tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post1311505504486340003..comments2024-03-28T11:33:16.271-05:00Comments on Adventus: Um.....Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-64849201078266346312011-03-30T22:36:00.286-05:002011-03-30T22:36:00.286-05:00I always hesitate to comment on someone whom I hav...I always hesitate to comment on someone whom I haven't read, but every time I picked up "Misquoting Jesus" in a bookstore I found it depressingly disingenuous wherever I flipped. (I never even found where Jesus was misquoted.)<br /><br />There is that breathless sense that he's revealing some hidden, shocking secret, as if this stuff hasn't been around since the days when Victoria reigned. If it's not widely known, it isn't because it hasn't been there for perusal. And if it isn't preached, I suspect that's because there's not much point to preaching it. So what if Peter didn't write Second Peter? If that means it has no authority, it should come out of the canon. If it has the authority of scripture, it doesn't need the authority of Peter. So what's the point?<br /><br />You can glipse Ehrmann's evangelical background in the way that he traces the male priesthood to the application of a sentence in the Timothy letter. Does he imagine that there was a great cadre of female clergy, who were removed from office when someone passed off this letter as Paul's? Surely, if the letter were by someone else, it would have reflected conditions in the Church, rather than have made wrenching changes.<br /><br />And there is that attribution of inerrency to the prevailing consensus. Personally I am persuaded that 2 Peter is not the work of Peter. But I don't know that. The same goes for the identification of the "genuine" letters of Paul. I appreciate the arguments, but they at best speak to possibilities. One could as easily assert that the author of "The Dead" could not possibly have written "Finnegan's Wake." Who am I to say that, based on this, a given author could not possibly have written that?<br /><br />What is irritating about Ehrmann is that he speaks mainly to those with no familiarity either with scripture or with the critical enterprise of the last hundred and fifty years. His assertions of "misquoting" and "lying" mostly operate to give the uninformed permission to remain that way. It's a shame that that's what popular scholarship has come to be about.<br /><br />But I'm trying not to care.rick allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07612435616018593956noreply@blogger.com