Bart D. Ehrman and Early Christianity

Frankly I think Occam's razor supports the existence of miracles because otherwise you have to make the assumption that the Biblical authors were deliberately lying.

And I do believe that other faiths are capable or producing supernatural signs through demonic powers. That's why supernatural signs should not be why one places their faith in a religion (as Jesus Himself taught).

...

>Frankly I think Occam's razor supports the existence of miracles because otherwise you have to make the assumption that the Biblical authors were deliberately lying.
No you don't. You just stop assuming that the gospel authors were somehow protected from the exaggerations, errors, third-hand reporting and so on common in the era.

>It doesn't really make sense.

The great Doctor of the Church St. Augustine of Hippo spent over 30 years working on his treatise De Trinitate [about the Holy Trinity], endeavoring to conceive an intelligible explanation for the mystery of the Trinity.

St Augustine with the boy on the beach

Augustine meets a boy on the beach
He was walking by the seashore one day contemplating and trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity when he saw a small boy running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The boy was using a sea shell to carry the water from the ocean and place it into a small hole in the sand.

The Bishop of Hippo approached him and asked, “My boy, what are doing?”

“I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole,” the boy replied with a sweet smile.

“But that is impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all that water” said Augustine.

The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the Saint, and replied, “It is no more impossible than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence.”

The Saint was absorbed by such a keen response from that child, and turned his eyes from him for a short while. When he glanced down to ask him something else, the boy had vanished.

- traditioninaction.org/religious/h065rp.Shell.html

The apostle Paul wrote the epistles and was eyewitness to the things he reported. You have to assume he's a liar in order to discount his testimony.

Literal heresy that holds the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to be parts of God rather than God itself.

tldr a square circle exists its just that we aren't intelligent enough to understand it.

He very explicitly was not an eyewitness to the life and miracles of Jesus.

You realize that assuming people are lying is much less complex than assuming an unknown undetectable power is violating the supposed laws of nature?

To simply say miracles are simpler and therefore inline with Occam's razor would be a gross misrepresentation of the principle.

>And I do believe that other faiths are capable or producing supernatural signs through demonic powers.

I am glad we have you to distiquish between demonic miracles and divine.

"You will know them by there fruits"

By which the church means any miricle that appears to validate them is probably divine where as those that caste doubt are false.

That certainly doesn't sound like confirmation bias, certainly not.

It's a Gnostic meme. Jesus was always God.

Do you have any views on the other questions in my post?

>any other authors on the subject
St. Paul, St. John Chrysostom.

>who to avoid?
Gnostics, Jews, Arians, Muslims, Nestorians, Hussites, Protestants, Cathars, Anglicans, heretics of all kinds.

Even if you dont agree with them, the mark of an intelligent and analytical mind is that it can entertain thoughts they dont necessarily agree with

This kind of shitposting is usually done from a YEC Protestant perspective. ARE the Cathodox really getting in on it to?

The Trinity is the way to explain the presence of three entities in Scripture that all claim to be God. There is the Creator God, the Heavenly Father; there is Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Son of God; there is the Spirit of God, the Heavenly Dove. They're all alluded to as being God, but they're all also considered distinct entities. The Scripture seems to contradict itself, but Scripture must be true because it's divinely revealed.

Thus the Trinity came to light. Understanding the existence of the Trinity is one of the great achievements of theology, because it's a prime example of using Reason to clarify an article of Faith.

I was asking more about modern sources that deals with the early church and the bible on the whole rather than just a source from those times.

Catholic and Orthodox are ususally more accepting of academic sources than protestants but if you step on their doctrines even a little, and they will start attacking academia with all the fury of a young earth creationist

>The Scripture seems to contradict itself, but Scripture must be true because it's divinely revealed
>must be true because it's divinely revealed
there's the problem in your logic

Well you could also assume that, in general, the world has a lot of weird shit in it and that sort of thing happens fairly regularly.

It even happens fairly regularly in the modern day, it's just generally dismissed when it's reported.

Because anecdotes about unconfirmed phenomena dont carry a lot of weight. When we consider how prone humans are to group think, manipulation and hallucination (the last one far far more common than most people assume), we have to be very careful about such accounts in any field, not just on religious issues

>It even happens fairly regularly in the modern day, it's just generally dismissed when it's reported.
If you could provide consistent evidence of "weird shit" happening, you'd be the recipient of a Nobel Prize. Most cases of weird shit are easily debunked.

And even contrary to that, we have evidence of how even eye-witness is extremely unreliable, how stories morph as they are retold, etc (how King Arthur went from being non-existent to a warlord fighting the Anlgo-Saxons to the greatest king of "England.")

Peter was.

biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1 Peter 1

I realize assuming creation has a Creator is the simplest explanation for existence.

Not really. There exist certain mechanisms that allow for what you call "creation" to exist, but the mechanisms required for what you call the "creator" to exist are way beyond that. Simplifying the actual physical involved using the words creation and creator doesn't actually change the fundamental reality.

Mechanisms require a Mechanic.

do you wish to argue by logic or by english language conventions?

Assuming Paul to be a liar is a smaller assumption than assuming that the laws of physics just suddenly stopped applying.

OP, assuming that this thread isn't bait, you're never going to get anything but a shitstorm from trying to discuss Ehrman here. It's basically a subject that's off-limit at this point, because there are too many people here looking to discuss Jesus from a non-academic standpoint.

>all the triggered Christcucks ITT

By the Logic of the language.

Not at all. Again, you are confusing language with the actual underlying physics and how we name them.

Not him, but you're playing word games to dance around the issue. Reality doesn't need a creator, we can see complex phenomena occurring all around us without conscious input from any force. Quantum phenomena are especially relevant here, as they demonstrate that there are indeed processes occurring that are without cause: our universe coming into being uncaused is entirely possible, and renders a simpler explanation than it coming into being with a creator.

All languages (including physics) are animated by the same Spirit.

The universe has an age and therefore at one point there was nothing. Nothing produces nothing ergo there must have been Someone not nothing.

>Nothing produces nothing
Virtual particles come into existence from vacuum ("nothing", or at least the closest thing actually possible) fairly regularly, and if they do so at the event horizon of a black hole they produce Hawking Radiation ("something").

Actually, matter in the universe has a definite age, the background forces and energy of the universe have always been present. But you missed the point there: things have been demonstrated to occur uncaused, therefore the creation of an uncaused universe does not defy logical sense.

Proving that there is no nothing ergo there is a Someone.

Once there were no causes at all, then He spoke.

>no nothing ergo there is a Someone.
This isn't even close to an actual argument.

Someone must have made something for there to be no nothing.

>It's basically a subject that's off-limit at this point, because there are too many people here looking to discuss Jesus from a non-academic standpoint.

Do you know a place where i could go to get information regarding him and other Early Church Scholars? I figured Erhman despite his click bait titles might be a good source given he was chosen to translate the apostolic fathers for the loeb library.

Honestly I expected some shit posting but I didnt think it would get off topic.

Sorry, you just showed me your hand. I'm done here. Have a good night.

We got trolled.

You seem to have overlooked part of >the background forces and energy of the universe have always been present.

No, it could easily mean that "nothing" is a hypothetical construct that does not have any actual physical meaning. For example, we could hold onto the concept of a square circle and believe in it very strongly, but the closest actual equivalent is a hexagon. In this sense, philosophical "nothing" may simply be an utterance without reference to reality, and a different definition of "nothing" is actually required in order to refer to something in reality.

His hand.

God bless you.

Those forces (λόγοι) are a language therefore there is a Speaker.

We both agree that there is no nothing therefore Someone caused causality.

>Those forces (λόγοι) are a language therefore there is a Speaker.
What did he mean by this?

>The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork;

So specifically the warrior god Yahweh of Hosts combined with charateristics of Ba'al Hadad and El created the universe?

Really makes you think.

אֱלֹהִים

You do realize elohim is plural, right?

God is Triune.

let me correct myself: the warrior god Yahweh of hosts combined with charateristics of Ba'al Hadad and El, and is made up of three persons, created the universe.

I don't accept that your creation needs a creator argument but suppose I did. how do you get from "something or someone created the universe" to specifically the deity worshiped by ancient Jews and later elaborated on theologically by Christians created the universe?

>Is he a good source of information?

No.

>Does anyone have any experience with this author

He used to work on textual criticism but then realized he could write pop books filled with total bs that people want to hear and they will sell like hot cakes to fedoras/muslims who will hold them as gospel.

...

Seek and ye shall find.

Goodnight and God bless you.

so you don't have in argument

Tu quoque

Oh wait christcucks don't care about the truth

youtube.com/watch?v=ftHecLxquCg
youtube.com/watch?v=wRJUk4TvehQ

>He used to work on textual criticism

Are his older works any good ?

>Ehrman triggers christcucks so much they get out of their church safe spaces and produce garbage 'responses' like these

I like this Ehrman guy

Legitimately heretical.

>garbage 'responses'

How is it garbage? They provided an argument, you didn't.

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>yes, there are massive differences between the text we declared to be infallible and immutable
>but they're irrelevant because we say so

Yeah, great 'argument' you got there. I don't even need to respond to garbage like this. Now fuck off to /pol/ and go be christriggered there

Thanks,

Reality requires a realtor.

Thank you for that recommendation aside from the OP the following is easily available to me, is it worth the time or should I hold off until that one you posted

>>yes, there are massive differences between the text we declared to be infallible and immutable
>strawmanning

Anyone can type up a bible and fuck it up however much they want. That proves nothing. Christianity never said each bible is immutable.

Okay, now what if instead of having a bunch of "thou shalt not commit adultery" texts and one famous "thou shalt commit adultery" version, it was the other way around?

>what if it was ancient aliens

Anyone can make wild conjectures.

Answer the question.

>massive differences
>but they're irrelevant because we say so

They're irrelevant because the differences are scattered over the ~whole~ bible. It's not like one line has thousands of variants, each one of them different. It like every couple of pages has a line with a variate. And most of them are word order and spelling mistakes. And word order and spellin misteaks make up most of them. Others are late that pop up without precedent. Only a few really matter but they are backed up other parts the bible so nothing is lost by the uncertainty.

youtube.com/watch?v=6lEmch2OAhs

>massive differences
>but they're irrelevant because we say so

They're irrelevant because the differences are scattered over the ~whole~ bible. It's not like one line has thousands of variants, each one of them different. It like every couple of pages has a line with a variate. And most of them are word order and spelling mistakes. And word order and spellin misteaks make up most of them. Others are late that pop up without precedent. Only a few really matter but they are backed up other parts the bible so nothing is lost by the uncertainty.

If you want a more fleshed out argument see:
youtube.com/watch?v=6lEmch2OAhs

One of the examples already brought up in this thread involves an "irrelevant" difference of Jesus vs The LORD. This difference is considered irrelevant, because obviously both terms refer to the same figure, because Jesus is The LORD, and substitution of two synonyms doesn't really matter. But the problem is that this irrelevancy only works if you accept the idea that Jesus and The LORD are synonyms, which was not uncontroversial during the early life of the New Testament. In fact, we would expect an edit like this to occur very specifically in the context of someone trying to reinforce the idea that both terms were synonyms in order to establish the divinity of Jesus, which was a later development.

From the perspective of someone who accepts the dogma that motivated the variations, of course they are irrelevant, but to someone trying to figure out what was written before the edits they are actually very telling.

There are many other places in the bible that say Jesus is The LORD.

>In fact, we would expect an edit like this to occur very specifically in the context of someone trying to reinforce the idea that both terms were synonyms in order to establish the divinity of Jesus

Actually no, because for that to work you need it to say "Jesus, who is The LORD". Changing Jesus to The LORD or vice versa doesn't reinforce anything if the reader does not know this was done. Also in early bible manuscripts, it was common for references to God to be abbreviated to 2 characters with an over line (Nomina sacra). So this change would have been easy to happen by writing the wrong abbreviation (Lord = ΚΣ, Jesus=ΙΣ).

>establish the divinity of Jesus, which was a later development

Our earliest manuscripts refer to Jesus as the LORD, it is not a "later development" in any stretch.

>Ehrmans thoughts are pretty close to what the current consensus is among Historians.

Das rite ignorantboi we wuz THE CONSENSUS

>About the only people who disagree are conservative Christians.

Das rite ignorantboi anyone who disagry with us is a nazi !!!!

t. atheicuck

He is shit

Anyway if you want to read serious authors read Albright, Keller, and so on

>You have to assume he's a liar
Or you can assume he was a mentally ill superstitious ancient. Wasn't he prone to "ecstatic visions"?

>Is he a good source of information?

He's on par with Dan Brown.

Better call him a brainlet next time, my Æutistic friend :^)

But from where I sit, it seems that Bart’s black and white mentality as a fundamentalist has hardly been affected as he slogged through the years and trials of life and learning, even when he came out on the other side of the theological spectrum. He still sees things without sufficient nuancing, he overstates his case, and he is entrenched in the security that his own views are right. Bart Ehrman is one of the most brilliant and creative textual critics I’ve ever known, and yet his biases are so strong that, at times, he cannot even acknowledge them.

--Daniel B. Wallace

Yup. Christians disagree with heretics.

Assuming?

John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

We're not assuming anything.

Read Metzger's editions prior to when he was fooled into letting Ehrman put his name on it.

Yes, and people in reality care about the reasons why someone disagrees with someone

Not so much, really.

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Geniuses lacking spiritual discernment have no understanding of the word of God.

>Not so much, really.

You don't, but that's because you're an Æutist

Secular Bart Ehrman agrees with secular liberal christian scholars and historians because they all lack spiritual discernment.

See how you don't care about that?

>the power of the holy spirit

>when people disagree with my Æutistic views, they automatically become secular liberals who lack spiritual discernment

Now, Ælian, can you please fuck off from Veeky Forums forever? No one likes you and no one takes your Æutistic version of Christianity seriously. Take on your trip again so I can filter you and your christfaggotry.

Yup. The power to bring the dead to life, to bring life everlasting, and to transform the lives of sinners into the lives of saints.