Along Came An Eichenwald

by Stephen Rodgers

Every year around Christmas time, “we” get “presents.” I use scare quotes here because when I say “we” I mean “Christians” and when I say “presents” I mean “attacks on our religion by the mainstream media.” And if we’re being thorough, this happens at Easter as well…remember the “Jesus’ Wife” manuscript drama from a few years back?

Often these articles have some sort of seasonality to them: an article at Christmas might attack certain conceptions of the Star of Bethlehem. I suppose that makes sense, although I have to admit I haven’t noticed any corresponding pieces in the New York Times addressing…oh, let’s say…inconsistencies in the Qu’ran right when Ramadan begins.

So when Kurt Eichenwald’s article “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s A Sin” appeared in Newsweek right before Christmas, I really wasn’t surprised that it had showed up. Based on past experience, it was right on time. What did surprise me was how fundamentally confused… or dishonest… the author was. In fact, the author was so far afield of accepted scholarship on the Bible that even some of the scholars he quoted… many of them admittedly hostile to Christianity themselves… have been publicly distancing themselves from the article.

That’s a special kind of wrong.

Still the article itself is informative. This is (apparently) what some people believe about the Word of God in particular, and Christian doctrine in general. Or in some cases, this is what secular apologists hostile to Christianity want people to believe. That’s a scary thought.

To that end, I thought it might be helpful to collect some of the responses to the article. These serve not only to refute the article itself, but in many cases provide valuable context on some of the issues that Christians would do well to familiarize themselves with. Some responses are longer than others; some responses are more comprehensive than others. And honestly the respondents represent a somewhat diverse set of theological positions and convictions. But they all share a common feature in that they expose the Newsweek article for the factually-challenged hit-piece that it blatantly was.

Responses