In existographies, Bart D. Ehrman (1955-) is an American critical history New Testament scholar, author of some 30+ books in this field, noted for his 2005 focus on the fact that "no original copies of the Bible exist".
Religion | Beliefs
In c.1972, Ehrman, in high school, was a born-again Christian, he “accepted Christ as his lord and savior”, as he used to say, and in his late teens was committed evangelical Christian. He then went to seminary school, and was a pastor of a Baptist church for a year. Then, as he was getting his PhD in New Testament studies, at Princeton Theological Seminary, he began to lose his grip in his previously held belief that the New Testament was the “inerrant word of god”, as he starting finding “mistakes” in the Bible. [1] For years afterword, he was an open-minded “liberal Christian”, i.e. he still went to church, he still believed in god, but I didn’t believe that the Bible was the inspired word of god.
In 1998-1999, after reading multiple views, e.g. philosophical, theological, etc., on the "problem of suffering" in the world, supposedly controlled by a god, he became an agnostic. Ehrman. In 2014, was self-identifying as “both a humanist and an agnostic” and or, as he said during his 2014 FFRF "Emperor Has No Clothes" award speech, an “agnostic and atheist”, in the latter of which he digresses on terminology, as follows: [2]
“What I used to think, before I was an ‘agnostic’ [1998/1999], was that agnostics and atheists were two degrees of the same thing. When I first declared myself agnostic, I was amazed at how militant both agnostics and atheists can be about their terms [laughter] Every agnostic I met thought that ‘atheists’ were simply arrogant agnostics [laughter] and every atheist thought that ‘agnostic’ was simply a wimpy atheist [laughter]. Two degrees of the same thing. Where someone will admit they do know, the other will admit they don’t. But, I have come to think that they are not two different degrees of things, but that they are two different kinds of things. That agnosticism has to do with epistemology. That atheism has to do with belief.”
— Bart Ehrman (2014), FFRF “Emperor Has No Clothes” award speech, May 2-3 [2]
Correctly, evangelical Christian (1972-1970), liberal Christian (1978-1990s), agnostic (1998/1999), humanist-agnostic (2010), to agnostic-atheist (2014) are different "belief states" of the a deconversion process, wherein each is less epistemologically ignorant than the former, and the middle agnostic-themed terms are akin to mental transition state stage.
Quotes
The following are related quotes:
“My thesis can be stated simply: scribes occasionally altered the words of their sacred texts to make them more patently orthodox and to prevent their misuse by Christians who espoused aberrant views.”
— Bart Ehrman (1993), The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (Ѻ)
“It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but the reality is that we don't have the originals—so saying they were inspired doesn't help me much, unless I can reconstruct the originals. Moreover, the vast majority of Christians for the entire history of the church have not had access to the originals, making their inspiration something of a moot point. Not only do we not have the originals, we don't have the first copies of the originals. We don't even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, these copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”
— Bart Ehrman (2005), Misquoting Jesus (Ѻ)
“The Bible’s not some kind of inerrant revelation from god.”
— Bart Ehrman (2014), reflection on his graduate school days change of views [2]
References
1. Anon. (2009). “Finally Top Bible Scholar “Professor D. Ehrman” Leaves Christianity” (Ѻ), ImageOfLove, May 1.
2. Burdick, Scott. (2014). “Interview: Bart Ehrman’s Personal Beliefs” (Ѻ), Bart D. Ehrman, May 8.
Further reading
● Ehrman, Bart D. (2011). Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Harper Collins.
● Ehrman, Bart D. (2014). How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. HarperOne.
External links
● Bart D. Ehrman – Wikipedia.
● How Jesus Became God – BartDEhrman.com.
