"The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals." These are the words of Christopher Hitchens in GOD IS NOT GREAT, p.103. He adds the following: "There was no flight from Egypt, no wandering in the desert...no dramatic conquest of the Promised Land. It was all, quite simply and very ineptly, made up at a much later date."(p.103). His problem is not just with the Old Testament, but also the New Testament.



Chapter eight of his book is entitled "The 'New' Testament Exceeds the Evil of the 'Old' One". He quotes such biblical experts as Thomas Paine and H.L.Mencken as dismissing the New Testament as a "helter-skelter accumulation of more or less discordant documents"(Mencken). "But this argument takes place over the heads of those to whom the 'Good Book' is all that is required." (p.110). Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris have little respect for the intellectual acumen of the Christian community. He argues that Christians simply assume that the four gospels present an accurate historical account, when in reality all evidence points to the contrary. The Gospels he tells us "cannot agree on anything of importance" (p.111). He points to the Gospel of Judas which was in the headlines a couple of years ago as being "fractionally more credible than the official account", however, in reality we have zero evidence about the life of Jesus, and in fact that Jesus ever lived is "highly questionable" (p.114).



He accuses the Christians of suppressing reasonable questions about its truth claims: "...until recently, Christians could simply burn or silence anybody who asked any inconvenient questions."(p.115).



His authority in dismissing the accuracy of the Gospels and much of the New Testament is "Barton Ehrman". Ehrman in his book MISQUOTING JESUS describes his journey from a conservative Christian college to Princeton where he earned his Phd and now has a reputation as one of more renowned "textual critics" in America. A "textual critic" is a scholar who studies the many manuscripts of the Bible in an effort to determine the original text. Therefore, Ehrman is someone to be respected for his expertise, but not necessarily for his interpretation of Christianity. Ehrman as a teenager had what he described as a "born again" experience which led him to Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College, Billy Graham's alma mater, before ending up at Princeton. At Princeton and in subsequent years he began to give up his conservative views and determined that the Bible is filled with errors.



Hitchens says that "long before I read Ehrman, I had some questions of my own."(p.121).



Well, what do we make of all this? Has he burst our ignorant bubble and revealed us Christians to be ill informed ignoramuses?



One way to test the power of one's argument is to test the factual claims made. In other words if an author is wrong about his facts then his interpretations are much more suspect. Interpretations can be debated, but facts are facts no matter what one believes about them. The sun is shining this morning, Thursday, February 19, 2009, 10:19 AM in Maypearl, Texas. Someone could argue that its raining outside, but their argument could be dismissed because the facts would expose the argument as fallacious.



Hitchens asserts several facts that are so contrary to the recognized truth that his knowledge and interpretations become suspect simply because his grasp of facts is lacking. This is ironic since the atheists always look down upon the ignorant and uninformed Christians. Their arrogance makes it hard to disagree with them without feeling insecure, but the facts speak for themselves. Let me share just a few of the facts presented by him that are patently false.



On page 59 he writes that "even the stoutest defenders of the Bible story now admit that if Jesus was ever born it wasn't until at least AD 4." This is blatantly false. I have 7,000 volumes in my library, and many are written by Christian scholars who discuss this very question. Not a single one argues for AD 4 as the year of Jesus' birth. Check out whatever sources you may have in your library or in the church library and see what they say. Nearly all Christian and secular scholars would agree that the birth of Jesus most likely occured in 4 or 6 BC. I dare say, you won't nor will Hitchens find a scholar that argues for AD 4, and to claim that "even the stoutest defenders of the Bible story now admit" that Jesus was born in AD 4 shows an ignorance unbecoming such a brilliant atheist.



On page 120, he refers to his one authority on the bible as "Barton Ehrman". This is no big deal, but in the interest of truth and accuracy, where did he conclude that the author's name is "Barton". Maybe he knows something that Ehrman's publishers don't know and that "Bart" has never chosen to reveal in any of his books. If you don't get Bart's name right, then I'm not sure I can trust you to understand his arguments.



On page 112, the Nag Hammadi texts discovered in Egypt more than 60 years ago are described by Hitchens as "scrolls" when in reality they were codices. The difference would be like describing a newspaper as a book. Informed people would not be impressed by the mistake in fact. Yet he is so bold as to describe Malcolm Muggeridge, a well known Christian writer of the past as "silly"and dismisses C.S.Lewis as lacking in reasoning ability.



I am writing a blog and not a book so I can't respond to every issues he raises. Some of his issues have more substance than others. For instance believers have for centuries struggled with the issue of the Old Testament and God's commands to annihilate certain countries and cultures. This is a serious problem and one that cannot be summarily dismissed. However, informed thoughtful answers have been presented that can harmonize the God of the Old Testament with the loving God described in the New Testament. Yet it is true that some believers of the past decided that such harmony could not be achieved and as a result they rejected the God of the Old Testament as evil. The Nag Hammadi documents from Egypt represent gnosticism which was known for viewing the God of the Old Testament as evil. This is probably the primary reason Hitchens gives more validity to these documents than to the writings contained in the New Testament. These documents are all late 2nd century or third century writings and have no claim to historical testimony contemporary with the life of Jesus and the early church. When the gnostics first appeared in history, the Christians dismissed them as heretics because their writings did not harmonize with the early historical accounts and often dismissed Jesus as little more than a phantom.



As to Hitchens' claim that the Gospels do not agree on any of the important claims of christianity, one would be hard pressed to find a more inaccurate statement from anyone claiming to be informed. One can quibble about details. How many angels were in the tomb when the women arrived? Was the Passover of the synoptics the same as the meal described in John's gospel? Was the Sermon on the Mount really delivered on the plains ( compare Matthew and Luke). Hitchens says that Matthew and Luke disagree as to whether Jesus was born of a virgin. Read the first 3 chapters of Matthew and Luke and you decide if they agree. I believe the birth, family of origin, their names, his baptism by John, the mount of transfiguration, his arrest, crucifixion and resurrection are confirmed in multiple Gospels. Not a one of these historical realities are denied or contradicted by any Gospel. Thus to make the claim that they don't agree on anything of importance is beyong "silly".



If Dawkins and Hitchens want to dismiss Christians as uninformed about science, let them at least admit that they themselves are woefully ignorant of Christianity. Maybe we all could learn from one another, but the tone of their works make it hard for Christians to feel comfortable in discussions with them. It would be hard to have respect for someone who has shown such disdain for you and your faith. Yet, as Christians we need to respect people who disagree with us even if it is the devil himself (not that I'm calling Hitchens the devil). Jude writes that false teachers of his day dare to "slander celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil..did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said 'The Lord rebuke you'. Yet these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand.."(Jude 9, 10a). If someone speaks abusively against whatever they don't understand, let it not be us.