http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?endeca=1&cds2Pid=86&isbn=0060738170
(Nothing new here if you're familiar with the background of the early church's wanderlust. No wonder the good news turned into doom and gloom along the corridors of religious history.)
ABOUT THE BOOK
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
FROM OUR EDITORS
Dr. Bart Ehrman, the author of Lost Christianities and Lost Scriptures, has devoted his scholarly life to the recovery and interpretation of ancient biblical texts. He is unapologetic about his intense commitment:
In the absence of original manuscripts of the books of the New Testament, he notes, questions of transmission and text become paramount. Misquoting Jesus offers a revelatory view of the Gospels and Paul's Epistles, arguing that scribes and editors altered almost all extant manuscripts. Part memoir, part biblical history, part textual criticism, Misquoting Jesus challenges us to look anew at texts that have shaped our culture.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
When world-class biblical scholar Bart Ehrman first began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman tells the story behind the mistakes and changes that ancient scribes made to the New Testament and shows the great impact they had upon the Bible we use today. He frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultraconservative views of the Bible.
Since the advent of the printing press and the accurate reproduction of texts, most people have assumed that when they read the New Testament they are reading an exact copy of Jesus's words or Saint Paul's writings. And yet, for almost fifteen hundred years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological, and political disputes of their day. Both mistakes and intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct. For the first time, Ehrman reveals where and why these changes were made and how scholars go about reconstructing the original words of the New Testament as closely as possible.
Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our cherished biblical stories and widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes -- alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
"The Bible"-its use in the singular can gloss over the fact that we do not have access to the original text, but only to manuscripts of a relatively late provenance produced at different times and places and containing among them thousands of variant wordings. An accomplished scholar of early Christianity, Ehrman (religious studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) ventures out of the ivory tower in this accessible lay introduction to New Testament textual criticism. He sketches the development of New Testament literature, the gradual accumulation of errors therein through the accidental or intentional revisions of copyists, and attempts (beginning with Erasmus in the 16th century) to reconstruct the original text. Since mainstream study editions of the Bible have long drawn attention to the existence of alternate readings, the reasonably well-informed reader will not find much revolutionary analysis here. But Ehrman convincingly argues that even some generally received passages are late additions, which is particularly interesting in the case of those verses with import for doctrinal issues such as women's ordination or the Atonement. Recommended for all public libraries.-Charles Seymour, Mabee Learning Resources Ctr., Wayland Baptist Univ., Plainview, TX Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Product Details:
ISBN: 0060738170
Format: Hardcover, 242pp
Pub. Date: November 2005
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Barnes & Noble Sales Rank: 114
Man! Somebody forgot to tell me. :wink: The good news of Jesus has now gone to doom and gloom? Who started that silly rumor anyway?
