Toe-to-Toe with Evangelical New Testament Scholar Peter Williams: Can We Trust the Gospels?

[00:00:01] Toe to toe with evangelical New Testament scholar Peter Williams. Can we trust the Gospels? [00:00:08] Written by Bart Ehrman, read by Ken Teutch. [00:00:13] I recently reposted a debate I did with Peter Williams about the significance of textual variance for the New Testament. It reminded me of another debate we did some five years ago on an even more pressing question, whether the gospels can be seen as completely trustworthy. This one was televised. I thought it was particularly interesting because Peter is not simply a christian apologist who uses other people's scholarship to promote his religious beliefs. He himself is a bona fide scholar with a PhD from Cambridge and one of the leading experts on the ancient syriac version of the New Testament. Peter has been a friend for a long time and is also a committed evangelical Christian who does not believe there are mistakes in the gospels. I so disagree with that. Our debate was on the christian radio program unbelievable under their new series the Big Conversation season two, episode three, hosted by Justin Brierly. It was a long and interesting debate. Peter has written can we trust the gospels? And CS Lewis versus the new atheists. My contention throughout the debate is that he has not answered the question adequately, that in fact, virtually everything he says in the book is irrelevant to the question. It's a very interesting and unusual attempt that he makes, but most of the book completely misses the point. It's the kind of book that anyone who wants very much to trust the gospels will come away from saying, see, we can trust them. But anyone who actually looks at what he's saying and who knows about the actual reasons people have for not thinking the gospels are historically reliable will say, wait a second. He's simply countering arguments that no one makes and is not addressing the arguments they do. That's just building a straw man and knocking it down. That ain't going to work. [00:02:08] Watch it for yourself and see what you think. You can find it on YouTube. Bart Ehrman debates Peter J. Williams.