Dr Bart Ehrman 新書: God's Problem

God's Problem
In times of questioning and despair, people often quote the Bible to provide answers. Surprisingly, though, the Bible does not have one answer but many "answers" that often contradict one another. Consider these competing explanations for suffering put forth by various biblical writers:
The prophets: suffering is a punishment for sin
The book of Job, which offers two different answers: suffering is a test, and you will be rewarded later for passing it; and suffering is beyond comprehension, since we are just human beings and God, after all, is God
Ecclesiastes: suffering is the nature of things, so just accept it
All apocalyptic texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: God will eventually make right all that is wrong with the world

For renowned Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, the question of why there is so much suffering in the world is more than a haunting thought. Ehrman's inability to reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of real life led the former pastor of the Princeton Baptist Church to reject Christianity.

In God's Problem, Ehrman discusses his personal anguish upon discovering the Bible's contradictory explanations for suffering and invites all people of faith -- or no faith -- to confront their deepest questions about how God engages the world and each of us.

Bart Ehrman從15歲開始成為born-again JDT. 虔誠到什麼地步呢? 他抓住一切機會傳教, 他把家人, 朋友都轉化為重生的JDT. 在他的同學們都去上University of Kansas時, 他選擇了學習聖經, 他進入了the Moody Bible Institute學習. 這家聖經學院在Chicago, 禁止學生看電影, 打牌,跳舞, 和異性有身體接觸. 用他自己的話說:"Bible was our middle name!".

在隨後的12年裡, 他在Moody, at Wheaton College (another Christian institution in Illinois) and finally at Princeton Theological Seminary.學習. 最後在普林斯頓神學院學習. 他發現自己的語言天賦, 為了學習早期基督教文獻, 他學習了公元前後地中海地區(也就是基督教發源地)的多種語言, 包括希臘語(寫新約用的語言), 科普特語(一種古埃及語言), 希伯萊語(書寫舊約的語言), 敘利亞語….

他對聖經和早期基督教歷史的學習卻導致了他失去了他的信仰, 因為他的發現讓他無法再相信聖經. 他通過文本批判的學習, 發現聖經根本不是無誤的, 而是充斥著人為的有意無意的刪改添加, 許多是有很嚴重的神學意義的改變. 因為他原來是虔誠的相信聖經是神啟無誤的, 為什麼神卻不保證神啟的語言的準確的傳遞呢? 他也發現, 耶酥的復活根本沒有歷史證據. 這一發現是對他信仰的重擊. 他先從堅持聖經無誤的極端教派轉換為較liberal的教派, 然而他心中的懷疑越來越強烈, 最後導致他放棄JDJ信仰的就是這本書里闡述的問題, 上帝的全能全善和人類的苦難. 他自己講述, 在八十年代某一時期, 非洲的飢荒正在殘酷的蔓延, 他無法把這殘酷的事實和自己的信仰調和起來, 終於有天早晨, 他醒來, 發現his faith has gone, forever. 他的學習沒有加強他的信仰,卻讓他成為世界知名的聖經學者和早期基督教歷史專家. 並多有著作.

我非常期待有時間讀這本書.

[ 本帖最後由 blackcurtain 於 2008-2-12 14:24 編輯 ]

他另一本書Misquoting Jesus的簡介:

For the next 12 years, he studied at Moody, at Wheaton College (another Christian institution in Illinois) and finally at Princeton Theological Seminary. He found he had a gift for languages. His specialty was the ancient texts that tried to explain what actually happened to Jesus Christ, and how the world's largest religion grew into being after his execution.

What he found there began to frighten him.

The Bible simply wasn't error-free. The mistakes grew exponentially as he traced translations through the centuries. There are some 5,700 ancient Greek manus that are the basis of the modern versions of the New Testament, and scholars have uncovered more than 200,000 differences in those texts.
聖經根本不是無誤的. 錯誤呈指數增長,當他沿著歷史的印記追蹤下來. 現代版本新約是基於大約5700個古希臘文手卷, 學者們從這些文字中發現了多於200,000二十萬處不同.
"Put it this way: There are more variances among our manus than there are words in the New Testament," Ehrman summarizes.
可以這麼說: 不同新約手卷中的不同點比新約的用詞還多!

Most of these are inconsequential errors in grammar or metaphor. But others are profound. The last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark appear to have been added to the text years later -- and these are the only verses in that book that show Christ reappearing after his death.
多數這種錯誤是沒有嚴重後果的語法或隱喻錯誤. 但有些是有深遠後果的. 馬可福音的最後12條是很多年後加入的. 而這些是馬可中僅有的關於基督死後顯現的.

Another critical passage is in 1 John, which explicitly sets out the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). It is a cornerstone of Christian theology, and this is the only place where it is spelled out in the entire Bible -- but it appears to have been added to the text centuries later, by an unknown scribe.

另外一個關鍵的段落是約翰1 (John 1), 其中特別提出了神聖的三位一體(父, 子, 靈). 這是基督教神學觀的基石, 而且是整本聖經中唯一說到這一點的地方. 但是, 這段是幾個世紀后, 一個不知名的抄寫員加入的.

還有很多, 比如耶酥和通姦女人等....

有興趣可以看他的 best seller Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

公共圖書館可以借到. 他文風幽默, 讀之不倦. 這本書把聖經文本(textual critisim)這一學院的嚴肅研究介紹給大眾, 非常發人深醒.

同往從不認同這類學問!  追版更是視而不見

對啊, 這樣才叫信仰呢.

原帖由 sumw 於 2008-2-12 16:02 發表
同往從不認同這類學問!  追版更是視而不見

原帖由 blackcurtain 於 2008-2-12 00:25 發表
他另一本書Misquoting Jesus的簡介:

For the next 12 years, he studied at Moody, at Wheaton College (another Christian institution in Illinois) and finally at Princeton Theological Seminary. He f ...

co-推薦。我很幸運，得到一本電子版，查閱很方便。

最近一期的時代周刊上有一篇關於「God's Problem」的書評。

是誰剛才在那裡抱怨說」主版被基督徒刷屏，其他的主題只要一出現就被有關基督教的帖子所淹沒，「……

快過來抓元兇！

In response to Erhman's Misquoting Jesus , please also refer to the following books for objectivity:

Reinventing Jesus  by J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace


Misquoting Truth by Timothy Paul Jones



I'd also like to quote from Erhman's Misquoting Jesus, "To be sure, of all the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us" (p.207).

Erhman also conveniently has forgotten to inform his readers in Misquoting what he stated in his own college textbook: "In spite of these remarkable differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy." Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford University Press, USA, 3rd Edition, 2003), p. 481.

As far as other discrepancies of the Bible that Erhman claims in Misquoting, nothing is new.  In fact all of them have been dealt with competently by evangelical scholars.   Here are other references for interested readers:

The historical reliability of the Gospel by Craig Blomberg, distinguished professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary.

The Gospel according to Bart by Daniel B. Wallace , Th.M., Ph.D.
http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=4000

[ 本帖最後由 gyl 於 2008-2-13 06:24 編輯 ]

???

What the heck is this???

原帖由 buffer 於 2008-2-13 04:24 發表
是誰剛才在那裡抱怨說」主版被基督徒刷屏，其他的主題只要一出現就被有關基督教的帖子所淹沒，「……

快過來抓元兇！

是啊, 很多矛盾是早就知道的. 經過apologetics的圓法兒, 象"不帶拐杖"="不要多帶拐杖"之類的. 矛盾是不存在的.

運用JDJ彪悍的邏輯, 聖經是無誤的.

確實有那麼個帖子，原話不是這樣的。大概就是抱怨了一下話語權的問題。
我見大家（飛機）對基督教的話題實在興趣太過彪悍，所以才順嘴來了那麼一句。

這種剽悍早已經屬於 primitive 的小兒科了，還有更剽悍的，等華人基督徒們自己去發現吧

作用力與反作用力么. JDJ折騰勁兒大, 當然我們針對JDJ相應的工作量要大些. 不奇怪.

We humans subconsciously select what we want to see and believe, this is human "nature". This tendency is what shapes our comfort zone -- the zone that can avoid fear and conflicts and bring in certainty and self-righteousness. This is exactly like when we are in love with someone, we always see the beauty of her/him and whatever that might look imperfect will be overcome by good reasons and to some extent the imperfects may have been transformed to some unique characters which are also beauty. Christians only see the beauty of the Bible - God's love and salvation for eternity; For non-Christians or those who lost their faity, the salvation becomes a dreadful ecstasy. Just some opinion of mine.

原帖由 Pathless 於 2008-2-13 21:36 發表
For non-Christians or those who lost their faity

I guess you mean "faith" in the last quote.

HELLO..., how about the Christians who lost faith to Buddha, to Zeus, to Skadi, to the father of Jehovah, to the messenger of God? and to the hundreds of deities in the world?

Not believing in a non-existing being is not losing faith.

Typo.. thanks for pointing this out.  Not believing a "non-existing" being is a "belief" as well with justification ideas to support such a statement. In this case, if you really believe in "do not believe in anything", for sure whatever you don't believe will never affect you, because those are irrelevant. If you still care for that, it means you still believe in "these non-existing beings" can not exist and they are fake".

The losing faith in my earlier sentence is losing faith to God or more appropriately to the God in the Bible.

原帖由 Pathless 於 2008-2-13 08:22 發表
Typo.. thanks for pointing this out.  Not believing a "non-existing" being is a "belief" as well with justification ideas to support such a statement. In this case, if you rea ...

不同意。拿我常用的例子：你這等於說禿頭也是一種發色。

Understand -- you may have a different definition than me in this term - belief.  Strictly speaking "belief" is found in "our judgment" about which we in fact "don't know". Like when I tell you I have 2 million dollars in my account, the question of "belief" comes in, so you need some judgment to figure out whether I am trustable or not. If the determination is "established" -- the "faith" comes in, meaning it is a more determined form of "belief".  If you have seen for yourself there is really a 2 million dollars in my account -- after you go with me to the bank. This question of belive or not disappears -- you see. Now if I ask you: do you believe I have 2 million dollars -- you would definitely think I am showing off.