Bart Ehrman: "It's almost a peculiarly American version of Christianity that says that to be a Christian you have to believe in the Bible"
Saturday, April 04, 2009
This is what every single New Testament should look like. Now there's no more forgetting that the original was written in Greek.Bart Ehrman of Misquoting Jesus (which I just finished reading) has an interview in Salon today with a part that I consider to be very important about Biblical literalism:
You say you don't believe that pursuing this kind of scholarship impacts one's belief. But I have difficulty understanding that. Once you begin to view the Bible as being humanly constructed, and study the history of how the biblical canon was constructed, it requires a mental schizophrenia to view the contingent, all-too-human doctrine that emerged from this process as something that contains the ultimate truth about the nature of reality. How do you reconcile those two ways of looking at the world?
Well, yeah, I can see how it would seem like schizophrenia. I think, though, the situation is this. People who are evangelical Christians, who think the Bible is the only source for truth and doctrine, have real problems with accepting that there can be discrepancies and contradictions and different points of view. But there are a lot of Christians who simply don't have that view of the Bible. If the Bible is not the be-all and end-all for somebody's faith, then the historical problems in the Bible don't really touch their faith.
It's almost a peculiarly American version of Christianity that says that to be a Christian you have to believe in the Bible. It's actually a modern invention, located in America and wherever American missionaries have gone out. But historically, Christianity has never been about belief in the Bible. So that historical problems don't shake up people who have a historically grounded understanding of the Bible.
It's worth remembering that during the early history of Christianity there wasn't even a New Testament, and Christians at the time were involved in writing their own content as opposed to the type you usually see today where the books that make up the Bible have by and large been decides and no changes are made unless new documents emerge that bring about changes to a translation.
I'm of the opinion that churches should be more involved in teaching members (and themselves) a few basics of the Greek language (such as being able to read the alphabet, perhaps some other easy things like identifying plurals, how to recognize words that have been borrowed into English etc.) in order to avoid the impression that the New Testament just somehow came into existence one day, and in English no less. I also think that Bibles should always have the original text used next to the translation, not only to assist those that are able to read the original language to a certain extent, but also to really drive the point home that this is a translated work. A lot of misunderstandings could quite easily be avoided in this way.
8 comments:
"A mental schizophrenia". All schizophrenia, if it exists, is mental! Probably he means "split-minded" or "contradictory". Schizophrenia is a very vague diagnosis, anyway.
On a lighter note, I'd like to see a gospel in transliterated Aramaic. With Hebrew. But it seems it's not 100% that Jesus spoke Aramaic - the Amaraic (!) words in the gospels are slightly wrong.
I don't see why you bother with this bigoted twaddle. You say, "This is how the NT should look." Nonsense: the Greek you show has word divisions and accents; the original texts didn't, as is mentioned in the Shepherd of Hermas. The idea of teaching most people (the vast majority of whom have NO linguistic knowledge or ability) basic Greek is a recipe for disaster. That's where people like Ehrman come from who know just enough to spout idiocy.
He says that "literalism" (which he never really defines with reference to a real group, as distinct from his own imaginary nemesis) is "almost a peculiarly American" phenomenon. Rubbish. Had he bothered reading early Christian writers, he would know that they did often take a literalist view; it depended on the precise text they were exegeting. They didn't take the psalms literally, for example, but Augustine defended the literalism of Genesis pretty strongly.
As to the comment about transliterated Aramaic--Jesus' quotes can be viewed as either Hebraized Aramaic or Aramaicized Hebrew. Flip a coin. (The transliteration into Greek doesn't help resolve the issue.)
Nah, take Matthew 5:22 for example with the mention of Hell (Gr. Gehenna), and other passages where it mentions Hades, usually both translated as Hell in English. These are two words that even modern English people can understand if they could only read the letters, and Greek letters are already used in math so it's not that much of a demand. That's what I mean by "basic Greek" (not verb conjugation and all the rest).
As for the accents, the originals weren't even written with spaces in between the words so of course there are going to be a few modifications, just as how Middle English pieces aren't written with that long f-looking thing that used to be used for s, even though the rest of the document may remain unchanged.
I take it you know that Shakespeare's spelling has been corrected? "the dogges of warre" etc.
Hey man, how come you don't comment on the NK missile launch? It was the top TV story in Brit-land all day yesterday. Scary or what!
Here in S. Korea the reaction to anything N. Korea does is pretty much just "meh". It was on the news a lot yesterday but most people didn't really give it any thought. For most of us North Korea is just annoying, as thanks to them it's impossible to take the train or car north and into cool places like China, Russia and Mongolia. Always has to be a plane or a boat.
Nah, take Matthew 5:22 for example with the mention of Hell (Gr. Gehenna), and other passages where it mentions Hades, usually both translated as Hell in English. These are two words that even modern English people can understand if they could only read the letters, and Greek letters are already used in math so it's not that much of a demand. That's what I mean by "basic Greek" (not verb conjugation and all the rest).
As for the accents, the originals weren't even written with spaces in between the words so of course there are going to be a few modifications, just as how Middle English pieces aren't written with that long f-looking thing that used to be used for s, even though the rest of the document may remain unchanged.
I take it you know that Shakespeare's spelling has been corrected? "the dogges of warre" etc.
Hey man, how come you don't comment on the NK missile launch? It was the top TV story in Brit-land all day yesterday. Scary or what!
"A mental schizophrenia". All schizophrenia, if it exists, is mental! Probably he means "split-minded" or "contradictory". Schizophrenia is a very vague diagnosis, anyway.
On a lighter note, I'd like to see a gospel in transliterated Aramaic. With Hebrew. But it seems it's not 100% that Jesus spoke Aramaic - the Amaraic (!) words in the gospels are slightly wrong.
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