Flann 5 wrote:You may trump me with Bart's credentials as an historical scholar but as the article I linked showed, both in recognised messianic O.T. passages themselves and in rabbinic interpretation of these passages,he is simply wrong on this.

Biblical scholar Craig Evans and others wrote a book in response to Bart Ehrman's and there's an 18 minute excerpt by Craig Evans on youtube that I'll give the link for.

You can judge for yourself. I think it would be interesting if Evans debated Ehrman on his thesis. So scholarly historical research is fine but speculative theories using unreliable sources which ignore archaeological evidence, not so good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC1GyMXDfzM

When you say that Ehrman is "simply wrong" you're taking an ideological stance. The mere fact that there are multiple possible interpretations of scripture suggests the text is ambiguous and subject to different interpretations. That an ancient holy text can be so easily manipulated and that it is inconsistent with itself makes perfect sense if you consider that it was written by people from different cultures and from different time periods. It's not at all consistent with the belief that it's God sacred word. Why would God make his "word" so ambiguous and inconsistent? Is he playing games with us?

The problem with Christian apologist scholars is that they're not really interested in an objective examination of a historical document. They're too busy trying to mesh God's "word" with their own subjective religious beliefs.

geo wrote:When you say that Ehrman is "simply wrong" you're taking an ideological stance. The mere fact that there are multiple possible interpretations of scripture suggests the text is ambiguous and subject to different interpretations. That an ancient holy text can be so easily manipulated and that it is inconsistent with itself makes perfect sense if you consider that it was written by people from different cultures and from different time periods. It's not at all consistent with the belief that it's God sacred word. Why would God make his "word" so ambiguous and inconsistent? Is he playing games with us?

Hi Geo. In the article I linked in my earlier post,the author gave several examples of rabbinically recognised messianic texts.
In the second example he gave you could maybe argue about who the subject is for various of the titles.

I think if you look at the texts it is quite clear that the messiah would be both human and God in the texts themselves and also in rabbinic interpretation.Some things are easy to interpret because they are so clear and unambiguous.
The author gave the book and verse numbers in some cases without writing out the quote itself.
I would challenge you to actually look at these and provide a credible alternative interpretation to the one given.

I've listened to Ehrman and am not impressed with his skills when it comes to interpretation of the texts.
Ehrman has a thesis and seems to be trying to bend the texts to fit his thesis rather than the other way round.

This is familiar to me from how mythicists use texts in strange ways. Robert Tulip's interpretation of Romans 8 would be an extreme example where he imposes his thesis unnaturally on the texts themselves.
Ehrman is not as extreme but is certainly doing this. In the debate with Gathercole this is evident though more subtle at times.
As with almost any form of communication interpretation is required. There are obscure passages and there are far more clear passages.
There's a skewed parody of the imagined difficulties and contradictions in the bible that are standard fare on anti Christian "freethinker" websites.
Many have been answered for centuries but this is no deterrent apparently. What's evident is not the chaotic collisions of ideas and cultures but coherence.
A good example is the new testament explanation of the sacrificial system in the old and messianic fulfillment in Christ in the new.