Bart D. Ehrman · 266 pages
Rating: (11.8K votes)
“The Bible, at the end of the day, is a very human book.”
“Moreover, his view was precisely the one that many English Protestants feared would result from a careful analysis of the New Testament text, namely that the wide-ranging variations in the tradition showed that Christian faith could not be based solely on scripture (the Protestant Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura), since the text was unstable and unreliable. Instead, according to this view, the Catholics must be right that faith required the apostolic tradition preserved in the (Catholic) church.”
“We might mean different things. How can you tell? Only by reading each of us carefully and seeing what each of us has to say—not by pretending that we are both saying the same thing. We’re often saying very different things.”
“What if we have to figure out how to live and what to believe on our own, without setting the Bible up as a false idol—or an oracle that gives is a direct line of communication with the Almighty?”
“Some believers, as though from a drinking bout, go so far as to oppose themselves and alter the original text of the gospel three or four or several times over, and change its character to enable them to deny difficulties in the face of criticism. (Against Celsus 2, 27)”
“Besides, I thought you were convinced that Price did it.’ ‘I changed my mind. It’s a lady’s prerogative.’ Winter halted abruptly. Slowly, he turned towards me. ‘You … you’re a lady?’ Ha. Ha. Ha. ***”
“Is there anything more frightening than people?”
“This shriveled conception of democracy has solid roots. The founding fathers were much concerned about the hazards of democracy. In the debates of the Constitutional Convention, the main framer, James Madison, warned of these hazards. Naturally taking England as his model, he observed that “in England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place,” undermining the right to property. To ward off such injustice, “our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation,” arranging voting patterns and checks and balances so as “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” a prime task of decent government.19”
“The social contract imposes obligations on citizens, but it does so in exchange for rights, and the government may not deny the rights while it insists on the obligations.”
“We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?”
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