First, allow me to congratulate you on providing the public with an excellent array of teaching videos by the nation’s top scholars in their field. But as I was paging through the offerings on your website, I found—much to my amazement—that you’ve selected a certain Bart Ehrman as your teacher of the New Testament.

“What’s wrong with that?” you will ask.

How to put it? What illuminating example can I give to make the problem startlingly clear?  Aha! How about the following?

Imagine if I went into a shop clearly marked “Meats and Sweets by Bob the Butcher and Candymaker” for a pound of ham, a half pound of pepperoni, and a small box of chocolates. I go up to the glass counter in the front and hand Bob my shopping list.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “we’ve got no ham or pepperoni here—or chocolates for that matter. How about some nice tofu briquettes and a lentil cake?”

“Uh…what about your sign, Meats and Sweets?”

“Yes, actually, as it turns out, I’ve been a vegetarian now for thirty years. And as for the candy, I’ve sworn off that as well. It’s been a bit over ten years now for that. So, we don’t actually sell either meats or sweets.”

“But the sign!?”

“Oh that! Well, we get more business that way.”

You see the point?  Those who peruse your catalogue and come to the “sign” that reads “New Testament” would assume that the teacher was a top scholar who believed in the veracity of the subject matter. But as I hope you are aware, Bart Ehrman has developed a mini-industry in spreading doubt about the New Testament.

“But he’s a top scholar,” you may reply.

“True enough. But two points about that. First, Ehrman is one of the top scholars of a certain kind, the kind that makes his career in debunking the subject matter which he purports to teach. He’s like any of a number of such “top scholars” who chisel away at their own discipline from within. Philosophy professors who believe that there’s no truth. Literature professors who believe all literature is a sham disguise for oppressive political propaganda.  But like Bart Ehrman, they are only the top of a particular heap.  There are other top scholars, with equally powerful credentials, who disagree heartily with the likes of Ehrman.

And so it comes to this.  Either the Teaching Company should change its “sign” outside of Bart’s shop so that it accurately reflects what is sold within, or you should tap any of a number of the many top biblical scholars who actually believe the subject matter they are teaching.

How about any of the following?

Dr. Craig Evans who has a new book out entitled Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels.

Or Dr. Richard Bauckham, who has just written Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.

Or Dr. Ben Witherington III, whose latest book is What Have They Done with Jesus?: Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History--Why We Can Trust the Bible.

Or Bishop of Durham N.T. Wright, who has just published Simply Christian.

Sincerely,
Benjamin Wiker, Ph.D.