The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction – by Bart D. Ehrman

From chapter one:

«The Bible is the most commonly purchased, widely read, and deeply cherished book in the history of Western Civilization. It is also the most widely misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misused. These reasons alone make it worth our time to study it. We can begin by considering the importance of the Bible in greater depth.

Why Study the Bible?

People study the Bible, and should study the Bible, for lots of reasons – religious reasons, historical reasons, and literary reasons.

Religious Reasons

Most people who study the Bible do so, of course, for religious reasons. Many people revere the Bible as the word of God, and want to know what it can teach them about what to believe and how to live. In this book our study of the Bible will not be in order to promote any particular religious point of view or theology – Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran, agnostic, or anything else. We will instead be approaching the Bible from a historical and literary point of view. But even from these alternative points of view, there are solid religious reasons for studying the Bible -- even for those people who are not themselves religious or interested in becoming religious. That is because in order to understand our world – and the religious people in it – we need to have a firmer grasp on the book that stands at the heart of the Jewish and Christian religions.

Historical Reasons

Arguably the most important reason for studying the Bible – especially from a historical point of view -- is because of its importance for the history of Western Civilization. The dominant religion of Europe and the New World for the past 2000 years has been Christianity; and Christianity, as we will see, grew out of, and alongside of, Judaism. Both religions continue to assert an enormous influence on our form of culture. This is true not only on the individual level, as people are guided in their thoughts, beliefs, and actions by what they learn in these religions. It is true on the broadest imaginable historical scale. Christianity has had the single greatest impact on Western civilization of any religion, ideology, or world view, whether looked at culturally, socially, politically, or economically. There is no institution that can even come close to the organized Christian church for its wide-ranging impact on the West. And at the foundation of Christianity –at its heart, one could argue – stands the Bible. If one does not understand the Bible, one cannot fully understand the course of the history of the world we inhabit.

And more than that, there can be no doubt that the Bible has influenced, and continues to influence, millions and millions of people’s lives. It is widely known that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, without any serious competitor. What is not always appreciated is that the Bible is the best-selling book every year, year in and year out. So many copies of the Bible are sold every year that no one has been able to add them all up. One estimate from the year 2005 indicated that just in the United States, some twenty-five million copies of the Bible were sold. But what is most astounding is that the vast majority of those Bibles were sold to people who already had Bibles: over nine out of ten American households own at least one copy of the Bible, and the average household has four. As an article in the New Yorker magazine of December 18, 2006 put it, this “means that Bible publishers manage to sell twenty-five million copies a year of a book that almost everybody already has.”

Americans not only like owning and buying Bibles. They like reading them. A Gallup poll...»

This moment

This moment, the moment of being, is all there is.

Dogmatic positions

Michael Shermer vs Douglas Jacoby: A debate on evolution and God.

For me, one of the most interesting moments in this debate between Michael Shermer and Douglas Jacoby occurred at the beginning of the Q&A section, when a young gentleman from the audience asked the first question: «What sort of new evidence would it take to get you to change your mind?»

That is a question that helps us to ponder how different or how similar are the positions held by the debaters. The debaters held opposing positions, but this opposition is superficial. Actually, based on each response to the question, both of them share a dogmatic* position. Both of them could encourage the use of reason, evidence, and questioning before accepting any truth claim, yet none of them have exerted self-questioning to their own opinions.

I see very little value in such a “debate” between apparently opposing positions which are deeply similar.

* Dogmatism is the tendency to express strongly held opinions in a way that suggests they should be accepted without question; and dogma is a forcibly asserted opinion expressed as incorrigible, immutable, and unchallengeable.

A single orthodoxy

I recently read this on Facebook: “Jesus always was God and still is. If you write otherwise then you are a blasphemer and a decieving wolf. (sic)”

That comment was written by someone (here called “Dude”) in response to a note posted by Dr. Bart D. Ehrman. The note referenced this blog entry: Visions of Mary. Although similar comments had been written by Dude in response to notes about the book Dr. Ehrman is currently writing. His new book discusses, historically —not theologically—, how Jesus became God.

The comments from Dude reminded me of my younger years. A time when my Christian faith meant upmost certainty and such level of conviction completely filled me emotionally and intellectually. What was good for me must be equally good for everybody, I thought, and any idea that could stop my Christian proselytism had to be seen as a dangerous idea, worth fighting against it.

The only thing I currently fight against is ignorance.

Next is my response to Dude’s comments:

«Dude: I have seen your comments on this Facebook page (Dr. Ehrman’s page) since some days ago. I guess you have a profound faith in Jesus Christ and I also guess you are certain of the infinite value and significance of the character of Jesus as God himself. Perhaps you know that his divinity is the cornerstone for Christian salvation. I held myself those beliefs in my youth; before I entered thoughtfully in the study of theology in general, and Christology and Christian soteriology in particular. Perhaps your local ministers are not equipped for the task of answering profound theological questions, so you must do the hard work of researching for yourself. That very thing is what I have done since almost two decades ago, just because the truth, ample and deep, it is something very important for me. What I have found is something that I could not believe in my past: there is something even greater that such certainty of my younger years.

I won’t tell you the details of my case because my path is not the same as yours. You have to find out your own way.

I no longer hold similar beliefs as yours, mainly because there are better ones: more thoughtful, benevolent and caring beliefs. And by this I do not mean that a given person have to leave Christianity in order to hold those other beliefs.

Also, apparently your current beliefs, whichever they might be, have led you to make suspicious judgments over a person you pretend to know: “a blasphemer and a decieving wolf (sic)”.

What is next? Are you going to agree to punish someone just because he doesn’t hold your orthodoxy? You seem to be a Christian; I have no doubt about it, but please consider that Christianity is much more than a single orthodoxy.»

Falsifiability

How does the brain generate consciousness? Baroness Susan Greenfield: ANU

I was listening to this presentation by Susan Greenfield about some scientific work in neuroscience. Several ideas captured my full attention. One was this expression of a key scientific concept:

«…I don’t care if this is right, at all. That is not important. What does matter is that it is testable; and that’s why it is important that we can at last use science to develop falsifiable hypotheses.»

The concept of falsifiability is essential because it helps us to ponder how much of “science” there is in any given idea or system of related ideas —a scientific theory. By concepts like this of falsifiability we can now know that phrenology is a pseudoscience.

Falsifiability is a very important concept that must be understood in order to identify a scientific endeavor. I would go so far as to suggest that it is a very useful intellectual pattern to follow when building opinion on other matters. I wonder if scholars in non-natural sciences fields, like political science, adhere to this intellectual standard of falsifiability when they are doing research.

Is it the case? It sounds like falsifiability should be the basis for demarcation in any kind of science, but it is too early for me to accept that; that is, before doing some research among what social scholars have to say on the matter.

Science and theology

If there are false dilemmas between theology and science it is because there are superficial views of both fields. There is a lot of thinking to do and hard work on self-education in order to build informed and justified opinions not just about supernatural deities but about the world we all live in.

I am not an atheist; but I do not hold the naïve faith of my younger years anymore. Now I despise pretentious absolute truth claims from both, theists and atheists. For example, the theistic claim that there is an anthropomorphic deity ruling the natural world from a supernatural realm; or the atheistic claim that the religious instinct is a trait of stupidity. I despise the arrogance in any position that present itself as if there is nothing more to learn.

There is a lot to learn, unlearn, and relearn about philosophy, theology and science. In the realm of theology, I look for ways to think about —as R.C. Sproul put it— «God» as that-than-which-no-greater-can-be-thought, so I study a variety of perspectives from different forms of both, theism and atheism. I study individual works from theist theologians, atheist theologians, and also from philosophers, theist scientists, and atheist scientists. I also listen to their discussions and debates.

A problem with many debates between science and theology is that, often, both sides defend a position based on mutual ignorance; that is, both sides forget what John Stuart Mill wrote time ago about the value in refuting, ourselves, our own arguments from an opposite perspective.

An outcome of such mutual ignorance is a “debate” on which each side argues from two different levels of abstraction, and they pretend to ignore the various synthesis proposed by thinkers who actually took the time to learn and understand both fields, science and theology.

So far, I have studied the works of philosophers and theologians like Charles Finney, William Lane Craig, Hans Küng, and others, and I have not found any ground for the uninformed faith of my younger years. Yet, I also see around me many religious institutions doing very little, if any, to help kids and adults to leave behind the different kinds of uninformed faith. For example, the answers from William Lane Craig in the following video imply a particular conceptual and philosophical level in order to properly understand them, but it is very unlikely such intellectual level is actually present at churches. I wonder why this situation has remained since long time ago.

A Conversation About Faith and Reason (William Lane Craig)