The ordinary public has a craving for ‘scandal stories’ about ‘the church’, especially tales that involve ‘conspiracies’ – note the popularity of The Da Vinci Code.
The reason? There would be limited demand for it. Would that more evangelical scholars were possessed of his communication gifts! However, it must be immediately objected that it is most unlikely that any such scholar would be able to interest a major publishing firm to take on a work defending the Bible. In that sense, his defection to agnosticism and theological liberalism is a tragic loss to evangelicalism. Ehrman is determined to see the accounts as impossibly divergent, rather than to consider alternative proposalsĮhrman’s new book once again shows that he is an impressive communicator, able to take often difficult and intricate issues and present them in an accessible and readable fashion for ‘the common man’. It follows that in order to safeguard untrained members of our congregations, we must be aware of the challenge that his writings present and be able to respond to them – because sooner or later ordinary people in the pew are going to approach their pastors with reports that Islamic missionaries have attempted to shake their faith with Ehrman’s material. Recently, at a meeting between evangelicals and Muslims, one Muslim in the audience referred to his writings in order to suggest that the biblical text was untrustworthy. Indeed, his books are on sale in Islamic bookshops. Ammunition for IslamĪ further problem, as my previous review mentioned, is that Ehrman’s works are utilised by Islamic polemicists in their attacks upon the Bible, as demonstrated by a cursory glance at Muslim polemical literature and websites. This latest book has already received considerable attention in America.
The problem for evangelicals is that this means he is popularising often hardened modernist biblical criticism. Interrupting Ehrman: another attack on the reliability of the BibleĮhrman is a prolific writer, gifted to present his work in a very accessible way for readers who have little academic theological education. I observed that Ehrman had previously been a professing evangelical, but thereafter became an agnostic with a strongly liberal agenda in regard to biblical criticism. Readers of EN may remember a previous article where I reviewed several books by Bart Ehrman.
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