Perhaps more than any writer Bart Ehrman, a former evangelical turned agnostic, has proven to be a persuasive, compelling, and clear writer of early Christian history, arguing that forgeries and personal agendas compromised the “truth” that biblical apologists claim imbues every word of their Bible.
If you’re a lapsed Christian and still afraid of going to eternal hell since it would appear religious conversion leaves an indelible imprint on one’s soul, you want to know good reasons for being an agnostic. After all, your eternal soul could depend on it.
Not just a fear of hell but a natural religious hunger could draw you to your faith. Christianity addresses universal needs: A path that takes us out of the rabbit hole of our irrational passions, lust, vanity, sloth, spite, and others; an opportunity for a second chance, atonement, and forgiveness for all our colossal screw ups.
Even Bart Ehrman is currently happy being an agnostic. He writes in his current Christmas Even blog post: “I moved from being a conservative evangelical to being a liberal evangelical to being a liberal non-evangelical to becoming an agnostic. And that’s where I am now. For now. “
Perhaps he’s implying that “for now” he’s an agnostic, but that his spiritual journey has other possibilities such as returning to his faith. Wouldn’t that be something if he led thousands into the world of agnosticism and then he became, again, a Christian.
Forgive me for my digression. My purpose here is to take a look at Ehrman’s book Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.
His thesis, which covers a lot in Jesus, Interrupted and Misquoting Jesus, is that the Bible is full of forgeries and lies and that these lies contradict the Bible’s claim to be “truth.”
To give us context, he writes that pagan religions were moralistic systems, contrary to Christian propaganda, but that pagans didn’t emphasize believing the “right things.” They were more tolerant and inclusive. But Christianity emphasized having the right beliefs and condemned to hell people whose beliefs didn’t coincide with theirs. Irony one is that there was no one Christianity in the early church but competing Christianities. Irony two is that a lot of books in the New Testament were forgeries written by author X claiming to be author Y and embellished with add-ons to champion a cause or shoehorn an alleged Old Testament prophecy, to give a couple of examples.
Very disturbing, Ehrman points out, are the ways the Gospels and other books were rewritten to demonize the Jews for rejecting the Christian faith (55).
Also disturbing is that one Paul argues that women are equal to men while another Paul argues that they are inferior and should be put in their place.
One Paul believes the end of times will happen in his lifetime; another Paul sees it coming at a more future date.
Some Pauline letters protected the interests of the state authorities while other books such as Revelations lambasted and cursed government leaders.
Some Pauline letters show disagreement with Peter; other Pauline letters show harmony with Peter.
Ehrman writes that the more Christian authors attempted to establish their “truth” over other religions the more they resorted to deceit, lies, and forgeries to champion their “truth”:
Into this maelstrom of attack and counterattack, some Christian authors introduced the weapons of literary forgery. The ultimate goal of the church was to establish itself as true and, of course, to show that all other religions were, as a consequence, false. So once more we have one of the great ironies of the early Christian religion: some of its leading spokesperson appear to have had no qualms about lying in order to promote the faith, to practice deception in order to establish the truth. (177- 178).
There are a lot of forgeries that didn’t make it into the Bible. Ehrman covers dozens upon dozens of these. I think he juxtaposes these forgeries with New Testament books to argue, or at least imply, that some NT books could be just as false as the agreed upon forgeries.
Ehrman concludes his book with the Golden Rule: No one wants to be lied to so we shouldn’t lie, but the Bible lies and uses deceit to champion its “truth”; therefore, we could infer from Ehrman’s more diplomatically stated argument, the Bible damns itself.
I’m not one of those readers who—at this stage of my life anyway—drinks anyone’s Kool-Aid. I’m impressed with much here but I can’t say Ehrman proved within a shadow of a doubt that we can become agnostics or some other type of non-believer and be guaranteed we won’t go to hell.
Such guarantees don’t exist. Looks like we’ll have to find peace of mind from some other way. When I find it, I'll let you know.
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