Wednesday 7 May 2014

"A Verdict on Josh McDowell"


Since this inspirational speaker and writer claims to have been involved in trashing ancient artefacts in order to obtain ancient papyri to bolster his theories and teaching, it seems not without interest to look at how those theories stand up to scruting. Gordon B. Hazen ("A Verdict on Josh McDowell"), for example concludes that he is "a compiler":
 Josh McDowell's book Evidence That Demands a Verdict has been variously described as an authoritative defense of Christianity and a masterpiece of Christian apologetics, which provides scholarly, intelligent, well-grounded answers to questions about the Christian faith. [...]  I began a six-month investigation of McDowell's Chapter 4, entitled "The reliability of the Bible". By checking McDowell's sources and consulting works of NT scholars, I was eventually able to discover that much of what McDowell presents is untrustworthy, misleading or simply incorrect. [...]   There are other rebuttals of McDowell's work available on the Internet, foremost of which is Jeffery Jay Lowder's The Ruling on McDowell's "Evidence". Lowder presents a chapter-by-chapter reply to McDowell. [...]  The Secular Web references other rebuttals to McDowell as well.  The Ontario Consultants for Religious Tolerance present a discussion of Biblical inerrancy which is relevant to many of McDowell's claims. One may also find critical reviews of McDowell at Amazon.com, interspersed among fundamentalist accolades.
So, the way he treats the "Łódź Torah" and papyri taken from trashed ancient mummy masks is not surprising.

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