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Wed 15 Mar, 2006 10:09 am
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
by Bart Ehrman
Book Description
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.
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist by Bryce Christensen:
The popular perception of the Bible as a divinely perfect book receives scant support from Ehrman, who sees in Holy Writ ample evidence of human fallibility and ecclesiastical politics. Though himself schooled in evangelical literalism, Ehrman has come to regard his earlier faith in the inerrant inspiration of the Bible as misguided, given that the original texts have disappeared and that the extant texts available do not agree with one another. Most of the textual discrepancies, Ehrman acknowledges, matter little, but some do profoundly affect religious doctrine. To assess how ignorant or theologically manipulative scribes may have changed the biblical text, modern scholars have developed procedures for comparing diverging texts. And in language accessible to nonspecialists, Ehrman explains these procedures and their results. He further explains why textual criticism has frequently sparked intense controversy, especially among scripture-alone Protestants. In discounting not only the authenticity of existing manuscripts but also the inspiration of the original writers, Ehrman will deeply divide his readers. Although he addresses a popular audience, he undercuts the very religious attitudes that have made the Bible a popular book. Still, this is a useful overview for biblical history collections.
Charleston Post & Courier: "Offers a fascinating look into the field of textual criticism and evidence that Scriptures have been altered."
Dallas Morning News: "Whichever side you sit on regarding Biblical inerrancy, this is a rewarding read."
Washington Post: "One of the unlikeliest bestsellers of the year."
This has been an academic cottage industry for 1900 years, nothing new.
It is one thing to say that something is not right and another to provide substantiated facts of the differences.
From Papias to Origen to Pamphilus to Eusebius, the four gospel canon got one hell of a work-over to produce the rather ludicrous text which is revered today by the religio-loonies as divine revealed truth.
Those folks have too big a stake in their own bigotry to accept that they could have been wrong all along, so mountains of "proof" that the texts are unreliable won't change things. The cult of personality centered on the putative Jesus is actually a rather recent phenomenon (beginning with the last great evangelical movement in England more than 150 years ago), and has little or no reference to reputable biblical scholarship.
The four gospel canon as authorized by Eusebius was enshrined at Nicea in 325 CE. That's not going to change. It is ironic, though, that the very men who accepted Eusebius' credentials as a scholar to pronounce on the authenticity of the cannon were the same men who attacked him both before and after the Nicean Council as an Arian--which is to say, someone who did not accept the dvinity of Jesus. They were likely correct, although Eusebius was wise enough to commit nothing definitive on that topic to writing.
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