According to a survey of recent college graduates, the problem of evil is the issue that makes it most difficult for many of these graduates to trust in the truth of Christianity. These students’ struggles mirror the struggle that biblical scholar Bart Ehrman describes in his book God’s Problem: “I felt compelled to leave Christianity […]
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Apologetics: Who Wrote the Gospels?
Open your Bible to the table of contents and take a look at the list of books in the New Testament. There, you’ll find the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John leading the list. But were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John really the ones who wrote the Gospels? If so, how do we know?
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Peter Gurry and Elijah Hixson: Was the Bible Copied Accurately? + “You Belong to the City” (Glenn Frey)
Has the Bible been copied accurately? Skeptics such as biblical scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman have suggested that it wasn’t. According to Bart Ehrman‘s book Misquoting Jesus, it makes no sense for Christians to refer to the Bible as God’s inspired Word “because we no longer possess the words that God supposedly inspired. … All that […]
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Jonathan Pennington: Truth and Testimony in the New Testament Gospels + “All Along the Watchtower” (Jimi Hendrix)
According to bestselling biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, the New Testament Gospels “were not written … by people who were eyewitnesses, but by people living later.” Ehrman goes on to say that “sometimes Christian apologists say there are only three options to who Jesus was: a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. But there could be a fourth option—legend.” And legend is the possibility for which Ehrman argues. But is it true that the circulation of stories by word of mouth necessarily results in changes that turn testimony into legend? That’s what Timothy Paul Jones and Garrick Bailey discuss with New Testament scholar Jonathan Pennington on the Three Chords segment of the show.
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Apologetics: How Can the Bible be Inerrant if Copyists Made Mistakes?
How can the Bible be inerrant if there are variations among the manuscripts and even between different accounts of the same events? That’s the question we’ll explore together in this post. How Can We Have the Word of God If Some of the Words Are Different? I slumped in an unpadded pew, half-listening to the morning […]
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Apologetics: Dealing with Discrepancies in the Biblical Text
The content that I present in this video may also be found in my book Misquoting Truth. (c) 2008 Coral Ridge Ministries. Used by permission. Click here to purchase full DVD.
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Apologetics: Was Scripture Modified to Oppose Women and Jews?
According to Dr. Bart Ehrman, in his book Misquoting Jesus, there exists a category of New Testament alterations which includes changes that occurred because copyists “who were not altogether satisfied with what the New Testament books said modified their words to make them … more vigorously oppose heretics, women, Jews, and pagans.” Yet he fails to come […]
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Apologetics: Can We Trust a Copy of a Copy?
I slumped in an unpadded pew, half-listening to the morning Bible study. I wasn’t particularly interested in what the Bible teacher in this small Christian high school had to say. But, when the teacher commented that the Gospels always reported word-for-word what Jesus said, I perked up and lifted my hand. This statement brought […]
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