Muslim-Christian Debate in Abbasid Baghdad
Posted: May 25, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Book review/recommendation, Christianity, Debates, Islam | Tags: Abbasid Baghdad, Abu Uthman al-Jahiz, christianity, islam 1 Comment »
I have just come across a fascinating account of Christians living in the third/ninth century Abbasid Baghdad to be found in the work of Muslim theologian Abu Uthman al-Jahiz (died 255/869) in a letter he wrote to some Muslim friends who had asked for his help against a group of Christians. He outlines for them the way in which Christians treat Muslims in debate:
‘They choose contradictory statements in our Hadiths, our reports that have weak chains of transmitters, and the equivocal verses in our Book, and they take to one side our weak and common people and ask them questions about them. Despite the ideas they have learnt from the heretics and accursed atheists, they often appear innocent before our intellectuals and people of influence. Hence they stir up trouble among the powerful, and cause deception among the weak-minded. And the pity is that each and every Muslim thinks he is an expert in religious matters, and that no one is better at arguing with heretics than anyone else!’
Quotation in Early Muslim Polemic against Christianity Abu ‘Isa al-Warraq’s “Against the Incarnation”, edited and translated by David Thomas, published by University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 59 in 2002.
David Thomas comments,
‘This depicts the Christians as completely unscrupulous in the way they confused ordinary Muslims by presenting spurious or difficult statements from Muslim scriptural sources, and confuted experts with arguments they innocently passed off as not their own. It is undoubtedly exaggerated.’ (page 7)
Exaggerated or not, the description is undoubtedly fitting of some Christians we deal with today as we well know – mentioning no names! How little has changed in over a thousand years…
MDI Book Recommendation: ‘A New History of Early Christianity’
Posted: May 23, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity Leave a comment »
A New History of Early Christianity by Charles Freeman, published by Yale University Press 2009
The contemporary relevance of Christianity is as hotly contested today as it has ever been. ‘A New History of Early Christianity’ shows how our current debates are rooted in the many controversies surrounding the birth of the religion and the earliest attempts to resolve them. Charles Freeman’s meticulous historical account of Christianity from its birth in Judaea in the first century A.D. to the emergence of Western and Eastern churches by A.D. 600 reveals that it was a distinctive, vibrant, and incredibly diverse movement brought into order at the cost of intellectual and spiritual vitality.
Against the conventional narrative of the inevitable ‘triumph’ of a single distinct Christianity, Freeman shows that there was a host of competing Christianities, many of which had as much claim to authenticity as those that eventually dominated.
A great read!
Abdullah Quilliam: Britain’s First ‘Islamist’?
Posted: May 21, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Book review/recommendation, Islam | Tags: Abdullah Quilliam, Caliphate, islam, Islamism, Sheikh of Islam Leave a comment »
William Henry Quilliam (April 10, 1856 – 1932), who changed his name to Abdullah Quilliam, was a 19th century convert from Christianity to Islam, noted for founding England’s first mosque and Islamic centre.
“Among Muslims none should be known as Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Ajem, Afghans, Indians or English. They are all Muslims, and verily the True-Believers are brethren. Islam is erected on the Unity of God, the unity of His religion, and the unity of the Muslims. History demonstrates that the True-Believers were never defeated while they remained united, but only when disunion crept into their ranks.
At the present time, union is more than ever necessary among Muslims. The Christian powers are preparing a new crusade in order to shatter the Muslim powers, under the pretext that they desire to civilise the world.
This is nothing but hypocrisy, but armed as they are with the resources of Western civilisation it will be impossible to resist them unless the Muslims stand united in one solid phalanx.
O Muslims, do not be deceived by this hypocrisy. Unite yourselves as one man. Let us no longer be separated. The rendevous of Islam is under the shadow of the Khalifate. The Khebla of the True-Believer who desires happiness for himself and prosperity to Islam is the holy seat of the Khalifate.”
Somehow not much seems to have changed since he wrote these words in 1896!
Abdullah Quilliam was ennobled as the Sheikh of Islam of the British Isles in 1894 by the Ottoman caliph and by the Emir of Afghanistan; he remains a symbolic flag-bearer for British Muslims.
This book is the first full biography of Abdullah Quilliam by Ron Geaves, Professor of the Comparative Study of Religion at Liverpool Hope University. Highly recommended! Click the pic for more details.
Monsters on the cultural landscape
Posted: May 19, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Catholicism, Christianity, Secularism 3 Comments »
The prestigious Catholic weekly The Tablet reports…
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said that tendentious notions of equality, freedom and tolerance are “three monsters on our cultural landscape” that formed part of a new and “very, very dangerous” secular religion.
Speaking in Leicester Cathedral, the Cardinal said:
‘What worries me today is the development of a kind of negative tolerance. For the sake of tolerance the Government forced the Roman Catholic Church to close its Adoption Agencies because we were not able to accept politically correct law which said that all agencies have to accept homosexual couples if they wished to adopt. This went against the conscience of Catholic teaching which asserted that the best way of bringing up children was with a father and a mother. Thus the agencies have had to close for no good reason because homosexual couples could adopt from any other agency. All this for the sake of tolerance. For the sake of tolerance we must not allow a person to wear a cross so that Christianity is not expressed visibly. In the name of tolerance it seems to me tolerance is being abolished. Our danger in Britain today is that so-called Western reason claims that it alone has recognised what is right and thus claims totality that is inimical to freedom. No one is forced to be a Christian. But no one should be forced to live according to the new secular religion as if it alone were definitive and obligatory for all humankind.’
He said that “the new secular religion” was “not pure reason but rather the restriction of reason to what can be known scientifically – and at the same time the exclusion of all that goes beyond it”. He added: “It is very, very dangerous.”
He went on: “The propaganda of secularism and its high priests want us to believe that religion is dangerous for our health. It suits them to have no opposition to their vision of a brave new world, the world which they see as somehow governed only by people like themselves.”
The new religion of Secularism and its fanatical supporters like Richard Dawkins are determined to enforce their will and shove their ‘faith’ down society’s throat.
But some Muslims have questioned whether the churches as a whole are really willing to resist the challenge of secularism. Muslim philosopher Shabbir Akhtar in The Quran and the Secular Mind (2008) comments provocatively (p.7):
‘We must note that there are now few authentically religious Jews and Christians in the West even among the clergy and the rabbinate. All intellectually sophisticated Jews and Christians are secularised and, in their attitudes towards domestic issues, as opposed to foreign policy, are typically humane capitalists whose religious beliefs serve as a decorative veneer on their underlying secularised religious humanism. All charges are variations on the stock Muslim accusation, rooted in the Qur’an, that Jews and Christians have achieved a cosy accommodation with the world – or with modern secularism, in our day – at the cost of being unfaithful to their dogmatic traditions. Modern versions of Christianity and Judaism appear to be carefully disguised variants of secular humanism. Predictably, therefore, many Jews and Christians, unlike virtually all Muslims, live conscientiously and comfortably within the arrangements of the liberal secular humanist state. Islam is now unique in its existential decision, though not intellectual capacity, to confront rather than accommodate the secularist world-view. It is a faith whose adherents are sounding a lone note of courageous defiance in the battle against secularism while other trumpets are blowing retreat.
Kuwait’s ruler blocks MPs’ Islamic law proposal
Posted: May 18, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam, Islamophobia, Secularism, The News Leave a comment »
Reuters reports, May 17, 2012:
Kuwait’s ruler has blocked a proposal by 31 of the 50 elected members of parliament to amend the constitution to make all legislation in the Gulf Arab state comply with Islamic law, an MP said on Thursday.
The approval of Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, is needed for any constitutional change.
“His highness the emir is not in favour,” said Mohammad al-Dallal, an Islamist MP and legal expert. The proposal was put forward by the Islamic Justice Bloc and signed by 31 lawmakers, he said.
Political parties are banned in Kuwait so MPs have to rely on forming blocs in parliament. The 15-member cabinet selected by the prime minister can also vote in parliament.
“We must think again about convincing the emir or submitting it again in another format,” Dallal said.
“Our society is a conservative society, a lot of people request that laws comply with sharia (Islamic law). We also do not have a stable political system,” he said, adding such an amendment could help make lawmaking less chaotic.
Islamist MPs have proposed amending the constitution in this way several times in the past. This time, they asked to change article 79 to make sharia “the only source” of legislation rather than a major or main source as it is now.
Like elsewhere in the region, Islamists have made political gains in the major oil producer. With many campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, Islamists increased their share of parliamentary seats in Kuwait after a snap election in February which ushered in its fourth parliament in six years.
Kuwait, a regional US ally, is ruled by a Sunni Muslim monarchy and states Islam as its official religion. About 85 percent of Kuwait’s population is thought to be Muslim. The next biggest groups are expatriate Hindus and Christians.
Here are some Reader comments:
Pollack said, ‘Seems like in the arab lands, democracy only brings in forces which actively work to introduce undemocratic laws. It’s a strange case where the unelected emir has more wisdom than the elected politicians.’
Umer said, ‘Thank God for Amir’
To Pollack I say, Remember, Kuwait was not a democratic country in the first place, it outlaws all political parties, so there has been no threat to its democratic status, it had none. Furthermore surely it is ‘undemocratic’ for the Amir to block the legitimate legislative wishes of 62% of the MPs? Pollock, you should be on the side of the MPs if you were being consistent.
But the real reason for your objection has nothing to do with democracy or the lack or it: it reflects the deep-seated Western prejudice against Muslims and Islam.
Europeans and Americans are so deeply convinced of the superiority of their secular, liberal culture that it is, to say the least, difficult for them to empathise with a profoundly different system. You may ask ‘why should I bother understanding it?’ The answer should be obvious: the peace and good order of our world depends upon this understanding.
The ummah (the Muslim community of believers) is today weak and divided. It will not always be so. It is imperative for the West to make the effort to see past its inherited cultural hostility and cease opposing by military might and cultural hegemony those who follow the way of the final prophet of God, Muhammad, upon whom be peace.
To Umer I say, Muslims thank God for Muhammad, upon whom be peace, and the Islamic community he created. Sovereignty belongs solely to God not to man, his creature. This flows directly from the Muslim confession of faith, lā ʾilāha ʾillà ‘Llāh which, in this context, can be interpreted as meaning that ‘there is no legislator but the Legislator’. The Amir of Kuwait appears to be working against this principle.
Do as I Say, Not as I Do…
Posted: May 12, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam, Islamophobia, The News, US terrorism | Tags: islam, Mecca and Medina, US terrorism 2 Comments »We are all familiar with the story…
Al-Qaeda terrorists plot to kill civilians in the West, innocent men, women and children. Think 9/11 New York, 7/7 London. Western governments hunt down the conspirators and incarcerate them without charge or kill them with drones. Even to express sympathy with al-Qaeda type actions can lead you to imprisonment for life.
Western governments repeatedly condemn terrorist acts as barbaric, evil, and state that terrorism must at all costs be defeated.
This anti-terrorism rhetoric is such a part of our world view today that when it is disclosed that the US Military itself taught over 800 military officers the ‘necessity’ (see below) of making war on civilians no one seems to see the elephant in the room.
Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley until this week taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. The college, for professional military members, teaches midlevel officers and government civilians on subjects related to planning and executing war.
Dooley presumed, for the purposes of his theoretical war plan, that the Geneva Conventions that set standards of armed conflict, are “no longer relevant.”
He added: “This would leave open the option once again of taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary (the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki being applicable…).”
His war plan suggests possible outcomes such as “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation … Islam reduced to cult status,” and the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia “destroyed.”
His course on Islam was taught since 2004. It was offered five times a year, with about 20 students each time, meaning roughly 800 students have taken the course over the years.
The BBC’s North America editor Mark Mardell commented, “What does seem rather surprising is that all those commanders, captains and colonels must have sat through the course and not felt the need to tell someone that something rather weird was going on”
Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley still works for the college, but is no longer teaching, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said.
This is such an extraordinary statement that it is worth repeating:
Dooley still works for the college, but is no longer teaching.
Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley has not been sacked. He has not been charged with any terrorism related offenses. He has not been charged with anything at all. He has not been locked up without trial. He has not been rendered to Guantanamo Bay.
In fact the only change to his life appears to be the fact that ‘he is no longer teaching’.
Words fail me. I could condemn all this as hypocritical, self serving, two-faced, deceitful, double-dealing, and duplicitous, but this doesn’t even begin to express the revulsion the world must feel at the blatant double standards the US authorities maintain.
But the conclusion is obvious:
The United States government utterly condemns terrorism if it is perpetuated by Muslims, but it takes absolutely no action whatsoever against non-Muslim advocates of terrorism in the US itself such as Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley – who gets to keep his job.
♦
Compare the treatment of Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley with that of Muslim Tarek Mehanna who was recently sentenced to 17 years in prison for supporting the right of Muslims to defend themselves against US troops:
Tarek Mehanna: punished for speaking truth to power
President Obama endorses ‘same-sex marriage’
Posted: May 11, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Homosexuality, Islam, Militant Secularism, The News | Tags: catholic church, gay marriage, homosexuality, islam 7 Comments »“Same sex couples should be able to get married”, said the President of the United States Barack Obama in an interview with the television station, ABC. Obama, speaking on 9th May in the Cabinet Room of the White House, stated: “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married”. The Vice-President Joe Biden also declared he was in favour of same-sex marriage.
However leaders of the largest Christian Church in the world were clearly very disappointed:
US Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin (of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island) said,
The decision of President Barack Obama to endorse same-sex marriage is extremely disappointing, but not at all surprising. This is a very divisive and devious president who, from the beginning of his administration has actively pursued a liberal, secular agenda that discards fundamental moral values including respect for human life, and religious freedom. This is a sad day in American history. Even the President of the United States does not have the authority to redefine the sacred institution of marriage that has been given to us by God.
What is the Islamic view of ‘gay marriage’? The excellent website Eye on Gay Muslims clarifies the unambiguous teaching of Islam:
‘Whatever actions are carried out in pursuit of fulfilling sexual desires must be deemed unlawful unless the proper channel is followed, i.e. marriage, which Islam defines clearly as being only with the opposite sex. We select one relevant verse to begin a short discussion of this matter:
And Allah has given you spouses (azwāj) of your own kind, and has given you, from your spouses, sons and grandsons, and has made provision of good things for you. Is it then in vanity that they believe and in the grace of Allah that they disbelieve? [16:72]
The reference to procreation is significant, as one of the aims of marriage is indeed to bring forth new generations of humans who will worship Allah. Furthermore, much could be said about the word azwāj (sing. zawj) with its linguistic and Qur’anic meaning as “the opposite part of a pair”. One of the numerous evidences in the Qur’an of zawj meaning the opposite sex, and indeed a very relevant evidence in this context, is the following proclamation of Lut (peace be on him). Here it is evident that the spouses (azwāj) of the men addressed cannot be male, and that homosexual partners cannot be considered as azwāj:
“What! Of all creatures do ye come unto the males, and leave the spouses (azwāj) your Lord created for you? Nay, you are a people exceeding limits.” [26:165-6]
From such verses, we establish that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Therefore any sexual activity between two men or between two women is by necessity outside the realms of marriage and, by extension, outside the realms of permissibility. In other words, homosexual marriage is unsupportable within the Islamic legal system, and by definition any homosexual behaviour is fornication; indeed, it may be considered a level worse, by virtue of including the additional element of sexual perversion.’
Jesus Christ: Prophet or God? by Paul Williams
Posted: May 10, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Islam, MDI UK, The Bible Leave a comment »Sussex Islam Awareness Week 2012, Jesus Christ: Prophet or God? by MDI’s Paul Williams
Questions & Answers @ 00:30:05
A Liberal Feminist Speaks Out on Women in Islamic Countries
Posted: May 10, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam, Islamophobia, Women in Islam 1 Comment »
Naomi Wolf (born 1962) is an American author and political consultant. With the publication of The Beauty Myth, she became a leading spokesperson of what was later described as the third wave of the feminist movement.
Wolf has spoken about the dress required of women living in Muslim countries:
The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I traveled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channeling – toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.
Behind the veil lives a thriving Muslim sexuality
The Social Catastrophe of Alcohol Abuse: A Case Study
Posted: May 5, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, The News 1 Comment »Drinking alcohol has long been a part of Australian culture. But today, the country is suffering huge social and economic costs from its love for the drink. A recent report estimated that the tangible cost for alcohol misuse is $25bn a year, including medical expenses, lost wages and productivity. Ten million Australians experience negative effects from other people’s drinking, and 70,000 fall victim to alcohol-related assaults. With an increasing number of young people binge-drinking, children as young as 10 are seeking treatment for alcohol addiction. Police and hospital authorities are urging Australians to sober up but face formidable challenges from a powerful alcohol industry and an entrenched drinking culture.
God says in His Word:
“They ask you about intoxicants and games of chance. Say: In both of them there is a great sin and means of profit for men, and their sin is greater than their profit.” Qur’an, Sura 2: 219
See Al Jazeera’s film Unquenchable thirst
Christology: Methodological and Historical Considerations
Posted: April 30, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, The Bible 2 Comments »
The Christology of Jesus by Ben Witherington III, was published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers in October 2001
Professor Witherington is one of America’s most respected Evangelical biblical scholars. His book on Christology is written for advanced students and other scholars, and is worth reading. I quote here for the benefit of dawah carriers a significant statement from Witherington’s book concerning his modus operandi in approaching the question of the Christology of Jesus.
He writes:
Methodological and Historical Considerations
‘Most of my material, with rare exception, is taken from Mark or Q. Thus, I will start with what are probably our earliest sources and go into later material, if it confirms hints in the authentic synoptic material or if it helps make sense of that data. I will not be dealing with material such as the “I Am” discourses on the Fourth Gospel because it is difficult to argue on the basis of the historical-critical method that they go back to a Sitz im Leben Jesu. Even when we can get back to such a Sitz im Leben from Mark or Q, what can be recovered is often only the substance of what Jesus said or did, although sometimes we are able to recover his very words.’ p.30
*
Some brief comments,
1) Witherington’s reluctance to utilise the ‘I Am’ statements in John is quite unremarkable in itself, and follows the consensus of virtually all other NT scholars. What is significant in my view is the fact the Witherington is one of the leading faces of American evangelical Christianity which often looks to him for a scholarly validation of their theology (see for example chapter 7 of The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel). But as this quote demonstrates, he is in considerable doubt concerning the historical value of the discourses in John which, significantly, contain the highest Christology of any of the four gospels.
2) Even in the earliest recoverable Jesus material in Mark and Q Witherington demonstrates typical scholarly reserve and knows that only ‘sometimes’ can we recover Jesus’ actual words. This caution is a world way from ubiquitous evangelical and fundamentalist use of the gospels which give the impression that they all contain only the actual words of Jesus himself. At least some of Evangelicalism’s best scholars know that this is not the case.
The Triumph of Paulinism
Posted: April 28, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Book review/recommendation, Christianity Leave a comment »In the current edition of the Times Literary Supplement the great British biographer A. N. Wilson reviews Tom Wright’s new book, ’Simply Jesus, Who he was, what he did, why it matters‘. Wright, now retired as Bishop of Durham, is currently professor of New Testament studies at St Andrews University. He has written over fifty books, nearly all of them concerned with Jesus and most with the question of reconstructing the first-century Palestinian Judaism from which Christianity sprang.
Wilson too is a committed Christian who nevertheless asks the right questions about the New Testament. It is his comments in the review that I want to share with readers.
He writes,
‘A core issue must be: how do you get from the Galilean prophet (or whatever you think he was) to the Christ proclaimed in St Paul’s epistles, which were written some twenty years after Jesus’s lifetime? The problem for New Testament scholarship, which necessarily follows the matter chronologically, is framed slightly differently. Paul’s letters are the first Christian documents, and they reveal two things. First, that there is a lively cult of the Messiah among the fledgling gentile congregations of Asia Minor; second, in the Letter to the Galatians, we discover that there is an all but irreconcilable rift between Paul and his gentile followers on the one hand, and, on the other, the Jerusalem “church”, which insisted that the followers of Jesus continue to observe Judaism with regard to the dietary laws, circumcision and so forth. Time passes, and what scholarship slowly realizes is that the Pauline, gentile “church” – destined to separate itself entirely from Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in ad 70 – is also destined to rewrite history. The Jews protesting at Paul’s activities in Galatia in AD 51 are Trotsky sitting beneath the strutting figure of Lenin. They are about to be airbrushed out of the story. Only as the Ebionite sect does later history know, or guess, very much about those who took an entirely different view of Jesus from the one that developed as orthodoxy – with the definitions of the Councils of the Church, Christ’s status as Second Person of the Trinity, Christ as an incarnation of the godhead, and so forth.’
Spot on! Wilson highlights the early deep schism between Paul and his gentile followers on the one hand and James (the head of the Jerusalem Church) on the other. Paul’s law free gospel which he claims to have received in a vision, eventually supplanted the original Torah observant gospel of Jesus, and a new religion was born which we today call ‘Christianity’, but which is in fact largely a Messiah cult established with brilliance and fanaticism by Paul of Tarsus, a man who never even met Jesus! The 2nd century inheritors of the original Jerusalem disciples were vilified as heretics by a church which became ever more anti-semitic. The child turned on its parent in an unholy act of matricide. Only with the advent of Islam in the seventh century was the monotheistic faith of the original disciples recognised and restored.
As the prestigious New Jerome Biblical Commentary observes,
‘Jewish Christianity as a movement was eventually defeated by Paulinism and died out, perhaps to be reborn in a different form as Islam’ (page 641).
Was Jesus a Religious man?
Posted: April 28, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, The Bible Leave a comment »‘We are so accustomed, and rightly, to make Jesus the object of religion that we become apt to forget that in our earliest records he is portrayed not as the object of religion, but as a religious man.’
The Teaching of Jesus, p. 101.
These words come from the pen of the great, late New Testament scholar Thomas Walter Manson. The earliest evidence we now possess portrays Jesus as a deeply religious man whose ministry and teaching pointed unambiguously towards God and His Kingdom. Our earliest narratives show Jesus praying to his God, going on pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, and participating in synagogue worship on the Sabbath.
Truly, Jesus was a religious man.
‘Son of God’: it’s meaning in historical context
Posted: April 28, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Judaism, Speakers Corner Leave a comment »Someone dug out this short clip from a few years ago. I had many conversations with the American Christian (I can’t recall his name) and I remember having the utmost respect for his intelligence and open-mindedness.
What did the title ‘son of god’ mean during the times of Jesus? Did it mean a divine figure or simply a righteous individual? MDI’s Paul Williams explains the question to a Christian at London’s Speakers’ Corner.
MDI Book Recommendation
Posted: April 28, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Book review/recommendation, Christianity, Dawah, MDI, The Bible Leave a comment »The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament
I have read this excellent book, and though it is definitely not aimed at the average lay reader it is well worth reading if you want an advanced introduction to how and why the Biblical text has been corrupted by Christian scribes.
The victors not only write the history, they also reproduce the texts. In a study that explores the close relationship between the social history of early Christianity and the textual tradition of the emerging New Testament, Ehrman examines how early struggles between Christian “heresy” and “orthodoxy” affected the transmission of the documents over which, in part, the debates were waged. His thesis is that proto-orthodox scribes of the second and third centuries occasionally altered their sacred texts for polemical reasons–for example, to oppose adoptionists like the Ebionites, who claimed that Christ was a man but not God, or docetists like Marcion, who claimed that he was God but not a man, or Gnostics like the Ptolemaeans, who claimed that he was two beings, one divine and one human. Ehrman’s analysis makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the social and intellectual history of early Christianity and raises intriguing questions about the relationship of readers to their texts, especially in an age when scribes could transform the documents they reproduced to make them say what they were already thought to mean, effecting thereby the orthodox corruption of Scripture.
Reviews
“This detailed, carefully argued, and thoroughly documented study should be purchased for collections serving faculty and graduate students in New Testament studies and church history.”–Choice
“Ehrman’s arguments throughout deserve our attention; they are frequently compelling….Clearly set out and persuasively presented….Variants that treat of Christ’s person and function must from now on always be considered with reference to Ehrman’s thesis.”–Novum Testamentum
“This book is highly recommended as an excellent work of scholarship that is of great importance in the development of New Testament studies. Here is a new voice that addresses some of the central theological and historical issues.”-Journal of Theological Studies
“Bart D. Ehrman has written a book which will stimulate the casual reader and intrigue the academic or professional reader of the New Testament….An excellent work and definitely invaluable for lay or scholars.”–Anglican Theological Review
