Bart Ehrman - Christian who left the faith

I've listened to hours of Ehrman's content. Obviously, I do not think he is someone you should follow. He usually presents factual information, but it is the way he presents this information that entices people to leave Christ. He is also not shy about presenting his conjectures as factual information.

One of his big arguments was "We do not even have copies of the copies of the copies of the Bible [therefore, the Bible can't be trusted]" But when he was challenged on this, he was forced to admit that the Bible is the best attested work in antiquity. In other words, if you applied the amount of hyper skepticism that he applies to the Bible to any other ancient work, we could have no knowledge of any of that ancient history.

 
Tippy said:
I was reading some posts by this guy here:

https://ehrmanblog.org/explanations-for-why-i-left-the-faith/

It seems he has written some important books on the Bible but since left the faith.

Has anyone come across his works and have any thoughts on him or rebuttals to his arguments?

Thanks!
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Go ask TrainedLogosmotion for the answer to that question—but sadly, he has “fallen asleep” and is no longer with us.

I do have his book, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, but I’m too lazy to read it.

Here’s a screenshot of the first page:​
1759734872449.png
 
Tippy said:
I was reading some posts by this guy here:

https://ehrmanblog.org/explanations-for-why-i-left-the-faith/

It seems he has written some important books on the Bible but since left the faith.

Has anyone come across his works and have any thoughts on him or rebuttals to his arguments?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Never heard of him but skimmed through some stuff. He seems very much a materialist. He's going to approach everything in a deconstructive way. I always chuckle at people like him because many times the stuff he brings up is actually great to consider, it's just that his intent is to tear down.
 
Tippy said:
I was reading some posts by this guy here:

https://ehrmanblog.org/explanations-for-why-i-left-the-faith/

It seems he has written some important books on the Bible but since left the faith.

Has anyone come across his works and have any thoughts on him or rebuttals to his arguments?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Pay walled - could you paste the entire blog here?

I skimmed through some of his books before. The brief summary of his background that I can recall is that he was brought up as a nominal Christian in the Midwest (in the Episcopalian Church of I remember correctly) but became an Evangelical in his high school years due to the wave of evangelistic Christianity that swept through his area. He went to Wharton which is an evangelical university where he studied the Bible. He decided to pursue it further at Princeton Theological Seminary which is where he encountered a lot of the higher criticism stuff which led him to abandon Biblical inerrancy. He still remained a Christian though he was now a mainline Protestant liberal type of Christian - basically the sort you would find in a lot of Methodist and Presbyterian churches now which isn't surprising since his supervisor and biggest influence on his views on the Bible was Bruce Metzger who is a Presbyterian and Princeton is officially affiliated with the Presbyterian church.

What causes him to completely abandon the faith wasn't him no longer adhering to Biblical inerrancy but the problem of evil - basically the whole 'if God good why bad thing happen' stuff.
 
Wutang said:
Pay walled - could you paste the entire blog here?

I skimmed through some of his books before. The brief summary of his background that I can recall is that he was brought up as a nominal Christian in the Midwest (in the Episcopalian Church of I remember correctly) but became an Evangelical in his high school years due to the wave of evangelistic Christianity that swept through his area. He went to Wharton which is an evangelical university where he studied the Bible. He decided to pursue it further at Princeton Theological Seminary which is where he encountered a lot of the higher criticism stuff which led him to abandon Biblical inerrancy. He still remained a Christian though he was now a mainline Protestant liberal type of Christian - basically the sort you would find in a lot of Methodist and Presbyterian churches now which isn't surprising since his supervisor and biggest influence on his views on the Bible was Bruce Metzger who is a Presbyterian and Princeton is officially affiliated with the Presbyterian church.

What causes him to completely abandon the faith wasn't him no longer adhering to Biblical inerrancy but the problem of evil - basically the whole 'if God good why bad thing happen' stuff.
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This is the article that explains it more:

https://ehrmanblog.org/leaving-the-faith/
 
Honestly I only ever heard of him in the context of Christians citing him to prove the historicity of Jesus to nontheists since he's irreligious but acknowledges Jesus existed.
 
There's a channel on YouTube titled 'Testify' in which he dismantles a lot of Bart Ehrmans arguments. Sounds like what you're looking for. Bart seems like a smart guy, but I sniff a lot of bad faith in his takes. I'd post a link if I wasn't too stupid to figure out how to post a link from my phone. Cheers
 
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