Thinking to Believe

Bart Ehrman recently released his latest salvo attacking the Bible.  This time he is not just trying to undermine people’s confidence that what we read today is what the authors wrote back then.  Instead, he’s trying to undermine people’s confidence that the people we think wrote the NT documents actually wrote them.  In his view, fraudulent authors successfully deceived the NT church by forging documents in the name of ecclesiastical leaders.

Dr. Ben Witherington is currently doing a chapter-by-chapter review of the book.  He has already released four installments:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Witherington is well-qualified to interact with Ehrman’s work.  I would highly recommend that you read his review, and read his future installments.

Perhaps some of you have heard about the discovery of ~70 lead codices that many involved with its promotion have claimed date to the 1st century, and could reveal interesting information about Jesus.  Some were even saying this find was more important than the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Based on the initial reports and media fluff (claims without any substance to back them up), I was immediately skeptical that these lead codices had anything to do with Christianity or would shed any light on the Christian faith, and thus chose not to post anything on the topic until more information came to light.  Well, it appears that I should have been even more skeptical than I was.  There is good reason to think these lead codices are forgeries.

Peter Thonemann of Wadham College in Oxford, England, was contacted prior to the press release of the discovery by one of the promoters of the find, David Elkington to help determine the meaning of some Greek text on a few of the codices.  Thonemann responded with the following conclusion:

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