Jeff,
Thanks for your interest and comments.
I might have to reread the book again, but if memory serves, Ehrman makes the point that these books themselves were floating around for centruies. Often, Christian groups with their own take on Jesus (such as the Gnostics) took the scrolls in circulation and used them to prop up their own unique Christian tradition and teachings. The Gnostics obviously lost. It seemed to me that Ehrmans point was that the early churches and councils weren't selective at all and used the now canonical books not for religious reasons but for political consolidation of power. Discrepencies were allowed to stand because the purity of the text as they had it wasn't their number one priority, or even number two. It was all about their power while quashing dissident view of other Christian and pagan sects.
"...Centuries" would be a slight exaggeration. Most of the books eventually included in the canon were generally accepted among churches by something like AD 200. These books seemed to have survived on their own merits with churches and their leaders, while others which were not included had limited acceptance.
About the books of the canon being decided as the result of a power struggle with the victors getting to choose: while we like to respect everyone's point of view, what if clear direction is needed and choices have to be made as to a course of action that some will like and others will not? Sometimes, "might makes right," but sometimes "right makes might." If there is a God, why wouldn't he empower those who succeeded?
Is it possible is always an interesting question, but it isn't always a very pragmatic point of view. First of all, their were serious disagreements for hundreds of years after Jesus and his apostles died among the breakaway sects. That in itself hints at if not outrightly points to them noting problems in translation and especially interpretation. As for the standards of scholars today, they have no agenda. Do you think they should keep silent if they note that Mark got the wrong source text for his gospel? That isn't a "standard". Thats just factual evidence. As far as what we should require of the texts, we should require for the burden these "holy" books put on man that they be accurate and factual, and free of myth, legend and superstition. That seems fair to me.
I disagree with you here friend. The conclusions as the accuracy of these texts are in legitmate question, and rightfully so. I can't help but note the thiestic slant to your framing of this question. Certainly we have complete evidence that god (if he exists) didn't protect these scrolls. So the only thiestic argument left is to suggest that they still represent gods thoughts. But as Ehrman presents through evidence and facts, there is 100% evidence that men with religious and political agendas were 100% responsible for what was in the now canonical bible and 0% evidence that god did much of anything in making sure the "bible" was written and inspired for us today. There is way to much in the way of mental gymnastics to do to come to that conclusion.
When I said "Is it possible...?" I wanted to suggest other possibilities. I'm suggesting that how we evaluate these texts now, and what we expect of them, is different now in recent history than in ancient times. These texts were written by people to people in a different time and culture than ours. Is it fair to apply OUR standards to their works?
There is no question that there were changes. The question is, what do we do with that? Do we have to conclude that this is evidence that God doesn't exist and automatically throw him out of the picture? Well, it depends on what we expect of God. If we demand that God verbally dictated the words as one would to a scribe, and that he would actively prevent any and all tampering through history, then we would have a problem. But is that what we see? What we see are texts written in different styles, with different levels of quality to the writing, and we see clear evidence of changes. What about a God who impressed on the writers what to include, and the writers did that with what they had available. Of course, in this picture, God would choose specific people who had access to what he wanted to include, and he could arrange to make necessary information available. We don't have a clear, consistent definition of what "inspiration" is, so I suggest we be careful about what we expect. Subsequently, although copyists made changes, they didn't have a significant effect. I'd like to suggest that when God worked through imperfect, fallible people, it would be a miracle that the texts remained intact as well as they have.
When we second-guess about why God didn't do a better job, we can end up asking questions like, "Why did God even rely on men and writing? Why didn't he just leave angels around to tell us?"
Apparently, Dr. Ehrman had to take an "all-or-nothing" approach. The rigid training he had in his early years of study couldn't accomodate challanges. Perhaps he carried with him the impression that any modification to the rigid position was a compromise with the world, and compromise equaled apostasy, so he had nowhere to go. I would really like to know the conversations he would have had with his admired mentor, Dr. Metzger, who held to the reliability of the Bible (but not necessarily inerrancy).
