A Personal Transition
A week ago today I finally sent off the very last and final
version of The Triumph of Christianity to my editor. It is
done, as good as I can make it. Now it will go to a copyeditor who will go over it line by line, word by word to make
sure the grammar, punctuation, and even spelling is all
correct, and to make suggestions for writing style as
needed.
Depending on the copy-editor, sometimes there are
tons of these stylistic suggestions, sometimes hardly any.
As an author, I much prefer the “hardly any” approach – it’s
much easier on me and more, well, affirming of my writing
style. When I do get a lot of suggestions I have to take a
deep breath and remind myself that the copy-editor is just
doing his/her job and trying to make the prose better. But I
do hate that part.
I will then go through the copy-edited manuscript, approve or
reject all the suggested changes, and return the book to the
editor, for it to go into production.
The goal is to have the book published next year (2017) at
this time, possibly at the end of November. Then begins a new
round of anxiety-producing-fun: seeing if it gets any media
attention and public notice.
From beginning to end, the book-writing business is tense.
There is pressure…
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Finding Meaning in the Bible:
More
Responses
to
my
Christmas Article
In the previous post I indicated some of the initial
reactions, four years ago, to my Newsweek article on the
Gospel stories about Christmas. I received yet more reaction
after that old post, and so posted again, dealing this time
with people who thought I was too kindly disposed to anyone
who found the stories meaningful. Here is what I said at the
time. (I still stick by it, for what it’s worth!)
**************************************************************
********
When the editor at Newsweek ask me if I would be willing to
write an article on the birth of Jesus, I was hesitant and
wrote him back asking if he was sure he really wanted me to do
it.
I told him that I seem to be incapable of writing
anything that doesn’t stir up controversy. It must be in my
blood. Still, he said that they knew about my work and were
not afraid of controversy, and they did indeed want an article
from me.
What’s interesting to me is that I’ve been getting it from all
sides. I don’t know why that should surprise me. It seems to
be the story of my life.
For years my agnostic and atheist
readers were cheering me on from the sidelines as I talked
about the problems posed by a critical study of the
New Testament: there are discrepancies and contradictions, the
Gospels are not written by eyewitnesses, and the stories they
contain were modified over time, and many of them were
invented, in the oral traditions before anyone wrote them
down.
Etc. My “non-believer” readers were pleased that all
this was coming out in a popular format for the general
reader.
And then I wrote Did Jesus Exist?, arguing that there is no
serious doubt for virtually any real scholar of antiquity
(whether biblical scholar, classicist, historian) that Jesus
of Nazareth really did live.
And many of my agnostic and
atheist allies suddenly felt completely betrayed and began to
attack me even more virulently than the conservative
Christians had earlier done.
You can’t please all the people all the time, and sometimes
you just never can please anyone.
History is like that.
But so it goes.
People line up on various sides, and if
what you’re really interested in is uncovering the truth that
history can convey (e.g., in an earnest attempt to do nothing
other than reconstruct what actually happened in the past),
you’re going to offend people, no matter what your
views/reconstructions are.
And so too ….
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Is
the
New
Testament
Authentic? Readers’ Mailbag
December 4, 2016
QUESTION
Dr Ehrman, I found this attack against you:
Bart likes to deceive his listener by claiming more
variations and more copies give birth to less
authenticity. Actually flip that and you’ll begin to “see
the light”. The Bible manuscripts were transmitted not
in a linear way, as in “Chinese whispers” but
geometrically as in 1 produced by 5 others which in turn
then produced, say 20, etc.
I think you already dealt with this claim, but I am unable to
find your post.
RESPONSE
I have to admit that I have a hard time responding to this
objection because I don’t know what the person is talking
about. Maybe someone else can enlighten me.
For openers,
I’m not sure what he means that I “like” to deceive my
listeners – I think that must mean I do this a lot. And the
“deception” appears to be that I think lots of variations in
the manuscripts of the New Testament make something “less
authentic.” But what does the person mean?
Exactly what is
less authentic? The words of the Bible? The words of Jesus?
The message of the Bible?
Christian beliefs?
Something
else?
And what does it mean to be less authentic? Less than
what?
mean?
And – my biggest problem – what does “authentic” even
I’m not simply asking a set of rhetorical questions: I
genuinely don’t know what this person is talking about.
I suppose the reason I have these problems is …
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Response
to
my
Newsweek
Article on Christmas
Earlier this week I posted my Newsweek article on Christmas
from four years ago, and several people have asked me what
kind of reaction I received. I made two posts about that at
the time. Here’s the first. I find this post rather humorous
now, years later, since I was obviously being wildly defensive
(halfway through the response) before denying I was defensive
at all (at the end)! What funny people we can be….
********************************************************
My Newsweek article this week has generated a lot of
response. I have no idea what kind of comments they typically
get for their stories, but so far, as of now, there have been
559 on mine; and most of them are negative – to no one’s
surprise – written by people (conservative evangelicals and
fundamenalists for the most part, from what I can tell) who
think that the Gospels are perfectly accurate in what they
have to say about Jesus – not just at his birth but for his
entire life. A lot of these respondents think that anyone who
thinks that the New Testament contains discrepancies is too
smart for his or her own good and blind at the same time (not
sure how it can go both ways, but there it is).
I’ve also been getting a lot of email from incensed readers,
including a sixteen-year old girl who tells me that she is a
Pentecostal Christian who has read the Bible 160 times and is
now starting her 161 st ; she was very upset with me and is
praying for my soul.
I appreciate the animosity that people feel: I would have felt
the same way…
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Gift Subscriptions, 2016!!
It is now December (can any of us believe it?) and we are
blasting from one holiday to the next. For the occasion, I
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As many of you know, for the past three of years, thanks to a
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It has happened in two stages.
It started off when two
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I put out the offer on my Facebook page,
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I would like to do the same thing this year, right now.
Would any of you be willing to donate one or more memberships
during this we’re-moving-to-the-holiday season?
Each new
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You could donate to the blog any increment of $25
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