I found this over at Robert Cargill’s blog site:
“And I applaud Harvard Divinity School’s Dr. Karen King. Dr. King released this fragment the way it should be released in this new digital era of immediate feedback: first to a group of scholars for review, and then to a professional conference of her peers for review, and only then to the public.”
Cargill and other scholars must think that the public is stupid, ignorant, and in need of the ‘elite’ to tell them what is true or not. The public is far more discerning than he, and his cohorts, give them credit and can smell something fishy when it warrants it.
While the supposed intellectuals of academia were busy ‘discussing’ this fragment and taking well over a week to come to a consensus that it may not be authentic, true believers knew on the first day that it shed no light upon the life of Jesus or his ‘romantic’ side. We do not care if the fragment is authentic or not. That isn’t the issue with us.
It doesn’t matter if the fragment was written in the 4th century or not because we knew it did not contain any true information, was too sparse to contribute anything to biblical studies and was out of context to be of any value.
One interesting observation about this fragment. Many scholars were ready to say it was authentic even though no one knew the author’s name or biography yet we have the human author’s names to the biblical books and some of their human biographies and the same scholars, if not more, are declaring many of the books of the Bible as forgeries.
The scholarly world think they are something but they do not have a clue. True believers do not need scholars to tell us what is true or false. We already have a guide aiding us in that department. We read in John 14:15-17 these words;
“if you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever–the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives in you and will be in you’
Does this mean we believers are anti-intelligence or anti-solid research? No, it means that when we do our research and use our God-given intelligence we look for the truth and follow the Holy Spirit to that truth, avoiding the confusion that seems to permeate the unbelieving biblical scholarly world.
I say unbelieving because the majority of biblical scholars today do not believe the Bible, do not accept its words and do not teach the truth. Robert Cargill is an atheist, Phillip Davis is a minimalist who denies most of the Bible as true, Bart Ehrman claims to be an agnostic, William Dever doesn’t believe any more, James McGrath denies the Bible is God’s word and believes alternatives and the list goes on for a long time.
These men, and others like them, do not have the truth and do not speak the truth. They are deceived like the Bible says but the do not accept that fact as they think they are okay and know what they are looking at and doing. They don’t for they do not understand God’s word at all nor what it really says.
Does this mean that believers ignore all learned men? No, we look for the God-led man, the Spirit filled one that leads people to the truth and present it with wisdom, understanding coupled with consistency with God’s word. Believers still need intelligent men who are in academia to sift through the false teachings and point them out to the error found in the words of those who do not believe or pretend to be Christian.
Young believers still need to grow thus they need learned men of God pointing the way to them so they do not get misled away from Jesus. Being properly educated is part of the Christian life, we do not revel in ignorance but we do not follow the secular scholarly world either. They are blind and believers are not thus we look for those men who can see clearly and know how to communicate what they know to others.
We also do not use the criteria of the secular academic community but exchange those with God’s criteria so we can see who is telling the truth and who is not. The secular world think they are something and think they have the inside track to all things ancient. They don’t because they weren’t there and they use minutes amount of information to draw their ideas from. Then they paint the ancient world with a very broad brush.
Believers do not need secular biblical scholars to tell them what is true or not. They wouldn’t know. It is quite possible that that fragment was written in the 4th century AD but that doesn’t mean the author knew what was true in the 1st century.
The Christian world does need intelligent, wise men in academia because that area of life is not immune to the sin and corruption that entered the world at Adam’s sin and the secular world is not after the truth. Thus those men need to stand with God and present to the Christian community the right way to go in academic affairs. Too many people are fooled by false teachers today because they let words like Biblical, Christian, Bible, and others lull them to sleep and they allow false teaching into their midst.
God wrote the Bible so His followers would be prepared, alert and wary. Lean on it when in doubt and ask the Holy Spirit to keep you in the truth. Believers cannot be children all their lives, they need to grow up and take spiritual responsibility for their lives and the lives of their families.
The words found in John 14 are not for the elite, the apostles or the super spiritual alone. They are for everyone so they do not get trampled and destroyed.
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