According to bestselling religious scholar Reza Aslan, the New Testament Gospels “are not, nor were they ever meant to be, a historical documentation of Jesus’s life.” The Gospels are, Aslan claims, fictional compositions from early Christians who re-imagined a Jewish revolutionary named Jesus as an ethereal Christ of faith. But is it really reasonable to read […]
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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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