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.
BART D. EHRMANDifferent authors have different points of view. You can’t just say, ‘I believe in the Bible.
More Bart D. Ehrman Quotes
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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?
BART D. EHRMAN -
The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don’t want to go there.
BART D. EHRMAN -
[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.
BART D. EHRMAN -
A fundamentalist is no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental.
BART D. EHRMAN -
His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!
BART D. EHRMAN -
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.
BART D. EHRMAN -
I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it’s silly to talk about him not existing.
BART D. EHRMAN -
Jesus existed, and those vocal persons who deny it do so not because they have considered the evidence with the dispassionate eye of the historian, but because they have some other agenda that this denial serves.
BART D. EHRMAN -
In the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet.
BART D. EHRMAN -
In fact, most of the changes found in early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology.
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You can’t believe something just because someone else desperately wants you to.
BART D. EHRMAN -
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.
BART D. EHRMAN -
I don’t know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this.
BART D. EHRMAN -
No other author, biblical or otherwise, mentions this event. Is it, like John’s account of Jesus’ death, a detail made up by Matthew in order to make some kind of theological point?
BART D. EHRMAN -
My students sometimes ask: what is a fundamentalist? I give them a very simple definition.
BART D. EHRMAN