Recently in Scholarship Category

Rachel Held Evans reviews “The Bible Made Impossible”, what appears to be a fairly liberal book (stay-tuned for the stunning—if honest—goal of the author).

Mr. Bart Ehrman (who calls himself a “renowned Bible scholar”) returns with a new book, this time claiming most of the New Testament was forged. We won’t analyze much of his “scholarship” because similarly to the Deutero-Isaiah Hypothesis, it only takes a few minutes to discover the “scholarship” has no basis in sound logic and analysis.

An MSNBC host (Lawrence O’Donnell) caused a recent stir when he proclaimed:

“The Book of Revelation” is a work of fiction describing how a truly vicious God would bring about the end of the world. No half-smart religious person actually believes “The Book of Revelation.”

Christians are warned in the Bible to do their own homework and check things out for themselves. Be a Berean, as in Acts 17. Many dangers exist for those failing to perform their own research, but one of the more common arises as the “argument from authority” error, frequently used in advertising as you see a doctor promoting a car or something else (Remember the Camel ads? “What cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?” More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette). Obviously, a doctor doesn’t necessarily have any more expertise in automotive matters than anyone else. Advertising sometimes seeks to make a subtle connection between the two, “trust me, I’m a doctor”.

For some reason, atheists aren’t happy unless they convert religious people to their dogma. Why? I don’t know, but they frequently display intolerance, expressing a deep conviction to win converts to the religion of atheism. Here’s a statement which isn’t very remarkable, except for the revelation of the methods atheists should use to win converts.

Not everyone with the title “pastor” behind their name is trustworthy. That should be obvious, but many fall victim to the “appeal to authority” problem, where someone appearing as an authority has their beliefs accepted without challenge.

The Manhattan Declaration continues to make people nervous. As we mentioned before in our discussion should a Christian sign the Manhattan Declaration, it’s not so much if you sign or not, but your attitude towards the concepts it contains. Yet some still don’t like the principles and choose to divide over it — even using faulty analysis in the process.

Bible translations come and go; we generally don’t proclaim all modern translations evil as it’s not inherently bad to have a Bible in modern English, but you must be careful — some of these groups claim they’re only updating English and grammar, but after a careful review you find they don’t just update English, but actually change doctrines to fit their liberal theology — all under the guise of “updating” the venerable KJV.

Richard Dawkins makes absurd claims which don’t withstand even a casual glance, but at least provide some entertainment value — get the popcorn, this could surpass the best summer movie. You’ll watch as Dawkins equates scientific inquiry with Holocaust deniers. The suspense! The thrill! The betrayal! See Mr. Dawkins replace the scientific method by his own vision of truth by fiat! It’s the greatest show on earth! Get your tickets now for the best comedy of the year! Oh the humanity!

We’ve mentioned previously a book by a “scholar” utterly lacking basic logical and Biblical analysis as a warning not to depend on Phd’s and other accolades to give credibility to some theory. Another book by that “renowned Bible scholar” has come under fire … by an atheist desperately trying to show no God exists, yet we’ll agree with the atheist the “renowned Bible scholar” uses bogus “scholarship”, in spite of their title.

Occasionally we stumble across (or someone recommends) a scholar touted as the ultimate answer to rebut Christianity and promote (presumably) atheism, or at the least the absurdity of Christianity. One such person is Bart Ehrman, professor of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. One of his books discusses the problem of why suffering exists, but let the review on his web site speak for itself:

Many issues divide the Body of Christ today. Baptism, communion, pre-tribulation rapture verses post-tribulation and more all cause division in the Church as satan loves to divide and conquer; it’s sad we fight among ourselves instead of the real enemy.

One of satan’s strategies from early in Genesis becomes casting doubt on God’s word. Recall in the garden satan’s words “Has God really said?” confusing Eve and causing her to sin. Satan realizes casting doubt on what God actually says can be a winning strategy for him — what could cause more confusion than casting doubt the Bible in your lap isn’t the exact Word of God?

If you’ve never heard of the Deutero-Isaiah hypothesis, it’s the modern belief Isaiah didn’t write the book bearing his name — actually multiple authors wrote parts and those anonymous authors became compiled much later into one book called Isaiah. Most commonly, the theory states two authors wrote the book (less commonly, three authors) as web sites about the theory frequently state:

In spite of the lack of concrete evidence that any part of Isaiah ever existed without any other part as far back as the 200’s BC, the dogma of most scholarship today is that two or more individuals authored Isaiah. This perspective arose, most notably in the deistic[1] climate of 18th century Europe. J. C. Doederlein, one of the earliest to argue for a second author,[2] said explicitly that since Isaiah could not have forseen the fall of Jerusalem, the 70 year captivity, the return or Cyrus, Isaiah could not have written those chapters making such claims (e.g. chapters 40-66). Since this time, others have advanced arguments in support of dual or even multiple authorship.