Bart D. Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman (2012)

Bart Denton Ehrman (born October 5, 1955 in Lawrence , Kansas ) is an American religious scholar .

life and work

Bart D. Ehrman received an evangelical education and was a member of the Episcopal Church . He had a rebirth experience at the age of 15 and attended the Moody Bible Institute from 1973 to 1976. In order to be able to deal intensively with the faith, he studied the ancient languages ​​of the Bible. He received his Masters and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary . He is now a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill .

The more he dealt with the Bible, the more he became convinced that the Bible was not error-free and revealed by God, inspired right down to the individual words, as he had initially thought; Rather, the Bible is a very human book, with all the hallmarks of a man-made work: discrepancies, contradictions, errors and different perspectives from different authors who have written at different times for different reasons for different recipients with different needs. Ehrman parted with his evangelical views, but initially remained a Christian.

The theodicy problem became decisive for his departure from the Christian faith . He could no longer reconcile the teachings of faith with the facts of life; in particular, in the face of the misery and suffering in the world, he could no longer believe that there was a good and almighty God who actively looked after this world. Since then Ehrman describes himself as an atheist and agnostic . When asked whether he believed that there was a higher power, he answered: “How should I know?” And when asked whether he believed in the God of Christianity with “No”.

Ehrmann follows Walter Bauer's thesis , according to which the parts of Christianity that were later described as " heretic " have priority over later " orthodoxy " in terms of both time and content . He also works in the field of textual criticism of the New Testament . He opposes the fact that textual criticism is understood exclusively as a tool for the reconstruction of a hypothetical “original text” of the New Testament writings. Rather, he sees the diversity of the different manuscripts as a gateway to the theological and social history of ancient Christianity.

Work (selection)

• Forgery and Counterforgery. The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics , Oxford University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-992803-3
• Jesus in the distorting mirror: the hidden contradictions in the Bible and why they exist. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2010, ISBN 3579064967 (Original title: Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them) . Translated by Gerlinde Baumann)
• Written, misquoted, and misunderstood: How the Bible came to be what it is. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 3579064509 (Original title: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why . Translated by Uta Rohrmann)
• God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer , HarperOne, New York 2008, ISBN 0061173975
• Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (1999), ISBN 019512474X
• The New Testament - A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (1997), ISBN 0195084810
• The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture - The Effect and Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (1993), ISBN 0195102797

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bart D. Ehrman, God's Problem. How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer , p. 3
2. ↑ Bart D. Ehrman, Lecture at Secular Students
3. ↑ Bart D. Ehrman, The Text as Window: New Testament Manuscripts and the Social History of Early Christianity , in: Ders./Michael W. Holmes, The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. Essays on the Status Quastionis (New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents 42), 2nd ed. Leiden / Boston 2013, 803–830.

Web links

• BartDEhrman.com