Bart Ehrman's official title is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Gray endowed the chair specifically for the purpose of keeping a Christian presence in the faculty of UNC's Religious Studies department. Ehrman is a self-professing agnostic (formerly Christian).
Now, it turns out that James A. Gray is my grandfather's cousin. My grandfather commented today that if Gray knew that an agnostic occupied his namesake chair, he would roll over in his grave. This is funny enough coming from a 70-something-year-old man, but it gets better. My grandfather once met Ehrman and actually told him this. Ehrman didn't seem perturbed.
This story just makes me giggle. And I'm not going to debate Ehrman here--Richard Hays, Stephen Colbert, my dad and many others have done a far better job than I could. I just want to clarify one thing: my problem with Ehrman is not that he's agnostic. It's his reasons for leaving the faith.
Ehrman is making gobs of money off books where the thesis is basically "OH MY GOSH THERE ARE INCONSISTENCIES IN THE BIBLE AND IT MIGHT NOT ALL BE 100% HISTORICALLY ACCURATE AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" I *might* be mocking, but I can't help it if I'm snarky and sarcastic by nature. Anyway, the thing is, Ehrman presents his problems as if he's the first person to notice them. But if no one had ever realized that not all 4 Gospels were exactly the same...why would we have 4 Gospels in the first place? The point is that Ehrman is wrestling with legitimate questions in a way that ignores the fact that the church has been dealing with them for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Since I have papers to write and don't feel like going into this anyway, I'm just going to leave you with this gem:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Bart Ehrman | ||||
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