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:
Witherington is well-qualified to interact with Ehrman’s work. I would highly recommend that you read his review, and read his future installments.
Thinking to Believe 
April 8, 2011 at 5:37 am
I didn’t realize that Ehrman’s conclusion is controversial. I remember 10-20 years ago reading a scholar write that we don’t know who wrote the gospels, and the only thing we can say with certainty is that they weren’t written by the persons whose names are in their titles. Ehrman’s argument appears to be simply a restatement of the accepted academic view, controversial only to evangelical layfolk.
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April 8, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Arthur,
Ehrman isn’t talking about the Gospels. The Gospels are formally anonymous documents. While Ehrman doubts that the authors church tradition associated with them actually are the authors, in Forged he is not talking about anonymous books like the Gospels (or Hebrews). He is referring to books that make an internal claim to authorship, such as Ephesians or 2 Peter, and claiming that these were not written by the people they claim to have been written by.
In one sense this is not new. Such claims have been made for a couple hundred years. One of the things that Witherington points out that Ehrman fails to recognize is that the majority of NT scholars do not doubt that all of these books Ehrman appeals to are pseudopigraphal. Indeed, many of the reasons for thinking they were in the past have been shown to be flawed (statistical analysis of word usage, grammar, etc.).
As for the issue you raise, while this line is repeated often, there are good reasons for thinking that the authors traditionally associated with the Gospels are the actual authors (at worst, the traditional author stand behind the bulk of the material included in the gospel that now bears his name). I plan to blog on this sometime in the future since I did a study on the issue. Of course, I’ve been planning to blog on it for about a year now, so don’t hold your breath.
Jason
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April 12, 2011 at 10:35 am
Jason,
Thanks for introducing me to Ehrman. I’m reading a few of his books right now and they’re great. Little that I didn’t already know, but it’s great to see that the knowledge of the Holy Bible is finally being released from the seminaries to the masses.
It reminds me of the Roman Catholic church keeping the scriptures and telling the people teachings that must be believed. Today people have the Bible but the truth of its origin and meaning are kept cloistered. God bless Mr. Ehrman!
Arthur
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April 12, 2011 at 10:59 am
Arthur,
What in the world are you talking about? Looking to Ehrman to give us knowledge of the Holy Bible is like looking to China to teach us something about human rights. Ehrman is an ex-Christian, whose sole goal through all of his publications is to undermine people’s confidence in the Bible, and hence the God of the Bible. That’s not to say his works are of no value. There is some valuable information in them. The problem is his spin on the information. People like Ben Witherington make this clear (and expose the fact that Ehrman often builds on old, outdated scholarship).
Jason
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April 13, 2011 at 7:09 am
Jason,
Looking forward to the post on the pseudopigraphal issue. I have been studying this of late….Seems to me if doubt could be placed on authorship then doubt could be placed on the bible as a whole. Not sure. What do you think?
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April 13, 2011 at 10:26 am
Tiny,
It depends on whether we are talking about anonymous books, or those in which the author is named in the text itself. For example, I don’t think that if it could be shown that the author of the Gospel of John was not John the Apostle (or even a guy named “John”), that this would place doubt on the gospel itself since the book is formally anonymous. The title of the book comes from church tradition, not an internal claim of the book itself. So if someone else wrote it, it only shows that the church got the title wrong.
It is a different story for books that make an internal claim to authorship. For example, in the epistle to the Ephesians it identifies Paul as the author within the epistle itself. If Paul truly did not write the epistle, then it raises serious questions about its inspiration, the truth of its contents, and thus its place in the canon.
I should point out that even if it could be demonstrated that one or more of the Biblical books were not written by the authors that the books claim to be made by, at best it would show that the church erred by placing it in the canon. It would not show that all of the other books in the Bible are unreliable. Consider this analogy: When a bank discovers a counterfeit bill, they do not conclude that every bill in their bank must be counterfeit as well. Rather, they inspect each bill, and keep all the bills that are proven to be genuine. The same would be true of the Bible.
Jason
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April 14, 2011 at 7:03 am
Jason,
You said: “at best it would show that the church erred by placing it in the canon. It would not show that all of the other books in the Bible are unreliable” — actually, I thought of this too. Though I believe they are all reliable.
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April 16, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Jason,
Ehrman points out that the different Bible authors teach very different things, even when they are telling similar stories. For example, the Jesus of the synoptics never claims to be divine but the Jesus of John has that as a central teaching. You’d never realize it by just reading the books front to back or by listening to preachers, but Ehrman opens your eyes to the truths that are undeniable. It helps the NT make sense.
Arthur
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April 18, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Arthur,
And I suppose you think Carl Marx has some good things to teach us about capitalism as well!
Ehrman, like many other liberals, is simply mistaken. One could only make that conclusion if they are reading the Synoptics very superficially. While it is true that the deity of Christ is more explicit in John, it is definitely being proclaimed in the Synoptics as well.
Consider the following:
–Jesus is identified as “God with us” in Mt 1:23
–He is identified as the YHWH of the OT in Mt 3:3 (see Isaiah 40:3)
–He claimed to have the power to forgive sins, which is a prerogative of God alone (Mt 9:1-6)
–Accepted worship (Mt 14:33; 28:17)
–Claimed omnipresence (Mt 18:20; 28:20)
–Claimed the authority to change the Law of God (Mt 5:31-32)
–Claimed to be the judge of all men (mt 16:27)
None of these things would have been appropriate to be said about or done to/by Jesus if He were not God, and thus the Synoptics do proclaim Jesus’ deity.
Jason
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May 1, 2011 at 8:42 am
God has providentially preserved His Word perfect in the Bible according to His promise. It is thus sacred, infallible, and final authority. He used HIS servants in HIS time and way.
“But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth [therein], he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” (Jas 1:25)
AFTER Bart becomes a new creation in Christ, wisdom will then become possible.
Never doubt the infallible Biblical revelation.
Doubt finds its moorings in Hell.
Wait for Bart’s books to hit the library, spend no more than 5 seconds glancing through them, then go on to profitable reading.
🙂
Having said that, God is not done with Bart.
We’ll see.
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June 16, 2011 at 5:46 pm
great analysis Jason.
When you over analyse you find problems. people have different styles and characteristics inside themselves. Bart is just a person who lost his faith and is lashing out because he is internally bothered. just because something lacks the same repetitive style does not make it fictitious. maybe the author was trying something new, having someone else articulate it.. Bart wrote this book as tool to discredit the christian faith and community. i have to say that this some what disappointing me being as i am a graduate with a bachelor of theology. im saddened to hear that a Dr. of theological studies such as Mr. Ehrman’s book was full of things that have been attacking the community for years. the authenticity has always been a debate. he could have put up a much better argument. his work seemed to be at a undergraduate level.people should stop putting so much concern in who wrote the books and focus on the messages inside
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July 15, 2012 at 4:11 pm
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May 9, 2023 at 2:36 pm
[…] his multi-part critique of Bart Ehrman’s book, Forged, Ben Witherington, PhD, of Asbury Theological Seminary, provides […]
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