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The Quantity and Quality of Textual Variants
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Today’s post, as well as several posts to come, are excerpts from my new book, Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Skeptics who try to cast doubt upon the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts point to the apparently large number of variants they contain. Bart Ehrman, for example, in Misquoting Jesus, suggests that there are 200,000 to 400,000 variants among the New Testament manuscripts. He adds, dramatically, “There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.” That sounds ominous, doesn’t it? But, in fact, the data give us no reason to doubt the reliability of the manuscripts. Let me explain why.
We have such a large number of variants because there are so many extant manuscripts. Considering that the four Gospels contain a total of 64,000 words, and we have about 2,000 manuscripts of the Gospels, that’s a lot of potential variants. But as I’ve already shown, having many manuscripts actually increases the likelihood of our getting back to the original text. It also adds to the number of variants, however, which can sound negative to one who isn’t familiar with text-critical issues.
Let me suggest a more hypothetical example that might make clear what I’m saying. This book contains almost 50,000 words. Suppose I asked two people to make copies of this book by hand. Suppose, further, that they made one mistake every 1,000 words (99.9 percent accuracy). When they finished, each of their manuscripts would have 50 mistakes, for a total of 100. This doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But suppose I asked 2,000 people to make copies of my book. And suppose they also made a mistake every 1,000 words. When they finished, the total of mistakes in their manuscripts would be 100,000. This sounds like a lot of variants—more variants than words in my book, Bart Ehrman would say. But in fact the large number of variants is a simple product of the large number of manuscripts. Moreover, if text critics, lacking access to the original version (the autograph) of my book, were going to try and determine what my original version said, they’d be in a much stronger position if they had 2,000 copies to work from, even though they would be dealing with 100,000 variants. With 2,000 manuscripts, the text critics would be able to evaluate the variants more astutely and come up with something very close to what I originally wrote. If they had only two manuscripts, however, even though these included only 100 variants, they would find it harder to determine what the original manuscript said.
So, the fact “there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament” isn’t surprising. Nor is it bad news. It is a reflection of the wealth of the manuscript evidence available to us. The actual number of variants represents a tiny percentage of the variants that could have occurred among the manuscripts.
Moreover, the vast majority of variants in the New Testament manuscripts are insignificant, either because they appear so rarely that they are obviously not original, or because they don’t appear in the older manuscripts, or because they don’t impact the meaning of the text. In fact, the majority of variants that show up in enough older manuscripts to impact our reading of the text are spelling variations or errors.16 Text critic Daniel Wallace concludes that “only about 1% of the textual variants” make any substantive difference. And few, if any, of these have any bearing on theologically important matters. If you actually took out of the Gospels every word that was text-critically uncertain, the impact on your understanding of Jesus would be negligible.
Consider, for example, the two most obvious and significant textual variants in the Gospels. One of these appears in John 7:53–8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery. Virtually all modern translations put this story in brackets, adding a note that says something like, “The earliest manuscripts do not include this passage.” It’s likely that this story is true, but that it was added to John well after the evangelist finished his task. Similarly, the ending of Mark includes a bracketed passage because the old manuscripts do not include anything after Mark 16:8. These two disputed passages, though significant in some ways, do not substantially alter our understanding of Jesus.
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels? | 8 Comments »
How Should We Evaluate the Antiquity of the Gospel Manuscripts?
By Mark D. Roberts | Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Today’s post, as well as several posts to come, are excerpts from my new book, Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The smallest time gap, the one between P52 and the autograph of John’s Gospel, is two generations. The more complete manuscripts are about a century later than the original writings, with extant copies of the whole New Testament more than two centuries later than the time of composition. From our point of view, the period between the extant manuscripts of the Gospels and the autographs may seem awfully long, and may raise doubts about the reliability of the Gospel manuscripts. (Picture to the right: an ancient manuscript of one of the letters of Paul)
But if we compare the antiquity of the Gospel manuscripts with similar ancient writings, the case for trusting the Gospels gains considerable strength. Consider, for example, the writings of three historians more or less contemporaneous with the evangelists: the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius. The oldest extant manuscripts of Tacitus and Suetonius come from the ninth century. Those of Josephus date back only to the eleventh century. We’re talking about a time gap of 800 to 1,000 years between the autographs and the extant manuscripts, yet historians accept the manuscripts as basically reliable representations of what was originally written. Lest it seem that I’ve chosen examples that are unusual, the oldest manuscripts of the classical historians Herodotus and Thucydides are separated from their autographs by about 500 years.
If someone were to claim that we can’t have confidence in the original content of the Gospels because the existing manuscripts are too far removed from the autographs, then that person would also have to cast doubt upon our knowledge of almost all ancient history and literature. Such skepticism, which is not found among classical scholars and historians, would be extreme and unwarranted.
Therefore, on the antiquity scale, the New Testament Gospels receive a top score.
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels? | 1 Comment »
Standards for Evaluating the Reliability of Gospel Manuscripts
By Mark D. Roberts | Monday, June 25, 2007
Today’s post, as well as several posts to come, are excerpts from my new book, Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Before we examine the data, let’s think for a moment about what might allow us to put confidence in the manuscripts of the Gospels.
First, we would look for antiquity. We’d want the manuscripts in existence to be old, the closer to the autographs the better. Less time between the original and an existing copy decreases the possibility of changes being introduced through many acts of copying.
Second, we would prefer multiplicity. Clearly, it would be better to have many manuscripts at our disposal rather than just a few. An abundance of manuscripts would put us in a much better position to determine the original wording. (Picture to the right: An ancient manuscript of the Gospel of John)
Third, we would want trustworthy scholarly methodology. If the academics who study the biblical manuscripts, known as textual critics, utilize reliable methods, ones that maximize objectivity, then we would have greater confidence in their conclusions.
Fourth, we would look at the quantity and quality of textually ambiguous passages (made up of differences, called variants, among the manuscripts). If the existing copies of the Gospels contain a high proportion of textual variants, then we would question our ability to know what was originally written. If, on the contrary, the differences among extant manuscripts are relatively insignificant, then we would rightly place confidence in the critical Greek texts upon which our translations are based.
So how does reality measure up to these standards?
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels? | 1 Comment »
The Relationship between Existing Manuscripts and the Original Compositions
By Mark D. Roberts | Sunday, June 24, 2007
The documents we know as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written sometime in the second half of the first century A.D. (I’ll say more about the dating of the Gospels in chapter 4.) They were written on scrolls of papyrus (a rough, paper-like substance). Papyrus was popular because it was readily available and relatively inexpensive. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t especially durable. Thus it is highly unlikely that any of the original Gospel manuscripts, called by the technical term autographs, exist today. Probably, the biblical autographs were worn out through use, though they could also have been misplaced by absentminded church leaders, destroyed by persecutors of the early Christians, or even eaten by critters.
Because ancient documents tended to have a relatively short shelf life, people who valued them had a way of preserving their contents: copying. Professional copyists, called scribes, would copy the words of one text into a fresh papyrus or parchment (a longer lasting material made from animal skins). Their training taught the scribes to minimize errors and maximize accuracy.
Yet copying manuscripts was not a slavish task, with scribal accuracy matching modern photocopy technology. At times scribes would make intentional changes as they copied. For example, they would correct what they believed to be a spelling error in their source text. And even the best of scribes also sometimes made unintended errors. Thus the best extant manuscripts of the Gospels are likely to differ in some measure from the autographs.
Moreover, it is probable that many of the first copies of the Gospels were made, not by professional scribes, but by literate lay copyists. As the early church rapidly expanded throughout the Roman world in the first centuries A.D., there was a pressing need for multiple copies of authoritative Christian documents, including Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Nonprofessional copyists must have stepped in to meet this need.
The fact that the original Gospel manuscripts have not survived to this day, combined with the fact that for centuries the text was passed on through a careful but imperfect process of copying, makes us wonder whether we can trust that the Greek text we have today looks anything like what the authors originally wrote down. Can we know what the original Gospel manuscripts actually said?
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels? | No Comments »
F.A.Q. Format
By Mark D. Roberts | Saturday, June 23, 2007
Today’s post, as well as several posts to come, are excerpts from my new book, Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Influence of the Internet can also be seen in the basic format of this book. Millions of web sites use a F.A.Q. page—Frequently Asked Questions—to respond to the most common inquiries from visitors. Can We Trust the Gospels? is an extended F.A.Q. It is structured by a series of basic questions about the Gospels:
• Can we know what the original Gospel manuscripts really said?
• Did the evangelists know Jesus personally?
• When were the Gospels written?
• What sources did the Gospel writers use?
• Did early Christian oral tradition reliably pass down the truth about Jesus?
• What are the New Testament Gospels?
• What difference does it make that there are four Gospels?
• Are there contradictions in the Gospels?
• If the Gospels are theology, can they be history?
• Do miracles undermine the reliability of the Gospels?
• Do historical sources from the era of the Gospels support their reliability?
• Does archeology support the reliability of the Gospels?
• Did the political agenda of the early church influence the content of the Gospels?
• Why do we have only four Gospels in the Bible?
• Can we trust the Gospels after all?
The pages ahead contain answers that are the result of more than three decades of investigation, involving hundreds of hours of seminary teaching, thousands of hours of thinking, and myriads of pages of reading. For the sake of my intended audience, I have condensed all of this into relatively few pages. You won’t find complex arguments with elaborate footnotes in this book, even though many of my conclusions grow out of such complexity and elaboration. If you’re looking for more data than I can provide here, I’ll try to point you in helpful directions through the footnotes.
My hope is that, as you read this book, you will come to believe that you can trust the biblical Gospels. Even as Luke wrote the third Gospel so that his readers might “know the truth” concerning Jesus (Luke 1:4), so have I written this book.
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels? | 1 Comment »
Critical Scholarship and Confidence in the Gospels
By Mark D. Roberts | Friday, June 22, 2007
Today’s post, as well as several posts to come, are excerpts from my new book, Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Beginning with my days at Harvard and continuing throughout the last three decades, I have worked away on the question of the trustworthiness of the Gospels. I have come to believe that there are solid reasons for accepting them as reliable both for history and for faith.
You may be surprised to learn that I agree with about threequarters of what I learned from Professor MacRae in Religion 140. We affirm the same basic facts: the raw data of ancient documents and archeological discoveries. The differences between our views have to do with how we evaluate the data, and here the gap between what Professor MacRae taught and what I believe today is often wide and deep.
You may also be surprised to discover that my arguments in this book are often friendlier to critical scholarship than you might expect. For example, many defenses of the historical reliability of the Gospel of John depend on an early date of composition (pre–A.D. 70). I will not base my own conclusions upon this early date, though I think there are persuasive arguments in its favor.
While reading this book, an evangelical who is well acquainted with New Testament scholarship might periodically object, “But there are even stronger arguments than the ones you’re making.” So be it! I’m open to these positions and glad for those who articulate them. But I have chosen to base my case, for the most part, on that which most even-handed critical scholars, including non-evangelicals, would affirm. I’ve done this for two reasons.
First, I want to encourage the person who is troubled by negative views of the Gospels, perhaps in a college New Testament course or in a popular “Gospels-debunking” book. In a sense, I’m writing for the Mark Roberts who once felt perplexed in Religion 140. To the “old me” and others like him I want to say, “Look, even if you believe most of ‘assured results of scholarship’ concerning the Gospels, you can still trust them.”
Second, I believe this book will have broader impact if I don’t fill it with theories that, however plausible, are popular only among conservative scholars. For example, it may well be that the disciples of Jesus had been trained to memorize sayings of their religious mentors, much like later rabbinic students.10 If this is true, it would greatly increase the likelihood that the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels closely reflect what Jesus himself had once said. But since the jury is still out on the question of whether or not the disciples were trained in technical memorization, I won’t base my conclusions upon this possibility.
My basic point in this book is that if you look squarely at the facts as they are widely understood, and if you do not color them with pejorative bias or atheistic presuppositions, then you’ll find that it’s reasonable to trust the Gospels.
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels? | 10 Comments »
Critical New Testament Scholarship: Up Close and Personal
By Mark D. Roberts | Thursday, June 21, 2007
The following is an excerpt from my new book, Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Without exception, my grad school teachers echoed Professor MacRae’s conclusions about the historical limitations of the New Testament Gospels. In fact, several faculty members made him look rather conservative. I did learn a great deal from these scholars, however. Their knowledge of the world of early Christianity was encyclopedic, and their ability to interpret ancient texts critically was superlative. Yet I began to see how often their interpretations were saturated by unquestioned philosophical presuppositions. If, for example, a passage from the Gospels included a prophecy of Jesus concerning his death, it was assumed without argument that this had been added later by the church because prophecy didn’t fit within the naturalistic worldview of my profs. (Photo to the right: Harvard Divinity School)
The more I spent time with some of the leading New Testament scholars in the world, the more I came to respect their brilliance and, at the same time, to recognize the limitations of their scholarly perspectives. I saw how often conclusions based on unsophisticated assumptions were accepted without question by the reigning scholarly community, and taught uncritically as if they were, well, the Gospel truth.
I also discovered how rarely my professors entertained perspectives by scholars who didn’t share their naturalistic worldview. Evangelical scholars were usually ignored simply because they were conservative. This fact was driven home once when I was on winter break in Southern California. I needed to read a few books for one of my courses, so I went to the Fuller Seminary library because it was close to my home. What I found at Fuller stunned me. Fuller students were required to read many of the same books I was assigned, and also books written from an evangelical perspective. Whereas I was getting one party line, Fuller students were challenged to think more broadly and, dare I admit it, more critically. This put an arrogant Harvard student in his place, let me tell you. It also helped me see how much my own education was lopsided. Only once in my entire graduate school experience was I assigned a book by an evangelical scholar.
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels? | 5 Comments »
Doubting the Gospels
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Today’s post, as well as several posts to come, are excerpts from my new book, Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
I grew up in a solid evangelical church. The Gospels were assumed to be not only historically accurate but also inspired by God. In my teenage years I wondered about the trustworthiness of the Gospels. But my youth leaders reassured me. I was encouraged to learn that the inspiration of the Gospels was proved by the similarities between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Who else, besides the Holy Spirit, could inspire the evangelists to compose such amazingly parallel accounts of Jesus?
I went to college at Harvard. Though founded as a Christian school, and though the university seal continues to proclaim veritas christo et ecclesiae, “Truth for Christ and the Church,” Harvard in the 1970s wasn’t exactly a bastion of Christian faith. Plus, I was planning to major in philosophy, a discipline notorious for its atheistic bias. Many of my friends back home worried that I would lose my faith at “godless Harvard.”
During my freshman year, it wasn’t my philosophy courses that threw my faith for a loop, however. It was a New Testament class. Religion 140, “Introduction to Early Christian Literature,” was taught by Professor George MacRae, a top-notch New Testament scholar. As the semester began, I had my guard up, expecting Professor MacRae to be a Dr. Frankenstein who would create a monster to devour my faith. In fact, however, Professor MacRae was no mad scientist. One of the best lec- turers I ever had at Harvard, he seasoned his reasonable presentations with humorous quips among hundreds of valuable insights. His first lecture on the challenges of studying early Christianity was so impressive to me that I still remember his main points and use them when I teach seminary courses on the New Testament.
Professor MacRae followed this lecture with a fascinating exploration of the world of early Christianity. Next he turned to the letters of Paul. Though he investigated them as a critical scholar, his insights fit more or less with what I had learned in church. My guard began to come down.
But then we came to the Gospels. Professor MacRae did not deny their usefulness as historical sources. But he did argue that these documents, though containing some historical remembrances, were chock-full of legendary elements, including miracle stories, exorcisms, and prophecies. These were not to be taken as part of the historical record, he said. Rather, they were best understood as fictional elements added by the early Christians to increase the attractiveness of Jesus in the Greco-Roman world. The Gospels were not so much historical or biographical documents as they were theological tractates weaving together powerful fictions with a few factual data.
Perhaps what most shook my faith in the trustworthiness of the Gospels was Professor MacRae’s treatment of the similarities among Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He explained per- suasively that Mark was the first of the Gospels to be written, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark in their writing. In the process, he also demonstrated how Matthew and Luke changed Mark, interjecting “contradictions” into the Gospel record. Listening to this explanation of why the Synoptic Gospels were so similar, I felt the rug being pulled out from under myconfidence in these writings. Where I had once been taught that these similarities were evidence of divine inspiration, I discov- ered that a straightforward historical explanation provided a simpler account of the data. How many other things have I been taught about the Gospels that aren’t true? I wondered.
Topics: Can We Trust the Gospels? | 3 Comments »
An Very Honest Ending to a Book
By Mark D. Roberts | Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Recently I read The Velvet Covered Brick: Christian Leadership in an Age of Rebellion. As you may suspect from the subtitle, this book was written in the aftermath of the 60s, when traditional notions of leadership had been tossed aside, often in favor of chaos. The author of this book, Howard E. Butt, Jr., was (and still is) a businessman and Christian leader. His book was one of the very first to advocate what later would be called servant leadership. Mr. Butt grounds his vision of leadership upon the very nature of God as Trinity. You can’t buy this book new anymore, but used copies can be found, and I highly recommend it.
One of my favorite parts of The Velvet Covered Brick comes right at the end. It reads: “When I’ve made more progress as a Christian I won’t worry whether or not you like my book.” This, I’ve got to say, is one of the most honest lines I’ve ever read in any book. I say this as an author who does indeed worry about whether people like my books or not. (My newest volume, Can We Trust the Gospels? is just now becoming available. You can pre-order it from Amazon, or buy it now from the publisher. Amazon should have it in a couple of days.)
I’m tempted to swipe Howard Butt’s honest admission for my blog as well. I could end every post with: “When I’ve made more progress as a Christian I won’t worry whether you like my blog.” (There, I just did.)
Topics: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
The Curiously Unscientific Christopher Hitchens
By Mark D. Roberts | Monday, June 18, 2007
Part 10 of series: god is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens: A Response
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Christopher Hitchens loves science. Rightly, he understands that science has enabled human beings to understand our world in astounding ways. In many ways he sees science as replacing religion in human experience. For example, he writes: “Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, [religion] no longer offers an explanation of anything important” (p. 282).
Scientific inquiry is noted for its effort to be objective, to study the data carefully, to put aside prejudice, and to seek the truth, whatever it might be. (Yes, yes, I know some scientists don’t do this, but the best ones try, and with considerable success.) One can approach life scientifically even if one is not studying natural phenomena. You see this sort of thing among anthropologists, for example, who study tribal peoples through careful observation, seeking to “get inside the heads” of peoples quite different from themselves in order to make sense of their particular customs.
One of the things I find curious about Christopher Hitchens is the contradiction between his love of science and his unscientific approach to the study of religion. To be sure, he has gathered some data about religion, most of it having to do with religion’s failures and oddities. But absent from god is not Great is anything like a scientific approach to religious phenomena.
During my interview with Hitchens I said, more than once, that it seems like he and I inhabit alternative universes. I said that because, among other things, his view of what Christians believe and experience is so contrary to my view, and I’ve been a practicing Christian for 44 years. For example, in one place Hitchens writes that believers claim, “Not just to know, but to know everything” (p. 10). Now even allowing for a good bit of hyperbole, this statement reflects nothing of my experience as a believer. I do claim to know certain things, but I freely admit the fallible nature of my knowledge. Has Hitchens ever spent any time with thoughtful Christians (or other religious folk) who wrestle openly with matters of faith, who sometimes struggle with doubt, and who freely admit their own ignorance? If not, I could introduce him to dozens of such people. Moreover, I can’t even begin to think that I know more than a tiny percentage of what can be known. Know everything???? If Hitchens thinks this is what the average religious person claims, then he knows little about the average religious person, at least in my experience.
One of the more biting reviews of god is not Great appreared in the Washington Post. It was written by Stephen Prothero, a highly regarded scholar of religion, the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, and the chair of Boston University’s religion department. Near the end of his review Prothero writes: “I have never encountered a book whose author is so fundamentally unacquainted with its subject.” Ouch!
On the way to earning my PhD in New Testament, I did a MA in the study of religion. I had the privilege of learning from some of the finest scholars of religion. They represented a wide range of religious traditions, including agnosticism. These people had devoted their lives to the careful, objective, and critical study of religion. They were more than willing to accept the premise that sometimes religion is harmful. In fact, several of my professors were particularly unhappy with my breed of Christianity (evangelical). But in all of my years in graduate school, not once did I hear even one professor come anywhere near the claim that “religion poisons everything.” This particular claim stirs up emotions and sells books, to be sure. But it reflects an utterly biased approach to the study of religion, something that plainly contradicts Christopher Hitchens’s love of science. His writing would have far more credibility and, in the end, much more to contribute to the world, if he would take the time actually to understand actual religious people. Of course then he couldn’t truly claim that religion poisons everything, because he’d know that this simply isn’t true from any sort of objective, scientific perspective.
Topics: Hitchens: god is not Great | 22 Comments »
Sunday Inspiration from Pray the Psalms
By Mark D. Roberts | Sunday, June 17, 2007
Excerpt
The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
Psalm 135:15
Click here to read all of Psalm 135
Prayer
O Lord, I don’t worship literal idols. I don’t have silver or gold statues of gods before which I bow down. But I am caught up in a culture that worships silver and gold. The materialism around me is so rampant and so pervasive that it feels, well, normal. I confess, Lord, that often I don’t even sense its corrosion of my soul. Yet I can let my love of things get in the way of my love of You. I can fool myself into thinking that if I can just get the next thing, then I’ll be happy. I know this is silly, Lord. And I hate to admit it. But it’s true. Forgive me.
I know I can’t serve You and money. So help me, Lord, to seek You first and foremost. Help me to be generous, thus breaking the power of Mammon over my life. Help me to sacrifice things for the sake of Your kingdom. Help me to delight in the priceless “stuff” of life that doesn’t have a literal price: the beauty of nature, the love of family, the pleasure of Your peace.
Postscript
22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; 23 but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
24 “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Matthew 6:22-33
Sun and clouds over Boerne, Texas
Topics: Sunday Inspiration | 2 Comments »
Will Rhetoric Like That of Christopher Hitchens Make the World a Better Place?
By Mark D. Roberts | Friday, June 15, 2007
Part 9 of series: god is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens: A Response
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Yesterday I began to express my concerns about Christopher Hitchens’s tendency to ridicule people with whom he disagrees, especially people of faith. I explained that, in my experience, a debater resorts to ridicule only when he or she realizes that rational arguments won’t prevail. I also suggested that scorning people almost never helps them hear what you are saying. I ended by suggesting that ridicule is, in most cases anyway, immoral, and that most people would sense this intuitively (a curiously Hitchensian moral argument on my part).
I want to press the moral point a bit further because I’m deeply concerned about the state of our world and the extent to which ridicule and its cousins are hurting us rather than helping us. Even if Christopher Hitchens is right that god is not great, and that religion poisons everything, I’d propose that his tendency to belittle people will not make the world a better place. And if those who agree with him follow suit imitate his example, this will make matters even worse.
When I asked Hitchens about this in our debate on the Hugh Hewitt Show, he said:
CH: Ah, well, it’s just the way I am. I mean, I am a polemicist, if you like, and one has to get people’s attention first of all.
I admire this honest and straightforward answer. But the question is whether one ought to be such a polemicist or not, especially when dealing with touchy issues like religion. To put it differently, when you survey the religious conflicts in our world today, when you take seriously the tinderbox of religion, do you really think we’re helped by polemics, or would another approach be more helpful? Is it best to get people’s attention by putting them down? The word “polemicist” comes from the Greek word polemos, which means war. So I ask: Will the world be helped by more warlike words?
I am not saying that we should just all be nice and pretend as if we all agree about matters of religion. I’m not an advocate of Rodney Kingism, wondering why we can’t all get along. If you’ve read my last several posts on god is not Great, you know that I’m perfectly willing to take on someone’s ideas and to criticize those ideas. But I try to avoid ad hominem low blows. And when I make them, which I do at times, I repent and retract.
Why have I chosen to engage in respectful discourse rather than ridicule? To be sure, I’ll own that it comes from my Christian convictions. Silly as it may sound to some folks, I try to love my neighbors and my enemies even when I’m debating them. (For the record, I do not consider Christopher Hitchens to be my enemy. In human terms, he may want to disabuse me of my faith, but at least he won’t blow me up. And in Christian terms, human beings are not the enemy.)
Yet I have chosen the way of respectful discourse, not only because it reflects my faith, but also because I’ve found that it works better in practice. It fosters better understanding of all sides. It helps me to learn things I haven’t learned before and would be unable to learn if I were too busy blasting away at my opponents. And, get this, respectful discourse sometimes helps my opponents in arguments to actually hear what I’m saying and, in some instances, even to be persuaded by it. If I call somebody stupid, he won’t hear a word I’m saying. If I speak with somebody respectfully, she just might listen.
I resolved to try and be a respectful interlocutor years ago when I was an associate pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. I had invited Dallas Willard to speak to a group at the church. Willard was (and still is) a Professor of Philosophy at USC, and one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. He was also a Christian who spoke on matters of faith to church groups. Willard gave a fantastic lecture, insightful and challenging, yet clear enough for lay people. His content was serious but he didn’t take himself too seriously. (Photo to the right: Dallas Willard)
Following the lecture we had time for questions. A person from my church raised his hand and asked one of those questions that makes one cringe. It was an embarrassing and self-serving question, one that wasn’t so much a question as an attack on what Willard had just spent 45 minutes teaching. The question came close to an insult, actually. “Here I’ve got one of the smartest men in the world speaking to my church,” I thought, “and he’s got to deal with this sort of thing.” I was mightily embarrassed.
But before I had a chance to fret, Willard responded to the question. His answer was straightforward and fair. He didn’t seem to mind repeating things he had already said. He didn’t seem bugged by the insinuation of the questioner that his ideas were foolish. More striking to me was the manner of Willard’s response. He treated the questioner with kindness and respect. I watched as the questioner stopped being defensive and started listening for the first time to what Willard was saying. I also saw how other people in room, many who sensed the tension of the moment, relaxed enough to start engaging with ideas rather than with raw emotions.
At that moment I resolved to try and be like Dallas Willard, which, given my own history of headstrong, prideful argumentation, wouldn’t be easy. For over twenty years I’ve tried to “be like Dallas,” in my speaking, in church business meetings, when I teach seminary, when I blog, and even when I do debates on the radio. Though I’ve failed in this effort many times, I haven’t stopped trying. I only wish I were as smart, mature, and kind as Dallas Willard. Yet, lacking these qualities is no excuse for not trying to emulate his example.
I don’t doubt that Hitchens’s tendency to call his opponents “stupid” and to label a highly-regarded theologian as an “ignoramus” helps to sell lots of books, just like he said to me. And I expect it does get more attention than a respectful and reasonable approach. But I’m just not convinced that the world is any better off with more ridicule-filled books or with more people paying attention because derision is more interesting than respect. Would that we could learn to disagree about ideas without disparaging each other. This, I believe, would in fact make the world a better place.
Topics: Hitchens: god is not Great | 19 Comments »
Why Does Hitchens Ridicule His Opponents?
By Mark D. Roberts | Thursday, June 14, 2007
Part 8 of series: god is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens: A Response
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Christopher Hitchens is an engaging writer, a master of clever rhetoric. Please understand that I’m not using “rhetoric” here in a derogatory manner. I respect the person who is a master of words, and, to be sure, Hitchens is such a master. To be completely honest, I envy his ability with language. I’m glad that the Decalogue doesn’t prohibit the coveting of your neighbor’s rhetorical skill, otherwise I’d be sinning right now.
In my last two posts I’ve shown, however, that sometimes Hitchens seems to let his language run away with him. Exaggeration, in measured doses, can accentuate one’s point. But when it distorts reality, then it isn’t especially helpful for the reader who seeks truth and not just entertainment. In the end, I don’t think it helps the writer, because discerning readers will tend to dismiss his claims as bombastic, whether they’re true or not.
Yet as I read god is not Great – two times, actually – I was concerned, not only about an over-indulgence of hyperbole, but also about a consistent tone of ridicule. I’ve got to believe that even someone who loves this book would agree that it’s full of scorn for religious people. Let me cite a few examples:
[Concerning religious furor over the year 2000] The occasion was nothing more than an odometer for idiots . . . (p. 60)
Augustine [one of the theologians most highly regarded by Christians] was a self-centered fantasist and an earth-centered ignoramus. (p. 64)
[Concerning the notion that certain places are holy] the ostentatious absurdity of the pilgrimage (p. 6)
Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago. . . .” (p. 7) Not good news for us preachers!
[Religion] comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). (p. 64)
[Re: alternative views of how the universe was created] “creationist” stupidity (p. 78); the stupid notion of “intelligent design” (p. 85).
All attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to failure and ridicule for precisely these reasons. (p. 65)
Perhaps such attempts will fail, and Hitchens is right. But why does he consign them to ridicule? Why does it help to make fun of people who see to reconcile faith with science and reason? Why not take them seriously enough to engage their ideas and show, in a scientific and reasonable way, why they are wrong? Hitchens admits to a great respect for science. But science doesn’t advance human knowledge by ridicule, but rather by careful investigation and logical examination. So again my question: Why are such attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason consigned to ridicule? (Photo to the right: A bit of the most recent Harvard Divinity Bulletin)
Ironically, a few days ago I received the latest edition of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. (The Spring 2007 edition is not yet up on the website, but will presumably become available here at some time in the future.) The cover story focused on recent efforts among Harvard faculty to engage in cross-disciplinary studies of science and religion. It was entitled: “A Confluence of Opportunities To Bring Science and Religion Together: Several Harvard projects try to discover a middle way of debate, stressing synthesis rather than dogmatic opposition.” The article included some excerpts from a lecture delivered by Martin Nowak Professor of Mathematic and Biology at Harvard. He said things like:
Science is no replacement for religion because we are interested in many questions which are not scientific. For example, what is the purpose of my life? Where do I come from? Where will I go? Everybody has these questions either consciously or subconsciously.
Scientists should admit that science does not provide any evidence against well-formulated theology. On the other hand, religion should not oppose scientific progress.
Now Christopher Hitchens is surely welcome to disagree with Professor Nowak and to show that his points are wrong. But is it rational, scientific, or moral for Hitchens to ridicule this man? If so, why? If not, why does Hitchens claim the right to do so?
Throughout most of my experience in life, substantive arguments don’t need scorn. Arguers only stoop to such tactics when they realize that their arguments aren’t good enough to prevail. You can see this writ large over the face of American politics these days. If you can’t beat your opponent with logic, start tearing down your opponents character, intelligence, or whatever. Ridicule is the weapon of last resort for the debater going down to certain defeat. And, I’m sorry to say, in our culture ridicule often carries the day.
I was concerned enough about the prevalence of mockery in god is not Great to use up my one chance to ask Christopher Hitchens a direct question in our debate on the Hugh Hewitt Show. Here’s the interchange:
MR: Well, only in that the harder parts of your book for me were the places where you rather ridicule people of faith. Now, sometimes you ridicule people of faith that I also agree with you are thinking and doing things that are virtually worth of ridicule. But I wondered why you do that when it seems like you’re going to lose the opportunity to influence some of the very people you would want to influence.
CH: Ah, well, it’s just the way I am. I mean, I am a polemicist, if you like, and one has to get people’s attention first of all.
MR: Well okay, that’s fair.
CH: And that may sound to you as it somewhat slightly sounds to me as a vulgar answer, but it is the truth, right? One can’t write a book saying God is not that brilliant.
Well, I suppose one could write such a book, but it wouldn’t sell nearly as many copies at Hitchens’s more provocative tome.
My problem is not with provocative language, with clever rhetoric, with incisive arguments, even when they’re directed at me. My problem is with ridicule, with ad hominem attacks upon people with whom one disagrees. I would argue that ridicule rarely accomplishes anything other than making people upset. It almost never helps the person with whom you disagree to listen to what you’re saying. And, at least in my book, ridicule is almost always an immoral act. Moreover, I’d bet that you don’t even need a religious basis to see that ridicule, especially when talking about that which people hold most dear, is wrong.
Yet I’m willing to argue this case against ridicule a bit further. I’ll pick up the thread tomorrow.
Topics: Hitchens: god is not Great | 24 Comments »
Some of Hitchens’s Misunderstandings or Distortions, Part 2
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Part 7 of series: god is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens: A Response
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Yesterday I began looking at some of the many misunderstandings found in Christopher Hitchens’s book, god is not Great. Today I’ll examine a few more before I press on to further considerations of the book.
Hitchens Oddly Derides and Distorts the Teachings of Jesus
He writes:
But many [of the teachings of Jesus] are unintelligible and show a belief in magic, several are absurd and show a primitive attitude to agriculture (this extends to all mentions of plowing and sowing, and all allusions to mustard or fig trees), and many are on the face it flat-out immoral. The analogy of humans to lilies, for instance, suggests–along with many other injunctions–that things like thrift, innovation, family life, and so forth are a sheer waste of time. (”Take no thought for the morrow.”) This is why some of the Gospels, synoptic and apocryphal, report people (including his family members) saying at the time that they thought Jesus must be mad. (pp. 117-118)
Some quick responses:
• Admittedly, the teachings of Jesus are sometimes challenging. Yet the person who claims that the teachings of Jesus are unintelligible is telling us more about himself than about the teachings of Jesus. By design, Jesus’s sayings are not simple. But unintelligible? And absurd? Perhaps to Hitchens. Probably not to Jesus and those who have actually tried to understand them.
• The “primitive attitude to agriculture” comment makes me laugh. Indeed, Jesus used illustrations from His world, which in fact had a primitive attitude to agriculture. It’s called effective communication. Had Jesus instead spoken of irrigation and tractors, I fear Hitchens would have criticized Him for showing off.
• The claim that some of Jesus’s teachings are “flat-out immoral” deserves careful scrutiny. Who would you choose to be a judge of what is moral? Jesus? Or Christopher Hitchens? Now before you vote for Hitchens, please note that his example of the immorality of Jesus’s teachings is based on a serious misinterpretation of Jesus’s meaning. From a passage where Jesus is teaching people not to worry, Hitchens thinks that Jesus is somehow against “thrift, innovation, family life, and so forth.” His textual proof is “Take no thought for the morrow,” which appears in Matthew 6:34 in the King James Version of the Bible. In fact, the verb translated four centuries ago as “take no thought” means “do not worry” (Greek, merimnao), as is seen in every modern translation I consulted. If Hitchens had made an effort to understand what Jesus was actually saying, then he’d be relieved to know that Jesus doesn’t oppose sensible preparation, just anxious preoccuption.
• It’s highly unlikely that people thought Jesus was mad because of His primitive agronomy or encouragement not to worry. Jesus was thought to be mad for much greater reasons, largely His proclamation of the kingdom of God. Hitchens shows no indication that He understands what Jesus actually did proclaim as the center of His message.
Hitchens Finds the Commonplace Shocking
He writes:
Overarching all this is the shocking fact that, as Ehrman concedes: “The story [in John 8 of the woman caught in adultery] is not found in our oldest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of John . . . .” (122)
First, Ehrman didn’t have to concede anything. He was quite pleased that this story wasn’t in the early manuscripts of John because this fact seems to support Ehrman’s anti-Christian argument. More importantly, there is absolutely nothing shocking about this whatsoever. Christians have known for ages that this story was not in the early manuscripts of John. Every modern translation of the Bible that I have seen puts this passage in brackets and adds a comment indicating it’s uncertain history. I wonder if Hitchens has read a modern translation of the Bible. If not, such an exercise would at least help him to understand that which he intends to criticize before he misspeaks.
Hitchens Misunderstands the Nature of Jesus’s Resurrection
He writes:
This supposed frequency of resurrection [in the New Testament] can only undermine the uniqueness of the one by which mankind purchased forgiveness of sins. (143)
One might argue that the frequency of resurrections in the New Testament actually strengthens the case for their historicity, but for obvious reasons Hitchens doesn’t go there. What he misunderstands is the unique nature of Jesus’s resurrection. The other people raised from the dead were raised to ordinary life. We have every reason to believe that, after their coming back to life, they lived ordinary lives and died like everybody else. Jesus’s resurrection was in a unique category as the beginning of resurrection to life in the age to come. Jesus’s resurrection body was different from other bodies, as is seen from the Gospel accounts and 1 Corinthians 15. None of this proves that Jesus actually rose from the dead, of course, or that His resurrection purchased forgiveness of sins (which, by the way, was more about His death than resurrection). But it does show that Hitchens simply does not understand what the writers of the New Testament believed about the resurrection of Jesus.
Interim Conclusion
I’m going to stop examining Hitchens’s misstatements now, though I could keep on going for a long time. I think it’s obvious that he simply doesn’t “get” Jesus or the New Testament writings very well at all. His grasp of the New Testament reminds me of my grasp of the Grand Canyon. I’ve seen it, but only from an airplane. From that perspective, the Grand Canyon looks like a bunch of reddish ruts in the ground, and that’s about it. It doesn’t look that big or that impressive. Plus, from a plane I’ve never seen any evidence that it was carved by a river, or that people hike it, or that it’s worth more attention than a quick flyover. I might be inclined to say that the reality and beauty of the Grand Canyon have been greatly exaggerated by confused people who aren’t to be believed, and therefore I will never go out of my way to visit it on the ground. But if I were to say this, I’d be telling you more about my inexperience, indeed, about my own foolishness, than about the Grand Canyon itself.
Topics: Hitchens: god is not Great | 9 Comments »
Some of Hitchens’s Misunderstandings or Distortions, Part 1
By Mark D. Roberts | Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Part 6 of series: god is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens: A Response
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In my last three posts I’ve shown that Christopher Hitchens, in his book god is not Great, makes fifteen errors in his discussion of the New Testament and related scholarship. As I explained, this undermines my confidence in him as a reliable witness in other matters, those where I lack academic expertise. When Hitchens purports to lay out the facts of Western history, or Islam, or Judaism, or . . . is he generally accurate? I can’t be sure.
There’s another problem in Hitchens’s treatment of the New Testament in addition to his errors. This concerns what I’ve called “misunderstandings or distortions.” These have to do with statements that, though they might not be wrong in the strict sense, so misrepresent reality as to be just about as bad as outright errors. I counted sixteen (or so) of these misunderstandings of the New Testament as I read god is not Great. And, once again, I’m focusing only on areas of my own scholarly competence.
Given what I’ve written already, I’m not going to deal in detail with all of these misrepresentations, since this would be extremely tedious both for writer and reader. (No doubt someone will comment that what I’m writing is already extremely tedious. Point taken in advance.) In today’s post I will mention and comment briefly upon a few of them. A few others I’ll pick up tomorrow. The others will have to wait in line for treatment sometime later.
Hitchens Exaggerates the Differences Among the Gospels
Here are two examples of such exaggeration, though there are others:
Matthew and Luke cannot concur on the Virgin Birth . . . (p. 111)
Most astonishingly, they [the Gospel writers] cannot converge on a common account of the Crucifixion or the Resurrection. (p. 112)
First of all, it’s disingenuous to use the verb “cannot” in this claim, which seems to suggest that the Gospel writers actually got together and tried to come up with a common account but just couldn’t do it. Whether they could have agreed or not Hitchens cannot know.
But even if he had said only that the Gospel writers do not concur on the virgin birth or on their treatments of the crucifixion and resurrection, this would be an exaggeration. Matthew and Luke both affirm what we call the virgin birth in no uncertain terms. But they narrate the story from different perspectives, with Matthew focusing on Joseph and Luke on Mary. Difference does not equal disagreement.
Similarly, the diversity in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death and resurrection doesn’t detract from fundamental agreement on the main points, and even some of the surprising details (like the prominence of women in the resurrection narratives). If the four Gospels told exactly the same story in exactly the same way, what do you think are the odds the Hitchens would deride this as collusion? Methinks he’s a hard man to please when it comes to religion.
Hitchens Misunderstands What It Means to Be a Christian
He writes:
The best argument I know for the highly questionable existence of Jesus is this. His illiterate living disciples left us no record and in any event could not have been “Christians.” since they were never to read those later books in which Christians must affirm belief, and in any case had no idea that anyone would ever found a church on their master’s announcements. (p. 114)
If this is the best argument Hitchens has for the “questionable existence” of Jesus, then we who believe that Jesus existed can be reassured. Here are some brief reasons why:
• Almost every scholar of New Testament and ancient history believes that Jesus existed.
• It’s quite possible that the disciples of Jesus (those who were with Him in the flesh), did write or influence two of the Gospels (Matthew and John).
• I’ve never seen a definition of “Christian” that requires belief in the biblical books per se. In fact, followers of Jesus were first called “Christians” (the Greek word christianoi means “Christ people”) before the Gospels were even written (see Acts 11:26).
• It’s quite likely that some of Jesus’s first disciples did in fact read some of the books of the New Testament, at any rate, though this hardly made them Christians.
• The disciples of Jesus not only heard Jesus talk of perpetuating a community (we call “church”) after His death, but also they were in fact the primary church planters.
I’ll continue this examination of Hitchens’ misunderstandings tomorrow.
Topics: Hitchens: god is not Great | 12 Comments »