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HomeBart’s BlogCan My Students Believe in the Inerrancy of the Bible? 
  
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Can My Students Believe in the Inerrancy of the Bible?
 
QUESTION:
Do you ever get a student in your class who doggedly insists upon the inerrancy of the Bible? If so, and if they write their term papers in support of Biblical inerrancy, is it possible for them to get a passing grade in your class?
 
RESPONSE:
HA!  That’s a great question!
So, part of the deal of teaching in the Bible Belt is that lots of my students – most of them? – have very conservative views about the Bible as the Word of God.    A few years ago I used to start my class on the New Testament, with something like 300 students in it, by asking the students a series of questions, just for information.  I would ask:
•How many of you in here would agree with the proposition that the Bible is the inspired Word of God (PHOOM!  Almost everyone raises their hands)
•OK, great: Now, how many of you have read the Harry Potter series? (PHOOM! Again, almost everyone raises their hand).
•And now, how many of you have read the entire Bible? (This time: scattered hands, here and there, throughout the auditorium)
Then I’d laugh for a minute and say, “OK, so I’m not telling *you* that *I* think the Bible is the inspired Word of God; you’re telling *me* that *you* think it is.   I can see why you might want to read a book by J. K. Rowling.   But if God wrote a book – wouldn’t you want to see what he had to say???”
What I have found over the years, consistently, is that my students have a much higher reverence for the Bible than knowledge about it.   Most of them would say, at the beginning of the course, that there can be no mistakes in the Bible.  But of course they haven’t actually read the Bible in order to *see* if there are any mistakes in it.  They’ve just learned, from childhood, that it’s a perfect, flawless book.
The goal of my class is NOT to deconvert anyone from their religious beliefs or to convert them to become an agnostic like me.  I don’t see that as a viable goal – especially in a secular research university funded by the state.  The state is not and should not be in the business of promoting one religious view or agenda – or one anti-religious view or agenda – over another.  The state, when it comes to education,  is in the business of educating its young, and not so young, people,  And so my goal is to get students to learn more about the Bible from a historical, not a religious/theological, perspective.
And that’s what my class sets out to do.   I never ever have any writing assignments in which students have to defend their religious views, about God, Christ, the Trinity, the inspiration of Scripture, and so on.   And so in direct response to this very good question, I never ask students to support a view of biblical inerrancy.
But what I do do is have them look critically at the Bible – and to draw their own conclusions.   And so rather than ask them to lay out for me their theology of Scripture, I will give them an exercise such as this:  I’ll ask them to read carefully the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21.   I ask them to list in detail everything that happens in each account, one by one.  And then I ask them to compare their lists.   They then are to indicate all the things that are in common among the Gospels and all the things that are different.   And then they are to indicate if they find any of the differences to be irreconcilable.
It’s a fantastic exercise (all semester we do exercises like this), because it does not involve me telling them that there are differences, even discrepancies, even flat out contradictions in the texts.  They see them for themselves, and have to figure out what do to about them.
In class I will lecture about how scholars deal with problems like this, what scholars think about the sources behind each of the Gospels, and how scholars have isolated discrepancies both in small details (which women went to the tomb?  how many were there?  what did they see there?  what did they hear there?  what were they told to do?  did they do it?) and in big matters (did the women tell anyone or not?  did the disciples stay in Jerusalem and never leave until long after Jesus had returned to heaven?  Or did they immediately leave Jerusalem and go to Galilee and there saw the resurrected Jesus, not in Jerusalem?).
And I will talk about how scholars have found these differences significant, not for their theological views of the inspiration of Scripture, but for their understanding of the relationship among the Gospels, the distinctive emphases of each of the Gospels, and the historical reliability of the Gospels.
In my class, students are NOT required to accept the views that I lecture on based on standard, critical scholarship.  If they want to hold on to their views of inerrancy, then I urge them to try to figure out how they can reconcile what appear to be contradictions.  If they can’t reconcile them, then I suggest that whatever it is they believe, it should be consistent with the facts that they themselves agree to.
Some of my students end up shifting their theological views about the Bible during the class.   Others find it all very confusing, and it forces them to think about their views while they are, at present, unwilling to change those views. Yet others of them hold fast to their views very firmly.  It’s not my job to tell them what to believe, but to instruct them about biblical scholarship.  And to get them to *think*.
My view is that a course on the NT, especially in the American South, is ideal for a university education.  If one of the major *points* of a university education is to get people to THINK, then this kind of course is perfect.  If students are relatively alert and sober, they find that historical realia create problems for their religious convictions.  If these convictions are important to them, this FORCES them to think about them – either to change them or to develop more sophisticated ways of understanding them.  Either way, they become far more thoughtful, both about the facts of history and the beliefs they hold dear.  And I think that is a very good thing indeed.
(BTW: students do *not* need to agree with historical scholarship to do well in my class.  They simply have to know both what scholars have to say about historical issues and what evidence scholars adduce in support of their views.  If they know these things, they’re free to believe, religiously, anything they choose, as far as I’m concerned.  If they choose to continue to believe the Bible is inerrant, I simply want them to believe it in a thoughtful rather than in a mindless way.)(I want my agnostic and atheist students to be more thoughtful about their views as well!)
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What Is Different in My Textbook?«
The Bloody Sweat and Historical Plausibility»


24

OCT

2014

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Michael  October 24, 2014
Being an instructor at any level puts one in constant contention between personal belief and the beliefs of their students. I learned this by being a TA my last two years at school and having to grade papers in Anthropology. You do an excellent job of explaining that dichotomy.
A funny story about being a TA and taking classes at the same time is in order. My last year I had one elective to finish in one of my degrees and took the class with no expectation of an A, I simply wanted to get a B in the class (my chances at honors was already blown by two bad quarters early in my college years). I had written a paper that I figured would get a B+ or an A-. Imagine my shock when it cam back with a C. I read the comments, dissecting the grading and got angrier and more determined to fix it.
I went to the instructor and told him I wanted to review the grade. He replied asking me why he would want to do that? I pointed out that a TA had graded the paper. He asked me how I knew that and I explained that the hand writing was different and he would not have made the errors the TA made. I went through the grading pointing out the errors, saving the best one for last. The TA had scored me down for grammar from a direct quote that was formatted and cited correctly. The professor expressed his displeasure, for you see the direct quote was from a book his father had written…
He gave me an A-
I am not sure what the TA received.
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Matilda

Matilda  October 24, 2014
I think it just doesn’t matter to some that the Bible is not the word of God. Christianity has become, in some cases, a support group. People gather together and read the bible not because they believe but because they feel secure within the group. The mega churches have huge gatherings of like minded people who say they believe but are actually just modified hate groups with con men leading the way. Christianity has just become a cult of many factions. It is religion without spirituality. So sad….
Until people can find their way without relying on myth the Bible or something equally silly will rule the day.
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prestonp  October 26, 2014
“The mega churches have huge gatherings of like minded people who say they believe but are actually just modified hate groups with con men leading the way. Christianity has just become a cult of many factions. It is religion without spirituality. So sad….Until people can find their way without relying on myth the Bible or something equally silly will rule the day.”
I am using the word “racist” in a new context. I would use “religionist” but it doesn’t work. “Sexist” works. “Homophobe” works but “religiphobe” not so much.
That is a racist, hateful statement.
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Matilda

Matilda  October 27, 2014
I got lost. I don’t know what you mean. sorry What is a racist/ hateful statement?
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prestonp  October 28, 2014
“The mega churches have huge gatherings of like minded people who say they believe but are actually just modified hate groups with con men leading the way. Christianity has just become a cult of many factions. It is religion without spirituality. So sad….Until people can find their way without relying on myth the Bible or something equally silly will rule the day.”
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jhague  October 24, 2014
Why do conservative Christians take your class? The conservative Christians that I know would be arguing and fighting with you during the entire semester!
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
Sometimes they want to hear “the other side.” Sometimes they want to witness to “the truth.” Sometimes they’re just really curious. Sometimes they’ve actually heard that it’s a good class!
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prestonp  November 2, 2014
Why do liberal atheists/agnostics refuse to take Systematic Theology at MBI? Are they afraid of exposure to scholars with faith?
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Bart

Bart  November 2, 2014
I don’t understand what you’re asking. Atheists and agnostics don’t go to MBI. But the people who do go there do take Systematic Theology. It was my major!
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Bethany

Bethany  October 24, 2014
I’ve never read the whole Bible, even though I’ve read a lot ABOUT the Bible. So I decided this year was going to be the year I read the Bible. In spring I read the New Testament in conjunction with Dale Martin’s Yale Open Course, and after a long hiatus during which I found a new job, moved, started the new job (and the nontrivial task of trying to read — or deciding not to read — all the library books I had checked out at my previous job and renewed every year, which they were now going to want back…) I started the Hebrew Bible, also in conjunction with the corresponding Yale Open Course.
Now that I’m trying it myself, in some ways it surprises me that as many Americans have read the entire Bible as apparently have, given that we’re not exactly a reading culture. I didn’t really appreciate before I started seriously working my way through it how long the Bible actually is (it looks so much smaller sitting there in the back of the pew!) and how difficult a read it can be. (The commentary in the Bible I’m using I bet doubles the amount of actual text to read, but man, there’s a lot of stuff there I wouldn’t have noticed or understood without it.) Definitely an undertaking.
I mean, I think of myself as a pretty fast reader and I bet I could go through the Harry Potter series in maybe a week and a half or two weeks of normal leisure reading, whereas I started the Hebrew Bible at the end of August and have just met David for the first time in 1 Samuel.
Given the long hiatus I doubt I’m going to finish it by the end of the year, but I’ll keep on plugging.
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ElazarusWills  October 24, 2014
I greatly admire your clarity on the role of a teacher. Now if churches would be more inclusive of modern biblical scholarship when promoting doctrines. Just re-watched the French Canadian movie, Jesus of Montreal, (from your recommendation made during a lecture) and the bad priest’s explanation of what the congregation/shrine board wanted (simple assurances of God’s love) nailed the attitude of the pastor’s in most mainstream churches with an educated clergy. Keep to the old Charlie Brown version of the story.
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doug  October 24, 2014
Thanks for your answer. I especially like that idea that you are helping your students to think. I had a professor in college to helped her students improve their thinking ability, and it was one of the most important things I learned in college – perhaps the most important.
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Tom  October 24, 2014
My dad taught geology in a small Methodist college in the Bible Belt starting in 1946. He received the same challenges you did.
His response was that the tests would be on the material in the book. The college backed him up.
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Steefen  October 24, 2014
Bart Ehrman: If students are relatively alert and sober, they find that historical realia create problems for their religious convictions. If these convictions are important to them, this FORCES them to think about them – either to change them or to develop more sophisticated ways of understanding them. Either way, they become far more thoughtful, both about the facts of history and the beliefs they hold dear. And I think that is a very good thing indeed.
Steefen: Can you do a post on Age of Reason by Thomas Paine? That book forces people to think. Have you put any part of the Age of Reason in your textbooks? Have you ever used it as a supplemental text or at least suggested reading?
The only reason I could see you not doing so is that Paine is mostly critical and his analysis leads to Deism. Is that a flaw that would keep his work out of your classes?
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
I’m afraid that when it comes to Thomas Paine I’m a complete amateur.
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Hon Wai  October 25, 2014
I take it that the answer to the 2nd question is, yes, with caveats. A somewhat different question: Do you think someone can be a top-notch biblical scholar publishing in mainstream biblical journals on historical-critical issues (leave aside the textual critics), and espousing views compatible with biblical inerrancy as defined by the Chicago Statement 1978? Do you know of any such scholars?
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
They can certainly be well recognized scholars in some fields of scholarship (textual criticism, formation of the canon, history of first century Palestine, and lots of other areas.) But if their views of inerrancy affect their understanding of such things as the authorship of the Pauline epistles, or the historical accuracy of the Fourth Gospel, etc., they won’t make a significant impact on scholarship at large.
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Steefen  October 25, 2014
Bart Ehrman: It’s a fantastic exercise (all semester we do exercises like this), because it does not involve me telling them that there are differences, even discrepancies, even flat out contradictions in the texts. They see them for themselves, and have to figure out what do to about them.
Steefen: Recently, someone pointed out contradictions in how Mary Magdalene is depicted at the tomb of Jesus:
Within the 4 versions of the story, she arrives at the tomb at three or four different times
 1) John 20, it was still dark,
 2) Matthew 28, it was dawn
 3) Mark 16, it was after dawn / after sunrise
– and with different people,
– to have touched and not touched Jesus,
– and to have told and not told the disciples that the tomb was empty.
A single Mary Magdalene cannot do everything in each of the 4 gospels. She cannot, in John (20:17), not be permitted to touch Jesus but in Matthew (28: 9) she clings to Jesus’ feet.
And, Jn 20:17 – touch me not (I haven’t ascended to my father) but 10 verses later Jn 20-27 Thomas is touching Jesus before he has ascended to the Father.
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prestonp  October 27, 2014
Let him be a human being who interacted with others with spontaneity, sensitivity and in context. One of the most difficult issues for some is the simple task of letting go and allowing him to be fully human. Their doctrine, that defines what he must be, forbids any hint of his humanity. But, he breathed the air, he blinked his eyes and yawned, he got cold, and angry and he coughed and sneezed.
Mary may have desired to be intimate with him (and he with her) and he let her down gently in this fashion. Thomas needed to be convinced with a touch. The Pharisees had similar struggles. Their messiah would adhere to certain regulations, in certain ways and to be as pious as they were. In fact, they stood in his presence and heard him and watched him do miracle after miracle and they could not grasp who he really was.
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BrianWoolsey  November 9, 2014
I wonder what people said to him when he sneezed.
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prestonp  October 28, 2014
Within the 4 versions of the story, she arrives at the tomb at three or four different times
 1) John 20, it was still dark,
 2) Matthew 28, it was dawn
 3) Mark 16, it was after dawn / after sunrise
Light the sun!
 Once dawn begins, that thermonuclear reactor that burns six hundred million tons of hydrogen a second, brightens up the horizon pretty quickly.
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Jason  October 25, 2014
How many of them know about uncomfortable passages like Luke 19:27 or Mark 14:51 (regardless of their “historicity?”)
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
They’ve read them often enough, but maybe not thought deeply about them.
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Tom

Tom  October 27, 2014
This is the parable of three men given three talents.
 It’s a quote ‘inside another quote’ that Jesus spoke of .. and demonstrates a specific point.
 But your right. -Why would Jesus use illustrations of killing and slaughter when a savior is supposed to be loving and kind?
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prestonp  October 28, 2014
Why do you believe a savior is supposed to be loving and kind?
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prestonp  October 25, 2014
Strange. I have found no irreconcilable differences or contradictions in the New Testament, yet, though I have examined hundreds of those referred to by Dr Bart and others. Many of the answers to such “contradictions” are simple and easy to explain.
A major flaw I find among the critics is their phenomenal complacency; indeed, what appears to be a rush to judgment prevents them considering and examining simple, non-contradictory alternatives. With something like religious fervor they scurry in an all out mad dash to uncover theories to support their beliefs. Intellectual one-upmanship comes to mind. Whoever unearths the most clever, nuanced and avant-garde solution wins!
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Matilda

Matilda  October 27, 2014
Is yours a “racist” statement prestonp?
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prestonp  November 2, 2014
no
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Matilda

Matilda  November 3, 2014
Neither was mine! :)
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ericpellarin  October 25, 2014
This is excellent. As a high school social studies teacher, I tried to get my students to look at things like the founding documents, look at current events and develop a critical approach to make them better citizens. Many of the students are discomfited because they have never been asked to question many basic assumptions. There are no documents that are so sacrosanct that they are beyond critical examination, be it the Bible, the Constitution or whatever.
 What kind of backlash, if any, have you experienced from those who prefer teachers who are more like ventriloquist dummies than critical examiners?
 Thanks for this great post.
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
If I ever have students like that, they never identify themselves!
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prestonp  October 25, 2014
The foundation upon which all their theories rests is structured on an error, a profound, overlooked crack. They hold to an unproven premise that not one of his disciples came from an urban area.
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Steefen  October 25, 2014
Not sure why you don’t take a jury approach to the answer.
Beginning of trial: I believe this that or the other thing
 After all evidence and arguments: I know this that or the other thing
We’re hoping that scholarly pursuits do not have inadmissible evidence rules or such things that keep facts out of presentations.
So, when we read a scholar’s book, we are building/manufacturing intellectual structures and creating culture. If our infrastructure fails, the scholar and professor is partly to blame.
Our culture has locked juries and we’re not moving forward on some points in New Testament Studies. Our Christian creeds would be different. But creeds are repeated weekly, oaths on Bibles occur daily.
You say there are discrepancies and contradictions but it is okay that people build on top of these. Jesus taught to build on rock not discrepancies and contradictions.
Book Recommendation: The Culture We Deserve : A Critique of Disenlightenment
And, if there’s some societal disaster because we were lapse in our intellectual infrastructure, those who voted against a stronger intellectual infrastructure are to blame.
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prestonp  October 26, 2014
“Jesus taught to build on rock…” How do you know this?
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Wilusa  October 25, 2014
It must be *very* tricky to do this! But the goal is certainly laudable.
I find myself (actually an agnostic, of course) trying to decide how, if I were a believer, I’d try to “explain away” the contradictions. I think, for starters, I’d speculate that all the texts had originally agreed, and they’d been distorted by bad translations. But why would God have allowed that to go unrecognized and uncorrected? To “test believers’ faith”!
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RonaldTaska  October 25, 2014
Terrific post! With regard to inerrancy, I have just read Ben Witherington’s article entitled “Bloomberg’s ‘Can We Still Believe the Bible,’ Part 3?” In his articlet, Witherington contends that you make too much of the textual variants in the Bible despite the fact that you have written and said over and over and over that most of the textual variants in the Bible are of no theological significance. Do you have a response to his article?
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
I’m afraid I haven’t read it. But I’m not sure why he thinks I make too much of them. My view is that there are passages of the NT where we don’t know what hte authors wrote. And I don’t know any NT scholar that disagrees with that (or could disagree with it). Whether that’s significant or not probably depends on the individual….
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Rosekeister

Rosekeister  October 25, 2014
There are scholars with very good credentials as scholars that have strange ideas that they promote strongly. These aren’t questions of inerrancy, belief in God, miracles or incarnation but questions of where your scholarship leads you. Have you had post graduate students that are veering off into strange paths not trodden by others and how do you handle such a situation? Academic counseling that mainstream scholarship isn’t going to follow them and that they will lose credibility? At the moment I’ve got Robert Eisenman in mind but there are others. Robert M. Price has the credentials of a scholar although I’m not sure where he teaches. In the past there was and I guess still is Hugh Schonfield. I’ve only read one of Barbara Thiering’s book so maybe her others are different.
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Tom

Tom  October 26, 2014
The claim of the Bible being inerrant (even with the Chicago statement of Biblical inerrancy, 1978) dates back to the early days of protestant reformation primarily stemming from Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Martin Luther to name a few with their “Infallible Truth” doctrine created a really big mess in our modern era given what we know from scholarship. Before the protestant reformation, the Bible was never used in such a manner.
 IMHO, I think fundamentalist evangelicals have done themselves a dis-service by treating it as such.
 Thanks!
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prestonp  October 28, 2014
“…over 90% of the NT is rather well established in regard to its original text, and none of the remaining 10% provides us with data that could lead to any shocking revisions of the Christian credo or doctrine. It is at the very least disingenuous to suggest it does, if not deliberately provocative to say otherwise”.
Bruce Manning Metzger
 American biblical scholar
 and textual critic,
 professor at Princeton Theological Seminary
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RonaldTaska  October 26, 2014
P.S. I read the 4th Witherington article about the Blomberg book today. In it, Witherington makes some argument that I cannot follow about the diversity of early Christianity and how you cannot have it “both ways,” whatever that means. I really didn’t understand his argument. I do understand that he has an axe to grind about your books and, hence, pulls stuff out of context and exaggerates. .
With regard to the textual variants, you once had a superb post about the variants that matter. Basically, several variants, but not most, matter especially if one has been following the verse in Mark about handling poisonous snakes.
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
Hmmm… I’m not sure how I have it both ways either when it comes to diversity. Early Christianity was *amazingly* diverse!
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Steefen  October 27, 2014
Having it both ways is: Yes, there are textual variants and other issues with the New Testament but one doesn’t have to convert to Deism as Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and Age of Reason, the latter work being relevant.
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bonnie43uk  October 27, 2014
There is a superb audiobook on Youtube of Thomas Paines “The Age of Reason”, i think it’s about 11 hours long. For the past week or so I’ve found it excellent to listen to in bed before I go to sleep. His insight into the New Testament in particular is wonderful. I’m not a great reader of books, i find it very tiring on my eyes, so an audiobook is great to listen to.
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bonnie43uk  October 26, 2014
Bart, do you have a preference as to which version of the bible your students study from?. I’m guessing the KJV is the most popular. And are there any versions of the bible you’d prefer them not to study from?
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
I ask them not to use the KJV for study purposes. Their preferred one is the NIV, which I tend not to like a lot. My preferred translation is the NRSV, which I especially like in a study edition such as the HarperCollins Study Bible.
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Josephsluna  October 28, 2014
So i was just relaxing at home at viewing a Yale University videos, and found,
 Friedrich Nietzsche? Can you tell me real quick what he meant by that in your words
 paul the corrupter noble prestine religion of jesus as a moral teacher ?
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Bart

Bart  October 28, 2014
Nietzsche was one of those thinkers who thought that Paul’s doctrine of redemption through the death of Christ was completely removed from Jesus’ own ethical teaching about how one should live in the world.
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HomeBart’s BlogCan My Students Believe in the Inerrancy of the Bible? 
  
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Can My Students Believe in the Inerrancy of the Bible?
 
QUESTION:
Do you ever get a student in your class who doggedly insists upon the inerrancy of the Bible? If so, and if they write their term papers in support of Biblical inerrancy, is it possible for them to get a passing grade in your class?
 
RESPONSE:
HA!  That’s a great question!
So, part of the deal of teaching in the Bible Belt is that lots of my students – most of them? – have very conservative views about the Bible as the Word of God.    A few years ago I used to start my class on the New Testament, with something like 300 students in it, by asking the students a series of questions, just for information.  I would ask:
•How many of you in here would agree with the proposition that the Bible is the inspired Word of God (PHOOM!  Almost everyone raises their hands)
•OK, great: Now, how many of you have read the Harry Potter series? (PHOOM! Again, almost everyone raises their hand).
•And now, how many of you have read the entire Bible? (This time: scattered hands, here and there, throughout the auditorium)
Then I’d laugh for a minute and say, “OK, so I’m not telling *you* that *I* think the Bible is the inspired Word of God; you’re telling *me* that *you* think it is.   I can see why you might want to read a book by J. K. Rowling.   But if God wrote a book – wouldn’t you want to see what he had to say???”
What I have found over the years, consistently, is that my students have a much higher reverence for the Bible than knowledge about it.   Most of them would say, at the beginning of the course, that there can be no mistakes in the Bible.  But of course they haven’t actually read the Bible in order to *see* if there are any mistakes in it.  They’ve just learned, from childhood, that it’s a perfect, flawless book.
The goal of my class is NOT to deconvert anyone from their religious beliefs or to convert them to become an agnostic like me.  I don’t see that as a viable goal – especially in a secular research university funded by the state.  The state is not and should not be in the business of promoting one religious view or agenda – or one anti-religious view or agenda – over another.  The state, when it comes to education,  is in the business of educating its young, and not so young, people,  And so my goal is to get students to learn more about the Bible from a historical, not a religious/theological, perspective.
And that’s what my class sets out to do.   I never ever have any writing assignments in which students have to defend their religious views, about God, Christ, the Trinity, the inspiration of Scripture, and so on.   And so in direct response to this very good question, I never ask students to support a view of biblical inerrancy.
But what I do do is have them look critically at the Bible – and to draw their own conclusions.   And so rather than ask them to lay out for me their theology of Scripture, I will give them an exercise such as this:  I’ll ask them to read carefully the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21.   I ask them to list in detail everything that happens in each account, one by one.  And then I ask them to compare their lists.   They then are to indicate all the things that are in common among the Gospels and all the things that are different.   And then they are to indicate if they find any of the differences to be irreconcilable.
It’s a fantastic exercise (all semester we do exercises like this), because it does not involve me telling them that there are differences, even discrepancies, even flat out contradictions in the texts.  They see them for themselves, and have to figure out what do to about them.
In class I will lecture about how scholars deal with problems like this, what scholars think about the sources behind each of the Gospels, and how scholars have isolated discrepancies both in small details (which women went to the tomb?  how many were there?  what did they see there?  what did they hear there?  what were they told to do?  did they do it?) and in big matters (did the women tell anyone or not?  did the disciples stay in Jerusalem and never leave until long after Jesus had returned to heaven?  Or did they immediately leave Jerusalem and go to Galilee and there saw the resurrected Jesus, not in Jerusalem?).
And I will talk about how scholars have found these differences significant, not for their theological views of the inspiration of Scripture, but for their understanding of the relationship among the Gospels, the distinctive emphases of each of the Gospels, and the historical reliability of the Gospels.
In my class, students are NOT required to accept the views that I lecture on based on standard, critical scholarship.  If they want to hold on to their views of inerrancy, then I urge them to try to figure out how they can reconcile what appear to be contradictions.  If they can’t reconcile them, then I suggest that whatever it is they believe, it should be consistent with the facts that they themselves agree to.
Some of my students end up shifting their theological views about the Bible during the class.   Others find it all very confusing, and it forces them to think about their views while they are, at present, unwilling to change those views. Yet others of them hold fast to their views very firmly.  It’s not my job to tell them what to believe, but to instruct them about biblical scholarship.  And to get them to *think*.
My view is that a course on the NT, especially in the American South, is ideal for a university education.  If one of the major *points* of a university education is to get people to THINK, then this kind of course is perfect.  If students are relatively alert and sober, they find that historical realia create problems for their religious convictions.  If these convictions are important to them, this FORCES them to think about them – either to change them or to develop more sophisticated ways of understanding them.  Either way, they become far more thoughtful, both about the facts of history and the beliefs they hold dear.  And I think that is a very good thing indeed.
(BTW: students do *not* need to agree with historical scholarship to do well in my class.  They simply have to know both what scholars have to say about historical issues and what evidence scholars adduce in support of their views.  If they know these things, they’re free to believe, religiously, anything they choose, as far as I’m concerned.  If they choose to continue to believe the Bible is inerrant, I simply want them to believe it in a thoughtful rather than in a mindless way.)(I want my agnostic and atheist students to be more thoughtful about their views as well!)
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What Is Different in My Textbook?«
The Bloody Sweat and Historical Plausibility»


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2014

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Michael  October 24, 2014
Being an instructor at any level puts one in constant contention between personal belief and the beliefs of their students. I learned this by being a TA my last two years at school and having to grade papers in Anthropology. You do an excellent job of explaining that dichotomy.
A funny story about being a TA and taking classes at the same time is in order. My last year I had one elective to finish in one of my degrees and took the class with no expectation of an A, I simply wanted to get a B in the class (my chances at honors was already blown by two bad quarters early in my college years). I had written a paper that I figured would get a B+ or an A-. Imagine my shock when it cam back with a C. I read the comments, dissecting the grading and got angrier and more determined to fix it.
I went to the instructor and told him I wanted to review the grade. He replied asking me why he would want to do that? I pointed out that a TA had graded the paper. He asked me how I knew that and I explained that the hand writing was different and he would not have made the errors the TA made. I went through the grading pointing out the errors, saving the best one for last. The TA had scored me down for grammar from a direct quote that was formatted and cited correctly. The professor expressed his displeasure, for you see the direct quote was from a book his father had written…
He gave me an A-
I am not sure what the TA received.
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Matilda

Matilda  October 24, 2014
I think it just doesn’t matter to some that the Bible is not the word of God. Christianity has become, in some cases, a support group. People gather together and read the bible not because they believe but because they feel secure within the group. The mega churches have huge gatherings of like minded people who say they believe but are actually just modified hate groups with con men leading the way. Christianity has just become a cult of many factions. It is religion without spirituality. So sad….
Until people can find their way without relying on myth the Bible or something equally silly will rule the day.
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prestonp  October 26, 2014
“The mega churches have huge gatherings of like minded people who say they believe but are actually just modified hate groups with con men leading the way. Christianity has just become a cult of many factions. It is religion without spirituality. So sad….Until people can find their way without relying on myth the Bible or something equally silly will rule the day.”
I am using the word “racist” in a new context. I would use “religionist” but it doesn’t work. “Sexist” works. “Homophobe” works but “religiphobe” not so much.
That is a racist, hateful statement.
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Matilda

Matilda  October 27, 2014
I got lost. I don’t know what you mean. sorry What is a racist/ hateful statement?
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prestonp  October 28, 2014
“The mega churches have huge gatherings of like minded people who say they believe but are actually just modified hate groups with con men leading the way. Christianity has just become a cult of many factions. It is religion without spirituality. So sad….Until people can find their way without relying on myth the Bible or something equally silly will rule the day.”
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jhague  October 24, 2014
Why do conservative Christians take your class? The conservative Christians that I know would be arguing and fighting with you during the entire semester!
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
Sometimes they want to hear “the other side.” Sometimes they want to witness to “the truth.” Sometimes they’re just really curious. Sometimes they’ve actually heard that it’s a good class!
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prestonp  November 2, 2014
Why do liberal atheists/agnostics refuse to take Systematic Theology at MBI? Are they afraid of exposure to scholars with faith?
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Bart

Bart  November 2, 2014
I don’t understand what you’re asking. Atheists and agnostics don’t go to MBI. But the people who do go there do take Systematic Theology. It was my major!
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Bethany

Bethany  October 24, 2014
I’ve never read the whole Bible, even though I’ve read a lot ABOUT the Bible. So I decided this year was going to be the year I read the Bible. In spring I read the New Testament in conjunction with Dale Martin’s Yale Open Course, and after a long hiatus during which I found a new job, moved, started the new job (and the nontrivial task of trying to read — or deciding not to read — all the library books I had checked out at my previous job and renewed every year, which they were now going to want back…) I started the Hebrew Bible, also in conjunction with the corresponding Yale Open Course.
Now that I’m trying it myself, in some ways it surprises me that as many Americans have read the entire Bible as apparently have, given that we’re not exactly a reading culture. I didn’t really appreciate before I started seriously working my way through it how long the Bible actually is (it looks so much smaller sitting there in the back of the pew!) and how difficult a read it can be. (The commentary in the Bible I’m using I bet doubles the amount of actual text to read, but man, there’s a lot of stuff there I wouldn’t have noticed or understood without it.) Definitely an undertaking.
I mean, I think of myself as a pretty fast reader and I bet I could go through the Harry Potter series in maybe a week and a half or two weeks of normal leisure reading, whereas I started the Hebrew Bible at the end of August and have just met David for the first time in 1 Samuel.
Given the long hiatus I doubt I’m going to finish it by the end of the year, but I’ll keep on plugging.
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ElazarusWills  October 24, 2014
I greatly admire your clarity on the role of a teacher. Now if churches would be more inclusive of modern biblical scholarship when promoting doctrines. Just re-watched the French Canadian movie, Jesus of Montreal, (from your recommendation made during a lecture) and the bad priest’s explanation of what the congregation/shrine board wanted (simple assurances of God’s love) nailed the attitude of the pastor’s in most mainstream churches with an educated clergy. Keep to the old Charlie Brown version of the story.
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doug  October 24, 2014
Thanks for your answer. I especially like that idea that you are helping your students to think. I had a professor in college to helped her students improve their thinking ability, and it was one of the most important things I learned in college – perhaps the most important.
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Tom  October 24, 2014
My dad taught geology in a small Methodist college in the Bible Belt starting in 1946. He received the same challenges you did.
His response was that the tests would be on the material in the book. The college backed him up.
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Steefen  October 24, 2014
Bart Ehrman: If students are relatively alert and sober, they find that historical realia create problems for their religious convictions. If these convictions are important to them, this FORCES them to think about them – either to change them or to develop more sophisticated ways of understanding them. Either way, they become far more thoughtful, both about the facts of history and the beliefs they hold dear. And I think that is a very good thing indeed.
Steefen: Can you do a post on Age of Reason by Thomas Paine? That book forces people to think. Have you put any part of the Age of Reason in your textbooks? Have you ever used it as a supplemental text or at least suggested reading?
The only reason I could see you not doing so is that Paine is mostly critical and his analysis leads to Deism. Is that a flaw that would keep his work out of your classes?
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
I’m afraid that when it comes to Thomas Paine I’m a complete amateur.
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Hon Wai  October 25, 2014
I take it that the answer to the 2nd question is, yes, with caveats. A somewhat different question: Do you think someone can be a top-notch biblical scholar publishing in mainstream biblical journals on historical-critical issues (leave aside the textual critics), and espousing views compatible with biblical inerrancy as defined by the Chicago Statement 1978? Do you know of any such scholars?
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
They can certainly be well recognized scholars in some fields of scholarship (textual criticism, formation of the canon, history of first century Palestine, and lots of other areas.) But if their views of inerrancy affect their understanding of such things as the authorship of the Pauline epistles, or the historical accuracy of the Fourth Gospel, etc., they won’t make a significant impact on scholarship at large.
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Steefen  October 25, 2014
Bart Ehrman: It’s a fantastic exercise (all semester we do exercises like this), because it does not involve me telling them that there are differences, even discrepancies, even flat out contradictions in the texts. They see them for themselves, and have to figure out what do to about them.
Steefen: Recently, someone pointed out contradictions in how Mary Magdalene is depicted at the tomb of Jesus:
Within the 4 versions of the story, she arrives at the tomb at three or four different times
 1) John 20, it was still dark,
 2) Matthew 28, it was dawn
 3) Mark 16, it was after dawn / after sunrise
– and with different people,
– to have touched and not touched Jesus,
– and to have told and not told the disciples that the tomb was empty.
A single Mary Magdalene cannot do everything in each of the 4 gospels. She cannot, in John (20:17), not be permitted to touch Jesus but in Matthew (28: 9) she clings to Jesus’ feet.
And, Jn 20:17 – touch me not (I haven’t ascended to my father) but 10 verses later Jn 20-27 Thomas is touching Jesus before he has ascended to the Father.
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prestonp  October 27, 2014
Let him be a human being who interacted with others with spontaneity, sensitivity and in context. One of the most difficult issues for some is the simple task of letting go and allowing him to be fully human. Their doctrine, that defines what he must be, forbids any hint of his humanity. But, he breathed the air, he blinked his eyes and yawned, he got cold, and angry and he coughed and sneezed.
Mary may have desired to be intimate with him (and he with her) and he let her down gently in this fashion. Thomas needed to be convinced with a touch. The Pharisees had similar struggles. Their messiah would adhere to certain regulations, in certain ways and to be as pious as they were. In fact, they stood in his presence and heard him and watched him do miracle after miracle and they could not grasp who he really was.
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BrianWoolsey  November 9, 2014
I wonder what people said to him when he sneezed.
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prestonp  October 28, 2014
Within the 4 versions of the story, she arrives at the tomb at three or four different times
 1) John 20, it was still dark,
 2) Matthew 28, it was dawn
 3) Mark 16, it was after dawn / after sunrise
Light the sun!
 Once dawn begins, that thermonuclear reactor that burns six hundred million tons of hydrogen a second, brightens up the horizon pretty quickly.
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Jason  October 25, 2014
How many of them know about uncomfortable passages like Luke 19:27 or Mark 14:51 (regardless of their “historicity?”)
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
They’ve read them often enough, but maybe not thought deeply about them.
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Tom

Tom  October 27, 2014
This is the parable of three men given three talents.
 It’s a quote ‘inside another quote’ that Jesus spoke of .. and demonstrates a specific point.
 But your right. -Why would Jesus use illustrations of killing and slaughter when a savior is supposed to be loving and kind?
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prestonp  October 28, 2014
Why do you believe a savior is supposed to be loving and kind?
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prestonp  October 25, 2014
Strange. I have found no irreconcilable differences or contradictions in the New Testament, yet, though I have examined hundreds of those referred to by Dr Bart and others. Many of the answers to such “contradictions” are simple and easy to explain.
A major flaw I find among the critics is their phenomenal complacency; indeed, what appears to be a rush to judgment prevents them considering and examining simple, non-contradictory alternatives. With something like religious fervor they scurry in an all out mad dash to uncover theories to support their beliefs. Intellectual one-upmanship comes to mind. Whoever unearths the most clever, nuanced and avant-garde solution wins!
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Matilda

Matilda  October 27, 2014
Is yours a “racist” statement prestonp?
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prestonp  November 2, 2014
no
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Matilda

Matilda  November 3, 2014
Neither was mine! :)
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ericpellarin  October 25, 2014
This is excellent. As a high school social studies teacher, I tried to get my students to look at things like the founding documents, look at current events and develop a critical approach to make them better citizens. Many of the students are discomfited because they have never been asked to question many basic assumptions. There are no documents that are so sacrosanct that they are beyond critical examination, be it the Bible, the Constitution or whatever.
 What kind of backlash, if any, have you experienced from those who prefer teachers who are more like ventriloquist dummies than critical examiners?
 Thanks for this great post.
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
If I ever have students like that, they never identify themselves!
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prestonp  October 25, 2014
The foundation upon which all their theories rests is structured on an error, a profound, overlooked crack. They hold to an unproven premise that not one of his disciples came from an urban area.
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Steefen  October 25, 2014
Not sure why you don’t take a jury approach to the answer.
Beginning of trial: I believe this that or the other thing
 After all evidence and arguments: I know this that or the other thing
We’re hoping that scholarly pursuits do not have inadmissible evidence rules or such things that keep facts out of presentations.
So, when we read a scholar’s book, we are building/manufacturing intellectual structures and creating culture. If our infrastructure fails, the scholar and professor is partly to blame.
Our culture has locked juries and we’re not moving forward on some points in New Testament Studies. Our Christian creeds would be different. But creeds are repeated weekly, oaths on Bibles occur daily.
You say there are discrepancies and contradictions but it is okay that people build on top of these. Jesus taught to build on rock not discrepancies and contradictions.
Book Recommendation: The Culture We Deserve : A Critique of Disenlightenment
And, if there’s some societal disaster because we were lapse in our intellectual infrastructure, those who voted against a stronger intellectual infrastructure are to blame.
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prestonp  October 26, 2014
“Jesus taught to build on rock…” How do you know this?
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Wilusa  October 25, 2014
It must be *very* tricky to do this! But the goal is certainly laudable.
I find myself (actually an agnostic, of course) trying to decide how, if I were a believer, I’d try to “explain away” the contradictions. I think, for starters, I’d speculate that all the texts had originally agreed, and they’d been distorted by bad translations. But why would God have allowed that to go unrecognized and uncorrected? To “test believers’ faith”!
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RonaldTaska  October 25, 2014
Terrific post! With regard to inerrancy, I have just read Ben Witherington’s article entitled “Bloomberg’s ‘Can We Still Believe the Bible,’ Part 3?” In his articlet, Witherington contends that you make too much of the textual variants in the Bible despite the fact that you have written and said over and over and over that most of the textual variants in the Bible are of no theological significance. Do you have a response to his article?
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
I’m afraid I haven’t read it. But I’m not sure why he thinks I make too much of them. My view is that there are passages of the NT where we don’t know what hte authors wrote. And I don’t know any NT scholar that disagrees with that (or could disagree with it). Whether that’s significant or not probably depends on the individual….
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Rosekeister

Rosekeister  October 25, 2014
There are scholars with very good credentials as scholars that have strange ideas that they promote strongly. These aren’t questions of inerrancy, belief in God, miracles or incarnation but questions of where your scholarship leads you. Have you had post graduate students that are veering off into strange paths not trodden by others and how do you handle such a situation? Academic counseling that mainstream scholarship isn’t going to follow them and that they will lose credibility? At the moment I’ve got Robert Eisenman in mind but there are others. Robert M. Price has the credentials of a scholar although I’m not sure where he teaches. In the past there was and I guess still is Hugh Schonfield. I’ve only read one of Barbara Thiering’s book so maybe her others are different.
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Tom

Tom  October 26, 2014
The claim of the Bible being inerrant (even with the Chicago statement of Biblical inerrancy, 1978) dates back to the early days of protestant reformation primarily stemming from Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Martin Luther to name a few with their “Infallible Truth” doctrine created a really big mess in our modern era given what we know from scholarship. Before the protestant reformation, the Bible was never used in such a manner.
 IMHO, I think fundamentalist evangelicals have done themselves a dis-service by treating it as such.
 Thanks!
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prestonp  October 28, 2014
“…over 90% of the NT is rather well established in regard to its original text, and none of the remaining 10% provides us with data that could lead to any shocking revisions of the Christian credo or doctrine. It is at the very least disingenuous to suggest it does, if not deliberately provocative to say otherwise”.
Bruce Manning Metzger
 American biblical scholar
 and textual critic,
 professor at Princeton Theological Seminary
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RonaldTaska  October 26, 2014
P.S. I read the 4th Witherington article about the Blomberg book today. In it, Witherington makes some argument that I cannot follow about the diversity of early Christianity and how you cannot have it “both ways,” whatever that means. I really didn’t understand his argument. I do understand that he has an axe to grind about your books and, hence, pulls stuff out of context and exaggerates. .
With regard to the textual variants, you once had a superb post about the variants that matter. Basically, several variants, but not most, matter especially if one has been following the verse in Mark about handling poisonous snakes.
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
Hmmm… I’m not sure how I have it both ways either when it comes to diversity. Early Christianity was *amazingly* diverse!
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Steefen  October 27, 2014
Having it both ways is: Yes, there are textual variants and other issues with the New Testament but one doesn’t have to convert to Deism as Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and Age of Reason, the latter work being relevant.
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bonnie43uk  October 27, 2014
There is a superb audiobook on Youtube of Thomas Paines “The Age of Reason”, i think it’s about 11 hours long. For the past week or so I’ve found it excellent to listen to in bed before I go to sleep. His insight into the New Testament in particular is wonderful. I’m not a great reader of books, i find it very tiring on my eyes, so an audiobook is great to listen to.
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bonnie43uk  October 26, 2014
Bart, do you have a preference as to which version of the bible your students study from?. I’m guessing the KJV is the most popular. And are there any versions of the bible you’d prefer them not to study from?
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Bart

Bart  October 26, 2014
I ask them not to use the KJV for study purposes. Their preferred one is the NIV, which I tend not to like a lot. My preferred translation is the NRSV, which I especially like in a study edition such as the HarperCollins Study Bible.
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Josephsluna  October 28, 2014
So i was just relaxing at home at viewing a Yale University videos, and found,
 Friedrich Nietzsche? Can you tell me real quick what he meant by that in your words
 paul the corrupter noble prestine religion of jesus as a moral teacher ?
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Bart

Bart  October 28, 2014
Nietzsche was one of those thinkers who thought that Paul’s doctrine of redemption through the death of Christ was completely removed from Jesus’ own ethical teaching about how one should live in the world.
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HomeBart’s BlogIs “Jehovah” in the Bible? 
  
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Is “Jehovah” in the Bible?
 
QUESTION:
How firmly grounded in reality is the claim of Jehovah’s Witnesses that the ‘divine name’ (Jehovah) belongs in the New Testament?
 
RESPONSE
So this is an interesting question, with several possible ramifications.  At first I should explain that the divine name “Jehovah” doesn’t belong in *either* Testament, old or new, in the opinion of most critical scholars, outside the ranks of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  That’s because Jehovah was not the divine name.
So here’s the deal.  In the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) God is given a number of different designations.  Sometimes he is called God (the Hebrew word is El, or more commonly – by far – the plural form of that word, ELOHIM); or The Almighty (SHADDAI), or God Almighty (EL SHADDAI), or Lord (ADONAI), or – well, or lots of other things.   But sometimes the God of Israel is actually given his personal name.   Like everyone else, he has a name.  And his name was יהוה (in English letters, that looks like YHWH).
Written Hebrew, as you probably know…
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jhm  March 10, 2015
Do you have any opinion on this idea of the origins of YHWH:
“NARRATOR: The Shasu were a people who lived in the deserts of southern Canaan, now Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia, around the same time as the Israelites emerged.
“Egyptian texts say one of the places where the Shasu lived is called “Y.H.W.,” probably pronounced Yahu, likely the name of their patron god. That name Yahu is strangely similar to Yahweh, the name of the Israelite god.
“In the Bible, the place where the Shasu lived is referred to as Midian. It is here, before the Exodus, the Bible tells us, Moses first encounters Yahweh, in the form of a burning bush.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/bibles-buried-secrets.html
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Tom  March 10, 2015
Topics like this are so very interesting, Dr. B.
Thanks for including them.
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walstrom  March 10, 2015
Thank you for covering this topic.
 I was a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses for twenty years and am conversant with all the arguments presented by the Watchtower organization bolstering their use of Jehovah in the New Testament.
 I’ll simply post three of these proffered arguments for your delectation in order to gauge your scholarly response.
1. About the middle of the first century C.E., the disciple James said to the elders in Jerusalem: “Symeon has related thoroughly how God for the first time turned his attention to the nations to take out of them a people for his name.” (Acts 15:14) Does it sound logical to you that James would make such a statement if nobody in the first century knew or used God’s name?
 2. When copies of the Septuagint were discovered that used the divine name rather than Ky′ri·os (Lord), it became evident to the (NWT) translators that in Jesus’ day copies of the earlier Scriptures in Greek—and of course those in Hebrew—did contain the divine name.
 Apparently, the God-dishonoring tradition of removing the divine name from Greek manuscripts developed only later. What do you think? Would Jesus and his apostles have promoted such a tradition?—Matthew 15:6-9.
 3.The AnchorBible Dictionary makes this comment: “There is some evidence that the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name, Yahweh, appeared in some or all of the O[ld] T[estament] quotations in the N[ew] T[estament] when the NT documents were first penned.” And scholar George Howard says: “Since the Tetragram was still written in the copies of the Greek Bible [the Septuagint] which made up the Scriptures of the early church, it is reasonable to believe that the N[ew] T[estament] writers, when quoting from Scripture, preserved the Tetragram within the biblical text.”
________________________
Below are some examples of English translations that have used God’s name in the New Testament:
 A Literal Translation of the New Testament . . . From the Text of the VaticanManuscript, by Herman Heinfetter (1863)
 The Emphatic Diaglott, by Benjamin Wilson (1864)
 The Epistles of Paul in Modern English, by George Barker Stevens (1898)
 St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, by W. G. Rutherford (1900)
 The Christian’s Bible—New Testament, by George N. LeFevre (1928)
 The New Testament Letters, by J.W.C. Wand, Bishop of London (1946)
 _________________
Is this merely a fetish on the part of Jehovah’s Witnesses to protect their ‘branding’?
How arbitrary and out of step with the scholarly community is the Watchtower organization?
Thank you very much!
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Short responses:
 1. “The name” is another way to say the name of God without saying the name of God. You just say, “the name” and you mean “God” or “Yahweh”
2. Yes, there are Septuagint manuscripts that preserve the tetragrammaton. But most don’t.
 3. I don’t know of any evidence that NT authors actually used the Hebrew letters for the tetragrammaton in their quotations of the OT. Do these authors actually say what the evidence *is*? I’ve looked at probably all the earliest manuscripts of the NT Gospels and I can’t think of a single stitch of evidence for that claim. But maybe I’m wrong!
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talitakum

talitakum  March 12, 2015
The AnchorBible Dictionary’s comment is a false statement. It’s a lie. There’s no such evidence, as dr. Ehrman knows better than any of us. It’s surprising to see how many unfounded statements like this you can find everywhere, from Wikipedia up to decent Commentaries, underpinned by so-and-so scholars. If dr. Ehrman, one day, would decide to open this can of worms he will have some fun – as he had with mythicists and christian conservatives/apologists. :)
 Regarding the evidence for the tetragrammaton in some LXX fragments, it doesn’t obviously imply any evidence of the Tetragrammaton on NT text !! Moreover, as dr Ehrman correctly pointed out, these LXX fragments are exceptions and such “hebraicized” exceptions already got a satisfactory explanation by scholars of the LXX.
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s a “lie” in the sense that it is an “intentional false statement meant to deceive.” My sense is that the author really believed it. Even though he was wrong.
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Rick

Rick  March 17, 2015
Is not HaShem, meaning the name, used by some Jews in place of ADONAI,,, which was in place of the Tetragrammaton? I’ve heard the Shema in a reform Temple said with Adonai, but understand other Jews find that inappropriate..
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Bart

Bart  March 17, 2015
Maybe someone can give a definitive answer to this. I thought HaShem was used to replace YHWH which itself was pronounced as Adonai. Does anyone else know for certain?
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nacord  March 10, 2015
A JW (who was eagerly attempting to convert me) was saying that the book of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and did in fact employ the divine name, though written using pre-biblical Hebrew characters. I think they say that Jerome mentions such a manuscript as still being in existence during his time. Have you ever hear of this argument? I tried to do some research but came up with very little (outside of the watchtower). Thanks!
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Jerome mentions a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew, but to my knowledge he doesn’t say anything about its transcription of the divine name. Maybe someone else knows off the top of their head?
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caseyjunior  March 10, 2015
This question is only tangentially related to the current post, but I can’t resist asking it. After attending your lectures in Wichita several weeks ago, I read Misquoting Jesus and Reinterpreting Jesus. I was take by the statement that the day of the crucifiction is different in the synoptics from the day in John, so I checked it out in three translations of the New Testament that I have. The Revised Standard version and the translation by Richmond Lattimore both agreed that in John the crucifiction occurred on the day of preparation for the passover. However, the New International Version just said it was on the day of preparation, with a note at the bottom of the page stating this meant the day of preparation for the sabbath. Is this a case of modern “scribes” “correcting” a translation so the gospels don’t contradict each other, or is there some technicality I’m missing here? Thanks for the indulgence on being off topic.
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Yes, the translators are changing what the text actually says because they know that what it says is a contradiction.
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talitakum

talitakum  March 12, 2015
I am not sure I understand this right. I think all Gospels agree on the fact that Jesus was crucified on Friday (the day before Saturday/Sabbath). So what does it mean that “the day of the crucifiction is different in the synoptics from the day in John”?
I believe that the discrepancy between John and synoptics is about that Saturday/Sabbath being also Passover day. But this would have nothing to deal with the day of Jesus’ crucifiction, all evangelists apparently agree on the fact that Jesus crucifiction (and burial) happened the day before Sabbath (Friday). Thank you.
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
Yes, the issue is not whether it was a Friday or not. The issue is whether that Friday was the Day before the Passover or whether it was the Passover — so was Jesus’ last meal a regular meal or a Passover meal.
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Hon Wai  March 10, 2015
Did ancient Hebrew writers omit the vowels to save space, making it quicker to make copies of the manuscripts?
 Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the notion of the Holy Spirit being God. Can you post on whether this is supported by New Testament? A post on how the Holy Spirit “became God” is helpful.
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
They simply didn’t have vowels in their alphabet. I’ll think about posting on the Holy Spirit!
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Diane  March 11, 2015
I think the Holy Spirit deserves his/her/its own book. There is no weirder or more neglected topic in Christianity!
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
And much less to say about it, since the early Christians themselves did not say much!
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Hon Wai  March 10, 2015
“When you add the vowels of ADONAI to the consonants of YHWH, it makes it very hard indeed to say”
Presumably it would sound something like “Yahowaih” – doesn’t sound difficult to say to me??
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Well, if nothing else it’s very weird and would have taken a while to figure out — and with that pause they would know what they should say instead.
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Adam Beaven  March 11, 2015
Dr ehrman
 Maybe this is a dumb question but is the consonantal skeleton for yhwh the same as adonai?
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
No, completely different, no similarities.
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PersephoneK  March 11, 2015
That was really interesting! I must confess, I never really thought about the origins of ‘Jehovah’ before, but had generally known about Yahweh, Adonai, El Shaddai, etc.
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Jason  March 11, 2015
It was hard to read this post without imagining you getting rocks thrown at you like John Cleese.
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Ha! I kept thinking of that too!
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MikeyS  March 11, 2015
That’s brilliant Bart, thank you.
One wonders if we are all descended from Adam and Eve or latterly from Noah or his family, then how come the world uses all these different languages? Different dialects certainly. New Yorkers speak so fast, its difficult to keep up.
One question though?
Yahweh was supposed to be read from right to left, why didn’t the sound start with an H, rather than the letter Y? Or maybe I have misunderstood it?
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
When we write “YHWH” or “Yahweh” we are reversing the order of the letters because we are putting it in English, writing from left to right. In Hebrew the letters go the other direction.
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Philbert  March 11, 2015
Amazing- I always wondered about that. Thank you.
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Mhamed Errifi  March 11, 2015
hello Bart
Are you aware that Arabic language it too can be written without vowels . We are told according to tradition, the first to commission a system of harakat or vowels was Muawiyah I of the Umayyad dynasty, when he ordered Ziad Ibn Abih, his wālī in Basra (governed 664–673), since you know the history of Hebrew so when were vowels introduced in Hebrew , is it before 673 AD or after ? just to know who copied the idea from the other Arabs from Jews or jews from Arabs
thank you
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
The Masorete scribes who added the vowel points to the Hebrew Bible started their work about the year 500 CE.
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Mhamed Errifi  March 13, 2015
hello Bart
Since I am familiar with writing and reading written language without vowels , but I could not understand when you this
What were Jewish readers supposed to do when they were reading a text that had the unpronounceable name יהוה
YHWH in it?
 My question is how did the first person I dont who he was maybe Moses wrote that in OT for the first time if יהוה was unpronounceable. As arabic speaker I can read and write arabic while somebody is dictating me without vowels but I cant write a single word until I heard its prounciation just like in any language , so how did the first person write יהוה for the time in OT
THANK YOU
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Bart

Bart  March 13, 2015
It was not originally unpronouceable.
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SteveWalach  March 18, 2015
I suppose any grouping of letters could — with enough effort — generate a vocalization, but given that the writers of the Torah were inclined to make puns, employ irony and use figurative language, isn’t an unpronounceable name for their supreme, incomprehensible deity the perfect metaphor?
 
 
 
 
 
 


Eric  March 11, 2015
Wow,
This is fascinating and absolutely new ground for me (read a lot of critical commentary — trade books — on biblical matters). I have never heard any of this. I always assumed that “Jehovah” was some kind of Hellenization or Latinization of Yahweh directly — it did seem a little oddly adjusted, but then Yeshua – Jesus looks like an odd transition to an English speaker, too. (or alternatively, Yeshua-Joshua).
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walstrom  March 11, 2015
Concerning Matthew having been written in Hebrew, Dr. George Howard says:
 ____
“Papias, a reputed pupil of Apostle John, around 90 A.D. explained: “Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.” (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39, quoting Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, which in turn quotes Papias.) The latter remark has been interpreted to mean it was translated as best as could be done.
 Irenaeus likewise says: “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel at Rome, and founding the church there.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter I, quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book V, Chapter VIII, quoted in Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lost and Hostile Gospels (Williams and Norgate, 1874) at 119..) This means GATHM was circulating by at least 54-58 A.D.”
(The above taken from http://www.jesuswordsonly.com/books/406-history-of-hebrew-version-of-matthew.html)
 __________________
If you’ll indulge me (I don’t know in what other contexts I should ask this question) I’d like to ask about Jehovah’s Witnesses peculiar and singular unwillingness to use CROSS (stauros), instead preferring ‘Torture stake.”
To wit:
“But what did stau·ros´ mean in the first century when the Greek Scriptures were written? An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, by W. E. Vine, says: “Stauros . . . denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun [stau·ros´] and the verb stauro?, to fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross. The shape of the latter had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt.” Vine goes on to say: “By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ.” The Companion Bible, under the heading “The Cross and Crucifixion,” notes: “Our English word ‘cross’ is the translation of the Latin crux; but the Greek stauros no more means a crux than the word ‘stick’ means a ‘crutch.’ Homer uses the word stauros of an ordinary pole or stake, or a single piece of timber. And this is the meaning and usage of the word throughout the Greek classics. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another. . . . There is nothing in the Greek of the N[ew] T[estament] even to imply two pieces of timber.” Watchtower 1989 May 1 pp.23-24
 _______________
This radical assertion seems totally at odds with traditional Christianity, certainly–but does it have scholarly merit of any weight?
Thank you!!
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
Yes, the tradition going back to Papias is that Matthew produced a Gospel in Hebrew. Later Christians thought he meant the Gospel of Matthew that has come down to us. There are very good reasons for thinking that he meant a different book, however, since the two things he says about Matthew are not true of our Matthew. Ours is not simply a collection of Jesus’ sayings (Logia) and it was certainly not originally written in Hebrew, as is almost universally recognized on very solid grounds (e.g., it copied stories from the *Greek* Gospel of Mark)
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nichael  March 11, 2015
My personal favorite “pointing” (i.e. adding of vowels) to YHWH is Larry Gonick’s “YaHoo WaHoo!”
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GokuEn  March 11, 2015
I have an idea for what could be a very interesting series of posts, although they are somewhat on the scholarly side… I have been reading different authors on Historical Jesus research and the one thing they all seem to disagree is on the question of the Son of Man. For instance, Vermes believes that “Son of Man” was an aramaic manner of speech, Dale Allison hinted that it could refer to some kind of corporate entity in reference to Dan 9, others believe that Jesus really called himself the apocalyptic Son of Man (usually a more conservative view) and then some say that Jesus preached about the coming of a supernatural entity other than himself (I believe that is your view).
Could you perhaps give us a sense of what are the “camps” in this dispute and what are the arguments they employ? What is the most common view? Why do adhere to your interpretation of the Son of Man sayings?
I know this is a very complex subject that might be a bit too much on the scholarly side… But I’ve been really going nuts over this question. Thanks!
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
Yes, it’s an unbelievably convoluted subject! I’ll add it to my very long list of things to post about.
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GokuEn  March 12, 2015
On the meantime, could you perhaps indulge me by recommending a paper/book that could summarize the “Son of Man debate” up until now? Thanks in advance!
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Bart

Bart  March 13, 2015
I haven’t read it, but you might try “Who Is This Son of Man?” by Larry Hurtado and Paul Owen.
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GokuEn  March 13, 2015
Thanks a lot!
 
 
 
 
 
 


Laszlo  March 13, 2015
I have always wanted to ask you this, but I think this is the first time the approtiate topic came up. Do you feel it would be more accurate Or even better if scholars translated the tetragrammaton to Yahweh or even just left the four letters as in the original text Instead of replacing it with lord which is not in the text? How do you deal with text like Acts 15:14 ” …God for the first time turned his attention to the nations to take out of them a people for his name.” What does that mean if not Yahweh? Also what about the abbreviated forms in the NT like “Hallelujah? Or of names derived from the divine name? Like Jesus which means Yahweh is salvation. Sorry for all the question, but I deal with this a lot and it would be helpfull for some info or even a book you could recommend.
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Bart

Bart  March 14, 2015
Good question — I’ve never really thought about it. I guess I’d be comfortable with translating it as YHWH or Yahweh — but it would certainly offend many Jewish sensitivities to do it that way.
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dragonfly  March 14, 2015
“Sometimes he is called God (the Hebrew word is El, or more commonly – by far – the plural form of that word, ELOHIM)”
Does this imply, in some instances the text may have actually been something like, “in the beginning THE GODS created the heavens and the earth”?
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Bart

Bart  March 14, 2015
No, the verb is in the singular, so it is a plural noun being construed as singular.
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JimBG  March 17, 2015
It’s seems a little strange to me why there is such resistance by modern translators to using Jehovah in English to render the tetragrammaton because its not how the Hebrews actually pronounced it (as it is unknown). Yet all use the name Jesus, and that is not how the Jews pronounced his name (Yehoshua?) nor Greeks. Similarly there are numerous names that are translated into English like Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehonadab, Jehoshaphat, etc. that incorporate the divine name, which again are not how they were actually pronounced in Hebrew. Since we speak English, not Hebrew, and Jehovah has been in use in English for a long time it seems puzzling. Any thoughts?
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Bart

Bart  March 18, 2015
I think the differences is that Jesus is the English of the Greek IHSOUS. Jehovah is not the equivalent of any ancient word.
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HomeBart’s BlogIs “Jehovah” in the Bible? 
  
7 votes, average: 6.86 out of 57 votes, average: 6.86 out of 57 votes, average: 6.86 out of 57 votes, average: 6.86 out of 57 votes, average: 6.86 out of 5 (7 votes, average: 6.86 out of 5)
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Is “Jehovah” in the Bible?
 
QUESTION:
How firmly grounded in reality is the claim of Jehovah’s Witnesses that the ‘divine name’ (Jehovah) belongs in the New Testament?
 
RESPONSE
So this is an interesting question, with several possible ramifications.  At first I should explain that the divine name “Jehovah” doesn’t belong in *either* Testament, old or new, in the opinion of most critical scholars, outside the ranks of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  That’s because Jehovah was not the divine name.
So here’s the deal.  In the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) God is given a number of different designations.  Sometimes he is called God (the Hebrew word is El, or more commonly – by far – the plural form of that word, ELOHIM); or The Almighty (SHADDAI), or God Almighty (EL SHADDAI), or Lord (ADONAI), or – well, or lots of other things.   But sometimes the God of Israel is actually given his personal name.   Like everyone else, he has a name.  And his name was יהוה (in English letters, that looks like YHWH).
Written Hebrew, as you probably know…
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jhm  March 10, 2015
Do you have any opinion on this idea of the origins of YHWH:
“NARRATOR: The Shasu were a people who lived in the deserts of southern Canaan, now Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia, around the same time as the Israelites emerged.
“Egyptian texts say one of the places where the Shasu lived is called “Y.H.W.,” probably pronounced Yahu, likely the name of their patron god. That name Yahu is strangely similar to Yahweh, the name of the Israelite god.
“In the Bible, the place where the Shasu lived is referred to as Midian. It is here, before the Exodus, the Bible tells us, Moses first encounters Yahweh, in the form of a burning bush.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/bibles-buried-secrets.html
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Tom  March 10, 2015
Topics like this are so very interesting, Dr. B.
Thanks for including them.
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walstrom  March 10, 2015
Thank you for covering this topic.
 I was a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses for twenty years and am conversant with all the arguments presented by the Watchtower organization bolstering their use of Jehovah in the New Testament.
 I’ll simply post three of these proffered arguments for your delectation in order to gauge your scholarly response.
1. About the middle of the first century C.E., the disciple James said to the elders in Jerusalem: “Symeon has related thoroughly how God for the first time turned his attention to the nations to take out of them a people for his name.” (Acts 15:14) Does it sound logical to you that James would make such a statement if nobody in the first century knew or used God’s name?
 2. When copies of the Septuagint were discovered that used the divine name rather than Ky′ri·os (Lord), it became evident to the (NWT) translators that in Jesus’ day copies of the earlier Scriptures in Greek—and of course those in Hebrew—did contain the divine name.
 Apparently, the God-dishonoring tradition of removing the divine name from Greek manuscripts developed only later. What do you think? Would Jesus and his apostles have promoted such a tradition?—Matthew 15:6-9.
 3.The AnchorBible Dictionary makes this comment: “There is some evidence that the Tetragrammaton, the Divine Name, Yahweh, appeared in some or all of the O[ld] T[estament] quotations in the N[ew] T[estament] when the NT documents were first penned.” And scholar George Howard says: “Since the Tetragram was still written in the copies of the Greek Bible [the Septuagint] which made up the Scriptures of the early church, it is reasonable to believe that the N[ew] T[estament] writers, when quoting from Scripture, preserved the Tetragram within the biblical text.”
________________________
Below are some examples of English translations that have used God’s name in the New Testament:
 A Literal Translation of the New Testament . . . From the Text of the VaticanManuscript, by Herman Heinfetter (1863)
 The Emphatic Diaglott, by Benjamin Wilson (1864)
 The Epistles of Paul in Modern English, by George Barker Stevens (1898)
 St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, by W. G. Rutherford (1900)
 The Christian’s Bible—New Testament, by George N. LeFevre (1928)
 The New Testament Letters, by J.W.C. Wand, Bishop of London (1946)
 _________________
Is this merely a fetish on the part of Jehovah’s Witnesses to protect their ‘branding’?
How arbitrary and out of step with the scholarly community is the Watchtower organization?
Thank you very much!
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Short responses:
 1. “The name” is another way to say the name of God without saying the name of God. You just say, “the name” and you mean “God” or “Yahweh”
2. Yes, there are Septuagint manuscripts that preserve the tetragrammaton. But most don’t.
 3. I don’t know of any evidence that NT authors actually used the Hebrew letters for the tetragrammaton in their quotations of the OT. Do these authors actually say what the evidence *is*? I’ve looked at probably all the earliest manuscripts of the NT Gospels and I can’t think of a single stitch of evidence for that claim. But maybe I’m wrong!
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talitakum

talitakum  March 12, 2015
The AnchorBible Dictionary’s comment is a false statement. It’s a lie. There’s no such evidence, as dr. Ehrman knows better than any of us. It’s surprising to see how many unfounded statements like this you can find everywhere, from Wikipedia up to decent Commentaries, underpinned by so-and-so scholars. If dr. Ehrman, one day, would decide to open this can of worms he will have some fun – as he had with mythicists and christian conservatives/apologists. :)
 Regarding the evidence for the tetragrammaton in some LXX fragments, it doesn’t obviously imply any evidence of the Tetragrammaton on NT text !! Moreover, as dr Ehrman correctly pointed out, these LXX fragments are exceptions and such “hebraicized” exceptions already got a satisfactory explanation by scholars of the LXX.
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s a “lie” in the sense that it is an “intentional false statement meant to deceive.” My sense is that the author really believed it. Even though he was wrong.
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Rick

Rick  March 17, 2015
Is not HaShem, meaning the name, used by some Jews in place of ADONAI,,, which was in place of the Tetragrammaton? I’ve heard the Shema in a reform Temple said with Adonai, but understand other Jews find that inappropriate..
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Bart

Bart  March 17, 2015
Maybe someone can give a definitive answer to this. I thought HaShem was used to replace YHWH which itself was pronounced as Adonai. Does anyone else know for certain?
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nacord  March 10, 2015
A JW (who was eagerly attempting to convert me) was saying that the book of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and did in fact employ the divine name, though written using pre-biblical Hebrew characters. I think they say that Jerome mentions such a manuscript as still being in existence during his time. Have you ever hear of this argument? I tried to do some research but came up with very little (outside of the watchtower). Thanks!
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Jerome mentions a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew, but to my knowledge he doesn’t say anything about its transcription of the divine name. Maybe someone else knows off the top of their head?
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caseyjunior  March 10, 2015
This question is only tangentially related to the current post, but I can’t resist asking it. After attending your lectures in Wichita several weeks ago, I read Misquoting Jesus and Reinterpreting Jesus. I was take by the statement that the day of the crucifiction is different in the synoptics from the day in John, so I checked it out in three translations of the New Testament that I have. The Revised Standard version and the translation by Richmond Lattimore both agreed that in John the crucifiction occurred on the day of preparation for the passover. However, the New International Version just said it was on the day of preparation, with a note at the bottom of the page stating this meant the day of preparation for the sabbath. Is this a case of modern “scribes” “correcting” a translation so the gospels don’t contradict each other, or is there some technicality I’m missing here? Thanks for the indulgence on being off topic.
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Yes, the translators are changing what the text actually says because they know that what it says is a contradiction.
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talitakum

talitakum  March 12, 2015
I am not sure I understand this right. I think all Gospels agree on the fact that Jesus was crucified on Friday (the day before Saturday/Sabbath). So what does it mean that “the day of the crucifiction is different in the synoptics from the day in John”?
I believe that the discrepancy between John and synoptics is about that Saturday/Sabbath being also Passover day. But this would have nothing to deal with the day of Jesus’ crucifiction, all evangelists apparently agree on the fact that Jesus crucifiction (and burial) happened the day before Sabbath (Friday). Thank you.
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
Yes, the issue is not whether it was a Friday or not. The issue is whether that Friday was the Day before the Passover or whether it was the Passover — so was Jesus’ last meal a regular meal or a Passover meal.
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Hon Wai  March 10, 2015
Did ancient Hebrew writers omit the vowels to save space, making it quicker to make copies of the manuscripts?
 Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the notion of the Holy Spirit being God. Can you post on whether this is supported by New Testament? A post on how the Holy Spirit “became God” is helpful.
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
They simply didn’t have vowels in their alphabet. I’ll think about posting on the Holy Spirit!
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Diane  March 11, 2015
I think the Holy Spirit deserves his/her/its own book. There is no weirder or more neglected topic in Christianity!
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
And much less to say about it, since the early Christians themselves did not say much!
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Hon Wai  March 10, 2015
“When you add the vowels of ADONAI to the consonants of YHWH, it makes it very hard indeed to say”
Presumably it would sound something like “Yahowaih” – doesn’t sound difficult to say to me??
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Well, if nothing else it’s very weird and would have taken a while to figure out — and with that pause they would know what they should say instead.
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Adam Beaven  March 11, 2015
Dr ehrman
 Maybe this is a dumb question but is the consonantal skeleton for yhwh the same as adonai?
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
No, completely different, no similarities.
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PersephoneK  March 11, 2015
That was really interesting! I must confess, I never really thought about the origins of ‘Jehovah’ before, but had generally known about Yahweh, Adonai, El Shaddai, etc.
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Jason  March 11, 2015
It was hard to read this post without imagining you getting rocks thrown at you like John Cleese.
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
Ha! I kept thinking of that too!
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MikeyS  March 11, 2015
That’s brilliant Bart, thank you.
One wonders if we are all descended from Adam and Eve or latterly from Noah or his family, then how come the world uses all these different languages? Different dialects certainly. New Yorkers speak so fast, its difficult to keep up.
One question though?
Yahweh was supposed to be read from right to left, why didn’t the sound start with an H, rather than the letter Y? Or maybe I have misunderstood it?
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Bart

Bart  March 11, 2015
When we write “YHWH” or “Yahweh” we are reversing the order of the letters because we are putting it in English, writing from left to right. In Hebrew the letters go the other direction.
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Philbert  March 11, 2015
Amazing- I always wondered about that. Thank you.
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Mhamed Errifi  March 11, 2015
hello Bart
Are you aware that Arabic language it too can be written without vowels . We are told according to tradition, the first to commission a system of harakat or vowels was Muawiyah I of the Umayyad dynasty, when he ordered Ziad Ibn Abih, his wālī in Basra (governed 664–673), since you know the history of Hebrew so when were vowels introduced in Hebrew , is it before 673 AD or after ? just to know who copied the idea from the other Arabs from Jews or jews from Arabs
thank you
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
The Masorete scribes who added the vowel points to the Hebrew Bible started their work about the year 500 CE.
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Mhamed Errifi  March 13, 2015
hello Bart
Since I am familiar with writing and reading written language without vowels , but I could not understand when you this
What were Jewish readers supposed to do when they were reading a text that had the unpronounceable name יהוה
YHWH in it?
 My question is how did the first person I dont who he was maybe Moses wrote that in OT for the first time if יהוה was unpronounceable. As arabic speaker I can read and write arabic while somebody is dictating me without vowels but I cant write a single word until I heard its prounciation just like in any language , so how did the first person write יהוה for the time in OT
THANK YOU
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Bart

Bart  March 13, 2015
It was not originally unpronouceable.
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SteveWalach  March 18, 2015
I suppose any grouping of letters could — with enough effort — generate a vocalization, but given that the writers of the Torah were inclined to make puns, employ irony and use figurative language, isn’t an unpronounceable name for their supreme, incomprehensible deity the perfect metaphor?
 
 
 
 
 
 


Eric  March 11, 2015
Wow,
This is fascinating and absolutely new ground for me (read a lot of critical commentary — trade books — on biblical matters). I have never heard any of this. I always assumed that “Jehovah” was some kind of Hellenization or Latinization of Yahweh directly — it did seem a little oddly adjusted, but then Yeshua – Jesus looks like an odd transition to an English speaker, too. (or alternatively, Yeshua-Joshua).
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walstrom  March 11, 2015
Concerning Matthew having been written in Hebrew, Dr. George Howard says:
 ____
“Papias, a reputed pupil of Apostle John, around 90 A.D. explained: “Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.” (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39, quoting Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, which in turn quotes Papias.) The latter remark has been interpreted to mean it was translated as best as could be done.
 Irenaeus likewise says: “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel at Rome, and founding the church there.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter I, quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book V, Chapter VIII, quoted in Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lost and Hostile Gospels (Williams and Norgate, 1874) at 119..) This means GATHM was circulating by at least 54-58 A.D.”
(The above taken from http://www.jesuswordsonly.com/books/406-history-of-hebrew-version-of-matthew.html)
 __________________
If you’ll indulge me (I don’t know in what other contexts I should ask this question) I’d like to ask about Jehovah’s Witnesses peculiar and singular unwillingness to use CROSS (stauros), instead preferring ‘Torture stake.”
To wit:
“But what did stau·ros´ mean in the first century when the Greek Scriptures were written? An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, by W. E. Vine, says: “Stauros . . . denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun [stau·ros´] and the verb stauro?, to fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross. The shape of the latter had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt.” Vine goes on to say: “By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the cross of Christ.” The Companion Bible, under the heading “The Cross and Crucifixion,” notes: “Our English word ‘cross’ is the translation of the Latin crux; but the Greek stauros no more means a crux than the word ‘stick’ means a ‘crutch.’ Homer uses the word stauros of an ordinary pole or stake, or a single piece of timber. And this is the meaning and usage of the word throughout the Greek classics. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another. . . . There is nothing in the Greek of the N[ew] T[estament] even to imply two pieces of timber.” Watchtower 1989 May 1 pp.23-24
 _______________
This radical assertion seems totally at odds with traditional Christianity, certainly–but does it have scholarly merit of any weight?
Thank you!!
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
Yes, the tradition going back to Papias is that Matthew produced a Gospel in Hebrew. Later Christians thought he meant the Gospel of Matthew that has come down to us. There are very good reasons for thinking that he meant a different book, however, since the two things he says about Matthew are not true of our Matthew. Ours is not simply a collection of Jesus’ sayings (Logia) and it was certainly not originally written in Hebrew, as is almost universally recognized on very solid grounds (e.g., it copied stories from the *Greek* Gospel of Mark)
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nichael  March 11, 2015
My personal favorite “pointing” (i.e. adding of vowels) to YHWH is Larry Gonick’s “YaHoo WaHoo!”
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GokuEn  March 11, 2015
I have an idea for what could be a very interesting series of posts, although they are somewhat on the scholarly side… I have been reading different authors on Historical Jesus research and the one thing they all seem to disagree is on the question of the Son of Man. For instance, Vermes believes that “Son of Man” was an aramaic manner of speech, Dale Allison hinted that it could refer to some kind of corporate entity in reference to Dan 9, others believe that Jesus really called himself the apocalyptic Son of Man (usually a more conservative view) and then some say that Jesus preached about the coming of a supernatural entity other than himself (I believe that is your view).
Could you perhaps give us a sense of what are the “camps” in this dispute and what are the arguments they employ? What is the most common view? Why do adhere to your interpretation of the Son of Man sayings?
I know this is a very complex subject that might be a bit too much on the scholarly side… But I’ve been really going nuts over this question. Thanks!
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Bart

Bart  March 12, 2015
Yes, it’s an unbelievably convoluted subject! I’ll add it to my very long list of things to post about.
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GokuEn  March 12, 2015
On the meantime, could you perhaps indulge me by recommending a paper/book that could summarize the “Son of Man debate” up until now? Thanks in advance!
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Bart

Bart  March 13, 2015
I haven’t read it, but you might try “Who Is This Son of Man?” by Larry Hurtado and Paul Owen.
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GokuEn  March 13, 2015
Thanks a lot!
 
 
 
 
 
 


Laszlo  March 13, 2015
I have always wanted to ask you this, but I think this is the first time the approtiate topic came up. Do you feel it would be more accurate Or even better if scholars translated the tetragrammaton to Yahweh or even just left the four letters as in the original text Instead of replacing it with lord which is not in the text? How do you deal with text like Acts 15:14 ” …God for the first time turned his attention to the nations to take out of them a people for his name.” What does that mean if not Yahweh? Also what about the abbreviated forms in the NT like “Hallelujah? Or of names derived from the divine name? Like Jesus which means Yahweh is salvation. Sorry for all the question, but I deal with this a lot and it would be helpfull for some info or even a book you could recommend.
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Bart

Bart  March 14, 2015
Good question — I’ve never really thought about it. I guess I’d be comfortable with translating it as YHWH or Yahweh — but it would certainly offend many Jewish sensitivities to do it that way.
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dragonfly  March 14, 2015
“Sometimes he is called God (the Hebrew word is El, or more commonly – by far – the plural form of that word, ELOHIM)”
Does this imply, in some instances the text may have actually been something like, “in the beginning THE GODS created the heavens and the earth”?
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Bart

Bart  March 14, 2015
No, the verb is in the singular, so it is a plural noun being construed as singular.
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JimBG  March 17, 2015
It’s seems a little strange to me why there is such resistance by modern translators to using Jehovah in English to render the tetragrammaton because its not how the Hebrews actually pronounced it (as it is unknown). Yet all use the name Jesus, and that is not how the Jews pronounced his name (Yehoshua?) nor Greeks. Similarly there are numerous names that are translated into English like Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehonadab, Jehoshaphat, etc. that incorporate the divine name, which again are not how they were actually pronounced in Hebrew. Since we speak English, not Hebrew, and Jehovah has been in use in English for a long time it seems puzzling. Any thoughts?
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Bart

Bart  March 18, 2015
I think the differences is that Jesus is the English of the Greek IHSOUS. Jehovah is not the equivalent of any ancient word.
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