Bart Denton Ehrman has made quite the name for himself in modern scholarship. In spite of his ultimate rejection of the Christian faith, he is a prolific author of over 30 books on the topic, including "Misquoting Jesus", "How Jesus Became God", and "Jesus Interrupted". He is perhaps one of the most famous and influential figures in modern religious discussions, with his name crossing the lips of Christians, atheists, and even Muslims. His speech is eloquent, his wit is unassailable, and one cannot fault him on his level of education.
Unfortunately, this is where my praise for the man must end, as his scholarship absolutely can be faulted. While he does cast aside some of the more asinine conspiracy theories, such as Jesus Mythicism, Ehrman is no stranger to peddling easily refuted narratives that not even he believes. Yet, because of his influence, as well as his skill in presenting his case, even many Christians find him intimidating, and some apostates can even attribute their departure from the faith to him. Thus, as much as I despise "hit pieces", I feel compelled to expose this man, removing the barriers he has placed between Christ and the salvation He brings. It is my hope and prayer that, in due time, Ehrman himself may also repent and be saved.
One key evidence that Ehrman is a deceiver is the simple fact that he changes his approach depending on his primary audience. On the whole, this is not unusual. Obviously, a scholar will change the way he speaks depending on the intended audience. A popular audience may be handled with kid gloves, so to speak, with scholarly language being removed, and, at worst, the occasional inaccuracy for sake of boosting understanding.
But with Ehrman, this isn't all that is done. Rather than using different language to present the same claims, Ehrman will flat out change his confessions depending on the audience he is intending to reach. As William Lane Craig once put it (1), there's a distinction between scholarly Bart and popular Bart. Or, as he puts it, "Good Bart" and "Bad Bart".
The example given by Craig is the reliability of the New Testament. As he put it, "Scholarly Bart knows that the text of the New Testament has been established in 99 percent accuracy". This assertion can be ironically proven by the appendix of one of Ehrman's famous books "Misquoting Jesus", where he writes the following concerning his mentor, Bruce Metzger: "If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament."
But as Craig further points out, "Popular Bart misrepresents this to unsuspecting laymen through innuendo and implication to make them think that the text of the New Testament is highly uncertain." This can be seen in the very title of the book: "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why"!
So which is it, Bart? Has the Bible been changed, or would there be around one or two dozen ineffective differences if you and your Christian mentor, Bruce Metzger, were to sit down and attempt to reproduce the original Bible? These two statements cannot be considered compatible.
The book itself doesn't get much better. Remember, Ehrman claims in the appendix thta "The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament." Contrary to this, the book itself says "It would be wrong… to say—as people sometimes do—that the changes in our text have no real bearing on what the texts mean or on the theological conclusions that one draws from them. We have seen, in fact, that just the opposite is the case." (Emphasis mine).
So which is it, Bart? Are the essentials left unaffected by the textual variants, or do the textual variants have real bearing on theological conclusions one draws from them? To illustrate this point, consider the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity is an essential Christian belief. You can be a Christian without knowing the doctrine, and you can certainly be a Christian without understanding the doctrine, but you cannot be a Christian if you reject the doctrine. Yet, one of the apparently meaningful variants Ehrman says will change your theological conclusions is 1 John 5:7-8.
As shown by his book "How Jesus Became God", Ehrman is of the opinion that the doctrine of the Trinity evolved gradually. It is his belief that Jesus neither thought, nor preached, that He was divine. Rather, the concept of divinity, in the ancient world, was quite plastic. He points out that some figures, such as Alexander the Great, were also deified after their deaths. This, he claims, is what happened with Jesus.
Regarding 1 John 5:7-8, then, Ehrman's claim is that the doctrine of the Trinity is found nowhere in the Bible, unless you read translations that contain a specific textual variation. As he writes in a relatively recent blog, "I maintained in the post that this doctrine is not taught in the New Testament, but I pointed out there is one apparent exception, depending on which translation you are reading. In the King James Version you will find the following passage in the letter of 1 John: There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water and the blood, and these three are one (1 John 5:7-8). That first part does indeed sound like an early expression of the doctrine of the Trinity! (No other place in the NT does so – even though there are some passages that mention or allude to Father, Son, and Spirit, none of them takes the crucial step of saying that are all equally God and that “the three are one.”) So it is in the NT! Right?" (2).
There is one particularly glaring problem with Ehrman's argument here: The doctrine of the Trinity is taught throughout both the Old and New Testaments! As Jewish, and notably non-Christian scholar Daniel Boyarin wrote, "The ideas of Trinity and incarnation, or certainly the germs of those ideas, were already present among Jewish believers well before Jesus came on the scene to incarnate in himself, as it were, those theological notions and take up his messianic calling." (3)
Now, if the "germs" of these ideas were already present in pre-Christian Jewish thought - and indeed, it seems they didn't cease until Christians started using them to effectively evangelise Jews - surely we must admit there is something there? But no. According to Ehrman, the only place we see the doctrine of the Trinity is in a well known forgery, which rarely (if ever) features in the Biblical arguments Christians, such as myself, make in favor of the Trinity. Oh yeah, and even by Ehrman's reckoning, the forgery is younger than the doctrine...
A further issue for Ehrman is that his view thoroughly ignores Jewish thought. As we've already pointed out, the Jews did have a concept of God being multipersonal. To be as charitable as possible, we'll simply assume Ehrman, as a New Testament scholar, who, as far as I can tell, only believes the Trinity "is not taught in the New Testament", is completely ignorant of the Old Testament. This would be absurd, but as I said, I'm willing to be charitable. But surely even a New Testament scholar knows that there is a grand total of one God in Judaism, and therefore, for Jesus to be identified as God, in any way, and at any point in history, necessarily points to a "Binity", at the very least?
I'll put it another way: The Jews knew what Ehrman, apparently, does not, as the New Testament, on which he is apparently an expert, records this. "For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God." (John 5:18). "“We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”" (John 10:31). The Jews knew Jesus was claiming to be God.
But Ehrman, as a proponent of the developing doctrine theory, will gleefully point out that both of these accounts come from John. By the reckoning of Ehrman and his ilk, the Deity of Christ evolved early, but gradually. John's Gospel, as a late edition, contains a high Christology, whereas Mark, supposedly the earliest Gospel, apparently doesn't even contain a resurrection account. They're a bit hard pressed to explain why Mark 16:6 contains an angel proudly announcing "He is risen!", but that's an issue for them to figure out another day.
For now, consider this: Mark's Gospel opens with the words "The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God,". The Son of who, now? Jesus, even according to Mark's Gospel, is uniquely the Son of God.
What's the son of a duck?
What's the son of a tiger?
What's the son of a monkey?
As the Son of God, Jesus is, by His very nature, God. But if, as Jewish thought goes, there can only ever be one God (Isaiah 43:10), the Trinity is the only doctrine that can reconcile Jesus' most famous title with the Jewish religion from which it sprang. No wonder the Jews tried to stone Him for blasphemy!
But Ehrman's own logic doesn't allow him to attribute the Deity of Christ to John and later authors. As he himself writes, "There are no grounds for assuming that Paul, whose views of Jesus were taken over from the Palestinian Jewish Christians who preceded him, held a radically different view of Jesus from his predecessors." (4). Yet, it takes a Tide pod-eating dunce to read Paul's writings and conclude that he thought of Jesus as anything less than the fullness of Godhead dwelling bodily. Why do I say that? Because he wrote "For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;" (Colossians 2:9). But 1 John 5:7-8 is the only place in the New Testament that teaches the Trinity, right?
It is, in my view, impossible for a scholar, particularly one of Bart Ehrman's caliber, to not be aware of the extreme weakness in these arguments. In fact, being so famous, Ehrman has the advantage of being able to Google himself. If he was to look up "responding to Bart Ehrman", or "Bart Ehrman refuted", or "review of Bart Ehrman", he would no doubt find the vast array of responses - most of which are far better than this article - that refute even his strongest arguments. Yet, even to the extent of explicitly contradicting his own work, Ehrman continues to peddle conspiratorial narratives, using clickbaity titles, in order to convince a popular audience that the Christian faith is somehow just one more man-made religion. However historical he believes the figure of Christ is, Ehrman nevertheless concocts some very strange narratives that can be disproven even by opening up a modern study Bible. Ehrman says the Trinity doesn't exist in the New Testament, we open the Bible, and oh look, there's the Trinity. Ehrman claims the Bible has been changed for nefarious motives, but it turns out he himself believes there are only a handful of textual variants, and they do not affect essential Christian beliefs.
With this in mind, It honestly seems the only real use Bart Ehrman's sensationally titled books are useful for is exposing Bart Ehrman as an agenda-driven charlatan. In spite of his undeniable skill as a scholar, and the fact that he is right about as often as a broken clock, it takes only the slightest pressure from his fellow scholars for him to change his tune. But there is only one word one can apply to a man who knowingly presents what is not true. That word is "liar", and liars have no more of a place in academia than they do in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Therefore, for those struggling with their faith because of anything Bart Ehrman has published, you may breathe a sigh of relief: Very little truth comes from the mouth of this man. For those who refuse to come to faith because of something Ehrman teaches, you have been fooled. To Ehrman himself, on the exceedingly small chance this article reaches you, I pray that I have not only done you justice, but also spared it. It is clear that you do not believe the words you put to paper. Indeed, you cannot, because aside from being lies, you are in a position to know that they are lies, and you stop just short of admitting it when you are confronted by your fellow scholars. Yet you peddle them anyway. For what motive, I cannot tell, nor would I presume to judge your heart. But you need not believe your heart is hidden from the God against whom you persistently and vocally rebel. I call upon you to repent, for this century will not end before you meet Him. We would all prefer if that meeting was a pleasant one.
References
1. Phan, Catherine T. - Apologist Responds to Bart Ehrman's Critique of Historical Jesus, The Christian Post, January 17th 2011 (link)
2. Ehrman, Bart - How the Trinity Got Into the New Testament, The Bart Ehrman Blog, January 7th 2021 (link)
3. Boyarin, Daniel - The Jewish Gospels - The Story of the Jewish Christ, The New Press, July 11th 2013
4. Ehrman, Bart - Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NT, 2012