think what these kinds of studies fail to take into account is that they aren’t discovering the faith of the Gospel writer as if it is a singularity but they discover what the Gospel writer was able to teach, articulate, put into words. Divine Revelation by definition introduces concepts that have never existed on earth before. Coming up with language to express it accurately takes time and creativity. I would say this process that the early Church, in particular the Apostles underwent is mistaken for their understanding of the faith.

 

[Gorgias]

For Ehrman to make that the paradigm for how the message of Christianity took on its final form is hardly fair or insightful and, instead, casts the entire process as inherently error producing and unreliable.

To be fair, though, it’s understandable that he sees things in that light, given his Fundamentalist-style religious background. From that viewpoint, the scholarly understanding of the provenance of the manuscripts probably does look like a game of Telephone!

However, that doesn’t mean that his take on it is accurate, or even reasonable. For exactly the reasons you outlined, the development of the Scriptural manuscripts isn’t similar to a game of Telephone, even if he asserts it is.

 

[HarryStotle]

To be fair, though, it’s understandable that he sees things in that light, given his Fundamentalist-style religious background. From that viewpoint, the scholarly understanding of the provenance of the manuscripts probably does look like a game of Telephone!

Perhaps, Ehrman, as a professional scholar, should be willing to do some self-reflection into how his fundamentalist background and upbringing have actually affected his scholarship and his ability to fairly treat an issue.

Might make an interesting doctoral dissertation for a cognitive psychology student.

 

[Dovekin]

By casting the process as akin to the telephone game, Ehrman directs attention away from that possibility towards conjuring a kind of confirmation bias in his readers, by comparing the process to a simplistic children’s game. The kind of bias that is clearly at play in Ehrman’s work and writings, and that showed up at least four times in the discussion (above) with Darrell Bock.

Your attention is not being directed away by Ehrman, but by your definition of the telephone game. I would use an anlogy like that, and never imagine that anyone hearing it would imagine a highly competitive game whose purpose is distortion. Nor would I expect such a prejudice against using a children’s game to describe he process.

Those features are what deflect your attention. There is no sleight of hand by Ehrman. He has amply reflected on his fundamentalist background. He is actually a good example for those who come to he discussion with their own preconceptions.

 

[Dovekin]

the development of the Scriptural manuscripts isn’t similar to a game of Telephone

How do you explain the 3 endings of Mark if the telephone game is an inappropriate explanation? Or the placement of the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 8, usually)? Or “thine is the power…” at the end of the Our Father? Or any of the thousand other variants?

 

[Gorgias]

How do you explain the 3 endings of Mark if the telephone game is an inappropriate explanation? Or the placement of the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 8, usually)? Or “thine is the power…” at the end of the Our Father?

Each of these three can be explained by recourse to an intentional redactor’s decision, wouldn’t you say? Or, are you really saying that someone misheard the Gospel of Mark and therefore added new text, or misheard John and added a new pericope mistakenly?

The whole point of the Telephone game is unintentional corruption and results unrecognizable from the original. That’s not what characterizes the development of the manuscript tradition (at least, not in terms of what Ehrman is attempting to describe).

 

[HarryStotle]

Gorgias:

the development of the Scriptural manuscripts isn’t similar to a game of Telephone

How do you explain the 3 endings of Mark if the telephone game is an inappropriate explanation? Or the placement of the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 8, usually)? Or “thine is the power…” at the end of the Our Father? Or any of the thousand other variants?

There are possible explanations that don’t involve making things up or adding novelties.

The problem is that we don’t have many very early papyri of Mark. That is just the nature of the writing medium with a lifespan of ~100 years under normal conditions. That doesn’t imply copies were substantially changed by the process, it just means the ancients understood papyrus doesn’t last so there was a need to copy relatively quickly.

Under those circumstances, the fact that only two relatively large anomalies exist – ending of Mark and the passage from John – in the entire corpus of the NT means that the Christian community was absolutely doing its best to safeguard transmission given the circumstances and what resources were available to it.

Ehrman is bloviating when he brings up the topic of textual change.

Even if we grant you that the telephone game is an apt analogy for what the Christian community underwent up to the 4th century, Ehrman’s conclusion shouldn’t be: “Therefore, the message was completely changed and corrupted.”

He should be celebrating the fact that the message retained its integrity through the entire process – as sometimes happens with the telephone game played by children, when what comes out of the last child’s mouth is essentially what left the first child’s.

He doesn’t celebrate, though, does he?

No, he nit picks little things endlessly to try to sustain his central contention – the message was completely changed and corrupted – which is false, even on the face of it.

 

[Gorgias]

There are possible explanations that don’t involve making things up or adding novelties.

There are, of course.

I guess where I’m working from is the general consensus that the short ending of Mark is generally seen as the original ending. So, we have to ask how the additional material came to be incorporated in his Gospel.

 

[HarryStotle]

How do you explain the 3 endings of Mark if the telephone game is an inappropriate explanation?

For one thing, Mark has a habit of making an absolute statement and then walking it back.

He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. (Mark 5:37)

Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. (Mark 9:8)

Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. (Mark 10:18)

So if in Mark 16:8, the ending of the Gospel, the writer is using that same technique of storytelling, an original ending beyond the short version makes sense.

“… and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid… [except]…”

Perhaps Mark himself added the longer ending to a second copy after a first copy had been distributed and the result has been two manuscript streams?

The possibilities are endless if we give the copyists and scribes a benefit of the doubt. Ehrman seems not to permit even the slightest benefit to go to those involved, however.

 

[rose321]

Jesus walked in the flesh, but Jesus fully live in the Spirit, did he not?

Respectfully opinion, questioning, examining, pondering on:thinking: only and NO not neo Gnostic what ever that means?

Isaiah>>> one of our Heavenly Father’s great prophet within his written Scriptures, teaches us how to read His Spoken Word, Holy Scripture>>>Isaiah tells us>>>read > line upon line>>> line upon line>>>> pretext upon pretext>>> line upon line does he not? In what is written within our own Biblical Scriptures, his own Spoken Word it is written>>Do not add to or subtract from is what got the Israelites in trouble right?

1 Corinthians 15:50
What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this :flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. " Listen I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For , at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will raised imperishable, and we ill be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability and this mortal body must put on immortality body must put on imperishable body. When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
" Death has been swallowed up in victory"
" Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the laws.

The body rots and decays does it not, it is buried and what is physical returns to the root matter that it came from right?

Thus that which is Spiritual will it not also return to that which it took root from Spiritual also?

In what is written within is His own Words Spoken, his words do they not teach us >hat Flesh and Blood does not enter the Kingdom?

So what enters into the Kingdom then?
Jesus does he not teach also to >>know thyself?

Jesus spoke to Nicodemus John 3 vs 3-6?
Jesus was he not preaching and teaching about our physical body, identity in the first Adam? Was Jesus teaching Nicodemus about our Divine Spiritual Being> body?

1 Corinthians 15:50 tells us we will not all die, means what? Here is Jesus telling us, that also some will die ?

Born again from above, how?

And what did Jesus mean when he said?
Happy are those in the >>first resurrection>> but will not be so for those in the>> second resurrection, it will be worst for them then Sodom and Gomorrah, did he not?

What are theses 2 Resurrections Jesus is speaking and trying to teach us about? His Spoken Word speaks of this, is written in our Holy Bible is it not?

Gnostic simple means >to know>to attain knowledge Spiritual understanding of his spoke Word right?

His Spoke Word is it not also our Bread of Life, that nourishes us, all who accept as Truth and live by?

Just questioning, pondering examining His Spoken Word, our Bread of Life that nourishes right? Peace

 

[Juvenal]

“For Mark, Jesus was adopted …“

Taken from Jesus as God in the Synoptics.

This isn’t right.

With due respect, you shouldn’t force readers to go googling to find a public post available on the internet from which you’re quoting. The original, a blog post, is from 2014, and intended to illuminate some of his thinking behind the recently released popularization, How Jesus Became God.

More, the quote you’ve chosen, taken out of its context, is a misrepresentation.

The blog post is not, as it would appear from the decontextualized quote in the o/p, a paean to Jesus’ original mortality, but rather a humble admission by a careful and conservative, non-theistic and agnostic scholar that his previous position on the divinity of Jesus in the gospels was wrong, with an explanation of how he came to that realization.

Until a year ago I would have said – and frequently did say, in the classroom, in public lectures, and in my writings – that Jesus is portrayed as God in the Gospel of John but not, definitely not, in the other Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

His earlier position was defensible, and he gives defenses, but in the end …

Jesus has the role of prophet, priest, and king – not just one thing or the other. And together these things suggest he is something more than human.

But more than that, in doing my research and thinking harder and harder about the issue, when I (a) came to realize that the Gospels not only attributed these things to him, but also understood him to be adopted as the Son of God at his baptism (Mark 1:9-11), or to have been made the son of God by virtue of the fact that God was literally his father, in that it was the Spirit of God that made the virgin Mary pregnant (Luke 1:35), and (b) realized what “adoption” meant to people in the Roman world (as indicated in a previous post), I finally yielded. These Gospels do indeed think of Jesus as divine.

In the setting of a Catholic discussion board, it may be especially futile to argue against any disunity of Christian opinion, and especially disunity within the Gospels, but honestly, it’s there. The Christology of John is widely divergent from the Christology of the synoptics, and this represents the majority view of biblical scholars, including the most conservative schools of thought.

All of the Gospels, according to Ehrman, and in contradiction to his earlier position, portray Jesus as divine, but in differing ways.

The suggestion that Ehrman’s post requires refutation is without merit. The view that the gospel writers, along with their contemporary early Christian communities, were in tension on Jesus’ mortality and divinity is necessary to understand Constantine’s need to call for the Council of Nicaea more than two centuries after the last gospel was written.

 

[ConstantLearner]

My guess is that Ehrman just isn’t convinced about the reports of miracles in Scripture, and given the prevalence of these he thinks, deep down, that the rest of the narrative was also just made up. He has to justify his career choice and investment in it, so to make the best of a bad situation, he has made a lucrative game out of justifying his disbelief by immersing himself in the historical aspects of Christian Scripture. Partially, it is to keep reminding himself that he is right about viewing the theological dogmas of Christianity as largely mythical, but also because selling books and the notoriety from them has been rewarding. He likely wouldn’t or couldn’t admit that so the problem of suffering makes a compelling alternative.

I am a theist; however, all these things, many of which were quite extraordinary, would be so much more believable if someone other than those with a vested interest in them would have written about them. The Jewish historian, Josephus, mentions Jesus, but only to say the Christians say such-and-such about him.

 

[Gorgias]

all these things would be so much more believable if someone other than those with a vested interest in them would have written about them.

Hmm… so, you’re taking an “ad hominem” approach? That is, the approach that says “I’m going to pay attention to the person who is making the argument, rather than the merits of the argument themselves”?

 

[ConstantLearner]

Hmm… so, you’re taking an “ad hominem” approach? That is, the approach that says “I’m going to pay attention to the person who is making the argument, rather than the merits of the argument themselves”?

I think the argument has plenty of merit. Jesus wasn’t hiding.

If a man goes to a college and is known by 1,000 people, but only his 100 closest friends say what a great person he is and how much he knows and how helpful and charitable he is, and the other 900, who know of him and are acquainted with what he does and his personality say nothing, it is going to seem more than kind of odd.

Let’s say that man was accused of a crime, and his friends all said, “No, he would never do that,” but 900 other people, who saw him and what he did and didn’t do said nothing, people are going to be puzzled. Unless, of course, they have a vested interest in saying good things about him.

 

[Gorgias]

I think the argument has plenty of merit.

Not as an ad hominem argument – that would be a logical fallacy.

Jesus wasn’t hiding.

I’m not so sure. After all, how many times do we see in the Gospels that Jesus said, following a miracle, “don’t tell anyone”? I mean, at the very least, He wasn’t erecting billboards saying, “The Son of God will be performing miracles Saturday evening at the Capernaum synagogue! Bring a friend! Be prepared to be amazed!!!”

So, I think it’s fair to say – based on the text of the Gospels – that Jesus was keeping the nature of his identity a ‘secret’ that only those in His inner circle might understand. In fact, if we read the Gospels carefully, we recognize that even his closest followers, the twelve Apostles, didn’t understand that He was God until after His resurrection!

So, I really do think it’s reasonable to say something not unlike “He was hiding.”

Let’s say that man was accused of a crime, and his friends all said, “No, he would never do that,” but 900 other people, who saw him and what he did and didn’t do said nothing, people are going to be puzzled. Unless, of course, they have a vested interest in saying good things about him.

Here’s the problem with your point of view: it doesn’t take into account the dynamics of the environment of Jesus’ life. He was an itinerant preacher, in an insignificant religious sect, in a backwater district of the Roman empire. Then, he was put to death as a criminal by the local Roman authorities.

Let me ask you a question: what do you think of Charles Manson? Especially if your exposure to him was from the mass media – that is, the media of the nation – and not from personal experiences with him or those who were eyewitnesses to him personally? For the vast majority of us – who never met him – all we got was the media account: criminal, lunatic, monster. Would any of us go any further than that? Of course not. And therefore, by the same standard, neither would those of the 1st century AD. Jesus was a criminal. Those who called him ‘Messiah’ would be laughed at by the populace and those in leadership. We absolutely cannot take their lack of testimony as evidence that Jesus isn’t who he said He was. Rather, we must look at those who knew him, personally.

And, after all, those who knew him either followed Him or rejected Him. Which of these will you accept as ‘reasonable’? If you reject some testimony, what valid, logical reason will you give for that rejection?

 

[ConstantLearner]

I think people’s friends and followers are going to look at them more favorably than strangers. We all filter things through a lens. A mother is much more likely to look favorably on an errant son than a stranger.

It isn’t Jesus’s personality I have a problem with. It’s the fact that at least a few people who were not his followers probably would have reported such extraordinary things. We have only his followers’ word for what happened, and that is problematic for me. But I’m not a Christian.

I didn’t know Albert Einstein, but I do know some of the things he did. I know many facts of Elie Wiesel’s life. People wrote a bout both men.

 

[HarryStotle]

It isn’t Jesus’s personality I have a problem with. It’s the fact that at least a few people who were not his followers probably would have reported such extraordinary things.

Very few people from the time reported anything in any form that had the potential to endure past a few decades.

You also have to factor in that both the Jewish authorities, who had Jesus crucified, and the Roman authorities, who did the execution, were not exactly favorable to Christianity to begin with. It had nothing to do with miracles, which were more or less accepted as possible, but more to do with survival (the Jews) and political order (the Romans.)

Even if Jesus raised people from the dead or resurrected himself, that would have largely been meaningless or dismissed unless the individual likely to be swayed by the miracle personally witnessed the event. There was lots of hearsay about miraculous events and science wasn’t established to disconfirm such things. They were thought possible, but not necessarily convincing except to those who witnessed them.

Also, recall that Christians underwent sporadic persecution, and starting with Decius, after the beginning of the third century, the emperors ordered the turning over and destruction of all Christian Scriptures and any writings favorable to Christianity. This went on for almost a century, so a great deal of what you are asking for would have been destroyed before Constantine legalized Christianity in the early fourth century.

 

[HarryStotle]

I am a theist; however, all these things, many of which were quite extraordinary, would be so much more believable if someone other than those with a vested interest in them would have written about them. The Jewish historian, Josephus, mentions Jesus, but only to say the Christians say such-and-such about him.

Are you even aware of what the Roman historian Tacitus wrote about Jesus and the Christians?
You appear not to be.

Tacitus, a Roman Senator and historian writing around 115 AD refers to Christianity in his Annals 15.44

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. …an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. (Tacitus, Annals 15.44)

These are the facts which can be gleaned from Tacitus’ writings:

• There was a group known as Christians.
• Their name came from a person called Christus.
• He was executed by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius.
• The Romans considered the Christians to be superstitious.
• Christians were much hated and were alleged to perform “abominations.”
• Their movement began in Judea but spread to Rome by 64 AD, the year of the fire.
• There was a vast multitude of Christians in Rome by the mid-sixties.

Tacitus was not exactly one with a “vested interest” in Christianity, was he?