If God is the least bit godly, you shouldn’t have any need for explaining anyway… it’s not like arguing with a traffic cop.

If what Ehrman and the other scholar’s say is true, then maybe we won’t have to.

But where Bart is mainstream among elite “biblical scholarship” in America I choose to remain the rebel.

Bart denies the historicity of John 5, yet all the witnesses in the latter part of John 5 to Jesus Christ are both powerful and compelling. I would hate to stand before God someday, trying to explain away one witness after another.

I will trust the witnesses, but in doing so, I forfeit my right to be scholar by academia in America.

Have you read some of Ehrman’s work elsewhere? If you never watched the video, what do you know of his “steady projection and reliance on ecclesiastical redactors”?

(Not that I disagree, actually to be honest, I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re trying to say here)

Todd said:
“And are you referring to the Dead Sea Scroll dates as 1st and 2nd century B.C. for some of the biblical scrolls?”

Right, well, I don’t know the dates, I just did a quick google on them and got the following…

From Wikipedia:

“According to carbon dating, textual analysis, and handwriting analysis the documents were written at various times between the middle of the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD. At least one document has a carbon date range of 21 BC–61 AD.”

I know, the Wikipedia isn’t to be trusted as far as I could throw it. My apologizes if those dates are way off.

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure how much of the New Testament is actually even in the Dead Sea Scrolls anyway.

As for your spiritual and physical witnesses (spiritual anyway) I’m impressed that you’re able to convince yourself you can rely on them. I, myself, can’t force myself to believe without stronger evidence, especially in the face of what appears to be contradictory evidence.

I do find that personally I must show more faith in Bart’s theories in textual criticism on John’s Gospel than the text itself. He won’t allow for much of Christ’s communication in John because it is too mature or complex in the theology. Go figure. In my opinion, Bart’s steady projection and reliance on ecclesiastical redactors is way over the top.

And are you referring to the Dead Sea Scroll dates as 1st and 2nd century B.C. for some of the biblical scrolls? If you are thinking A.D. only, I have never heard this among any of the DSS scholars.

I find it miraculous in how the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Masoretic text, and the Septuagint agree in fundamental content. I don’t think there is any other book for such accurate authentication in all antiquity.

And Jeff, if I was apart of the Jesus Seminar, I would probably believe your last sentence. But for me, there are too many witnesses (spiritual and physical) that point to the contrary.

How about John 3:1-5 (it’s the conversation where Nicodemus is learning that one needs to be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven). I found it kind of interesting that the the conversation had a double entendre in Greek that couldn’t have been used in conversation in Aramaic. It shows that someone (probably the scribes copying the story) added that conversation to the script.

I assume since you didn’t watch the video you aren’t interested, but if you change your mind, you can see this part at around the 1 hour 34 minute point.

As for your comparison of ancient texts, I’m no Masoretic Text, Septuagint, or Dead Sea Scrolls expert, but my quick perusal of Wikipedia indicates that the Masoretic Text came from between the 7th and 10th century, the Septuagint from the 4th, and the Dead Sea Scrolls between the middle of the 1st and 2nd century.

These dates strike me as being written far too long after the fact to be very accurate down to specific conversations. Even if the Dead Sea Scrolls were written within 100 years, the chances that the story maintained much of it’s integrity seems like a long shot.

Perhaps the writing in the New Testament shouldn’t be taken as literal conversations that actually happened.

I have a text that compares Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts. And I scratch my head over what are the major errors in variants?

See my blog for references and links to different translations that retain the discrepancy in the wording.