Bart Ehrman

[themonkeyman]

Hi Folks,

 

I have been reading some of the books of Bart Ehrman 'Jesus Interrupted' and 'Misquoted' and I have to say he shows a version of the Bible that I never knew existed.

 

One intresting thing that I think can give alot of Christians encouragement is that Celsius who was a Pagan wrote a refutation on the scripts available to him at the time.

 

Although we don't have his works anymore reading what the 'Apologists' said we can understand his views.  For a start he picked at problems with the birth / baptism / death and resurection and even went as far to say that Scribes change the original texts like drunken men.

 

Is it true perhaps that the reason Christians have a 'Better' arguement today is because of the scribes in Ancient Times fabricating bullshit until their case was strong enough!.

 

If only we had Celsius works we could probably how much crap there was in the bible and how incosisetent it was.  It would also probably give us a good view of why the Jews had problems in this Jesus.

 

But again sadly his works are distroyed probably by Constantine when he was burning pagan churches.

[Blood]

The totalitarian destruction of all non-Christian temples only started under Theodosius in the late 300s. 

 

Celsus was good, but he didn't have a copy of the Bible. His polemics were just based on what he could infer from talking to people and observing. 

 

Far more substantial was Porphyry. He somehow was able to access the Bible and wrote a devastating critique of Christianity in 12 to 16 books. All copies of these were of course destroyed in the 400s. Some paraphrases survive in Christian refutation, but that's all. 

[themonkeyman]

It's sad that the works of these two great Philosophers had their works distroyed.

 

Bart Ehrman shows to us that as Christianity Evolved scripture was changed / edited and in some cases deleted in the face of Critique.  To me this shows that in the first 300 years with people like Celsus and Prophyry Christians were able to make the bible look more credible because those people damaged the original arguement.

 

Imagine if we had their full works we would see not only the Original bible but also would probably show that most of it was edited later as the Religion itself was probably a fad that gained traction under constantine.