Discussion of the historical-critical method and its various methodologies and their application to Bible study and formation of doctrine.
I’m continuing my chapter by chapter response to Misquoting Jesus with a discussion of chapter 2, “The Copyists of the Early Christian Writers.” I continue to see this book as a basic introduction to New Testament Criticism (in agreement with Elgin Husbheck, Jr.), though the hype connected with it tries to make it sound more…
I found the second chapter of Misquoting Jesus generally very helpful. I can summarize my response to the chapter by saying that there is nothing very radical about its contents, and that it contains material everyone should consider. Ehrman has to go light on some things simply because of the size of the topic as…
I wanted to follow up briefly on my first post on Misquoting Jesus to provide a quotation and make a couple more comments on inspiration. The quotation comes from page 13: It is a radical shift from reading the Bible as an inerrant blueprint for our faith, life, and future to seeing it as a…
I have finally started reading Misquoting Jesus, by Bart Ehrman. It came in about a week ago via interlibrary loan, and I have now gotten through the introduction and the first chapter. Unlike my response to The God Delusion, I’m not going to post all sections at once, but rather I’ll just post my reactions…
The major complaint that I have about the treatment of the Bible in The God Delusion is that it is somewhat superficial. Particularly in the section on the Old Testament, Dawkins merely points out problems that we should recognize as real with scriptures. (For another approach see Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?.) I…
Hoppin, Ruth. Priscilla’s Letter. Fort Bragg, CA: Lost Coast Press, 1999. ISBN: 1-882897-50-1 In general when I write something I call a “review” I might better call it a set of notes. I don’t think my opinion about a book, positive or negative, is of much value in and of itself. But if I can…
Rev. Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council issued a statement attacking the forthcoming documentary on the grave of Jesus and his family. It was titled TV Special on Jesus’ Grave — a Hoax?. Though I have already commented on what I see is a completely unscientific and unscholarly hype, this is not terribly surprising…
A documentary to be shown on the Discovery Channel purports to have discovered the tomb and the ossuary of Jesus (CNN story here). I’m amazed that something like this would be called a “documentary” since there is next to no possibility of sufficient evidence for such a claim. The sad thing is that archeological claims,…
I’ve written a number of posts on the historical-critical method previously on this blog (category, listing 28 posts). It is one of the areas on which I can properly be described as unabashedly liberal. I fully embraced the critical approach to Bible study as the starting point, and as the best approach to ascertaining the…
In the third part of his interview series, Adrian Warnock makes the following comment in asking a question of Dr. Wayne Grudem: I was impressed by your compassion and fairness in the introduction of your new book expressed towards your egalitarian colleagues who you mention by name. At a later point, talking about Dr. Gordon…
