Phony Scholarship - Was the New Testament Forged?

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.

In this case, Mr. Ehrman takes aim at the apostle Paul:

The scholar also points to a famous passage in 1 Corinthians in which Paul is recorded as saying that women should be “silent” in churches and that “if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home.”

Only three chapters earlier, in the same book, Paul is urging women who pray and prophesy in church to cover their heads with veils, Ehrman says: “If they were allowed to speak in chapter 11, how could they be told not to speak in chapter 14?”

Answer: Because Mr. Erhman has no idea what he’s talking about. Instead of letting the text speak for itself, he wants to see errors and problems where none exist. Since we wrote a book on 1 Corinthians, we’ll simply quote “The Troubled Church” on this passage:

Remember the focus of this section — order in the church service. This verse results from a cultural issue existing in that day as women sat on one side, while men sat on the other.

During the service women asked questions by shouting across the room to their husbands. Paul reminds them of proper order; if a lady had a question, don’t interrupt the service, wait until they arrived home. In the context of previous verses, all must be in order and not confusion — it’s not a prohibition of women speaking in church as Paul already spoke of women praying and prophesying in chapter 11. Those seeking to apply this verse to a global ban haven’t done their homework.
“The Troubled Church”, page 153–154 ISBN 978-0-9831117-0-2

We’ve noted Mr. Erhman’s pseudo-scholarship before, as once again he reveals a total and complete lack of understanding of the text — a level so complete even atheists reject his arguments, a group which certainly wants any reason to doubt the Bible as it was written, yet they honestly note Ehrman’s total lack of actual scholarship, along with his contradictions and inconsistencies.

Mr. Ehrman provides yet another warning — just because someone might have a PhD behind their name, calling themselves a renowned scholar, doesn’t mean you should lend any more credence to their theories than someone claiming the moon is made of cheese.

Next time we’ll discuss more credible ideas, like the moon landing hoax … or the Easter bunny.

Filed Under: Doctrine

Recommended Citation:
Yeager, Darrin "Phony Scholarship - Was the New Testament Forged?" (2024-05-19 17:20),
https://www.dyeager.org/post/phony-scholarship-was-new-testament-forged.html
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