Earlier this week, I reviewed the first part of a debate between Bart Ehrman and Richard Bauckham. Ehrman raised the popular objection that Irenaeus had too much of a role in giving us the gospels' authorship attributions. Other critics focus more on Papias in this context, but Ehrman seems to assign a larger role to Irenaeus.
I've already discussed some of the problems with Ehrman's view. Some of our extant sources who predate Irenaeus name the gospel authors and/or describe them in some significant way. Irenaeus cites earlier sources when discussing gospel authorship. The gospels were circulating in such a manner that their authorship would have been widely discussed long before Irenaeus wrote. And so on.
What I want to do in this post is discuss how inconsistent Ehrman's hypothesis is with the larger context of Irenaeus' life, including his writings. Ehrman is attributing some behavior to Irenaeus that's highly unlikely in light of what else we know about the man.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Did the disciples die for a lie?
I'm going to comment on a post by Richard Carrier:
Carrier reviews his debate with Justin Bass. Let me begin by saying I disagree with how the issue was drawn. Framing the issue in terms of martyrdom is arbitrarily narrow. I reserve the right to recast the issue. Many people will avoid sticking their neck out for far less than fear of violent death. Fear of losing your livelihood, fear of being shunned by your friends, fear of exposing your family to harm, or fear of having your family disown you, or even public stigma, are usually effective deterrents. It takes something very powerful to overcome those disincentives. You have so much to lose, short of losing your life. Many people will either recant for far less, or never risk it in the first place. Persecution, or the tacit threat of persecution, often has that winnowing effect. It's very artificial to restrict the issue to martyrdom.
Thus countless people die for a “lie” in the sense that they don’t know that what they are dying for is false.
A red herring The statement that people "don't die for a lie" is a shorthand slogan. The actual argument is that many members of Christ's original circle of followers were in a position to know that he rose from the dead. They knew him before he died, and they saw him after he rose from the dead.
Thus countless people die for a “lie” in the sense that they don’t know that what they are dying for is false. This is most obviously true for non-eyewitnesses, who die merely for trusting someone else’s word (many religions have many examples of this happening, from Mormonism to Islam to Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, and beyond).
i) The basis for Christian faith isn't confined to faith in the NT accounts. In addition, there's the argument from religious experience. You have Christians who experience a miracle, amazing answer to prayer, or some other special providence. That provides corroborative evidence. Or you have some people who come to the faith as a result of something miraculous. It isn't just "trusting someone else's word".
ii) There's nothing inherently irrational about "trusting someone else's word". Most of what we know is based on secondhand information. So long as your source of information is reliable, it would be irrational to disbelieve it.
Countless people throughout history have been fully convinced that gods or ghosts spoke to them, by the mere fact that they dreamt it, or hallucinated it.
i) Which assumes that ghosts and apparitions are hallucinations. But that begs the question.
ii) Which assumes that all dreams are imaginary. But that begs the question.
iii) Carrier is a physicalist. He denies postmortem survival. But even if, for the sake of argument, Jesus merely appeared to people as a discarnate spirit, that would be sufficient to falsify Carrier's naturalism.
iv) People don't confuse ghosts and apparitions with a physical resurrection. Those are opposing categories.
The ancients did not make a distinction between waking visions and divine appearances in dreams.
In Mt 28, Lk 24, Jn 20-21, and Acts 9, the witnesses were not in an altered state of consciousness when they saw Jesus. They didn't practice Yoga or trip out on acid.
For example, as Robert Price well put it:
Let us imagine ourselves among the apostolic community in those early days. We hear reports from several of the brethren that they have seen the slain Jesus alive again. Naturally our eyes widen; our ears perk up. And, like Thomas, we ask, “Are you sure? Tell me about it!” One tells us, “Of course I didn’t realize it was Jesus at the time. It only dawned on me later” (so Luke 24:13–32). Another says, “It didn’t really look like him, I admit, but later on I realized it must have been Jesus” (so Matt. 28:17; John 20:14–15; 21:2–12). And so on. I submit to you that we would be well justified to wonder what might have happened, and not to be convinced that our friends had actually seen Jesus. (TEC, p. 230)
So Price thinks this is just mistaken identity?
Carrier also talks about people who die for a noble lie. But they don't die for the lie. The lie is just a means to an end. They die for the cause. Yet the Resurrection is foundational to Christian faith. That's hardly analogous to a noble lie.
More so if the honor or reputation—or security or emotional or financial or physical wellbeing—of their family (or community or congregation or flock) depends on their not recanting a lie.
Just the opposite: they sacrifice their honor, reputation, security, emotional, financial and/or physical wellbeing by publicly becoming Christian in the first place.
Carrier then appeals to The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss. But read some of the scathing reviews:
But I have been accepting an assumption here: that the original believers were actually willing to die. Yet by all accounts, they avoided violence by any means possible. Look at the adventures of Paul, for example, e.g. Acts 9:23-25, 29-30.
That's highly deceptive. At the outset of his mission, Paul avoided capture. His mission would be abortive if he allowed himself to be prematurely martyred. But towards the end of his career, he deliberately puts himself at risk of martyrdom in order to gain an audience with Caesar. He uses the appellate process as a pretext to evangelize the Roman ruling class, even though that exposes him to execution.
Is it an accident that Peter recants precisely when he cannot protect himself from sudden retribution [e.g. Mark 14:66-72], but then reconverts when safe?
Yes, he gave into the natural fear of death and torture. That shows you how high the stakes were. So Carrier's observation is counterproductive to his argument.
Bass then leans on a vague allusion in the canonical Gospel of John 21:18-19.
There's nothing vague about that. It's a retrospective allusion to the martyrdom of Peter, which had taken place at the time of writing.
He does not mention that most top experts conclude the obvious, that that chapter is an appendix added after the original Gospel of John was written (see the end of John 20). It’s the latest layer of redaction.
Actually, that's disputed. For instance, S. Porter, "Jesus and the Ending of John's Gospel," John, His Gospel, and Jesus (Eerdmans, 2015), chap. 9,
And all specialists on John agree this was written in the early to mid second century, by authors unknown (yes, plural: John 21:24).
It's demonstrable false that "all" (or even most) specialists on John think the final edition was written in the early to mid-2C. Moreover, if you combine Carrier's late dating scheme with his belief that the first edition circulated without the epilogue, he must explain how all our extant MSS contain the epilogue. Given the interval he implicitly postulates between the first edition and the final redaction, his Gospel would circulate in at least two different editions (with and without the epilogue). Why is there no trace of that in the MS tradition?
And its stated source (something written by an unnamed “Beloved Disciple”)…
As Wescott demonstrated way back in the 19C, by process of elimination, the "Beloved Disciple" is John.
Worse, it merely alludes to the Acts of Peter (in which Peter is crucified upside down). It has no other plausible source. And still this allusion in John says nothing about why Peter was killed or what he could have recanted to escape his death. It is therefore evidentially useless.
i) Which assumes Jn 21 is literarily dependent on the Acts of Peter rather than vice versa.
ii) Since the Acts of Peter was written c. late 2C, that would require John's Gospel to be written around the turn of the 3C! How does Carrier propose to reconcile his radical dating scheme with patristic evidence and the MSS tradition?
Likewise 1 Clement merely says Peter was martyred. Not why, how, or what for.
Carrier is playing dumb.
Besides, the notion that Romans or Jews would let Paul write letters from jail so as to continue conspiring with fellow criminals, much less that Paul could expect to stay in jail unkilled for the months it would take for all the correspondence and travel he commands, and that fellow criminals could visit him without being arrested (2 Tim 4:9-14)…
So Carrier doesn't think Romans ever employed house arrest?
Because 1 Clement 5 says Paul died in Spain (“at the farthest end of the West”); the letter exhibits no knowledge of his dying in Rome.
That's not what 1 Clement actually says. Rather:
1Clem 5:5
By reason of jealousy and strife Paul by his example pointed out theprize of patient endurance. After that he had been seven times inbonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached inthe East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was thereward of his faith,
1Clem 5:6having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reachedthe farthest bounds of the West; and when he had borne his testimonybefore the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto theholy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/1clement-lightfoot.html
Back to Carrier:
Of course, that’s even moot anyway. Because Paul is not actually a “witness” to anything but a dream or vision, as he swears in Galatians 1.
i) Gal 1 doesn't say he saw Jesus in a dream or vision. Carrier seems to be using Acts to gloss Gal 1.
ii) Paul's conversion experience in Acts is described in terms of an objective appearance. Remember, it's by the same author who records the physical, post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples (Lk 24; Acts 1). Although Jesus is radiant, that doesn't make it a subjective vision–any more than the Transfiguration (cf. Lk 9).
ii) Moreover, Paul says he received the "gospel" by revelation. His commission, as well as the theological interpretation of the event, not the event itself.
The report in Josephus was probably never even about Christians at all, much less about either James (see OHJ, Chapter 8.9 and HHBC, Chapter 19). The two words linking it to a brother of “the reputed Christ” are highly likely to be an accidental interpolation, probably substituted for what was originally there, two other words stating this James was a brother of the Jesus who was “the son of Damneus.” Christians are not mentioned. Not even in the passage as it now stands, James is not called a Christian, and Christianity is not mentioned as the reason he was convicted and executed.
Since Josephus evidently didn't believe Jesus was the Messiah, he uses a disclaimer ("reputed Messiah") to dissociate his own viewpoint from the viewpoint of Christians. Far from being "highly likely" an "accidental interpolation," we'd expect a non-Christian Jewish historian like Josephus to use that distancing formula. Moreover, that makes Josephus a hostile witness.
Acts does not say the James killed by the sword was the brother of Jesus. It says it was James the brother of John (Acts 12:2).
Which makes James a witness to the Resurrection. He'd be included among the original disciples (Lk 24; Acts 1).
Meanwhile, Acts does not say why James the brother of John was killed, what exactly he was dying for, or what he could have recanted to save himself. It simply says he was executed. And that’s it.
Once again, Carrier is playing dumb.
The New “Uncertainty Principle” In Catholic Doctrine and Hermeneutics
I’ve been checking out some of the responses on both sides of the “Pope Francis” “apostolic exhortation” “Amoris Laetitia”. It seems as if, generally, conservative Roman Catholics are breathing a sigh of relief about this. Generally, the word is, “no doctrine was changed”. But some things have changed, and it was no less a source than Cardinal Schönborn who has openly called some of the “developments” in this document “true innovations”.
The conservative Catholic website Rorate Caeli sums them up very well:
The conservative Catholic website Rorate Caeli sums them up very well:
1. An apostolic exhortation is not, by its very nature, a non-magisterial document. It is the content of a papal document that reveals its magisterial relevance, … Amoris Laetitia itself does not say that it is not itself magisterial: what it says, in its highly explosive paragraph 3, is that the Magisterium does not need to be invoked or suffer intervention to sort all Catholic questions. On the other hand, this same paragraph opens up a Pandora's Box of decentralization of the Magisterium [and especially the papacy, predicted here], creating a centrifugal force which can ruin Catholic doctrinal unity.What the author here is saying is that there is no principled way of discerning divine revelation from mere human opinion, which, according to Michael Liccione (and echoed by dozens of writers and commenters at “Called to Communion”), is the epistemological advantage that Rome supposedly has over Sola Scriptura. But that has now officially vanished.
2. Saying Amoris Laetitia is not a big deal, and not magisterially relevant is simply not true. The present Pope and his successors will not act as if it were not magisterially relevant, and bishops on the ground will certainly invoke it in their own Magisterial pronouncements. Amoris Laetitia will certainly have its place in future editions of the Denzinger and in any future revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
3. Francis, with some of his previous documents, but particularly with Amoris Laetitia, introduced a kind of "uncertainty principle" in Catholic doctrine and hermeneutics on morals, marriage, and family life, and that itself is magisterially relevant.
Defunding Catholicism
Every so often, a GOP presidential candidate campaigns on replacing the Federal income tax with something else. Unfortunately, that hasn't caught on thus far.
In theory, there are two ways this could happen. One is to repeal the 16th amendment. However, that's a glacial process with dim prospects for success.
A far more efficient alternative is to simply defund the IRS. You don't even have to abolish the IRS–although that would be even better.
That alternative leaves the text of the Constitution intact, including the odious 16th amendment. But it would effectively nullify the 16th amendment. Without a corresponding collection agency, the 16th amendment is a dead letter.
And that's the strategy in Amoris Laetitia. Pope Francis didn't so much repeal Catholic dogma as defund Catholic dogma. It made official the informal nonenforcement policy that's already been in effect. The Pope needn't change dogma to change policy.
Everything may look the same on paper, so long as you don't pay too much attention to the new disclaimer–which effectively abrogates traditional dogma through studied neglect. It's striking how many pious Catholics are taken in by this ruse.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Cold War on drugs
Do we need to revise our drug enforcement policies? I don't have a firm position, but I have some inclinations on the question.
i) Some libertarians think we should legalize hard drugs. If drug abuse only harmed the individual user, there'd be a case for legalizing drugs. But humans are social creatures. We live in communities. Certain behaviors are socially destructive as well as self-destructive. If a social behavior is detrimental to the common good, that's a potential reason to legally deter it.
However, drug enforcement presents a dilemma: On the one hand, the fact that demand is so great demonstrates the danger that it poses for the social fabric. On the other hand, the same enormous, insatiable demand makes it very hard to deter.
ii) In popular parlance, drug enforcement is called the "war on drugs". One problem with that characterization is that we tend to think of wars as a contest in which one side wins and the other side loses. The war ends.
But drug enforcement isn't that kind of "war". Given demand, the conflict never ends.
If we wish to retain the martial metaphor, we might call it the Cold War on drugs. Because both Russia and the US had the bomb, both sides avoided a head-to-head showdown. The American strategy was the containment policy.
It's best to frame drug enforcement in terms of containment. Keeping drug abuse at manageable levels. If enough people want it, you can't prevent it. But you can still deter it.
iii) Another way to assess drug enforcement is balancing harms. Drug abuse is personally and socially harmful. The more widespread, the more harmful to the common good.
However, drug enforcement has many incidental harms. Although these may be side-effects of drug enforcement, the cumulative effects are considerable. Current drug enforcement is very expansive and very intrusive. The cost of opposing evil should not outweigh the evil opposed. So these need to be calibrated. We need to balance the social harm of drug enforcement against the social harm of drug use, so that drug enforcement doesn't do more harm than good. This isn't a choice between drug enforcement and general legalization, but striking a balance between competing goods.
iv) Consider some elements of current drug enforcement:
• Gov't involvement at federal, state, and local levels
• Drug raids, no-knock warrants, sting operations, entrapment, seizure and civil forfeiture
• Random checkpoints, stop-and-frisk
• Interdiction, air smuggling
• Undercover operations, viz. recruiting informants, informant payments, protecting informant identity, undercover apartments, undercover patients, fake internet cafes, fake Facebook accounts.
• Surveillance, viz. domestic drones, laser microphones, Stingrays, RFID chips, spyware, thermal imaging, mail imaging, radio-frequency scans, turning laptop webcams into hidden cameras or cellphones into hidden microphones, use of voice recognition to scan mobile networks.
• Access to bank/phone records
• Access to bank/phone records
• Targeting possession, drug paraphernalia
• Corruption of police departments on the take
v) Some of these are not specific to drug enforcement, but part of a larger pattern. I'd say current drug enforcement policies have become far too expansive and invasive. We need to scale back.
vi) Some drugs are more addictive and dangerous than others. It makes sense to concentrate on those.
vii) I think drug enforcement should focus on production (e.g. meth labs) and sales rather than possession. We should consider legalizing possession. Call it supply side drug enforcement.
This would also mean police can't plant evidence to justify arrest and conviction.
This would also mean police can't plant evidence to justify arrest and conviction.
Of course, you have possession with intent to distribute, which shades into sales. We could debate that.
Ehrman's Errors In His Debate With Bauckham
Bart Ehrman and Richard Bauckham recently discussed the gospels on Justin Brierley's Unbelievable? radio program. The first part has been posted, and the second should be available later this week. Neither scholar holds a traditional view of the gospels, but Bauckham is much closer to a traditional perspective.
Since Ehrman repeats many of the errors he put forward in his exchange with Tim McGrew last year, I'll point readers to my review of that discussion. Ehrman keeps asking for external evidence for the traditional gospel authorship attributions prior to Irenaeus, even though Ireneaus himself cited pre-Irenaean sources. See the examples cited in my response to the Ehrman/McGrew exchange. We also have evidence for pre-Irenaean testimony outside of Irenaeus, which I also cited in that previous post. I discussed the sources in the comments section of a thread at another blog here. Go to that page and use the Ctrl F feature on your keyboard to search for my last name. See here regarding Polycarp's likely role as a witness to gospel authorship prior to Irenaeus.
Since Ehrman repeats many of the errors he put forward in his exchange with Tim McGrew last year, I'll point readers to my review of that discussion. Ehrman keeps asking for external evidence for the traditional gospel authorship attributions prior to Irenaeus, even though Ireneaus himself cited pre-Irenaean sources. See the examples cited in my response to the Ehrman/McGrew exchange. We also have evidence for pre-Irenaean testimony outside of Irenaeus, which I also cited in that previous post. I discussed the sources in the comments section of a thread at another blog here. Go to that page and use the Ctrl F feature on your keyboard to search for my last name. See here regarding Polycarp's likely role as a witness to gospel authorship prior to Irenaeus.
Schönborn: “Developments ‘Я’ Us”
Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn:
But you can make it quick-and-easy to get annulments, you can give winks and nods to German bishops, enabling them to "seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs", without the "need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium.
See what was predicted in March 2014 when all of this came up:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-coming-solution-to-roman-catholic.html
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis’ document on the family reflects an “organic development” of church teaching and doctrine, said Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, theologian and participant in both synods that dealt with the topic.
“There are true innovations, but no break” in tradition, the cardinal told reporters during a news conference at the Vatican April 8 presenting the apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”).
The document emphasizes the need for greater reflection and discernment by pastors and Catholic couples in so-called “irregular” situations as they look for ways they can participate more deeply in church life, he said.
Proper discernment is nothing new, the cardinal told another reporter. It has always been the serious duty of the lay faithful and their pastors or confessors. Everyone is responsible, he said, because “you cannot play with the sacraments, you cannot play with the conscience.”
But you can make it quick-and-easy to get annulments, you can give winks and nods to German bishops, enabling them to "seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs", without the "need to be settled by interventions of the magisterium.
See what was predicted in March 2014 when all of this came up:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-coming-solution-to-roman-catholic.html
Kasper’s proposed solution is, “change anything we want and call it development”. We can effect ‘further developments’ ourselves because we are the Magisterium”. You can read the larger selection here.
This was the nature of the proposal that Kasper put forward in the “Gang of Eight” cardinals meeting last week. It seems now as if the proposal on the table will have the opportunity to put Kasper’s “solution” to a vote among the full “Synod of Bishops on the Family” to be held later this year – this will have the full backing of this new pope behind it. How can it fail?
J. W. Montgomery podcasts
For those of you who like to listen to podcasts, here's four pages of recent podcasts by J. W. Montgomery:
Montgomery is now in his 80s. He's one of the most erudite Christian apologists of his generation. A Confessional Lutheran.
Dog "raped" and "murdered"
Let's begin with some headlines:
Dog found raped, murdered and left hanging from tree
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dog-raped-murdered-hanging-tree-5000-reward-us-washington-a6954286.html
Suspect arrested in rape, murder of Thurston Co. dog
http://www.kiro7.com/news/suspect-identified-in-rape-murder-of-thurston-co-dog/205174866
FBI investigating dog rape, murder in Thurston County
http://www.kiro7.com/news/fbi-investigating-dog-rape-murder-in-thurston-county/178830564
FBI investigating dog rape, murder in Thurston County
http://www.nbcrightnow.com/story/31565710/graphic-warning-fbi-investigating-dog-rape-murder-in-thurston-county
So much to discuss:
i) Well, I guess we can be grateful that the FBI is investigating a dog killing rather than harassing conservative high school students:
That said, what does it say about current law enforcement priorities that the FBI is now investigating a dog that was killed?
ii) Notice that the mainstream media now classifies the killing of a dog as "murder". You can "murder" a dog–just like you can murder a human. Indeed, killing a dog is "murder," but killing a baby is reproductive freedom.
iii) Yet organizations like PAWS and the Humane Society kill animals. They call it "euthanasia". Is that "murder"? Certainly the animal didn't sign a consent form to be euthanized.
iii) Likewise, the same mainstream media now classifies bestiality as "rape". That's very instructive. Let's pursue that line of though;
iv) I myself think this was a perverted deed. However, I'm a knuckle-dragging fundamentalist who gets his moral code from a Bronze Age book about a glorified storm-god (or so we're told). So let's bracket my retrograde religious beliefs and approach the issue from the standpoint of an enlightened atheist:
v) Peter Singer is the best-known, and perhaps the most influential, secular bioethicist of his generation. Yet he defends bestiality:
So we're going to have a conflict between secular animal rights activists who think bestiality is "rape", and secular proponents of zoophilia, zoosexuality, and/or bestiality.
vi) Presumably, the media said the dog was "raped" because this was forcible or coercive penetration. Against the animal's will.
If so, one problem with that rationale is that consent isn't a prerequisite for copulation in the animal kingdom. For instance, ever see ducks at mating season? Not much interest in foreplay. No candlelight dinner. Doesn't look like consensual sex to me.
vii) Perhaps, though, the argument would be that because the perpetrator was human, different rules apply. But suppose the perpetrator claims to be otherkin? Say he self-identifies as a dog. It that event, is it rape for him to sodomize a dog? Shouldn't we judge him by canine standards rather than our provincial, anthropomorphic standards?
For that matter, dogs kill other dogs. So if a person who self-identifies as a dog or wild predator (e.g. grizzly bear, Siberian tiger) kills a dog, how is that "murder"? When one animal kills another animal, zoologists don't classify that as murder. To do so would be speciesism.
viii) If, moreover, otherkin is a valid identity, just like transgenderism, then it isn't murder when a person who self-identifies as a wild predator kills a human. After all, it's only natural for major predators to kill humans.
Saturday, April 09, 2016
Letter boards
Suppose, though, that the scribe got all the words 100 percent correct. If multiple copies of the letter went out, can we be sure that all the copies were also 100 percent correct? It is possible, at least, that even if they were all copied in Paul's presence, a word or two here or there got changed in one or the other of the copies. If so, what if only one of the copies served as the copy from which all subsequent copies were made — then in the first century, into the second century and the third century, and so on? In that case, the oldest copy that provided the basis for all subsequent copies of the letter was not exactly what Paul wrote, or wanted to write.
Once the copy is in circulation — that is, once it arrives at its destination in one of the towns of Galatia — it, of course, gets copied, and mistakes get made. Sometimes scribes might intentionally change the text; sometimes accidents happen. These mistake-ridden copies get copied; and the mistake-ridden copies of the copies get copied; and so on, down the line. Somewhere in the midst of all this, the original copy (or each of the original copies) ends up getting lost, or worn out, or destroyed. At some point, it is no longer possible to compare a copy with the original to make sure it is "correct," even if someone has the bright idea of doing so.
Suppose that after the original manuscript of a text was produced, two copies were made of it, which we may call A and B. These two copies, of course, will differ from each other in some ways — possibly major and probably minor. Now suppose that A was copied by one other scribe, but B was copied by fifty scribes. Then the original manuscript, along with copies A and B, were lost, so that all that remains in the textual tradition are the fifty-one second-generation copies, one made from A and fifty made from B. If a reading found in the fifty manuscripts (from B) differs from a reading found in the one (from A), is the former necessarily more likely to be the original reading? No, not at all — even though by counting noses, it is found in fifty times as many witnesses. In fact, the ultimate difference in support for that reading is not fifty manuscripts to one. It is a difference of one to one (A against B). The mere question of numbers of manuscripts supporting one reading over another, therefore, is not particularly germane to the question of which reading in our surviving manuscripts represents the original (or oldest) form of the text. B. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (HarperCollins, 2005), 59, 128-129.
This is one of Ehrman's stock objections to the authenticity of the NT text, as we have it today. He repeats variations of this objection in his debates.
The argument appears to undercut the common apologetic appeal to the number of Greek MSS and even the antiquity of some Greek MSS. Although we have lots of MSS, if these derive from the same copy, that really counts as one rather than many. Likewise, although some of our MSS are very early, if they derive from the same defective parent copy, their antiquity doesn't make them reliable. I've discussed this before, but I'd like to say a bit more about the issue.
i) We've all seen letter boards. These are signs with movable letters. You have a box with magnetic letters of the alphabet. That way you can change the message on the sign when you have a new product or service to advertise.
We've all seen signs in which one or more of the letters dropped off. Sometimes the effect is comical. It changes the meaning of the message. However, it's usually easy to figure out the original message. If you know the language (e.g. English, Spanish), if you know the context, you can mentally reconstruct the intended message. This is something we all do. You don't need to have access to the original as a basis of comparison. Ehrman is overlooking really obvious counterexamples to his facile objection.
ii) Another problem with his objection is that we have four Gospels, not merely one. So he'd have to postulate that the chain of transmission was garbled, not just once, but independently for all four gospels.
iii) Ehrman has a "heads I win, tails you lose" approach to the Gospels. If they're different from each other, that's a contradiction! But if they agree, that's not independent multiple attestation. Rather, that just means Christians were telling each other the same stories, which eventually got written down. He's rigged it so that nothing can ever count as evidence for the historical Jesus.
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