Lots of Bart Ehrman to hear online
Monday, March 09, 2009
Almost two years ago Professor Bart Ehrman appeared on the Daily Show to promote his new book at the time about how the Bible has been altered over time by scribes as it was copied over and over again (lest you forget, at the time the only way to copy a book was to write out the whole thing):
Great interview! I thought, and then forgot all about looking for more interviews by Prof. Ehrman online. It turns out though that there's quite an extensive list of interviews on his site here, some of them over an hour in length (my favourite length for an interview of this nature when there's so much to talk about). It's always been my opinion that churches should focus a bit more on giving the congregation a basic knowledge of Greek, considering that this is the language the New Testament is written in. Of course not everybody is a linguist and there should be no linguistic barrier to belonging to a religion, but a basic knowledge is definitely doable. By this I mean being able to read the alphabet and a bit of discussion every once in a while on what certain Greek words mean, and this is important because the word hell in the NT is usually either Hades or Gehenna, and Hades is a dark and gloomy place where the English word hell is (now) thought of being exactly the opposite. English also has enough loanwords from Greek that knowing how to read the alphabet would be of some help even without knowing anything about the language.
In addition to that, all Bibles (Old and New Testament) should have the original language parallel to translations in other languages to remind people of their origin.
Curious about the original Greek of a certain passage and don't know how to check? Why, Greekbible.com of course.
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