Does Biblical Scholarship Destroy Faith?
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Chris Huntley
4.8 • 745 Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Biblical scholars who approach the Bible from a historical perspective are often accused of working hard to deconvert the faithful. Is that true?
Do undergraduates widely abandon their faith once they learn the historical realities behind it? Are professors and authors generally interested in urging their students and readers to abandon their religion? And is there any positive result for faith that can come from understanding historical scholarship? Is it crucial to faith to understand the Bible, or just an unnecessary add-on?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. |
| 0:07.0 | The only show, where a six-time New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned Bible scholar, |
| 0:13.0 | uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity. |
| 0:22.6 | I'm your host, Megan Lewis. |
| 0:23.8 | Let's begin. |
| 0:27.5 | Hello and welcome back to misquoting Jesus. |
| 0:32.9 | Today we are going to be exploring the question of whether biblical scholarship destroys faith. |
| 0:37.5 | Something I've heard from more than one atheist friend is that they only began questioning the Bible and the validity of their faith when they started to actually study the biblical text. |
| 0:42.6 | Similarly, Bart and biblical scholars like him are familiar with the accusation that they're |
| 0:46.7 | only out to deconvert the faithful. What is the relationship between biblical scholarship |
| 0:51.5 | and the loss of religious faith? Does the academic interrogation of a |
| 0:55.2 | holy text destroy one's belief, or is it a little bit more complex than that? Before we get into |
| 1:01.0 | all of that, though, Bart, how are you doing this week? Yeah, I'm doing well. Professorial life is a little |
| 1:06.4 | bit strange because of the rhythms of it is just not like what others do for living and the scheduling |
| 1:13.2 | especially. I was thinking last week that I'm 67 years old and I still think in terms of |
| 1:19.7 | semesters. There's like, you know, that ended, 45 years ago. |
| 1:28.8 | How are you doing? |
| 1:38.6 | Similar, actually, although I'm not a student and I teach very irregularly, I'm still very much in the academic year mode. |
| 1:39.8 | I haven't shifted out of it. |
| 1:43.5 | I suspect a lot of that is due to having children still in school. |
| 1:45.6 | Everything is, it's not the same semester system, but everything is run based on whether or not the schools are going. Right. And |
| 1:51.9 | you've got your kids are at a range of ages. We'll be doing this for a while. So you just kind of like |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Chris Huntley, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Chris Huntley and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.