Bart Ehrman, Ph.D - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Misquoting Jesus, Lost Scriptures, Jesus Interrupted, and God’s Problem has created a 6 hour Learning Company DVD course on the New Testament. Regardless if it describes a false god and false religion, the Bible is the most influential book in human history. If you find yourself arguing with biblical-inerrantists, or if you’d like to know the details behind how it was compiled then come join us.

There are only five spaces left for this three week event which begins this Thursday.

Where: Jon’s Home (Clackamas)
When: Thursday nights, March 4, 11, & 18. 7 - 9:30pm
What: The Teaching Co. Lectures: http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=6299
Why: From Lecture One Overview: How did we get the 27 books of the NT? When and how were the books written? For what purpose? When were they collected into a canon of Scripture?

If you are able to commit to all 3 weeks, RSVP to Jon if you’d like to attend. Snacks, friendships and a wonderful learning experience await you.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dDhUN1V2aElqUmd6LUpVT0FLNHc4aFE6MA..

I must have 10 or 15 of Ehrman’s Teaching Company DVDs.  They are excellent.  I would like to attend, but Clackamas is too far away.

I just started his book Misquoting Jesus. I really like Bart Erhman’s writing style. His book God’s Problem was a good as well but not an argument I care about. I was a Christian for the technical reasons of thinking the Bible was true, not because of emotional or theological reasons.

Which Teaching company courses do you own? Would you mind us borrowing some for future events? We’d like to do something similar on the West side of town, but just need a house / place to host it.

I have:

“New Testament”, which covers the most important material and is what you are looking at.

“From Jesus to Constantine”

“Lost Christianities”

Additionally, I have downloaded and committed to DVD the Yale lecture series on the Old Testament by Prof. Christine Hayes, which is very good.  I have added some captions to some of these lectures, spelling words she only pronounces or otherwise adding material.

There is a NT series from Yale also, but I have not heard more than a lecture or two.

Some of Ehrman’s lectures from “New Testament” are so good that I put them on one DVD at 1.3X normal speed, especially helpful if you are reviewing material you have already heard.  These are frequency shifted back down to baseline so that they merely sound like Bart is speaking faster.

I also have a DVD of a recent PBS program “The Bible’s Buried Secrets”, which is an excellent OT history of the Jews starting from the earliest archaeological history, i. e. about 1200 BCE.  It gives no credence to the Exodus as an historic event by omitting it.  Think Donald Redford.

I think I would enjoy having a group of people over to view the DVDs and discuss the material.  I probably have more than anyone would ever want to sit through.

I live in SW Beaverton.

John

KurtJ - 28 February 2010 11:02 PM

Bart Ehrman, Ph.D - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Misquoting Jesus, Lost Scriptures, Jesus Interrupted, and God’s Problem

This evening 3-12-10 NPR’s Fresh Air rebroadcast an excellent interview with Bart Ehrman.  “Jesus And The Hidden Contradictions Of The Gospels”  Originally airing a year ago.  I heard it then too, and it gets better with retelling - in fact I’ve listened to it a third time.

I like how he clarifies the aspect of the distinct books of the New Testament and explained how much confabulation has happened with the various distinct Gospel reports of the Crucifixion.

Another point (though I’m sure most of us know this ). Jesus predicted the end of days before his disciples died.  Didn’t happen, he was wrong.  Now, for the past 201 decades we’ve had people absolutely convinced the End of Days was nigh.  Everyone of ‘em has also been wrong.

From the interview: “To illustrate the differences between the Gospels, Ehrman offers opposing depictions of Jesus talking about himself. In the book of John, Jesus talks about himself and proclaims who he is, saying “I am the bread of life.” Whereas in Mark, Jesus teaches principally about the coming kingdom and hardly ever mentions himself directly. These differences offer clues into the perspectives of the authors, and the eras in which they wrote their respective Gospels, according to Ehrman.

““In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is not interested in teaching about himself. But when you read John’s Gospel, that’s virtually the only thing Jesus talks about is who he is, what his identity is, where he came from,” Ehrman says. “This is completely unlike anything that you find in Mark or in Matthew and Luke.”

I love to point out to the fundamentalists that in Mark, the first of the Gospels to have been written, Jesus “says” “Verily I say unto you that there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” (Mark 9:1 KJV)  The fundamentalists know this quote.  Obviously, to the extent that the quotation is true, Jesus thinks the Kingdom of God is coming soon.  It was not a strange belief.  He was one of many apocalypticists in a long chain for whom the only reason God would allow the children of Israel to suffer was that God was coming oh so soon.

By the time you get to Matthew and Luke, apocalypticism is toned down.  Many of those Jesus allegedly spoke to were getting old or already dead.  When Matthew and Luke wrote, the Temple had been destroyed (in August, 70 CE) perhaps 15 years earlier and people were dealing with it.  So Luke writes that Jesus says “This generation shall not pass away till all be fufilled.” (Luke 21:32)  Matthew has Jesus say the same thing almost verbatim in Matt: 24:34.  They hedged their bets because Matthew just two verses later writes that Jesus says “But of the day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” (KJV)

The average life span was about 40 years then, so a teenager when Jesus spoke would be about 70 years old when Matthew and Luke wrote.

Perhaps ten years later still, when John, the last of the four Gospels was written about 95CE (and not by John, see John 21:24), Jesus is not heard to say a word about apocalypticism.  Jesus’ apocalyptic words were a hard sell by then because virtually everyone to whom Jesus had spoken, including John, likely was dead.  But apocalypticism lived on.  John himself was the great apocalypticist, having written “The Revelation of John”, last book of the NT.

So then I say “Jesus was dead wrong about that”.  You would think I had struck them on the head!  “What? Jesus wrong?  No, he MEANT that…