Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Paperback – February 5, 2007

When Bart Ehrman wrote MISQUOTING JESUS, he kicked an evangelical hornet's nest, eliciting vehement opposition because he challenged their premise that the Bible is infallible and inerrant. He did so by presenting the fact that hundreds of thousands of errors and variations are found in the 5,700 biblical manuscripts on which the Bible is based.Ehrman's chosen field of study is textual criticism, which is determining what the authors wrote when the original manuscripts no longer exist. This is the first book written on the that field of study.Erhman traces how manuscripts were copied by hand, usually by nonprofes- sional scribes, in the first two to three centuries, and the problems inherent in that process. Changes they made in their copies were typically inadvertant mistakes, though some changes were deliberate to correct perceived errors or to alter the theology. This problem was so common that the author of Revelation wrote a warning of divine punishment against those who would add to or delete from his book. (Rev. 22:18–19). The problem also arose during the Old Testament period: "How can you say, 'We are wise, for we have the law of the Lord,' when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely." (Jeremiah 8:8)In sum, the original biblical manuscripts no longer exist. The extant copies made centuries later contain thousands of changes that make it difficult to know what the original text was. Ehrman asserts that the New Testament is the product of fallible human beings. How can the scripture we have be inerrant when it has so many changes from the original?One way evangelicals circumvent this issue it to assert that the originals were inerrant, not our modern copies. This distinction may be lost on the average Christian in the pew who believes the Bible she has today is infallible. When believers learn otherwise, their faith may collapse like a house of cards if it is based upon the inerrancy premise. Besides, since the original manuscripts are long gone, one can never know if they truly lacked contradictions.Five books were written purporting to refute Ehrman and to reassure Christians they can trust the Bible. I have read and reviewed two of them (Misquoting Truth by Timothy Paul Jones and Lost in Transmission by Nicholas Perrin). These critics, however, did not deny that the manuscripts are rife with errors. The errors don't matter, they argue, because almost all are minor errors of spellings or punctuation. Ehrman agrees: "Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant."Given the sheer quantity of variations, Jones and his colleagues realize they can't defend "inerrancy" as it is commnly understood. Consequently, they essentially move the goal posts by redefining the term as expressing truth despite variations that don't much matter.But a few of the discrepancies do matter. For example, the famous encounter with the woman caught in adultery is found only in the gospel of John (7:53–8:12). But it was not originally in the Gospel of John; it was added by later scribes. The evidence is that the story is not found in our oldest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of John, and its writing style is very different from the rest of John. Since this story was not in the original, is it the infallible truth?A second example is the last 12 verses of Mark, which are not found in the oldest and best manuscripts. Those added verses unclude references to speaking in tongues and to handling poisonous snakes. (16:17-18) Some Christian sects base their worship practices on those verses. Since the verses were not in the original gospel, are they the infallible truth or not?A third example is a verse that Ehrman contends was a late addition to First Corrinth- ians: "It is a shame for women to speak in church." (14:35) This verse seems out of context, it was placed elsewhere in some manuscripts, and it conflicts with other things Paul wrote in the same book. Critic Timothy Paul Jones argues the verse probably was by Paul, but admits the verse has been abused at times to dishonor and subjugate women.Ehrman sums it up his book this way:"Christianity from the outset was a bookish religion that stressed certain texts as authoritative scripture... However, we don't have these authoritative texts. This is a textually oriented religion whose texts have been changed, surviving only in copies that vary from one another, sometimes in highly significant ways."A born-again Christian who attended Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College, Ehrman embraced inerrancy. When he studied at Princeton, he came across not only the variations discussed above, but also various biblical contradictions. For example, in Mark 2:26, Jesus cited where King David and his men were hungry and ate the temple bread “when Abiathar was the high priest.” But 1 Sam. 21:1–6 states that David did this when Abiathar’s father Ahimelech was the high priest. An evangelical reference book called Hard Sayings of the Bible (1996) concedes, "the truth is that this is one of the problems in Scripture for which we do not have a fully satisfactory solution." This suggests either Mark, the author of 1Samuel, or Jesus got it wrong. If it was Mark or the 1Samuel author, then the scripture is not inerrant.Though the book is not primarily about factual contradictions, Ehrman mentions several more:• Mark 1:2-3 says he's quoting Isaiah, but the words are actually from Exod. 23:20 and one from Mal. 3:1.• In Mark 4, Jesus says later that the mustard seed is “the smallest of all seeds on the earth. ” It isn’t.• Mark says that Jesus was crucified the day after the Passover meal was eaten (14:12; 15:25) and John says he died the day before it was eaten (John 19:14).• Luke says that after Jesus’s birth, Joseph and Mary returned to Nazareth just over a month after they had come to Bethlehem (and performed the rites of purification; Luke 2:39), whereas Matthew indicates they instead fled to Egypt (Matt. 2:19–22).• Paul says that after he converted on the way to Damascus he did not go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before him (Gal. 1:16–17), whereas the book of Acts says that that was the first thing he did after leaving Damascus (Acts 9:26)If one believes the Bible is infallible, then such contra- dictions are bothersome, since they believe the words are god-breathed. Ehrman, on the other hand, now sees scripture as the product of fallible human beings.The two books by Ehrman critics referred to above concede more ground than they recover. Both admit that much of Ehrman's book is accurate. Their case depends upon the term "inerrancy" not meaning what it is commonly understood to mean, including by the average Christian in the pew. There are some reasonable differences in interpreting evidence between Ehrman and his evangelical critics, but they did not identify any clear factual error. Jones and Perrin land a few jabs, but clearly fail to deliver a knockout blow to Misquoting Jesus. ###

I know, almost everything that could have been said about this book is already said and quite eloquently at that. Why then a new review? To offer an apology (in classical Greek meaning) for this review, I need to first give a brief background.I am a physicist by education (theoretical/nuclear). I got interested in wide variety of spiritual experiences (almost every type you can imagine) and eventually came to Christianity. Given my background, I could not allow myself to be a blind believer; I had to be a "knower". I put to rigorous test everything. Christianity is not about blind faith, but about truth. In fact I encourage my fellow Christians to not abhor criticism, but welcome it. If your beliefs/knowledge of truth can not withstand opposing views/findings then they don't deserve following. In addition, sometimes the critics point you to directions you never noticed or thought about and your OWN research validates your beliefs.Now about the book itself; Of course the book from research standpoint is impeccable and Ehrman is one of the greatest authorities in textual research. But....His conclusions are highly illogical and not put to actual scientific test. Well, critics might argue that he could not have put his conclusions to scientific test, because the number of manuscripts is very scares. I will disprove that a little later.First, let me point out one of the most glaring illogical points in his book.He goes at length to show that in first century the number of educated people were very low (which is absolutely true), then he makes a point that many scribes were scarcely literate, just to know the letters, so they could copy the manuscripts(true again). Now, the illogical part: scribes, that are borderline illiterate, all of a sudden are several degrees of magnitude more literate, to both understand what is written in the manuscript and being able to make a meaningful change! Just remember yourself at the first grade, when you were at the same level as the scribes mentioned above, you were very careful to copy the words from your textbook, that's all you could do.Now about the scientific test of his theory;He outlines number of reasons and ways that the original text could have changed and transmitted to us and without real test of his thesis declares since it could have happened, then it should have happened. But wait a minute. Yes, certainly it happened, but the most important question is to what degree and what is the rate of that change!Again, remember your elementary school days, the amazement and awe that you experienced to learn that the water carved the Grand Canyon. You leaned that water is able to grind the rock. But what is the rate that is the most important question. You wouldn't expect to create a Grand Canyon in your back yard as a weekend science project. Just to point that water can carve deep canyons and not give some scientific calculations, but instead implicitly suggesting that it doesn't matter, will give some people impression that the weekend science project about is possible.Now, to the most important part, that lacks in the book (rate of change and amount of possible change). In my early twenties I had the same questions that Bart had; since until 15th century we didn't have printing press and books were transmitted by manual copying, how confident can we be that we possess the accurate representation of that was written in first century.Here is how I attacked this dilemma. Yes, like him I understood that we don't have all the original manuscripts to check against, but we have something else, that VERY conclusively could validate the quality of transmission one way or the other. NT was translated to several old languages relatively early one. To name a few, Peshitta (Old Syriac), done in second century, Armenian done in fifth century, Old Slavic, done in eleventh century. From these translations to printing press there were fourteen, ten and four centuries. All these old translations belonged to DIFFERENT, independent churches, so all the possibilities that Bart mentions should have happened in these texts also, and after the invention of the printing press, when these versions of the Bible were first printed, just comparing them to each other at that point, you should see the possibilities mentioned by Bart manifest themselves and you should be able to measure the rate of change. Yes, given just the ONE specified version of Bible mentioned above, you still have the same issue (not many surviving manuscript), but remember, we are comparing them to each other in fifteenth century, where each one had ample time to get "corrupted". So since each one had gone through manual reproduction through centuries, at this point in time each one should have accumulated enough "transmission errors" to be able the calculate the rate of inaccuracies of transmission. Let me stress here; if there are glaring discrepancies, we still will not know which translation if the correct one, BUT, we still have to find out that these discrepancies are there and their number is so significant that we can not trust out modern Bibles. I did quite an extensive cross check between several language translations, and I am happy to report that the differences between versions of New Testament independently traveling through many centuries were SURPRISINGLY few, even to my expectations.In conclusion: I trust Bart's intentions and sincerity, but I will challenge him to conduct very thorough analyzes along the lines outlined above (especially because he can involve the most knowledgeable guys and conduct this in even grander scale than I did) and I am sure at the end of it, his shattered beliefs might be made whole again.

This is a very methodical and enlightening overview of how biblical textual critics do their work. I was thoroughly engaged in this book from beginning to end, as the author provided examples of how the NT manuscripts have changed over time, sometimes due to error, and sometimes intentionally, as well as explaining the motivations for the intentional changes. In the end, his conclusion matches my own - if this is supposedly the inspired word of a god, then why has this god allowed the original inspired words to be lost? It seems far more realistic to believe this has been a very human endeavor from the start.