Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus? Quotes

“If you accept the Bible, you should accept it for what it is: a document of faith that is not a history book.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“You can’t simply trust these accounts to give you historically accurate versions of what happened in the life of Jesus because they are not interested in providing historically accurate accounts of what happened in the life of Jesus. These are Gospels; they are proclaiming good news. They are not histories. They are not objective biographies. They are filled with historical mistakes. But the authors were not trying to write objective historical accounts. They were trying to proclaim the good news.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“Luke’s Gospel portrays Jesus as calm and in control until the very end, assured of God’s presence with him. That’s not the portrayal of Mark.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“Acts is theological history, while the Gospels are theological biographies, i.e., biographies written with a theological agenda.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“Skepticism is demanding evidence before believing; cynicism is not believing even with evidence”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“Yet none of these models actually is hydrogen!”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“noumenal”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“these sources were not intending to present what we think of as historically accurate information; that’s a modern imposition on these Gospels that they can’t bear.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“we notice a discrepancy in sequences, that would be strange.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“the historical Jesus may not look as much like an evangelical Protestant theologian as an American evangelical might expect.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

“Abductive reasoning is neither deductive nor inductive. Abductive reasoning, even when done properly, doesn’t lead to a certain conclusion, as deductive reasoning does; nor even necessarily to a probable conclusion, as inductive reasoning does; but rather to the most plausible conclusion, meaning the likeliest explanation for the observations.”
― Bart D. Ehrman, Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?