2021/07/29

Job ready university degrees may not be the tertiary education solution we are hoping for - ABC News

Job ready university degrees may not be the tertiary education solution we are hoping for - ABC News



Job ready university degrees may not be the tertiary education solution we are hoping for


By Rosemary Barnes
Posted Wed 23 Sep 2020 at 4:30amWednesday 23 Sep 2020 at 4:30am, updated Wed 23 Sep 2020 at 7:14amWednesday 23 Sep 2020 at 7:14am

Rosemary Barnes inspecting a wind turbine in northern Sweden.(

Supplied)
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In 2005 I graduated from university with a combined degree in engineering and arts, majoring in philosophy.

Now, with 15 years of experience as a professional engineer specialising in wind turbine technology, I can look back and compare the practicality and "job relevance" of my two tertiary qualifications.

My grade average was almost exactly the same in both courses, and while I would not say that one was easier than the other, they were certainly very different.

Engineering grades seemed to be almost directly related to the number of hours spent studying and doing assignments: 10 hours' study might get you a pass, 20 a credit, 30 a distinction, for example.
Rosemary Barnes (centre) says her grades in engineering were strongly related to the number of hours she spent studying while her marks in arts were dependent on the quality of her ideas.(

Supplied)

Yes, there was some variation between courses depending on how naturally the content came to me. Distinctions in mechanics of materials took me less study time than in software engineering.

With arts subjects, however, there was no such relationship between hours spent and grade achieved.

Rather, how well I did in each course was dependent on having a good idea, and whether or not such an idea came to me seemed quite random. Without a good and original idea, it was nearly impossible to get better than a credit no matter how many hours I spent rewriting my essays.
Skills and concepts

There were other differences.

My arts degree focused on core theoretical concepts and skills and very little on the kind of specific tasks you might expect to perform in a job.
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Education Minister Dan Tehan says the Government want to steer people away from humanities into "job-ready" STEM fields.Read more

As an arts student, I gained critical thinking and logic skills, and practised applying them to a variety of issues until they were deeply embedded in the way I now interpret and interact with the world.

In engineering, the focus was partly on learning core concepts, like physics and maths, but with an important second focus on the idea of "job readiness". I learnt actual tasks that we could be expected to use in a future job.

Job readiness was emphasised more and more as I progressed through my five years at university.
Rosemary Barnes is an expert in wind turbine technology — a field that was still developing when she was at university.(

Supplied)
Technical fields move quickly

The interesting thing about the "job readiness" skills I learned at university is that these are the skills that quickly became outdated in technical professions such as engineering.

Fifteen years after graduation, the job-ready material that I learnt in my degree is no longer relevant.

The programs (for example, the computer-aided design or CAD program I learnt) and even types of structural analysis have evolved beyond recognition. The computer language I learnt to code in, project management methods, manufacturing methods — in fact nearly every practical example — were laughably out of date with five years of graduation.
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University life has always been somewhat synonymous with poverty. But students and social workers say things have gotten much worse, forcing some to abandon their studies.Read more

Technical fields like engineering move quickly and as a professional you need to be able to learn and adapt quickly if you are to keep up to date. Many important fields that I have become expert in now did not exist when I was at university.

But because I learnt how to learn, and I have a good theoretical basis in physics and maths, for example, I am able to keep up to date with my fast-moving field.

I believe another issue is crucial: industry doesn't necessarily know what it needs, and especially what will be needed in the future.

Along with many other new graduates, I was criticised for my lack of job-readiness in my first few years at work.

Some of these criticisms were that my generation was not willing to do menial tasks, that I could not hand draft (even though that skill was not required), or that I didn’t know a specific CAD program used by my company (I learnt it in a week).

Adding more job readiness skills to university courses will reduce the amount of time that can be spent on the important theoretical building blocks, leading to perverse outcomes within a few years of graduates leaving university.

Their technical skills will become outdated very fast if they have focused on learning specific skills at the expense of a rigorous theoretical foundation.
A few years after graduating from university Rosemary Barnes's engineering knowledge was being replaced by new advances.(

ABC News: Danielle Bonica)
The humble arts degree punches above its weight

So what about my arts degree?

By contrast, it has not dated much at all.

There have certainly been changes in the way topics like feminism and race are discussed. But the main skills you learn in a humanities degree are timeless: critical reading, critical thinking, communication of complex ideas, and most importantly (in my opinion) logical reasoning.

These skills have made me a far better engineer than I would have been without them, and I expect the same is true for most others with an arts degree, no matter which field they enter.

It may not be a straightforward ticket to employment — like an engineering degree — but wherever graduates end up, they are almost guaranteed to do a better job than they would without that intellectual training.

For these reasons, we need to be careful which courses we encourage students to take on, and we especially need to rethink giving degrees aimed at "job readiness" preferential treatment in relation to student fees.

The Australian Government has proposed a university education funding policy that would see the cost of degrees for "job-relevant" courses such as engineering, maths and nursing decrease while the cost of degrees such as humanities (implicitly not "job-relevant") will increase.

It is not so easy to anticipate what is ahead of us. If students don't get a strong education in theoretical basics they will not be as prepared to adapt to the future when it turns out to be different from what today's politicians imagine it will be.
Posted 23 Sep 202023 Sep 2020, updated 23 Sep 2020
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Namgok Lee 예수의 깨달음의 핵심 - 본인이 '사람의 아들'이라는 것

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Namgok Lee
5 h  · 
어제 폭염이었지만, 선풍기도 필요없을 정도로 시원한 한낮의 고운동에서 강영구 신부님과 대화를 나누었다.
세균과 바이러스와의 싸움에서 인간이 이길 수 있을까?
그것을 극복하는 길이 사회적 거리두기와 백신 같은 기능적 방법으로 가능할까?
극복의 길은 결국 사랑ㆍ양보ㆍ겸손의 길이라는 강 신부님의 이야기에 동의하면서, 나는 각자도생의 차가운 거리두기로는 자칫 생태파시즘 앞에 스스로를 노출할 수 있다는 위험을 지적하였다.
우리의 민주주의 안에 이웃에 대한 사랑과 배려의 의식과 단순소박한 삶  속에서 행복을 찾는 행복관의 변화가 그 내용으로 담겨야 한다는 생각들을 나누었다.

예수의 출가와 광야에서의 40일 간의 수행과 깨달음 그리고 하산, 12제자와의 만남과 복음 선포 등을 석가의 그것과 비교하며 그 근본이 회통한다는 강 신부님의 이야기가 신선했다.

특히 예수의 깨달음의 핵심이 본인이 '사람의 아들'이라는 것이었다는 말씀을 하시면서, 이문열의 소설 '사람의 아들'을 화제 삼아, 두 길의 선택에 대한 사제로서의 진솔한 고뇌를 말씀하셔서 감동을 받았다.

두 길, '상선벌악(선은 상주고 악은 벌한다)'과 '동체자비'의 길에서 결국 어디에 설 것인가라는 선택 앞에 사람의 아들이 직면할 수 밖에 없는 것이다.

때로는 백척간두에 몸을 던지는 결단일 수 있다.

나는 현실적으로 '미움과 분노에 휘둘리지 않고 정의를 실현할 수 있는가?'라는 인류사의 진보를 향한 질문과 이 두 길 사이의 선택이 이어진다고 생각한다.
'미움과 분노 없이'라는 것은 인간의 현실에서 너무 거리가 멀게 느껴지지만, 적어도 '휘둘리지 않고' 정도는 목표로 삼아야 지금의 난국과 위기를 넘어 새로운 전환을 이룰 수 있지 않을까?

나는 논어에 나오는 이야기를 소개했다.
'인자라야 능히 미워할 수 있고, 진실로 인을 구하면 미움이 없다'
라는 내 해석을 말했는데, 보통 해설서들은 '진실로 인을 구하면 악함이 없다'라고 번역을 한다.
미움과 악함이 한자가 같기 때문이지만, 문득 인이 궁극적으로 추구하는 길도 '상선벌악'의 길이 아닌 '동체자비'의 길이라는 생각이 들었다.
그런 의미라면 '악이 없다"라는 번역도 새로운 의미로 다가온다.

그리고 마지막은 최치원 선생의 피리 대신 강 신부님의 플륫  연주를 들었다.
 영화 미션의 주제가 였다는 넬라판타지아였다.
뜻깊은 피서였다.
모두에게 감사드리며, 고운동의 새벽.
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The Bible is Not the Word of God | Vance Morgan

The Bible is Not the Word of God | Vance Morgan
Progressive Christian
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The Bible is Not the Word of God
16 COMMENTS


 (HTTPS://WWW.PATHEOS.COM/BLOGS/FREELANCECHRISTIANITY/THE-BIBLE-IS-NOT-THE-WORD-OFGOD/#DISQUS_THREAD)
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Either the Bible is true or it isn’t, either it’s God’s inspired inerrant word
or it isn’t, you can’t have it both ways, you can’t pick and choose to fit with
whatever the latest fad or zeitgeist happens to be . . .

So claimed someone in a comment thread on a Patheos Progressive Christian
Facebook page post recently. One thing I’ll say for Bible literalists: they aren’t a
big fan of nuance. They like their truth to be . . . literal. Their world view is
Manichean to the core. This or that. Black or white. True or false. Good or evil.
No gray areas allowed.

This is the world I come from, and I find it difficult to just let it go when I see
such comments, especially when I learned from other commenters that this
particular commenter is a fundamentalist troll who loves to show up on
progressive Christian pages and tell everyone that they are going to hell. So, of
course I had to respond.

Me: The Bible is a book. A special one, but a book. Written by human beings, not
dictated by God.
Him: You’re free to believe that, to reject the nearly 30% of prophecy that is
STILL being played out today, but it does mean that you may not identify
as a Christian.

Me:It means nothing of the sort. Millions of Christians do not believe that the
Bible is the inerrant Word of God. What one believes about a book is not the
litmus test for membership in the club.

Him: In THIS CLUB, yes it is. Rejecting the inerrancy of scripture is
tantamount to rejecting the authority of God in your life, (A.K.A.
Christianity) because you wish to be your own God and live for yourself,
which is the very heart of so called progressivism (A.K.A SIN).

Me:It is sad to imagine a faith so narrow that it claims that God is confined
within the covers of a book. That God somehow is incapable of speaking directly
to contemporary human beings. That the Word of God is a book rather than a
Person. God is brought into the world through human beings, not ancient texts.
I could have done better. I could have used the book this fellow worships to make
my point as another participant in the conversation did succinctly:
John 1:1—In the beginning was the Word. John 1:14—And the Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us . . . The Bible isn’t the Word of God, but it
can lead us to the Word of God.
The Word is not a book, in other words. The Word is a Person.
Words have been a central focus of my life since my earliest memories. There
have been few times in my life when a book was not within arm’s reach. My
early years were full of apocryphal stories of how I learned to read. According to
my mother, I was reading by age three without anyone having taught me how to
do it. I was never without a book, and lined up my menagerie of stuffed animals

on the couch to read to them. I knew how to read before I could tell time or tie
my shoes—perhaps my parents should have provided me with instruction
manuals to read.
In Ali Smith’s Autumn, the elderly Daniel Gluck frequently asks Elizabeth, the
young woman next door who becomes his best friend, what she is reading. It
becomes clear that his question has to do with more than “what book are you
into right now?”
Always be reading something, he said. Even when we’re not physically
reading. How else will we read the world?
Daniel’s question reminds me of something I came across from Simone Weil as I
am reviewing some of her essays for a new course that I’ll be teaching in the fall:
There is a mystery in reading, a mystery which, if we contemplate it, may
well help us, not to explain, but to grab hold of other mysteries in human
life. . . The sky, the seas, the sun, the stars, human beings, everything that
surrounds us is something that we read.

Reading is more than deciphering words on a page. I was jerked up short a few
years ago when I read in a book by theologian Patrick Henry that “God died
because people forgot how to read.” Henry’s claim, as Simone Weil’s above,
incorporates a much broader understanding of “reading” than our traditional
Western conception, which considers reading to be an exclusively cognitive,
intellectual, and mental activity—precisely the sort of activity I’ve spent the
majority of my waking hours on this planet doing.
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So how is it that such a crucial, human defining activity as reading could be
forgotten, even to the point of emptying the divine of content? The problem is
not with reading per se—it’s that we’ve forgotten that reading is not just an
intellectual activity. God’s death is not due to a misuse of or over-reliance on the
activity of reading. It’s due to forgetting what true reading even is.
I had heard about “lectio divina,” sacred reading, before I went on sabbatical to a
Benedictine college campus with a large abbey on site a decade ago, but it had
not struck me as a particularly interesting concept. Just another skill to learn,
technique to master, perhaps—but really, I thought, if there’s one thing I know

how to do pretty well, its reading. After several weeks of daily prayer with the
abbey monks, it dawned on me that lectio divina isn’t about words and meaning
and retention at all.
I often found that I did not remember, even for the amount of time it took to
walk from the choir stalls to the front of the abbey and exit, which Psalms we
had read nor any of the content. Yet I had a sense that what we were doing was
far more important than reading a book, marking it with highlighter and pen in
my usual method, and perhaps memorizing a phrase or two for future reference
in class or conversation.
What was happening in the choir stalls was not a mind event, but a full body
experience bypassing my overdeveloped mind and seeping into all the other
parts of me that had been starved for years. My bodily rhythms, my intuitions,
my emotions, my spirit. The Psalms speak of God’s word all the time, but almost
never of thinking about God’s word.
It’s more like what Jeremiah reports: “Your words were found and I did eat
them, and your word was for me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” Simone Weil
was channeling her internal Jeremiah when she wrote that “I only read what I
am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not
read, I eat.” And like a mother bird regurgitating food for the babies, an
important word or phrase would come into my consciousness later in the day,
one that I didn’t remember reading but which had seeped into my soul.
In our “real world” of immediacy, getting it done, making money and a living, is
there a place for what I began to absorb in a monastery abbey in the middle-ofnowhere Minnesota? Over the subsequent years I’ve seen small but important
evidence of change in how I converse with people, how I approach the day, and a
heightened and more immediate sense of when a layer is threatening to grow
back over my divine reading space.

Learning how to read differently is not just another technique; because it is a
new way of being, it is transferable to everything. I went on sabbatical expecting
to write about trying to sustain a life of faith when God at best is a silent partner
who never writes, calls, emails, texts or tweets. Now the divine is everywhere
and seems to have a lot to say. Reading the divine begins with believing that everything is sacramental, infused with the breath of God, with taking “the Word became flesh” very seriously. All of creation is a sacred text. What are you reading?
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Steve Kellerman • 3 months ago

In the age-old controversy about the authorship/authenticity of the Bible, I have always found it most confounding just how overlooked is this one simple fact: THE BIBLE IS JUST A BOOK!!! It is merely one of countless so-called scriptures (e.g. Torah, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, Book of Mormon, etc.) which claim to be a rendition of inerrant truth! In fact, THE TRUTH is much more stark: this Bible "book" is actually a composite/compilation of numerous stories, histories, myths, legends, poems, and philosophical musings that someone, somehow, sometime decided should constitute the "Inspired Word of God". WHO determined this? WHAT qualifies as "inspired"? HOW MANY other written accounts (i.e. apocrypha) were disallowed from the final published version? WHY should one accept any of these Bible writings as "gospel"? Bible literalists avoid these conundrums and even eschew the very notion that one might ask such questions! But these are certainly legitimate concerns. If you can't defend your belief with facts, it's only your belief! It just goes to prove what I have always said: people don't really seek truth...they merely look to confirm what they believe is truth! Or, better yet is this quote by Mark Twain: "Faith is believin' what you know ain't so."

Vance Morgan Mod  
Steve Kellerman • 3 months ago
I agree with most/much of what you have written--thanks for sharing it. As a person who was raised in conservative, fundamentalist Protestant Christianity that virtually worshipped the Bible, I guarantee you that for such folks, the Bible is NOT "just a book." They view it as verbally inspired and literally inerrant. Your rational and logic observations and question have no effect on that belief.

Steve Kellerman  
Vance Morgan • 3 months ago
Amen! I too was raised in conservative, fundamentalist Protestant Christianity. Every Sunday (not to mention every other day, since I attended a parochial K-8 school) I was indoctrinated with the message of an unquestionable, literal, and inerrant "Word of God" transcribed by "inspired men of faith". I was also constantly admonished to steer clear of the evil neo-theology of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr, et. al., so that I might remain pure in the "faith of our fathers". Believe me, I know ALL about belligerent "bibletians"! Fortunately, I made the "leap of NON-faith" to escape this vortex of cloistered, fearful, intransigence of Christian (nay, ALL religious) teachings.

I have travelled a long, lonely journey in the pursuit of ultimate truth. I don't profess to have any handle on what it is, but I CAN claim to reject what it isn't: all ideological religious conviction No one has a fucking clue of what is true! We all tend to believe what we have been taught and we are too scared to consider that we just might be wrong. I have argued and debated with many well-intentioned, but pathetically misinformed faith fanatics to no avail. It is very difficult, if not quite impossible to convince a true believer of cognitive dissonance; one must come to such a realization/idealization in one's own time and on one's own terms. You are right - my rational, logical argumentation is absolutely irrelevant, if not threatening, to a Christian absolutist. I have given up trying to even engage with zealots! Thanks for listening.

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Kobukvolbane • 3 months ago
I love reading the Bible. And I loved this essay. Thank you!


CGA • 3 months ago
I suppose this did answer my questions on your previous post. You're still fairly incoherent, and have made it much about yourself. God is great enough to preserve his word. Good luck.


JD  CGA • 2 months ago
If god was so good at protecting his supposed word and he wouldn't had allowed people to hack it to pieces over the centuries.

No, the reality is the bible is an ancient collection of fragmented texts from ancient paranoid and highly superstitious warring tribal peoples filled with often bloody and violent tales of demons, deities and demigods. Until god appears in person with a renewed edition that's all it'll ever be; a collection of mythologies.

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Kyllein MacKellerann " • 3 months ago
The Bible: A compilation of campfire stories (Old testament) and hopeful apocrypha (New testament) first anthologized by Emperor Constantine in an effort to keep the Plebeians in their place... They were getting "Uppity" under the influence of "Heretical" Christian preachers who spoke of equality before God, mercy, and other Empire-damaging things.
Has been used as a principally political document off and on for nearly seventeen centuries, with occasional deviations into Social structure and other "Feel Good" things. Claimed to have Religious basis, but existing texts from the times represented in the document do not support this. Has some good ideas, some bad ideas, and some curious, possibly drug-induced apocraphic texts (John of Patmos). Useful for arguments, but that's about it.

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Julie Watkins • 3 months ago
Some years back, I was going on a long trip where internet would be iffy. I brought a pdf of Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom, by Ernst Bloch, as something to read and think about. [written in German, translated into English] I picked the book because the title intrigued me.

Basically, Bloch was dividing the Bible into two classes of “author”: Jesus (who cared about the suffering of the poor) & the “Priests” (who cared about control).

It was something to watch Bloch’s confident cherry-picking: Here, those suffering were talking to Jesus & He heard. There, the priests were trying to get back in control of the situation and lessen expectations. It wasn’t textual scholarship that told him which was which (though scholarship & theology were useful), it seemed to be the spirit of Jesus in his heart which was doing the pointing, ... and which was which was obvious to Bloch.

Reading the book was both satisfying & frustrating (frustrating in a good way). The early part of the book, resonated much with me and it spoke to my yearnings for a better life for all, but by the end it wasn't as powerful and I wished the author was there so I could talk about it because I knew the whole of it was powerful for the author.

I’m putting this experience into a comment because I feel “cherry-picking” (“pick and choose”) isn’t necessarily a “fad” thing.


bill wald • 3 months ago
If the original text was the exact word of God, how could this truth be demonstrated to others? Pun intended. And we don't have any original texts.

A parallel question: If Jesus' mother had to be a virgin at his birth, then if Mary was not a sinner, then her mother must have been a virgin and all the way back to Eve. Was Eve a virgin when her first daughter was born?

If it was, Americans would still have the same the same problem with the text as we do with the text of our Constitution. There would be no agreement as to what the words and sentences meant.

If the experts and the disciples of modern experts were logical and honest, the first question should be, "Are the covenants accumulative or does the newer replace the older? Or are the newer covenants simply commentary on the older?

Can God have different plans for different parts of the world? If not, why not?


Vance Morgan Mod  bill wald • 3 months ago
Thank you.

Mark Jeffrey • 3 months ago • edited
It always seems to me that the Literalists are simply yet another reincarnation of the Pharisees that Jesus had so much trouble with. They weren't all bad, and most sincerely thought they had it right, but they were missing so much of what God was trying to say by concentrating on the rules in their books, and trying to define them ever more precisely, to the point where all the Love was lost. I wish some of these folks could have a "Nicodemus encounter", much like John Wesley did.

Vance Morgan Mod  Mark Jeffrey • 3 months ago
Thank you.

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Joseph Douglas • 3 months ago
The Bible contains the Word of God, but you have to know how to find it. Anything that contradicts Jesus Christ is not God’s Word.

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Vance Morgan Mod  Joseph Douglas • 3 months ago
I completely agree with you. That's what I mean in the essay when I write that "the Word of God is a Person." You did read the essay, right?


Steve Bailey • 3 months ago
As James Warren points out, "we are Christians, not Bibletians". This has been a key issue for Christian faith and practice since the beginning of the 20th century with the rise of fundamentalism and originalism. The situation has caused deep pain and distress for literally millions of people who are judged and rejected with the support of gross misreadings of the Bible and the abject failure to read it with any sense of human or divine wisdom. Many 'Christians' have driven a wedge between the Bible and Jesus Christ as the Word of God. Much of American Christian leadership rejects contemporary Bible scholarship - a rich world of unfolding knowledge - for the sake of maintaining power over others. They grieve the Holy Spirit in doing so and hinder the mission of God in the world. We can only pray that their hurtful houses will crumble into dust as the Spirit of God prevails.

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Ryan Listerman
The author makes a great point; God’s word is so expansive and excellent no book could contain it. The author makes an error in reasoning that because we have incomplete knowledge of God, we can contradict the teaching of the Bible. We know that God’s nature is consistent, and the things we don't know about God wouldn't contradict the things we do know about the Lord.
Take, for example, being at sea and noticing an iceberg; we know that what is visible or known to us isn't the complete entity. Still, we also know the unseen expanse of the entity is consistent in its composition to the seen entity.
An iceberg is not the tip of a sea monster’s toenail.
Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Malachi 3:6
“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
James 1:17
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Numbers 23:19
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
 · Reply · 12 h


Ryan Kärgel
"Literal", "inerrant", and "God's Word" are three different arguments. I don't believe any are true, but for varying reasons.
"Literal" is not true because the Bible is written using many genres, only a couple of which are ever used in the way we use historical documents.
"Inerrant" is not true because we have multiple versions of the text, with differing content. "The original text" people love to claim is inerrant is not extant, and we have no evidence there even is a point where "the original" reached a finalized state. Plus, the content in each version is contrasting because we have dozens of contributors with their own viewpoints.
"God's Word" is a misnomer because the Bible never claims that for itself, and in fact redirects the claim to Jesus.
The Bible is a beautiful anthology describing humanity's struggle with the supernatural. It is invaluable, and almost our our only source material for the teachings of and about Jesus. But literal, inerrant, and God's Word are the wrong labels, and are the wrong hills to die on.

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Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth

Did Jesus Exist? (Ehrman book) - Wikipedia

Did Jesus Exist? (Ehrman book)

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Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
Did Jesus Exist (Ehrman book).jpg
AuthorBart D. Ehrman
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectsChristian history
Roman history
PublisherHarperOne
Publication date
2012
Media typePrint (paperback)
Pages368
ISBN978-0062206442

Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth is a 2012 book by Bart D. Ehrman, a scholar of the New Testament. In this book, written to counter the idea that there was never such a person as Jesus of Nazareth at all, Ehrman sets out to demonstrate the historical evidence for Jesus' existence, and he aims to state why all experts in the area agree that "whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist."[1][2]

Ehrman examines the historicity of Jesus and includes some criticism of Christ mythicists. As he does in other works such as Forged and Jesus, Interrupted, he disregards an apologetics-based or otherwise religiously-charged approach to aim at looking at the New Testament using historical-critical methodology. He argues that a specific historical Jesus really existed in the 1st century AD. Even as accounts about that figure later on brought in additional misinformation and legendary stories, Ehrman states, multiple reasons still remain to see things as framed around a flesh-and-blood actual person.[1]

Arguments for existence[edit source]

Ehrman surveys the arguments Christ mythicists have made against the existence of Jesus since the idea was first mooted at the end of the 18th century. To the objection that there are no contemporary Roman records of Jesus' existence, Ehrman points out that such records exist for almost no one and there are mentions of Christ in several Roman and Jewish works of history from only decades after the Crucifixion of Jesus, such as Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews and Tacitus's Annals.[1][3] The author states that the authentic letters of the apostle Paul in the New Testament (which Ehrman believes are 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, 2 Corinthian and Romans) were likely written within a few years of Jesus' death and that Paul likely personally knew James the Just and Peter the Apostle.[2] Although the gospel accounts of Jesus' life may be biased and unreliable in many respects, Ehrman writes, they and the sources behind them which scholars have discerned still contain some accurate historical information.[1][3] So many independent attestations of Jesus' existence, Ehrman says, are actually "astounding for an ancient figure of any kind".[2]

Ehrman dismisses the idea that the story of Jesus is an invention based on pagan myths of dying-and-rising gods, maintaining that the early Christians were primarily influenced by Jewish ideas, not Greek or Roman ones,[1][2] and repeatedly underlining that the idea that there was never such a person as Jesus is not seriously considered by historians or experts in the field at all.[1]

Many specific points by Ehrman concentrate on what may be regarded as the 'embarrassments' and 'failures' of the various depictions of Jesus Christ found in the gospels and the works of Paul which point to an account based on a real person that got embellished rather than a made up figure. He notes that Jews in the first century AD expected their Messiah to come from Bethlehem while Jesus is described as growing up in Nazareth, a dilemma that is simply not addressed in the Gospel of Mark (which has no nativity account) even though it is regarded as the earliest gospel. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas is another example, as critics of early Christianity found it strange that the Messiah would display the lack of personal awareness and foresight even to keep his close followers in line. Ehrman states that such things would make sense for a historical Jesus whom multiple people believed grew up, lived, and died in a certain time and place versus a purely mythological figure with malleable personal details.[1]

Criticism of mythicists[edit source]

Ehrman, a former fundamentalist Christian turned agnostic, has written numerous books challenging traditional views of the Bible himself.[3] Did Jesus Exist?, however, contains scathing criticism of the "writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists".[2] Ehrman says that they do not define what they mean by "myth" and maintains they are really motivated by a desire to denounce religion rather than examine historical evidence.[1] He discusses leading contemporary mythicists by name and dismisses their arguments as "amateurish", "wrong-headed", and "outlandish".[3]

Reception[edit source]

Speaking with The Huffington Post, United Methodist pastor and biblical scholar Ben Witherington III praised the book and thanked Ehrman for writing it.[4] The Christian Science Monitor wrote that "His [Ehrman's] newest book has turned some of his perennial critics into fans, at least temporarily".[5]

One of the mythicists who is criticized in Did Jesus Exist?, Richard Carrier, challenged many of the book's points on his blog,[6] to which Ehrman responded on his own blog.[7] Another scholar criticised in the book, Thomas L. Thompson, responded with the online article, Is This Not the Carpenter’s Son? A Response to Bart Ehrman, in which he rejects Ehrman's characterization of his views, stating that, contrarily to what Ehrman claims, he never denied the historicity of Jesus. However, Ehrman's positions were defended by New Testament scholar Maurice Casey, who dismissed Thompson's theories as "completely wrong from beginning to end".[8][9]

New Testament scholar R. Joseph Hoffmann, who has repeatedly criticized supporters of the Christ Myth Theory, nevertheless called the book "exceptionally disappointing and not an adequate rejoinder to the routinely absurd ideas of the Jesus-deniers."[10]

See also[edit source]

References[edit source]

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Ehrman, Bart D. (2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperOne. ISBN 978-0062206442.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Ehrman, Bart D. (2013-03-20). "Did Jesus Exist?". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2014-04-08.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Shimron, Yonat (3 April 2012). "In 'Did Jesus Exist?' Bart Ehrman's Portrayal Of Jesus Is Surprisingly Sympathetic". Huffington Post. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  4. ^ "Bart Ehrman's New Portrayal Of Jesus Is Surprisingly Sympathetic". HuffPost. 2012-04-03. Retrieved 2021-06-21.
  5. ^ "Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman supports the historic existence of Jesus". Christian Science Monitor. 3 July 2012. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
  6. ^ Carrier, Richard. "Ehrman on Historicity Recap". Archived from the original on 3 December 2012. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
  7. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. "Fuller Reply to Richard Carrier". Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  8. ^ "Is This Not the Carpenter's Son? A Response to Bart Ehrman | Bible Interp". bibleinterp.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2021-07-01.
  9. ^ "Is Not This an Incompetent New Testament Scholar? A Response to Thomas L. Thompson | Bible Interp". bibleinterp.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2021-07-11.
  10. ^ R. Joseph Hoffmann, "Did Jesus Exist? Yes and No", in New Oxonian, June 9, 2012
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