The error in Ehrman

Today I drove to Knoxville and back for work. That left me much time for listening to the radio. I tuned into NPR during the afternoon to catch an interesting episode of Fresh Air. - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101389895

The guest was liberal bible scholar and apostate of the faith, Bart Ehrman. Dr. Ehrman is a professor of religion at UNC (Chapel Hill). He has a new book coming out called "Jesus Interupted" which tries to claim that there are many important contradictions within the four gospels that cannot be resolved and that must alter our view of faith and the historical Jesus.

The first argument that Dr. Ehrman provides to back-up his claim on the show is the "contradiction" which occurs between the dying words of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. Ehrman claims that in Matthew, Jesus is a man of despair who only says "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" while he is on the cross. Then he tells us that in Luke we read that Jesus made several statements on the cross to include telling the thief that he would be in Paradise that day and crying "Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit." Ehrman concludes that Luke shows Jesus as fully realizing his role and his coming destination with the Father in heaven.

Here is the wierd thing. Dr. Ehrman, a noted academic, calls these two accounts a contradiction. They are NOT are contradiction. Any freshman in a Logic/ Critical Thinking class could tell you that a contradiction occurs when two sources claim exclusive, opposing viewpoints. The classic contradiction would be:
a is b
a is not b

In that case, you have a problem. The proposition (a) cannot both be (b) and not be (b). What we see in the two gospels is not even close to a classic contradiction. To be a contradiction the text would have to read "Jesus said My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" in Matthew and THEN read " Jesus did not say My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" in Luke.

What we do have in front of us as we read Matthew and Luke regarding the death of Jesus is two authors expressing complimentary and complete views about what occurred on that hilltop.

Remember that Jesus was up there 3 hours at least. Is it not likely that he could have went thru a range of emotions since he was fully human as well as fully divine (to include abandonment as he became sin for our sakes)? - see 1 Corinthians 5:21

Thru the program Dr. Ehrman tries to cite other examples of "contradictions" and all of them fall flat with some basic research and common sense. I don't think I need to lay them out here since I already showed his first example to the fallacious.

Ehrman is a sad case. He once had a brilliant mind that he used to further the kingdom. Now he has resorted to intellectual dishonesty to fool the masses. He is a wolf outside the flock and we all need to be aware of him and those like him lest we be led astray.