Ferdie Mulder recently sat down with Peter Head for a recorded interview and he has now posted the video. The geese get a bit excited at points, but don’t let that spoil it for you. The second video is more focused on textual criticism and papyrology, but do not miss the point in the first video where there is a soft giggle at the suggestion that Dr. Head has supervised some excellent PhD students. Aside from that, I quite enjoyed these. Thanks, Ferdie!
Part 1 Part 2
Peter makes the very good point that there is more agreement between Ehrman and evangelical scholars than many suppose. Kurt Jaros has some online videos, in which he makes the same observation.
ReplyDeleteI think that comes down to which version of Ehrman you're talking about: the author of the scholarly works, which tend to support very mainstream essentially Hortian views of the NT text, or the author of the popular works, which tend to make sensational claims about the text being unreliable.
DeleteNow, why would a person put forward in public two differing treatments, I wonder.
DeleteThe scholarly works are not best-sellers. The popular works make the NY Times best-seller lists and big bucks.
ReplyDeleteYes....follow the money! And blow academic integrity!
ReplyDeleteCertainly the Obbink affair tells us that academics are just as willing to follow the money as anyone else, but - as much as certain segments of conservative evangelicalism love to use Ehrman as some sort of evil anti-christ-like hobgoblin suitable for scaring children - is it possible, just possible, that he has a different, less nefarious motive for using different tones in different types of writings? Have none of you ever used different tones when speaking to different groups of people?
ReplyDeleteHis academic writings are targeted at, surprisingly, academics. While academic objectivity is just one of our preferred myths, we are at least still encouraged to take on an air of follow-the-evidence neutrality.
His popular writings, on the other hand, are targeted at the general populace, many of whom have theological pre-committments to a version of the reliability of scripture that far exceed the evidence. Could it be that he's simply trying to give a full throated defence of his position to a population that he knows will be hostile to it? You can't blame him for being, as he would say, loaded for bear; you don't bring a knife to a gun fight.
I think your last paragraph puts it backwards. The gunfight would be with other academics--i.e. the people who are best equipped to read his arguments critically and see through the fallacious reasoning that he uses in his popular works. When writing to that audience, he is much more cautious and mainstream. Then when he turns around and writes popular works where he makes it appear that lines of argument that he knows wouldn't fly in academia are uncontroversial. For example, he knows that a lay person will read his claim that there are more variants in the NT manuscripts than there are words in the NT and conclude that this must mean that the text of the NT is highly uncertain, which is just the conclusion he wants them to reach, when he knows full well that that fact doesn't in any way support that conclusion. And in fact the works of his that are read and respected in academia seem to take for granted the general reliability of the NT text.
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Adjusting style for the audience is one thing, what Ehrman does goes beyond that. Taking on someone who is capable of hitting back requires a degree of bravery, taking on someone who is incapable of hitting back is the mark of a coward. When Ehrman writes for the layman in the style he does he is certainly not exhibiting any academic bravery, rather he is exhibiting something else
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