Here’s what I gathered as I listened to this podcast for the second time: in the first several minutes of the interview Jones and Ehrman batted around the term “philosophical hermeneutics” and threw some names about (Foucault, Derrida, Princeton Seminary) but didn’t do a great deal with the content of that inquiry. (Frankly, I would have been interested to see how Ehrman’s secularist screeds have anything to do with actual post-structuralism.)

Later on, around the 35-minute mark in the podcast, the philosophy of text and meaning pretty much drops out of the conversation, and assertions about the later Pauline epistles’ being forged, the truth of the 19th-century historical-critical movement’s findings, and other such Enlightenment-flavored bits of biblical scholarship go largely unchallenged as givens rather than contested assertions in the field of Biblical studies. Nobody mentions N.T. Wright or any of the other fine scholars who have called into question the methodology or content that the Jesus Seminar and their popularizers bring to the table.

Michial, neither Jones nor Ehrman directly accused preachers or seminary professors of lying, so that wording of things probably oversimplifies things.

Tony, I still maintain that the interview as it happened privileged the particular findings of a particular segment of the historical-critical conversation, referring to its findings as if they were undisputed. That might have been tactical on your part (why get the petulant Bart Ehrman mad and cut short the interview?), or your editors at BeliefNet might have told you to lay back (no need to chase Ehrman to the hundred other media outlets who never challenge his thoughts either). I’m ready to entertain either or both of those options, but as the actual audio that came over my car stereo’s speakers sounded like an interview that threw out the vast complexity of Biblical Studies as a discipline in favor of the monomyth of the Jesus Seminar.

First of all, thanks for commenting. I do try to avoid misrepresenting people, so I appreciate that you noted where you think I’ve got it right and where I’ve got it wrong.

My comment on your Ehrman interview has to do with the character of the interview, not with the fact that you performed the interview. I’d certainly never turn down an opportunity to conduct a public interview with Ehrman, Richard Dawkins, or any number of folks whose ideas I don’t endorse. My take on your relationship with Ehrman comes from a sense (seven months old, to be clear) that you threw an awful lot of people under the bus in your effort to keep Ehrman’s ego floating.

That said, I last listened to that interview back in April, so I’ve re-downloaded it and plan to listen to it again while I make my way to work tomorrow. (I’ve got a long commute.) I’ll try to post some further thoughts, based on a fresh acquaintance with the interview, some time tomorrow.

While I have, indeed, grown less fond of neo-Aristotelianism over the years, I am in no way a fan of Bart Ehrman. I simply interviewed him because Beliefnet asked me to. And I found it to be an interesting interview, but it was in no an endorsement of his work.

What I still appreciate about Hauerwas, et al, is their focus on practice, though I now look on that from a perspective of Bourdieau and the like.

Tony