Sometimes Christian apologists say there are only three options to who Jesus was: a liar, a lunatic or the Lord. But there could be a fourth option – legend.
BART D. EHRMANThere are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.
More Bart D. Ehrman Quotes
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His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!
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My students sometimes ask: what is a fundamentalist? I give them a very simple definition.
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The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don’t want to go there.
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I have such a fantastic life that I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for it. . . . But I don’t have anyone to express my gratitude to. This is a void deep inside me, a void of wanting someone to thank, and I don’t see any plausible way of filling it.
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Everything we hear and see we need to evaluate—whether the inspiring writings of the Bible or the inspiring writings of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or George Eliot, of Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, or the Dalai Lama.
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Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes pure and simple slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another.
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Traditionally in Christian circles, Judas in fact has been associated with Jews. Of being traitors, avaricious, who in fact, betray Jesus, who are Christ-killers. And this portrayal of Judas of course also leads then to horrendous acts of anti-Semitism through the centuries.
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You can’t believe something just because someone else desperately wants you to.
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In Matthew, Jesus declares, “Whoever is not with me is against me.” In Mark, he says,“Whoever is not against us is for us.”
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[P]eople need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the Bible. This is how we need to live life generally.
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The problem then with Jesus is that he cannot be removed from his time and transplanted into our own without simply creating him anew
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Did he say both things? Could he mean both things? How can both be true at once? Or is it possible that one of the Gospel writers got things switched around?
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Different authors have different points of view. You can’t just say, ‘I believe in the Bible.
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There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty.
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In fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology.
BART D. EHRMAN