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The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. God looked down from heaven upon the children of man, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
-- Psalms 53: 1-3
A new book by Bart D. Ehrman titled "Forged" charges that about half of the New Testament books are forgeries, that the early Chrisians were seriously engaged in church disputes and would write up their positions and then use the big names of the apostles for authority. After all, Jesus's disciples were illiterate, and even when it comes to the letters of Paul, you can see wildly different writing styles, so the argument runs.
Of course, this isn't uncontested. Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar, takes up the debate:
As Paul (or whoever wrote under his name) says, in our time and place, we see things through a glass darkly, and one can only have faith that we will one day see everything clearly, and if that day does not come, then none of this really matters. Personally, I like the New Testament that we have, but I never felt comfortable about insisting that every word in its narrowest and most literal reading is infallible. I think part of our mystery is that we do not have a perfect map. Life isn't that easy.
In the end, I think the term 'forgery' is too hard a term, for I sense much of the same spirit throughout the text of the New Testament. One could say, it seems to me, that the Pentateuch is a forgery because we know that Moses did not actually write those books, but no one thinks that those books should be thrown out. If writers were a little free about what name they wrote under back then, while that is an interesting and somewhat problemsome proposition, it does not necessarily discredit the project. What is written is more important. I think it is Christianity, and the real issue is whether you care to take any stock in Christianity. If the answer is no, I suspect that was probably true even before this business of forgery comes up.
(Source: John Blake for CNN)
-- Psalms 53: 1-3
A new book by Bart D. Ehrman titled "Forged" charges that about half of the New Testament books are forgeries, that the early Chrisians were seriously engaged in church disputes and would write up their positions and then use the big names of the apostles for authority. After all, Jesus's disciples were illiterate, and even when it comes to the letters of Paul, you can see wildly different writing styles, so the argument runs.
Of course, this isn't uncontested. Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar, takes up the debate:
Witherington calls Ehrman’s book “Gullible Travels, for it reveals over and over again the willingness of people to believe even outrageous things.”It should be noted that Ehrman is not a proselytizing atheist trying to take the battle behind enemy lines, but apparently believes that we need an honest understanding of our materials:
All of the New Testament books, with the exception of 2 Peter, can be traced back to a very small group of literate Christians, some of whom were eyewitnesses to the lives of Jesus and Paul, Witherington says.
“Forged” also underestimates the considerable role scribes played in transcribing documents during the earliest days of Christianity, Witherington says.
...
Witherington says people will gravitate toward Ehrman’s work because the media loves sensationalism.
“We live in a Jesus-haunted culture that’s biblically illiterate,” he says. “Almost anything can pass for historical information… A book liked ‘Forged’ can unsettle people who have no third or fourth opinions to draw upon.”
“Forged” will help people accept something that it took him a long time to accept, says the author, a former fundamentalist who is now an agnostic.Having recently reread the New Testament, and doing so while having this article in mind (as I held onto this article for some time before posting it), I cannot say that I have trouble continuing to see the new Testament as our holy book. Even without this issue of forgeries, there were obviously points that one could not readily accept without having some doubts, especially if you are fairly materialistic in your understanding of the world, and therefore not strongly inclined to take stories of raising the dead and other miracles, including the supernatural divinity of Jesus, as straightforward factual narratives. However, if one has some hankering for a greater supernatural world, and if one feels a certain mystical power in Christianity, one can certainly accept a certain amount of mystery as to exactly where the greater truth lies.
The New Testament wasn’t written by the finger of God, he says – it has human fingerprints all over its pages.
“I’m not saying people should throw it out or it’s not theologically fruitful,” Ehrman says. “I’m saying that by realizing it contains so many forgeries, it shows that it’s a very human book, down to the fact that some authors lied about who they were.”
As Paul (or whoever wrote under his name) says, in our time and place, we see things through a glass darkly, and one can only have faith that we will one day see everything clearly, and if that day does not come, then none of this really matters. Personally, I like the New Testament that we have, but I never felt comfortable about insisting that every word in its narrowest and most literal reading is infallible. I think part of our mystery is that we do not have a perfect map. Life isn't that easy.
In the end, I think the term 'forgery' is too hard a term, for I sense much of the same spirit throughout the text of the New Testament. One could say, it seems to me, that the Pentateuch is a forgery because we know that Moses did not actually write those books, but no one thinks that those books should be thrown out. If writers were a little free about what name they wrote under back then, while that is an interesting and somewhat problemsome proposition, it does not necessarily discredit the project. What is written is more important. I think it is Christianity, and the real issue is whether you care to take any stock in Christianity. If the answer is no, I suspect that was probably true even before this business of forgery comes up.
(Source: John Blake for CNN)
