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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2022
- New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman says that the author of Acts didn’t know the Apostle Paul. So what we read about in Acts 13-28 is more about Luke “spinning a good yarn” than actually reporting real history. Ehrman writes: “(The author of Acts) is simply claiming to be a traveling companion of Paul’s and therefore unusually well suited to give a “true” account of Paul’s message and mission. But he almost certainly was not a companion of Paul’s. On the one hand, he was writing long after Paul and his companions were dead. Scholars usually date Acts to around 85 CE or so, over two decades after Paul’s death. On the other hand, he seems to be far too poorly informed about Paul’s theology and missionary activities to have been someone with firsthand knowledge.”
For someone writing long after Paul was dead and unfamiliar with Paul's missionary activities, the author of Acts effortlessly gets a ridiculous amount of difficult facts correct regarding local places, titles, names, environmental conditions, customs and circumstances. Classical historian Colin Hemer details 84 of these facts in his book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. Wouldn’t these details be best explained by him being a traveling companion of Paul? Allow me to give you a handful of instances of the titles of local officials that Luke effortlessly gets right and discuss what best explains these facts. Ehrman surprisingly finds these difficult-to-know facts as worthless when arguing for Acts being written by an eyewitness. Here is my response to that.
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I got two more unreleased videos on Acts that are available there now for early release.
So Ehrman is claiming that Luke's astonishing level of accurate detail isn't proof that he knew what he was talking about, it's only evidence that he is was the greatest literary genius of all time because he invented the kind of detailed historical fiction that wouldn't become popular until the early 19th century, somehow THAT is more plausible than just admitting that Acts is an accurate account of Paul's journeys
Nice
Very well put
Basically Ehrman makes little to no sense then, if Luke was fully knowledgeable, that means that acts isn’t?
Yet Ehrman is contradicting himself.
"Anything that supports my position is evidence. Anything that does not can be ignored" is far too common an attitude on both sides.
That is why Bible asks you to take the leap of faith: " And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." Hebrews 11:6.
Even science requires faith. Watch Unziker's videos expressing scepticism over the Standard Model of Universe . Nothing is certain except uncertainty even in science!
@@arulsammymankondar30 The Bible never asks anyone to take a leap of faith, the phrase "leap of faith" originated in the 19th century in the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, who has a fideist who believed that Christianity is opposed to rational thought
@The Sinful Bastard I didn't copy and paste anything
@The Sinful Bastard that still doesn't mean that he didn't coin the phrase "leap of faith", which he did, it is not a Biblical term, which is the point I was making
@@arulsammymankondar30 Unless of course if you were standing there when the Lord was executed.
EXCELLENT dissertation! And of course, Ehrman starts with a false assumption - that Luke was written in 85 AD. The internal evidence for an early date is far more compelling than the evidence for such a late date. And, as I have always said, a flawed premise leads to a flawed hypothesis, which in turn leads to a flawed conclusion. Kudos for another excellent episode!
You are literally refuting a guy with a phd and who is regarded as the leading new testament textual critic
I like that.
Bart Ehrman is very deceptive intentionally. Anyone who reads his book and don't read the main works themselves would be deceived.
His using his qualifications as something to gain people trust
@@jenex5608 I know
Leading.... Maybe only to atheists lmao
Anyone with a PhD should know to attack the argument, not the person.
Of course, Dr. James White is notorious for this.
@@Hhjhfu247 no, there are some Christians scholars that I love seeing getting schooled too
Argh... Very close to the spiderman-fallacy. And that one is alive and well on the internet today..!
Hey, thanks for becoming a member! And yeah, it is very close. This is vintage Bad Bart.
Serious question: What exactly is wrong with the Spiderman fallacy? I as I understand it, it is simply a logical claim that realistic details don't require that the author was an eye witness or that all the facts in the story are true.
@@truncated7644 the problem is that it is an ad hoc attempt to move the goalpost. At first atheists will say the gospels are unreliable because they get facts wrong, yet when Christian’s point out the facts the gospels and acts get right, edgy atheists like yourself just cope with “Muh Spider-Man fallacy” argument. You are not being honest. You are just a slimy serpent of sophistry.
@@truncated7644 so I think it's the second one. The Spiderman fallacy says that just because geographic and historical details are true it doesn't necessarily follow that the supernatural elements of the story are true. The issue is almost no serious scholars argue in this line of reasoning. It's a strawman to say that because people are arguing that luke is a consummate historian that those same people will argue that Luke's historiography necessarily means the supernatural is true. No what it means is that we have credence to seriously consider Luke's supernatural details because his verifiable history is right on every point
@@truncated7644it’s a fallacy because Spider-Man does not mistake itself for or intend to be a historical work. It’s comparing apples to pineapples.
Bart Errman knows exactly what he is doing.
He really does. He has made a concerted effort to destroy the faith of weak faith individuals. He clearly has an agenda.
Errormans story of ex-evangelical gone atheist sells books.
@@eternalgospels "Errorman" - I'm totally stealing that! LOL
@@John14-6... Doesn't he say that he strongly disagrees with those who have a fundamentalist faith (inerrancy, etc.)? He is open to very liberal interpretations, but if you have a fundamentalist understanding of Christian faith, then I guess you are correct.
So does a fruitcocktail.
Even in the early 90s figuring out who was the mayor of medium sized city of around 50,000 was difficult unless you were to ask someone who lived in that city. Imagine in 1850 before the telegraph was in wide use a person in San Francisco figuring out who was the judge who tried court cases in Louisville Kentucky. The only way to gain such knowledge was to travel extensively was at the same time interviewing many people and write everything down.
St.Luke was a First rank Historian...even skeptics acknowledged that
Luke (or the writer of Acts) having to travel to all these locations himself in ancient times, diligently interrogating & studying all the facts, to be able to accurately gather such verifiable information and details in the bid to tell a lie, is way more difficult a project than actually having lived them out in reality & merely recorded them.
It would make of him at the very least, such a diligent & honorable researcher (only with an evil motive). Which is actually not the point Bart is looking to promote.
Again on motive: who takes such pain to accurately promote something they don’t believe in?
you uploaded good .bro! ✨
From the outside looking in, it kind of seems like instead of just saying "they embellished the character of events to promote a message" (what I would imagine an anti miracle take to be) that they are so stuck on fundamentalism that even after falling away they are desperate to try and mythicize the entire indisputable event and recordings around it instead of just saying that. Would you say that's accurate? Great video by the way (:
Such a fantastic video, I’ve always been interested in reading Colin hemers book
YES! "why would Luke contradict Paul's letters that would have been in circulation in the 80s-90s" good lord NT scholars are so terrible at constructing arguments
Think of how absolutely stupid this is. This is honestly lazy... Luke writing about Paul all over the place and just also contradicting him? Lol... totally having their cake and eating it too. Blood boiling insanity
@@rebelresource Strong words. It is a good question though, so I asked him about it on his blog and will post his answer if I get one. His responses are usually pretty terse, so don't expect a full-throated explanation.
Bart, an apologist named Erik Manning (@Testify on TH-cam) has written many rebuttals to your work. He works with Frank Turek and the McGrews, but he is a smart and earnest researcher. Below is a quote from a recent youtube video. Would you mind addressing the question in the last paragraph?
“Luke gets hard things correct, things too difficult to be written off as mere common knowledge. Bart can’t have it both ways here. If getting historical details wrong is evidence against the historical trustworthiness of Acts then getting them right is evidence for it.
To give just one example Ehrman has often argued that Luke is a sloppy historian because he supposedly botches the details of the census of Quirinius, and in making his case against the reliability of Acts he references Paul’s letters saying Acts contradicts them in numerous ways.
If the author of Acts went to the trouble of visiting all these places that he claims Paul traveled to, gathering highly specific information to use them in his realistic historical novel of Paul’s travels, then why in the world would he also contradict the Pauline epistles which were in wide circulation and much more readily available?”
@@truncated7644 Also note that Luke most likely placed the Census of Quirinius in the wrong spot on purpose. The census was a massive deal to the Judean population, it was the annexation of the Judean Hill Country and Jerusalem. It was the official takeover of Rome. This is a slam dunk plot setting for Luke; for the messiah to enter into. Foreign oppressors coming in with their Census (Census = bad for Jews), and Jesus is coming to liberate them. The Census was the best possible thing Luke could have used to set the geo-political scene for Jesus even if it were a few years off - it didn't matter for Luke - it was setting the world that Jesus was born into and that was what was important for Luke. Him doing this is actually making the Gospel MORE accurate - you just have to understand Second Temple Judaism and its views on the Messiah and Romes dealings with Palestine.
It’s funny because Ehrman’s argument makes a lot of sense. He’s just not a very rigorous thinker.
I think he's a good thinker in many ways but just find it so odd that getting things wrong counts against Acts but getting things right over and over (difficult facts) doesn't count in favor. Just seems so odd.
@@TestifyApologetics What, in Bart's mind, do you think equals reliable?
I would like to know the answer to that question myself.
Thank you Erik Manning.
Who's this Mythvisionpodcast? 🤦🏻♂️
Its some biased guy who host only Mythicists like Richard Carrier or Robert M Price and completly ignore overwhelming majority of scholars who say that Christ Mythicism is nonsense.
@@Hhjhfu247 Derek, who runs Mythvision, has now abandoned Jesus Mythicism, though he's still doing Atheist Apologetics.
He's still pretty "mythicism" friendly though. I've been on Mythvision before. Derek's a nice guy, but he's taken in by a lot of funky scholarship.
@@Hhjhfu247
Christ mythicism is realy Nonsense .
Here's the Evidence for Historical Jesus
th-cam.com/play/PLPs7gzvdHEpW3OpI92GT1alSbN7hdx3_t.html
@@TestifyApologetics
May be he was inspired by Mythicist
Robert M Price.
Make a video addressing the points that Luke is dependent upon Josephus. I want Acts to be early but it seems more likely to me that it is a second century work (Indeed, a growing view. See Richard Peervo and others.).
Acts knows of the doings of Paul and his travels and these facts are independent of Josephus. That's the point of this video. Most if not all of these facts are not found in Josephus. Also, why do critics often claim that the author of Acts contradicts Josephus if he is dependent upon him? (The census)
I'm an aspiring scholar. The idea Luke is using Josephus is insane. I've watched the videos on mythvison and the amount of pure suggestion here is outlandish.
Luke in my view, was the first gospel written. There are various reasons to think this and the Jerusalem perspective has written extensively on this. Luke has better and more accurate geo political information than mark or Matthew - and this information changed during the 2nd half of the 1st century. IMO markan priority is one of the most harmful dogmatic ideas in NT scholarship today.
@@rebelresource What geo-politics do you think Matthew and Mark get wrong? And if Luke was the first, then what other accounts is he referencing in Luke 1:1?
So he's both super meticulous at some points and quite sloppy at others. That's kind of schizophrenic. A unified view is more probable than an non unified one I'd think
Thank you
You get to chose a print to type in and you chose the one with bad handwriting?!
Brother... could you get a better mic?
or maybe you could just lower down the noise gate?
Usually, your audio is pretty ok but this one is quite painful to listen to.
Thanks for your hard work man. Your content is amazing. Those inputs you share are like treasures that are pretty hard to find. One has to dedicate a lot of time reading and reading and reading just to have all this infos. God bless you greatly.
It's in the mail and should be arriving tomorrow. I'm just as annoyed by it if not more. That part was hard to record and I didn't want to do it all over again. Wish I had now.
@@TestifyApologetics It's fine, it's a short enough listen, but improved audio would be sweet going forward, especially with longer listens.
@Testify, as I understand your argument, you believe the high level of detail underscores the reliability of Acts and therefore the most probable explanation is "better explained by him being Luke's traveling companion and an eyewitness than the hypothesis that he wrote historical fiction or was deliberately duping his audience." You use McGrew's Wikipedia argument to increase the incredulity of the author of Acts not being an eye witness. Bart is biased because he chooses what you view as a less probabilistic alternative.
Additionally, in your view, it seems even less credible to think the author would research all this detail and still write things that Bart views as contradictions with Paul's own writings.
I think these are great questions. Bart has addressed them many times in his books and blog, but clearly not to your satisfaction. Instead of just speaking past each other, why don't you join the blog (your video clip showed your weren't logged in) and post your objections? It would be a great discussion.
Perhaps you or Frank Turek could do what Mike Licona did and write a series of guest posts for the blog and have Bart respond?
I've subbed to his blog before I'd love to do it again when I have a bit more money. As much as I respond to Bart I really enjoy reading him.
@@TestifyApologetics Just in case you are interested, here is Bart's reply to the question of why Luke would go to the effort of being detailed but still not agree with Paul:
"That’s really the point. What evidence does he have that at the time and place Luke wrote the Pauline epistles were in wide circulation and readily available? It’s an interesting assertion, but I can’t think of a single piece of actual evidence for it. And the fact that Luke never mentions Paul writing letters (let alone the letters we have) or quotes the letters (we have) or shows any knowledge of the letter rather seriously speaks against it. But whatever one makes of that - what makes him think a) the letters were widely circulated and b) Luke knew them. (Seriously: what makes him think so, other than supposition?). In any event unless he can show that the census for the whole world to be taxed happened during the reign of King Herod (and under Augustus) then I’m not sure that it’s very convincing to offer as a refutation that Luke would have known Paul’s letters!! (See what a I mean?) (As to specific information in Luke. Yikes. I can write a novel about Rome and get hundreds of details right about the place; but the novel could still be a complete fiction. What kind of argument is that?)"
No, I totally agree that Luke did not have access to Paul's letters. There's a misunderstanding there. I think however someone writing in 85 AD (which is when Bart thinks Acts was written, he says so explicitly and uses it as an argument against the reliability of Acts) probably would have been aware of at least some of the Pauline letters. And given the amount of undesigned coincindences between Acts and Paul's letters, one would need to say that Luke had Paul's letters. The problem though is there would have been more smoothing out done if that was the case. I could have worded that a little better.
But even if Paul's epistles weren't "widely circulated," think about it for a sec here. Wouldn't a "researching" author of Acts (as Luke would have had to be to get all these details right) maybe asked around a little? It sure the heck looks like he had visited several of the places to which Paul wrote letters. He was clearly part of the Christian community. Couldn't he have simply said, "Oh hey...so who founded your church? Oh, Paul? Did he ever write you? Could I read that letter?" (Thinks privately, "I'm making stuff up about Paul. I don't want to contradict his letters!") This isn't hard.
In terms of external details, we have specifics about Thessalonica and Ephesus that couldn't be looked up in books. Ehrman's really married to that Spider-Man fallacy. "I could write fiction and get lots of details right" is super frustrating. There was no Google or Wikipedia. There were no modern libraries. Luke doesn't have those advantages he has. C'mon. Bart's betting on bare possibility. If he did do that it would certainly be evidence that he was present in Rome and had researched Rome for his work of historical fiction.
We don't have any evidence of the very existence of that kind of well-researched historical novel at the time of Acts (totally anachronistic), and Ehrman would certainly pick at Acts as unreliable if these things (about the names of those in charge, the political status of the cities, and more) were *wrong*. Because that's exactly what he does elsewhere, like with the census. He's just basically doubling down on his stance and engaging in some kind of scholarly bullying by saying, "What kind of an argument is that?" My point is Ehrman thinks mistakes disconfirm while accuracies do not confirm. This is just bad. What kind of crappy probabalistic reasoning is that? would be my question. Bart is saying "Of course I could write a novel about ancient Rome and get tons of details right." (*while I sit here and have access to a university library, tons of scholarly journals, articles, Google, Wikipedia, etc etc. etc.) This is just absolutely extraordinary to me!
Was this something he said in direct response to my video? Did you quote it to him or did he watch it?
@@TestifyApologetics I get your point, I would imagine he thinks the details aren't as difficult to obtain or obscure as you do.
I don't think he uses the Spiderman argument to dismiss the entire document, but insists that it doesn't follow logically that it requires an eye-witness or that the entire document is true. It probably comes across as a reverse fundamentalist reading of the text to many Christians. I think his assessment of what is most probable is that authors wrote what they thought was true, but as humans they made mistakes and occasionally filled in the gaps (e.g. sermons by Peter & Paul). I don't think he views this as having it both ways, but rather as a unified and consistent approach applied to all ancient documents. I also don't think Bart thinks the author of Acts thought he was writing fiction or a historical novel or any other type of anachronistic literary genre.
Your approach, as I understand it, is to say that if Luke is so detailed and reliable overall, then when things appear on the surface to be contradictions, we should be charitable and presume an interpretation of the text that harmonizes it with other texts that say different things. Bart rejects that approach outright without evidence that provides a logical reason to do otherwise. He would argue that you don't have evidence that Luke is compressing the narrative here because you don't have evidence he knew the writings of Paul, don't have evidence that he knew about Paul's three years in Arabia, you don't have evidence Luke was divinely inspired, etc. What you do have evidence for is that Acts was trying to show the harmony between Paul and the apostles (thus an early meetup in Jerusalem) vs. Paul's motivation to show he received the gospel directly from Jesus and was an apostle in his own right.
I posted elsewhere in these comments here how he approaches the documents differently than most Christians would and puts an enormous weight on what each author, and even each document by the same author says without the expectation that other documents are saying different but equally accurate things. For example, in the video on Acts vs Galatians, Bart doesn't concede that Luke meant anything other than the surface narrative of Paul being converted and shortly thereafter going to Jerusalem. He literally has a different hermeneutic as a secular historian and no motivation to harmonize it with Paul's account.
In your community post response to the non-aclchemist video, you note that it would be weird to keep pointing out tensions in someone's world view if that person had already admitted that they have tensions in their worldview. I think in some ways you do with this Bart. He admits his approach to the text follows certain historical practices that lead him to the conclusions he reaches. You don't have the same approach and so come to different conclusions. I think it would be an interesting series of videos where, instead of noting why you think his conclusions are wrong, you instead present why you think his methodology is wrong.
Here is the question I posted on his blog. I took it word for word from your video but with edits to get under 200 words. I threw in your colleagues' names because I thought it might incite a more detailed response than usual. It did.
Bart, an apologist named Erik Manning (@Testify on TH-cam) has written many rebuttals to your work. He works with Frank Turek and the McGrews, but he is a smart and earnest researcher. Below is a quote from a recent youtube video. Would you mind addressing the question in the last paragraph?
“Luke gets hard things correct, things too difficult to be written off as mere common knowledge. Bart can’t have it both ways here. If getting historical details wrong is evidence against the historical trustworthiness of Acts then getting them right is evidence for it.
To give just one example Ehrman has often argued that Luke is a sloppy historian because he supposedly botches the details of the census of Quirinius, and in making his case against the reliability of Acts he references Paul’s letters saying Acts contradicts them in numerous ways.
If the author of Acts went to the trouble of visiting all these places that he claims Paul traveled to, gathering highly specific information to use them in his realistic historical novel of Paul’s travels, then why in the world would he also contradict the Pauline epistles which were in wide circulation and much more readily available?”
Trun, think about this for a bit here:
Did Paul exist? Of course, Even the mythers acknowledge that. Ehrman isn't a conspiracy nut. Did Paul travel widely and found churches in Asia Minor and Greece? By Bart's own principles about which Pauline epistles he accepts as genuine, he'd have to say most assuredly yes. And it's completely plausible that he had people who traveled with him. In fact, the epistles Bart acknowledges (Romans, 1/2 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon, Galatians) say as much.
Then why in the world does Ehrman treat it as so fantasticly improbable that Acts is an actual record of his travels written by someone who was his companion in many of those travels? There is nothing miraculous about this.
And if nothing else, the travels recorded in Acts do cover the areas also covered by the epistles Ehrman acknowledges. Apparently the answer is that Ehrman has a handful of contradictions between the epistles and Acts and that, despite the fact that these are easily answerable or at least we'd expect at least some variance in eyewitness reportage, he has magnified the significance of these so greatly that he dismisses the entire book of Acts as a meticulously researched historical fiction that tells all kinds of stories about Paul that never happened, telling about travel and events that cover the basically the same ground as the epistles but are fictional. And in the process of promoting this highly ad hoc theory, he completely dismisses all of the confirmations of Acts as merely reflecting the fact that the author had traveled to those places, but not that he traveled to those places *with Paul*!
I'd assume he'd also find some way as well of dismissing all of the undesigned coincidences between the epistles and Acts (e.g., of itinerary, intentions, companions in particular places, etc.)
At a certain point, it should be pretty obvious that the few discrepencies he alleges can't bear the weight of this big fat dismissal of a book that at the very least certainly looks like a detailed and accurate record of the missionary travels of Paul, even though Bart himself believes (presumably) that Paul made extensive missionary journeys in basiscally these very areas! Don't you find that to be in the least bit a tad strange? What's so improbable about Acts being a travelogue of an actual companion of Paul?
You just listed all those facts. Does that mean it's likey that you were a traveling companion of Paul?
The facts show that he was very familiar with the places Paul went in the period Paul was there. The fact that he's saying "We went here, we sailed there" is the clear indication that Luke was a companion of Paul. Also that Paul mentions him. The evidence is just far too strong unless you've already made up your mind to reject it.
Good work Erik as always. I don't know why so many skeptics love Bart Ehrman. "Scholarly Consensus" is overrated. Literally everyone can be and to some extent is a scholar. It's just very few do the research so they can actually act like one. Also why does Bart Ehrman keep trying to debunk Luke. Luke was a extremely high skilled Physician and Historian. He was basically super talented Beverly Hills millionaire doctor of his day, that just so happened to be a Historian on the side. If there was any apostle that was just as rock solid as Paul it would have been Luke. If Bart Ehrman was really trying to debunk something wouldn't he try to go after one of the apostles that in his own logic would be supposedly easier and less educated than Luke maybe like John or Mark and their Gospels? I don't think it's possible debunk any of the gospels because they the word of God, but wouldn't make sense from his view to go after the easy ones first and really make his point?
GALLIO is in Acts 18.12 no in 18.2
When Gallio was made the Roman governor of Achaia, Jews there got together, seized Paul, and took him into court.
hey luke olde buddy where you been. lets go a traversing the faraway lands. lets make them our followers of the future. as they know not what can be there till we show them. Paul : 12,3
"Scholarly Consensus" is overrated. Literally everyone can be and to some extent is a scholar. It's just very few do the research so they can actually act like one.
Funny how the only real evidence further exposes how big a lie it is ...
???
You guys do not know the scriptures and you underestimate the power of God.
What?