I've listened to a series of lectures by Prof. Bart Ehrman from the teaching company. Before I started listening to his tapes I read some of his books. I'd heard about his writings in the notes of some FARMS papers. His name popped up enough that I got (as is I actually bought them) a couple of his books and read them. The books that I've read have been "Lost Christianities", "Misquoting Jesus" and "The Text of the New Testament." On the last book he was the co-author of with Bruce Metzger and it was the 4th version of the text. The book is considered the introductory text of New Testament textual criticism and I was surprised to see that Prof. Ehrman was the co-author because it basically means that Prof. Metzger was passing the torch to Prof. Ehrman. Prof. Metzger wrote the first three versions himself.
The three lectures sets that I've recently listened to by Prof. Ehrman are "The New Testament", "The Apostolic Fathers" and "Lost Christianities," but the first lecture series that I listened to was "The Historical Jesus."
I actually think that Prof. Ehrman is pretty interesting as a lecturer and writer. He must be because he's written a ton of books and does a bunch of lecture series and he's got some of my money.
The first lecture set that I listened to by Prof. Ehrman was called "The Historical Jesus." I've read a lot about this topic and nothing that Prof. Ehrman said in the series really shocked or surprised me. He started out with the standard description of Apollonius of Tayana. For anyone who doesn't know about this guy his story sounds exactly like Jesus, except he's not the Son of God so no one hears of him except trivia experts and people trying to destroy Christianity.
One thing that I found interesting was his description of how a historian handles miracles. He was apologetic and said that he couldn't say that miracles didn't happen but that as a historian he could only deal with probabilities and since most people don't walk on water the way to bet is that a story of someone walking on water probably didn't happen. He then asks how the listener deals with miraculous stories of other religious leaders. I have to admit that made me think.
All of Prof. Ehrman's books and lectures are very interesting but you have to listen to them with the understanding that he's talking to you as a lapsed Evangelical Christian. I obviously don't know his complete history but he does give a little background in the introduction to "Misquoting Jesus" and it sounds like he went into higher learning as a believing Evangelical Christian and came out as an agnostic New Testament Scholar. When talking about the teachings of Paul he flat out states that Paul teaches that we're saved by grace alone. Now I understand this being said by a Born Again Fundamentalist Christian, but it surprised me coming from a scholar. I can think of a number of other interpretations of the teachings of Paul that I've heard from other scholars that Prof. Erhman doesn't even hint that may be there.
He takes the scholarly idea that Christianity was made up – at least that's what it always sounds like to me when I hear it. Here's what he describes. Jesus had a few followers who spread out after he died and they started talking about the wonderful things that Jesus did. Over time the stories that were told about Jesus were slowly changed and modified and then finally written down. Prof. Ehrman actually gives as an example the party game of "Telephone" where one person at the end of a line of people tells a person a sentence and then each person whispers the same sentence to the next person and then at the end of the line the last person repeats the sentence and everyone laughs at how funny the differences are. That basically is how the Gospels came about. Cool huh?
Another thing that Prof. Ehrman talks a lot about is apocalypsism. I had actually never heard of acpcalypsim before I listened to Prof. Ehrman which kind of surprised me. I've heard of apocalyptic literature before and I know that there are people who consider the apocalypse the end of the world because of Revelation. Here's how it works. The last book in the Bible is called Revelation and the reason it's called Revelation is because that is the English translation of the Greek word Apocalypse. Francis Ford Coppola make a famous Vietnam War movie called "Apocalypse Now" based upon a Joseph Conrad novel called "The Heart of Darkness" and suddenly everyone now knows that apocalypse means the end of the world. Well apparently it does mean that now. I'd always thought that it just meant a piece of literature which describes a persons tour of heaven (and sometimes hell) with an angelic being accompanying the tourist giving explanations of what is being seen. However, after listening to Prof. Ehrman, and some other series, I guess that apocalypsim is a term which means you believe the end of time is next week. So according to Prof. Ehrman Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist who was an apocalypsist (Are you surprised that Jesus was a disciple of John? I was, but apparently the superior baptizes the inferior according to Prof. Ehrman's understanding of early Christian customs.) which means Jesus was and Paul who was a follower of Jesus is an apocalypsist. Prof. Ehrman seems to find joy in doing things like saying "An early 1st century apocalyptic prophet said..." then he pretty much quotes Matt 24 then he gleefully tells us that it is a prophecy of Jesus with the obvious implication that he's a false prophet.
Despite all these things I have learned some insights from Prof. Ehrman. For example he points out in Romans that Paul talks about the "Law" on two levels. One level was the "Law" that seemed to apply to Jewishness, and another level was the "law" of an ethical level. I thought that was a pretty good way to describe it because I've always been amazed at the commandment lists that Paul lays out that he expects Christians to live by. However, after pointing all this out he never addresses the implications again.
I found one other amazing description given by Prof. Erhman. There was a movement in early Christianity called gnosticism of which one of the primary claims was that there was a secret gnosis, or knowledge, which is what the Greek word gnosis means. Prof. Erhman goes through a convoluted explanation that gnosticism arose from Jewish apcalyptism that arose in the 3rd or 2nd Century BC. I found it laughable, but it was an excellent demonstration of how scholars ignore Acts 1:3-4 which is where it says that Jesus spent 40 teaching all things about the Kingdom of God. What and where is that teaching? Nibley says this is the reason that gnosticism rose because there was the tradition about that teaching. Nibley's not the only person that I've read mention this, Margart Barker does as well, and others. Not Prof. Ehrman.
I found the tapes OK especially if you know what your going to be getting before starting with them.
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