Forged?

Bart Ehrman

Ehrman's the kind of guy at work who order's coffee for everyone at work. He assumes that everyone drinks coffee because most adults do at his work. He even considered the Mormon and bought him a juice instead. But he didn't bother to ask me, because I don't drink coffee nor do I like the taste. He didn't know that because he never asked me. It's like saying cats are animals and dogs are animals too, so therefore dogs are cats too. Logically it's correct, but it's not sound at all because the facts aren't correct. It's not looking at the facts. This is a common logical error.


In his book, Forged, Ehrman makes claims without supporting evidence--assumptions on cognitive content. The facts he uses are irrelevant! He takes historical facts of that time to make his claim seem to be true. His biggest argument is that the authors of the Bible are not who we think they are because the manuscripts have been "forged." He assumes that since that only the rich and powerful could only afford a secretary in those days then these manuscripts must have been altered.

First of all, Ehrman is making these claims without supporting evidence. There is no mention of this actually happening. We know that the manuscripts and copies of the manuscripts were made in the time of witnesses and eye witnesses, and within the 1st Century AD. The NT has by far the most reliable manuscripts of any other manuscripts of history. You can check out my other posts about the reliability of the scripture.
Second of all, He never considered the rest of the text or who the person was. It's not uncommon for Rabbi's to have secretaries. Also, thinking about the faithful co-workers mentioned that Paul had, and just as today, one would volunteer one's skills to labour for the Lord at no cost.

The early Church faced many accusations. You can see the evidence in Paul's letters. He defended the accusations people made towards his character (2 Cor. 10; 11:16-33). And there were many debates on theological issues. We can see that in 1 Corinthians. "For example, in 1 Corinthians Paul is answering a situation where some members of the church in Corinth were denying an afterlife. Paul replies that if we are not raised from the dead to enjoy eternal life, Christ was not raised from the dead either. And if Christ was not raised, our Christian faith is worthless and our loved ones who have already died are forever gone. In fact, Paul adds, if there is no future resurrection of the dead and this life is all there is, let's party hard now because we will all be dead in a relatively short period of time (1 Cor. 15:12-19, 32)!" Do I smell sarcasm? Yes. Our early church fathers were very adament towards accusations, false teachings and habitual ignorance to the scripture. "These situations were more important than life itself," as Lee Strobel says. I agree, because there is even evidence in scripture to support that idea. We already know how much Paul suffered for the sake of the gospel. Stephen argued to the Pharisees and Saducees about the willingness to reject Jesus' claim and died for it. And also Paul wrote to Peter and Timothy to encourage them to give a defence and reason to the hope that is in them (1 Peter 3:15).

"These New Testament ‘letters’ are really more like essays put in letter form." - Ehrman

Ephesians and 1 Peter are quite long when compared with the average length of the letters of Cicero and longer than the average length of the letters of Seneca.

• Cicero: average 295 words per letter, but ranging from 22 to 2,530 words
• Seneca: average 995 words per letter, but ranging from 149 to 4,134
• Ephesians: 2,422 words
• 1 Peter: 1,684 words

However, it’s noteworthy that the average length of Paul’s undisputed letters is even longer, in fact, much longer at 3,442 words each (Rom: 7,111; 1 Cor: 6,830; 2 Cor: 4,477; Gal: 2,230; Phil: 1,629; 1 Th: 1,481; Philem: 335). If Ehrman were consistent in the use of his argument from length, he would dismiss all of Paul’s undisputed letters with the exception of Philemon. Yet no one, including Ehrman, questions that Paul wrote these. This reveals that Ehrman’s argument concerning letter length is only a paper tiger.


Resource: www.biblegateway.com/LeeStrobel/