∎ [PDF] Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Bart D Ehrman 8601300042305 Books

Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Bart D Ehrman 8601300042305 Books

Download As PDF : Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Bart D Ehrman 8601300042305 Books

Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Bart D Ehrman 8601300042305 Books

Ehrman argues for two theses, one practical and one more abstract.

The practical thesis can be summarized as: We do not possess any of the original writings of the New Testament, and the copies we have are riddled with negligent and/or intentional alterations. Therefore, the New Testament we read today, which is based upon numerous altered copies, is not very close to the original text. And if the original text is the Word of God, the Word of God is lost.

The abstract thesis can be summarized as: For any text, both the author's and the reader's subjective beliefs and experiences condition the meaning of the words, and therefore color the interpretation of the text. As a result, there is no such thing as an objectively true interpretation of a text. The search for the "correct" meaning is fruitless. Therefore, no one can claim to know the true meaning of the text of the New Testament.

The upshot? The New Testament we read today is of human, and not divine, origin (practical thesis), and, in any event, any claim to "the One True Interpretation" is in principle false (abstract thesis).

I will not take a stand on Ehrman's claims but hope I've faithfully outlined them for people deciding whether to purchase the book. I am familiar with but not well-versed in either the New Testament or textual criticism. Nonetheless, I found his arguments and analysis easy to track. The broad historical information was interesting, and the biblical passages he focuses on to illustrate his points are engaging instead of arcane. Some may consider this book anti-religious, but Ehrman's tone is respectful and honest, not polemical. For such a short, accessible book, the reader can gain a lot from reading it.


Tags : Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why [Bart D. Ehrman] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <P>For almost 1, 500 years, the New Testament manuscripts were copied by hand&ndash;&ndash;and mistakes and intentional changes abound in the competing manuscript versions. Religious and biblical scholar Bart Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus,Bart D. Ehrman,Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why,HarperOne,0060859512,Christianity - General,History,Bible.,Biblical Criticism & Interpretation - General,Christianity,Christianity - History - General,Criticism,Criticism, Textual,General Adult,Manuscripts,Misquoting Jesus; The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why; Jesus Misquoted; Bart D Ehrman; Bart Ehrman; Ehrman; Bart Erman; Bart Ehrmen; biblical studies; christianity; religion; New Testament; Jesus Before the Gospels; How Jesus Became God; Did Jesus Exist; Jesus book; Forged book; Forged; Jesus Interrupted; God's problem; religious studies; religious studies; history; religion and spirituality; religious history; world history,N.T.,NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARY,New Testament,Non-Fiction,RELIGION Biblical Criticism & Interpretation General,RELIGION Biblical Studies General,RELIGION Biblical Studies History & Culture,RELIGION Christianity General,RELIGION History,RELIGIOUS,Religion,Religion - Church History,ReligionChristianity - History,ReligionEthics,United States,Biblical Criticism & Interpretation - General,Christianity - History - General,RELIGION Biblical Criticism & Interpretation General,RELIGION Biblical Studies General,RELIGION Biblical Studies History & Culture,RELIGION Christianity General,RELIGION History,ReligionChristianity - History,Religion - Church History,Bible.,Criticism,Criticism, Textual,Manuscripts,N.T.,New Testament,New Testament Commentary,Religion,Christianity

Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Bart D Ehrman 8601300042305 Books Reviews

As a textual critic, Erhman does a thorough job of illustrating the meandering path the New Testament has taken from the original writings to what we read today. I don’t challenge his work as a critic and can easily accept the multitude of errors, amendments, exclusions, and modifications he presents. However, ones faith system doesn't necessarily depend on the validity of a virgin birth, the exact definition of the Trinity, or other miracles & orthodoxy. While one can’t deny these things, one can’t exactly confirm them either. That’s where Erhman loses me. He connects textual variations with a denial of orthodoxy – essentially, since God isn’t acting the way he expects, he abandons faith and uses textual criticism as proof. I don’t get that at all. There are hundreds of books about Abraham Lincoln. Some of them are near works of fiction and even the best have historical errors and bad assumptions. That doesn’t mean that Lincoln wasn’t the 16th President and never spoke at Gettysburg. I know the weight placed on the New Testament is much greater than any Lincoln biography, but that would seem to be a reason to extract what one can from the works rather than abandon them. It’s possible that the different gospels were included because they provided a different point of view. Maybe Mark was more data driven than Matthew and that difference allows another angle on Jesus’ teachings. I’m glad I read the book and appreciate Erhman’s scholarship, but I challenge his conclusions.
A well written book about the evolution of the Bible, particularly the New Testament, and how our present text came to be in all its various forms. Dr. Ehrman begins with a brief summary of his own life. From an "ordinary kid" he becomes a fundamentalist Christian believing the Bible to be wholly inspired. During his graduate program in a Christian school he develops an interest in the wide variety of historical documents that have, through many generations come down to us a our present Bible. He becomes, in short, a textual-scholar, and has an epiphany!

Ehrman quickly learns that there are no longer any "original texts" anywhere. The earliest texts found, more fragmented the farther back one goes, come from the 2nd century some 100 years after Jesus' death. None of the original Apostles, nor Paul are any longer alive at that point, and what early notes exist for geographically fragmented communities are already copies of lost originals. Even if the literal-original writing was "inspired by God" as fundamentalists claim, by the opening of the 2nd century the earliest copies of these writings have already passed through human hands and the real originals are no more. Except for the Christian community of Alexandria where professional scribes already existed, all of the early copies were made by amateur believers who, as it happened could read and write, and so copied texts for their congregations; sometimes well and sometimes poorly. It was not until late in the 4th century that more professional scribes assumed the copyist role.

Roughly the first half of the book is taken up with the history of textual criticism. Ehrman leads us through early (17th century) classification attempts and the techniques developed to determine which texts were "more original" than others. Ehrman notes that in many many cases even that matter cannot be decided with any finality. That the modern obsession with the text began after the Reformation is no accident. Protestant scholars were far more compulsive about the text than Catholics. Protestant theology and doctrine rests entirely on the text, while Catholicism has its priestly class for precisely the task of interpreting the text in what ever form it takes. By the 18th century, scholars had identified some 30,000 textual variations in the manuscripts that come together as the then relatively stabilized New Testament.

Most of these variations were simply mistakes made by non-professional copyists. Sometimes they left out a word or whole sentences. Sometimes what there were of literal originals were physically degraded even when first copied. Copyists sometimes had to "fill in the blanks", a smudged word, or a bleed-through from some earlier text on the page for example. So why not go back to the more professional Alexandrian texts and call those "closest to original"? Because while the vast majority of changes were copy errors, not all were merely that. Here and there changes were made for theological and socio-political reasons. In point of fact (something he does not mention) the Alexandrian scholars were among those who, by the early 5th Century, were considered among the heretical sects by the then solidifying Roman Church. Ehrman does not mention is the textual difference between the modern Western (Roman) and Eastern (Greek and Eastern European "Orthodox") churches. His aim is historical, and he does cover the early Greek texts whose alterations became mixed in with all of the others.

In the second half of the book Ehrman covers three types of changes made deliberately by one group of copyists or another so as to make the text easier to read and better line up with the various theological opinions and social controversies of the time, each propounded by groups of believers who were doing their own copying! In the end, Ehrman is forced to conclude that even the lost originals were probably not autodidacts (texts dictated by God) because if God had wanted Christians to have his un-corrupted words in perpetuity, He would have made sure the originals survived.

I gave the book 5 stars not because the book's subject was of great interest to me, but because Dr. Ehrman does such a marvelous job of treating a scholarly subject (many many references are provided) with easy to read language aimed at non-scholars of the subject like myself.
Ehrman argues for two theses, one practical and one more abstract.

The practical thesis can be summarized as We do not possess any of the original writings of the New Testament, and the copies we have are riddled with negligent and/or intentional alterations. Therefore, the New Testament we read today, which is based upon numerous altered copies, is not very close to the original text. And if the original text is the Word of God, the Word of God is lost.

The abstract thesis can be summarized as For any text, both the author's and the reader's subjective beliefs and experiences condition the meaning of the words, and therefore color the interpretation of the text. As a result, there is no such thing as an objectively true interpretation of a text. The search for the "correct" meaning is fruitless. Therefore, no one can claim to know the true meaning of the text of the New Testament.

The upshot? The New Testament we read today is of human, and not divine, origin (practical thesis), and, in any event, any claim to "the One True Interpretation" is in principle false (abstract thesis).

I will not take a stand on Ehrman's claims but hope I've faithfully outlined them for people deciding whether to purchase the book. I am familiar with but not well-versed in either the New Testament or textual criticism. Nonetheless, I found his arguments and analysis easy to track. The broad historical information was interesting, and the biblical passages he focuses on to illustrate his points are engaging instead of arcane. Some may consider this book anti-religious, but Ehrman's tone is respectful and honest, not polemical. For such a short, accessible book, the reader can gain a lot from reading it.