Bob,
Good to see you here again.
We seem to be discussing Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. As for me the words of Jesus: “I am the way, the truth the life.” present a path, not a person. Where this path is reiterated in other religions merely serves to substantiate it, for me at least.
Right now, loudly in the media in the USA, Christianity suffers from the idolatry of Jesus as a person, not as a way to believe/behave. The person is judgment, not mercy. It is so whoring with materialism that it can only offer division among people.
PS. I like Ehrman also–a decent scholar!
The last one I read from Ehrmann was The Orthodox corruption of scriptures: the effect of early Christological controversies on the text of the New Testament, which I have here. It was a compelling read. I have only kept a loose account of what books by whom I have read, but I remember having read other books from him in the past.
Thanks Irrellus, I think you could be right about the leap of faith. I find that, just because research shows that the Bible is an anthology of diverse spiritual experience, it doesn’t mean that those editing were not trying to present a source of spiritual inspiration and trusted their own experience, which told them that the Numinous was a real phenomenon. Whether the stories are biblical or wherever they come from, people all across the world experience something universal which they describe in various ways. The theistic, deistic or polytheistic descriptions are but a few possibilities and it could well be that they hinder us here or there. Perhaps an atheist approach is helpful in some ways - a German theologian Dorothee Sölle once spoke of an “atheistic belief in God”, just to show the dilemma we may have.
i think it boils down to-----how should we live our lives…when you throw in the supernatural or divine inspiration you damage the opinions of those persons thinking up good ideas…