Great lecture series: History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon by Bart D. Ehrman

My review of History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon by  Bart D. Ehrman, an outstanding lecture series from  The Great Courses:

I listened to this lecture series on the drive to and from Barcelona, Spain, from Geneva, Switzerland, and from lecture one, I was hooked. Normally, I can only digest a couple lectures at a time while driving before my attention begins to wander, but Professor Ehrman gave such a humorous but excellent overview I kept listening.

I strongly disagree with reviewers who believed he was condescending either to Christianity (or to his students); I felt his comments simply reflect how widespread misconceptions are about the Bible and the astonishingly arbitrary way in which the New Testament was created. He repeatedly approached the subject with humility, emphasizing that he was a historian, not a theologian, and his job was not to pass judgment on the truth of the texts, only to describe how they were written, translated, propagated and accepted. Those who gave the course low ratings seemed to be rating it based on how it conformed to their theological ideas rather than whether it did what it was supposed to do: report the history of the writing and canonization of the New Testament.
I felt the reviewer who commented on the professor's personal religious beliefs both misrepresents the content of the lecture and injects a prejudice that I hope the Teaching Company does not share; since Jews do not believe that Jesus was divine, should Jewish professors be barred from studying this area of history? I certainly hope not.
If only Marxists could teach about Marx, psychoanalysts about Freud, or communists about Stalin, we would not have scholarly lectures but propaganda (itself a Christian term invented to propagate the faith (versus critically analyze it)).
I learned much from an Islam lecture series given by a non-Muslim ( Professor John L. Esposito, Ph.D., Temple University,
Georgetown University) and much about Judaism from Karen Armstrong, who is not Jewish, but who is recognized in Israel for her scholarship on Mediterranean Monotheism including Judaism. We can learn far more from Alexis de Tocqueville about American society because as a French citizen he saw it as an outsider, taking note of things those who had never left America might have been oblivious to.

Frankly, I do not trust people with strong a priori belief systems to be honest presenters of the data wherever those data may lead. At any rate, if something is true, our belief in it is immaterial as long as we are intellectually honest in how we present the consensus of scholarship and evidence. A 2010  survey showed that agnostics, Jews, and Mormons scored higher on a test of religious knowledge than those who considered themselves very religious, especially evangelical Christians.

This has certainly been my experience - anyone who says that every word of the Bible is perfect, timeless, and represents the direct word of god either has not read it or is oblivious to the extraordinary arbitrary way the collection of works we now call the Bible were created, translated, copied, and edited. The fact that a message was imperfectly copied or transmitted does not mean automatically that the message should be rejected as false, but anyone ignoring the enormous human fingerprints all over the Bible are simply not telling the truth. 

If Professor Ehrman was critical of anyone it was fundamentalists, particularly those of the End Times variety who misunderstand the historical context and contemporary targets of Revelation (which many of them incorrectly pluralize). But how else can a scholar of this period respond to those who seem to believe that the New Testament was never altered, magically and directly flowing from the mouth of Jesus - as captured by his followers - into a hotel room near you? And why should a scholar not point out absurd misconceptions, even strongly held ones? 

One is free to believe in one god, no god, or twenty, or choose whatever sacred texts to reinforce this belief system, but the rest of us are free not to and to examine those texts and ask how they were created. The passion with which a belief is held - and the offense some will take to us paying attention to the "man behind the curtain" - says nothing about its ultimate truth in an absolute sense. 

My wish is that those who search for theology seek it in the appropriate forum but please let those of us who love history enjoy and learn from these courses. Giving a history course a low rating because it does not match your metaphysical preconceptions is not fair either to the lecturer or to other potential listeners who might be scared away by a low rating that does not reflect the true quality of the course. 

If anything, I felt that Professor Ehrman was too kind to the centuries of anguish and bloodshed that the Christian obsession with orthodoxy (versus orthopraxy) unleashed. He did a good job of pointing out how strange monotheism and exclusivism were in the ancient world, but since all competing more tolerant polytheistic faiths were brutally crushed in the Mediterranean and Europe, we forget the radical nature of these beliefs - that god appeared once and only once to a specific people and time, was not recognized as such by his contemporaries who mostly rejected him, but that if we don't believe in him in just the right way 2,000 years later god will punish us forever and ever. Beliefs are ultimately involuntary (I can no more will or force myself to believe in Jesus anymore than I can force myself to believe in Allah or Zeus or Krishna) but clearly those exposed to the same texts either did not find them convincing or have now split into tens of thousands of Christian denominations, most of which do not recognize each other, and many of which have done their best to exterminate each other.
If someone launched a public education campaign with such contradictory documents written in such a manner that most people exposed to them are either not understanding them or erupting into savage battles over whose interpretation is correct - usually over the pettiest of metaphysical differences - then that public education campaign would be deemed a failure at best, a destabilizing and toxic influence at worst.
My only gripe about the course was that I would have liked to have more meat and less bread, meaning a bit more detailed analysis of exactly how the canon were selected and the others rejected. This came at the end of the series and seemed to go by so quickly I almost thought I missed it. The Council of Nicea, the influence of the Roman authorities who wanted to settle disputes such as the Arian "heresy" quickly for political expedience rather than any divine inspiration or scholarly reflection, and the fact that Jesus did not - despite what the lecturer implied - ever explicitly state he himself was a deity, were either glossed over or not mentioned, but perhaps this is the reason the lectures flowed as they did - they were relatively uncluttered. Also, the idea of a virgin birth was far from universally accepted, and the lecturer did not mention that early Christians took some liberty with language when translating the Hebrew word Åalma ("young woman") in chapter 7, verse 14, of Isaiah ("Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel") into the Greek word for virgin (parthenos).  

Professor Ehrman mentioned that the two genealogies of Christ differ from their starting point (one from David, the other from Adam) but perhaps out of kindness does not reflect that not a single name on the two lists is the same (except for David and Joseph of course).   They cannot both be right.  

He does point out something I had only learned recently, that the story of Christ forgiving the adulterer about to be stoned (as Biblical law demanded) had been inserted in the year 150 into a text that generations of early Christians read without that account.  This of course does not mean that it did not happen only that those who originally wrote the texts did not feel it was important enough to put in or did not know about it if it did happen.
The idea of blood atonement, essentially having another innocent creature (or in the case of Jesus, a man) killed to offset some wickedness you might have engaged in is strange and frankly immoral to a modern audience (I am reminded of people who paid substitutes to take their place rather than fight themselves in the Civil War; legal at the time, but frowned upon today); Richard Dawkins makes an excellent case against this central theme of Christianity (and of sacrifice-based religions as most Mediterranean ones were), one that I had not even thought much about until it was presented in its starkest terms.  (Like so many of the stranger aspects of Christianity, it is just there in the background culture so much that even those of us who were not indoctrinated as children can't help but ignore some of its more jarring tenets and claims.) 

In other words, Professor Ehrman held his fire and if anything bent over backwards not to offend modern Christians who believe Jesus was divine (half of first century Christians didn't) or that the New Testament was the unaltered direct word of God meant to be read as an objective history (something those who wrote it and the audience for whom it was created would have found absurd). Given all the pain and anguish that rigid interpretation of these texts has caused, I think it is imperative that we all recognize that they were never meant to be taken literally and even metaphorically they are frequently contradictory if not troublesome. I cannot imagine that even those who believe these texts contain a great deal of truth would not be strengthened by critically examining them, and that is exactly what this lecture series could help them do.  As another great teacher once said, let him who has ears listen. 

Adam Smith - What He Really Wrote in Wealth of Nations

Since so much faith, much of it blind, has been placed in the invisible hand of the free market to guide us and the ability of government only to impede economic progress, it's helpful to return, as always, to the source, in this case to the work that gave us these ideas and spawned some of the counter-intuitive ideas of liberal (free market) economic theory.   The Tea Party has been offering a watered-down version of what Smith actually wrote, but his work makes clear a few major points the Tea Party in its corporation-loving, government-hating rhetoric often ignores.   What follows are some choice excerpts from the 1775 work.
Note that Smith rails against corporations throughout the book, although to be fair the use of the term has drifted over time, and he was as concerned about the cornering of labor markets through guilds (which were also called corporations in his time) and local laws that artificially limited the supply of skilled laborers (by mandating long apprenticeships, for example, and quotas of numbers of apprentices per business), but the idea is the same.  Smith believed that whenever two businessmen got together, self-interest would compel them to collude to artificially drive up prices and keep out competition.
Smith also did not share the anti-government rhetoric of the Tea Party and nowhere suggests much less advocates the abolition of government.  Rather, he argues that some taxes can unfairly harm the poor (such as a window tax that would harm a lower income country inn owner much more than a higher income London landlord who might pay lower taxes because he has fewer windows (this is a stone's throw from advocating an income tax, something Smith does not explicitly do, but he argues against flat taxes that all must pay even though some would pay much more proportional to their income and property.
In fact, Smith often argues that government has a critical role to play in free markets.  Without the security provided by government, the rich few could never sleep at night knowing that the vastly greater many might be provoked into confiscating their property.   The only societies that do not need governments are poor ones, or ones in which the accumulation of wealth is trivial, only a few days' worth of labor.  In Smith's view, without government, there could be no secure accumulation of wealth.
Smith also makes clear that he feels government has a role in helping to shape the ethical, moral, and physical development of its citizens, especially the poor workers, who through the mindless repetition of their labor could become as "stupid as men can be."
Finally, in Smith's descriptions of ancient Rome,  the many poor who  became indebted to the rich few with massive debts that they could never hope to pay off  lost their independence and ended up having to vote for whatever candidate the creditor dictated, a situation eerily reminiscent of today's over-leveraged American consumer.  Put another way:  wealth inequality and manipulation of this situation for the benefit of the wealthy few can make the idea of a democracy a joke since the wealthy few can essentially by needed votes if the poor become indebted to them financially.

Excerpts:

Corporations … are a sort of enlarged monopolies
The exclusive privileges of corporations, statutes of apprenticeship, and all those laws which restrain in particular employments, the competition to a smaller number than might otherwise go into them, have the same tendency, though in a less degree. They are a sort of enlarged monopolies, and may frequently, for ages together, and in whole classes of employments, keep up the market price of particular commodities above the natural price.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 908-911). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

Corporation laws drive up prices which must be paid by everyone else
Corporation laws enable the inhabitants of towns to raise their prices, without fearing to be undersold by the free competition of their own countrymen. Those other regulations secure them equally against that of foreigners. The enhancement of price occasioned by both is everywhere finally paid by the landlords, farmers, and labourers, of the country, who have seldom opposed the establishment of such monopolies. They have commonly neither inclination nor fitness to enter into combinations; and the clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easily persuade them, that the private interest of a part, and of a subordinate part, of the society, is the general interest of the whole.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 1953-1957). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole. In a free trade, an effectual combination cannot be established but by the unanimous consent of every single trader, and it cannot last longer than every single trader continues of the same mind. The majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law, with proper penalties, which will limit the competition more effectually and more durably than any voluntary combination whatever. The pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade, is without any foundation. The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman, is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence. An exclusive corporation necessarily weakens the force of this discipline. A particular set of workmen must then be employed, let them behave well or ill. It is upon this account that, in many large incorporated towns, no tolerable workmen are to be found, even in some of the most necessary trades. If you would have your work tolerably executed, it must be done in the suburbs, where the workmen, having no exclusive privilege, have nothing but their character to depend upon, and you must then smuggle it into the town as well as you can.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 1983-1987). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

Corporate laws limit the mobility of laborers much more than the circulation of the rich
Corporation laws, however, give less obstruction to the free circulation of stock from one place to another, than to that of labour. It is everywhere much easier for a wealthy merchant to obtain the privilege of trading in a town-corporate, than for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it. The obstruction which corporation laws give to the free circulation of labour is common, I believe, to every part of Europe. That which is given to it by the poor laws is, so far as I know, peculiar to England. It consists in the difficulty which a poor man finds in obtaining a settlement, or even in being allowed to exercise his industry in any parish but that to which he belongs. It is the labour of artificers and manufacturers only of which the free circulation is obstructed by corporation laws.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 2083-2089). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

The main objective of corporate by-laws is to raise barriers to entry
The object, besides, of the greater part of the bye-laws of all regulated companies, as well as of all other corporations, is not so much to oppress those who are already members, as to discourage others from becoming so; which may be done, not only by a high fine, but by many other contrivances. The constant view of such companies is always to raise the rate of their own profit as high as they can; to keep the market, both for the goods which they export, and for those which they import, as much understocked as they can; which can be done only by restraining the competition, or by discouraging new adventurers from entering into the trade.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 11255-11259). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

But the reverence of the people naturally preserves the established forms and ceremonies of religion long after the circumstances which first introduced and rendered them reasonable, are no more.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 11727-11728). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

On Income Inequality : government is necessary to protect property
Wherever there is a great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy to invade his possessions. It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate, that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security. He is at all times surrounded by unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate, continually held up to chastise it. The acquisition of valuable and extensive property, therefore, necessarily requires the establishment of civil government.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 10831-10836). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

But in every improved and civilized society, this is the state [of neglected moral and physical development] into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 11954-11955). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

In several protestant countries, particularly in all the protestant cantons of Switzerland, the revenue which anciently belonged to the Roman catholic church, the tithes and church lands, has been found a fund sufficient, not only to afford competent salaries to the established clergy, but to defray, with little or no addition, all the other expenses of the state. The magistrates of the powerful canton of Berne, in particular, have accumulated, out of the savings from this fund, a very large sum, supposed to amount to several millions; part or which is deposited in a public treasure, and part is placed at interest in what are called the public funds of the different indebted nations of Europe; chiefly in those of France and Great Britain.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 12490-12495). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

The most opulent church in Christendom does not maintain better the uniformity of faith, the fervour of devotion, the spirit of order, regularity, and austere morals, in the great body of the people, than this very poorly endowed church of Scotland.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 12501-12502). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

In Rome, as in all other ancient republics, the poor people were constantly in debt to the rich and the great, who, in order to secure their votes at the annual elections, used to lend them money at exorbitant interest, which, being never paid, soon accumulated into a sum too great either for the debtor to pay, or for any body else to pay for him. The debtor, for fear of a very severe execution, was obliged, without any further gratuity, to vote for the candidate whom the creditor recommended.

Smith, Adam (2002-06-01). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle Locations 14515-14519). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.