Review of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

I have just finished reading Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman, PhD. It is 218 pages long and has an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. Dr. Ehrman describes how he became a Christian as a teenager and how he went to Moody Bible Institute, the Wheaton College, and finally to Princeton. These universities are all Christian-founded universities. Chapter 1 discusses how Christianity was a literary religion (written not oral) like its ancestor Judaism even though the majority of its believers could not read or write (only 5 to 10 percent of 1 century people could read or write). Chapter 2. The Copyist of the Early Christian Writings: the claim by Dr. Ehrman in chapter two is that the oldest and existing manuscripts we have today are copies of a copies, which are copies of copies that were changed accidentally and sometimes intentionally in 1st and 2nd century during the time when there weren't any professional scribes, and it is difficult to know what the original author actually stated, and some scholars have concluded that we never know, however Dr. Ehrman feels we may not know in an absolute sense but we can have a reasonable idea of what is original by studying the words, styles of writing to figure out reasonably what text were additions examples are John 7:52-8:11 and Mark 16:9-16 are examples of known additions, the words used and the writing style give clues to these being additions. Some additions were used by Heretics and Orthodoxy to influence the message toward doctrines each were trying to push. Dr. Ehrman is an expert textual critic in New Testament. Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concern with the identification of and removal of transcriptional errors in the text of manuscripts. (Wikipedia.) Info backing the claim is John and Marks additions. We need to remember also that the first copyist (1st through the 4th century C.E.) were not professional scribes but amateurs who were wealthy Christian leaders or literate slaves who worked for wealthy Christians so it is probable that errors were made when copying the original authors. Chapter 3. Text of the New Testament: Rome, Palestine, and Alexandria (center of the early Christian movement) each had different documents that did not influence each other. Most scholars believe the Alexandrian manuscripts, Alexandria was a major intellectual center in the ancient world, were more of a reliable source and was more scrupulous, in other words a very pure form of early Christian writings was preserved decade after decade. Professional scribes did not exist until near the beginning of the fourth century, because Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianityin 312 C.E. . In 331 C.E. Constantine commissioned 50 copies of the Bible by Eusebius to be produced for major cities were he was having churches built. Where did the professional scribes (including Eusebius) get the texts they were going to copy (this was before the printing press)? They got them from the earliest amateurs copies, full of copyist errors. There were different regions where the copies were created Greek=Eastern, Latin=Western, Coptic=Egypt, and Syriac= Syria, each copy used local languages. Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome to produce an "official" Latin translation, called the Vulgate (Common). This lead to twice as many Latin manuscripts/text than Greek text also called Byzantine Text. The printing press revolutionized creating copies of text, the 1st book printed on the printing press was the Latin Vulgate Bible, it took six years. Erasmus produced the 1st printed (1516) text of the Greek manuscript, which was rifted with errors, this happen 1400 years after the originals. King James is based on Erasmus error ridden Greek Text, not the oldest and best manuscripts, for example in 1John 5:7-8, what is called the Johannine Comma, was not in the oldest and best Greek Manuscripts. The Textus Receptus or T. R. , a term used by textual critics to refer to that form of Greek text that is based on not, the oldest and best manuscripts, but on the form of text originally published by Erasmus, including the King James version who used this T. R. in its editions. Textual Criticism did not occur seriously until 1707, it was an edition of the Greek New Testament by John Mill, a fellow of Queens College, Oxford, were he found 30,000 variations or differences between the manuscripts he was using, and this was not exhaustive, but it opened the door to dispute what had been complacently accepted until that point, today there are more variations or differences in the know manuscripts than there are words in the New Testatment. His Greek New Testament alarmed Protestants that the Catholics would say that this is proof that Christians cannot be saved by faith alone (a key argument of Protestantism) but by Church Authority (a key argument of Catholicism) because these variations you need Apostolic authority to gain salvation. This book say something that is true( and I really never thought about it until he brought it out), that when we read something we automatically change it, so that we can understand what is being written in our own words, or in a way that includes our point of view (our past experiences, influences that affect our thoughts, etc.) He concluded that the bible is a human book written by humans and not inspired by God. As he concluded “For the only reason ( I came to think) for God to inspire the Bible would be so that his people would have his actual words; but if he really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he had miraculously inspired them in the first place. Given the circumstance that he didn’t preserve the words; the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn’t gone to the trouble of inspiring them." The writers of the gospels had different messages, and different ways that they saw Jesus. Luke, who borrowed from Mark, changed how he saw Jesus crucifixion, he could have copied marks description but he saw Jesus death differently from Mark. He also discusses textual criticism, its history, and the people who influenced textual criticism. As Ehrman brings out so to the scribes who was copying the copies of copies accidentally and intentionally made changes based on their interpretation of the situation. We also need to remember we did not have a printing press until the fifteen century, therefore for 1500 centuries it was copied by hand. People made errors in copying, also for the first three hundred centuries before the Roman Catholic Church became the state religion and had professional scribes, the original copies was copied by those who happened to literate enough to copy and they made errors in copying, so when you change the original you change the intent, and often times they were sloppy, lazy, inept and made mistakes. During the 1400 years scribes added, deleted, misspelled, and changed text to emphasize a point, to dispel a dispute internally and externally (Jews, Pagans, etc.) or role of women, etc. The scribes were human and so when they were reading a text would like any other human change the text so they could put it into words which made senses to them, just like when we read the text of something written, we read from our human needs, beliefs, worldview, opinions, love, longings, likes, dislikes and so forth, all these things influence our perception of what is in the text and so the text changes whether we want it to or not. However, the scribes went further than just merely reading it; they physically changed it and so changed the original meaning, because it was not copied word for word. Some words were misspelled, or changed accidentally or intentionally and so even if we read the bible is not the original and if we read the original we would still change it in our mind to “other words” or contexts in which we could understand it and so change the originally meaning. And as Dr. Ehrman concluded " the bible was written by humans trying to make sense of their own lives and situations." I would recommend this book to anyone who is sincere in seeking the truth of how the New Testament as we have it, is totally different from what was originally written. It is not the word of God, but simply words of Humans.