Bart Ehrman has another book out entitled: The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. It’s essentially Bart Ehrman’s latest attack on the Christian faith. It’s a history of the early Church. More accurately, it’s a liberal history of the early Church.
It’s different than his other books because he doesn’t deal with the Biblical text as much. The one exception is Chapter 2 where he talks about the conversion and career of St. Paul. As one would expect, every ounce of liberalism and higher criticism is thrown at St. Paul’s epistles and the book of Acts. I honestly think that the only reason he has that chapter in was so he could attack scripture.
If you’re familiar with early Church history, most of it won’t be new. He basically gives a bunch of reasons why Christianity was attractive over paganism. Christianity had a sacred text and a high moral code whereas paganism was simply unorganized superstition. It was local and didn’t have an authoritative governing body or magisterium.
Ehrman talks a lot about how an average Roman citizen in the second century probably never came across a Christian. I find this hard to believe since there was some imperial persecution and a polemic written against it by the pagan philosopher Celsus. He does acknowledge that it had a large presence in the Roman Empire in the third century.
Also, he only focuses on the Roman Empire. Christianity grew outside of the Roman Empire as well. A good example of this Armenia. Armenia became Christian before the Roman Empire and there is not a single mention of this anywhere in the book. Sloppy scholarship in my opinion.
Naturally a lot of far left scholarship is thrown in. Luckily he cites his sources so we can see where he gets his data. Candida Moss was quoted quite a bit. It got to the point that I would be reading, see a fringe viewpoint, then think to myself – I bet he gets that from Candida Moss. I’d check the reference at the back and realize that I was spot on. That happened about three or four times.
One last thing that I noticed is that Ehrman no longer publishes with HarperOne. This book is his first book with Simon & Schuster. I looked at Bart Ehrman’s blog to see why that was. He brought up the issue but doesn’t really get to the core of it. In my opinion he’s hiding something. I suppose it doesn’t matter though, because Bart Ehrman is going to continue to bring his liberal scholarship to the popular level with one publisher or another.
Back in 2006 when he came out with Misquoting Jesus and was promoting it on a radio talk show, James White referred to it as scholarly prostitution. That description seems to fit Ehrman’s popular works quite well. It certainly fits this new book.
Should you read it? Only if you’re into apologetics since Ehrman is essentially on the must read list for apologists. Atheists and Muslims devour his publications so we need to be ready for them. However, if you want to learn about early Church history and the growth of Christianity, don’t read this book; read Eusebius.
Anti-Christian polemic in this book was relatively toned down, especially compared to “Jesus Before The Gospels” and “Forged”. And the Introduction was impressive and thought-provoking, probably the best Introduction, written by Ehrman thus far. I was curious about his views on the subject of Christianity’s triumph, especially after I read “Not The Impossible Faith” by the anti-Christian Richard Carrier, which was tackling (almost) the same matter, although from a different angle. Nothing surprising, except Candida Moss’ presence in the footnotes.
I agree, Eusebius’ work is a much better reading, though one should be cautious with it at times (*cough*Abgar’s letter *cough*). And Ehrman forgot not only Armenia, but also Osroene, Georgia and the Kingdom of Aksum. I assume it’s because they aren’t part of the Western civilization (Ehrman makes it clear in the book that he is dissecting Christianity’s early impact on the West, though he does not specify what “West” means to him).
You make some good points. It’s true that the anti-Christian vibe isn’t there as much as the other books. It was getting pretty nasty with books like “Jesus Before The Gospels”. I remember his debate with Richard Bauckham on that one.
I personally don’t think that the Muslims will use this one that much since they normally attack the Biblical text as opposed to Church history. At least in our day. The atheists will make use of this one though, just like they made use of Candida Moss when her book came out.
I think most people would have ignored those other places, not just Ehrman. After all, we all have a tendency to think that the world revolves around us. Since the Roman Empire is the shared history of the Western nations, we have a tendency to drown out the rest of ancient history.
Muslims use only what they consider useful for their dawamongering, that’s why they love so much “Misquoting Jesus”, “Jesus, Interrupted” and “Forged” while at the same time they pretend that “Truth And Fiction In The Da Vinci Code” and “How Jesus Became God” don’t exist (they loved the last one too, but quickly realized what exactly was Ehrman arguing for there and stopped using it).
In this case “The Triumph Of Christianity” will not be benefiting for them. It’s anti-Christian, but not in the way they would like it to be, just like Carrier’s “Proving History” and “On The Historicity of Jesus”.
Very true. They’ve always been selective with Ehrman, and not just his belief in the crucifixion. You were quite right. There are some books of his that the Muslims totally ignore. They don’t quote how Jesus became God as it gives a thesis that both of our faiths would reject. I also think its poorly argued. They also don’t quote Did Jesus Exist as it gives facts about the historical Jesus that they don’t agree with.
In my opinion, the work of Ehrman that Muslim apologists like the most is Forged. After all, a few variants here and there doesn’t refute theological beliefs so Misquoting Jesus is secondary. Forged is key because if the scriptures are forgeries, they’re unreliable. They only thing that Ehrman doesn’t say is a Forgery are the 7 epistles of Paul.
I wrote a response to some of the arguments in Forged. Here it is:
http://allanruhl.com/did-peter-know-greek/
I have to disagree on that one. “Misquoting Jesus” is used by Muslims not because it introduces the issue of variations in the NT manuscripts. It’s because Ehrman says there “We don’t know what the original text of the New Testament was!” Weirdly though, he insists that Christ was an apocalyptic prophet, citing certain passages from the Synoptic gospels. I wonder what makes him so sure they’re part of the original text. He also insists that the Pastoral epistles were not penned by St. Paul, because “the style and the ideas do not correspond to those in Paul’s authentic letters”. And how does Ehrman know that, if we don’t have the original text of the 7 undisputed Pauline letters? It seems that Ehrman wants to have his skeptic cake and eat it.
Here’s another example of a Muslim apologist plugging Forged.