Name: Misquoting Jesus
Rating: 3.79 (10 reviews)
ISBN: 9786130787585

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June 14, 2017

Misquoting Jesus – Bart Ehrman – 2005

Bart begins by giving some background information about his life, his conversion to Christianity, and how he was indoctrinated with the teaching that the Bible is completely infallible. This false premise (I believe) has set him up to have a crisis of faith.

This book is for laypeople to understand the field of Biblical textual criticism. I absolutely loved this book and wish that it was five times longer- it made me want to dig in and look at the manuscripts (being aided by a teacher who knows Greek, of course) and see how they relate to each other, in the “families” of texts, as Ehrman calls them. I want to see how different texts shed light on how we read scripture, and how these differences relate to the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible!

Early on, (page 36) Ehrman explains how we got the 27 books of the New Testament: “As it turns out, we are able to pinpoint the first time that any Christian of record listed the twenty-seven books of our New Testament as the books of the New Testament – neither more nor fewer. Surprising as it may seem, this Christian was writing in the second half of the fourth century, nearly three hundred years after the books of the New Testament had themselves been written. The author was the powerful bishop of Alexandria named Athanasius. In the year 367 C.E., Athanasius wrote his annual pastoral letter to the Egyptian churches under his jurisdiction, and in it he included advice concerning which books should be read as scripture in the churches. He lists our twenty-seven books, excluding all others. This is the first surviving instance of anyone affirming our set of books as the New Testament. And even Athanasius did not settle the matter. Debates continued for decades, even centuries. The books we call the New Testament were not gathered together into one canon and considered scripture, finally and ultimately, until hundreds of years after the books themselves had first been produced.” (p. 36)

The early manuscripts, Ehrman contends, were copied by laypeople of the church, some who were not literate. Another problem that compounded the possibility for errors in copying the original manuscripts was that there were not separations between words in the original Greek text. This could pose problems, for example: godisnowhere – this could mean “God is now here” or “God is nowhere” – I realize this is an oversimplification of the problem, nevertheless, errors could creep into a text that did not have punctuation or separation between words!

Regarding these mistakes, Ehrman said:

“One of the leading questions that textual critics must deal with is how to get back to the original text – the text as the author first wrote it – given the circumstance that our manuscripts are so full of mistakes. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that once a mistake was made, it could become firmly embedded in the textual tradition, more firmly embedded, in fact, than the original. That is to say, once a scribe changes a text – whether accidentally or intentionally – then those changes are permanent in his manuscript (unless, of course, another scribe comes along to correct the mistake). The next scribe who copies that manuscript copies those mistakes (thinking they are what the text said), and he adds mistakes of his own. The next scribe who then copies that manuscript copies the mistakes of both his predecessors and adds mistakes of his own, and so on. The only way mistakes get corrected is when a scribe recognizes that a predecessor has made an error and tries to resolve it. There is no guarantee, however, that a scribe who tries to correct a mistake corrects it correctly. That is, by changing what he thinks is an error, he may in fact change it incorrectly, so now there are three forms of the text: the original, the error, and the incorrect attempt to resolve the error. Mistakes multiply and get repeated; sometimes they get corrected and sometimes they get compounded. And so it goes. For centuries.” (p. 57)

One of the specific examples that Ehrman shows as an example of what he believes was not in the original text of the New Testament is the story of the woman taken in adultery in John 8. He writes, “Despite the brilliance of the story, its captivating quality, and its inherent intrigue, there is one other enormous problem that it poses. As it turns out, it was not originally in the Gospel of John. In fact, it was not originally part of any of the Gospels. It was added later by scribes.” (p. 64)

While this may be true, since we don’t have any of the original documents, how can Ehrman really know this for certain? I contend that he cannot, as we don’t have the original text penned by John (or his scribe) – we can only really say that the story of the woman taken in adultery is not found in any of the oldest surviving texts of the book of John. While I believe that Ehrman is right, that this (probably) wasn’t in the original text of the book of John, I am okay with this. Even Ehrman states that there was an oral tradition that this took place, therefore, perhaps a scribe added the oral tradition to the text of John.

Ehrman’s contention that the woman taken in adultery story is not original to the text are that the words used in this story, the writing style, does not match what we find in the rest of John, and it includes words and phrases that are otherwise alien to the Gospel. He writes, “the conclusion is unavoidable: this passage was not originally part of the Gospel.” (p. 65)

On the basis of these arguments, Ehrman is, in my opinion, correct. But as a Latter-day Saint familiar with the methods used by Mormon in the Book of Mormon, coupled with my knowledge of the documentary hypothesis as it relates to the Old Testament, I believe that the integrity of the text can still be maintained. How is this possible?

Mormon took documents, each with their own perspectives and viewpoints, and collected these and put together a narrative that “flows” – especially in the book of Alma. While some of the text of the Book of Mormon is (mostly) from the pen (stylus?) of the original authors, take 1 Nephi for example, much of the text of the Book of Mormon is a redacted version of multiple accounts. The scribe who inserted the woman taken in adultery story may have had access to a written account of this story, perhaps even in the position that it appears in our book of John, and simply put it where we have it now. Or perhaps the scribe had access to the story from another account written by another author, and put this in John where he or she thought it would fit in the flow of the narrative. At this point in time, with what we have in front of us with regard to the oldest texts, we just do not know. I am okay with this being an oral tradition – the part some would struggle with is whether the account is true or not.

We see this same problem with regard to the Exodus- the numbers used in this account make for an impossible narrative. Does this mean the Exodus did not happen? I do not think so, but it certainly did not happen as it was written in the text of the book of Exodus. The same can be said of the conquest of the land of Canaan as contained in the book of Joshua. Archaeological evidence shows us that this conquest simply did not happen. The walls of Jericho came down centuries before the Israelites arrived, indeed, the main claim in the book of Joshua, that a complete and total conquest by Israel – is false (Marc Zvi Brettler, How to read the Bible, p. 95-97). Scholars believe that the book of Joshua is incorrect history, but this does not mean that we cannot learn lessons from this book. In the same way, as the story of the woman taken in adultery is questionable that it ever happened (to scholars), it does not mean that we cannot learn from this experience. But this is all an academic exercise as we do not have John’s original.

Ehrman also shows how the last 12 verses of Mark are not in the oldest texts, as well as the “Johannine Comma” found in John 5:7-8, “There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one.”

Ehrman states that “the Johannine Comma found in the manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate (by Jerome, but not in the vast majority of Greek theologians, since it is the only passage in the entire Bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons in the godhead, but that the three constitute just one God. (p. 80-81)

Our Current Situation

Ehrman points out that we have very many differing copies of the New Testament. He says:

“In addition to these Greek manuscripts, we know of about ten thousand manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, not to mention the manuscripts of other versions, such as the Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Old Georgian, Church Slavonic, and the like…

In addition, we have the writings of church fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Athanasius among the Greeks and Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine among the Latins – all of them quoting the texts of the New Testament in places, making it possible to reconstruct what their manuscripts (now lost, for the most part) must have looked like.

What of the abundance of evidence, what can we say about the total number of variants known today? Scholars differ significantly in their estimates – some say there are 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more! We do not know for sure because, despite impressive developments in computer technology, no one has yet been able to count them all. Perhaps, as I indicated earlier, it is best simply to leave the matter in comparative terms. There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. (p. 90-91)

Ehrman then goes on to show how the scribes made accidental changes, as well as intentional ones. He notes that the scribes worked to “harmonize” passages in the Gospels that had issues or inconsistencies. He states, “Scribal tendency to “harmonize” passages in the Gospels is ubiquitous.” (p. 97)

In chapter 4, “A quest for origins” Ehrman goes through the scholars that worked on critical scholarship of the New Testament. His explanation of Johann Wettstein’s work on 1 Timothy 3:16 was enlightening. (p. 113)

Hebrews and the Forsaken Jesus

Hebrews 2:8-9 has a variation in the readings that was enlightening. Some of the texts state that Jesus died “apart from God” and some state that Jesus died “by the grace of God” – the KJV says that he died “by the grace of God”, but Ehrman makes that case that it should read “apart from God” when he says:

There is every reason to think that “apart from God” is precisely what the author of Hebrews said. For this less-attested reading is also more consistent with the theology of Hebrews (“intrinsic probabilities”). Never in this entire Epistle does the word grace (CHARIS) refer to Jesus’ death or to the benefits of salvation that accrue as a result of it. Instead, it is consistently connected with the give of salvation that is yet to be bestowed upon the believer by the goodness of God (see especially Heb. 4:16; also 10:29; 12:15; 13:25). To be sure, Christians historically have been more influenced by other New Testament authors, notably Paul, who saw Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross as the supreme manifestation of the grace of God. But Hebrews does not use the term in this way, even though scribes who thought that this author was Paul may not have realized that.

On the other hand, the statement that Jesus died “apart from God” – enigmatic when taken in isolation- makes compelling sense in its broader literary context in the book of Hebrews. Whereas this author never refers to Jesus’ death as a manifestation of divine “grace,” he repeatedly emphasizes that Jesus died a fully human, shameful death, totally removed from the realm whence he came, the realm of God; his sacrifice, as a result, was accepted as the perfect expiation for sin. Moreover, God did not intervene in Jesus’ passion and did nothing to minimize his pain. Thus, for example, Heb. 5:7 speaks of Jesus, in the face of death, beseeching God with loud cries and tears. In 12:2 he is said to endure the “shame” of his death, not because God sustained him, but because he hoped for vindication. Throughout this Epistle, Jesus is said to experience human pain and death, like other human beings “in every respect.” His was not an agony attenuated by special dispensation.” (p. 147-148)

I loved this! I believe that this is the message of Hebrews (or at least one of the main messages) – that Jesus did what he did, suffered what he suffered, “apart from God” (CHORIS THEOU)… Ehrman scores huge points with this argument!

Differing views of the message of Christ in the first few centuries

I like how Ehrman illustrated briefly that there were differing views on the message of Christ, and what it meant to be a Christian in the first few centuries. He states:

During the second and third centuries, there was no agreed upon canon – and no agreed upon theology. Instead, there was a wide range of diversity: diverse groups asserting diverse theologies based on diverse written texts, all claiming to be written by apostles of Jesus.

Some of these Christian groups insisted that God had created this world; others maintained that the true God had not created this world (which is, after all, an evil place), but that it was the result of a cosmic disaster. Some of these groups insisted that the Jewish scriptures were given by the one true God; others claimed that the Jewish scriptures belong to the inferior God of the Jews, who was not the one true God. Some of these groups insisted that Jesus Christ was the one Son of God who was both completely human and completely divine; other groups insisted that Christ was completely human and not at all divine; others maintained that he was completely divine and not at all human; and yet others asserted that Jesus Christ was two things – a divine being (Christ) and a human being (Jesus). Some of these groups believed that Christ’s death brought about the salvation of the world; others maintained that Christ’s death had nothing to do with the salvation of this world; yet other groups insisted that Christ had never actually died.

Each and every one of these viewpoints – and many others besides- were topics of constant discussion, dialogue, and debate in the early centuries of the church, while Christians of various persuasions tried to convince others of the truth of their own claims. Only one group eventually “won out” in these debates. It was this group that decided what the Christian creeds would be: the creeds would affirm that there is only one God, the Creator; that Jesus his Son is both human and divine; and that salvation came by his death and resurrection. This was also the group that decided which books would be included in the canon of scripture. By the end of the fourth century, most Christians agreed that the canon was to include the four Gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul, and a group of other letters such as 1 John and 1 Peter, along with the Apocalypse of John. And who had been copying these texts? Christians from the congregations themselves, Christians who were intimately aware of and even involved in the debates over the identity of God, the status of the Jewish scriptures, the nature of Christ, and the effects of his death.” (p. 153-154)

Ehrman’s assertion that the passage in Luke where Jesus “sweat great drops of blood” is an antidocetic change in the text of Luke. (p. 165) There are several antidocetic passages in the New Testament, notable among them 1 John 4:1-2 and 1 John 5:6. I had never before considered this passage in Luke to be an antidocetic insertion in the text.

Ehrman’s conclusion was powerful:

“As the years went by and I continued to study the text of the New Testament, I gradually became less judgmental toward the scribes who changed the scriptures they copied. Early on, I suppose I was a bit surprised, maybe even scandalized, by the number of changes these anonymous copyists of the text had made in the process of transcription, as they altered the words of the texts, putting the text in their own words rather than the words of the original authors. But I softened my view of these transcribers of the text as I (slowly) came to realize that what they were doing with the text was not all that different from what each of us does every time we read a text.

For the more I studied, the more I saw that reading a text necessarily involves interpreting a text. I suppose when I started my studies I had a rather unsophisticated view of reading: that the point of reading a text is simply to let the text “speak for itself,” to uncover the meaning inherent in its words. The reality, I came to see, is that meaning is not inherent and texts do not speak for themselves. If texts could speak for themselves, then everyone honestly and openly reading a text would agree on what the text says. But interpretations of texts abound, and people in fact do not agree on what the texts mean. This is obviously true of the texts of scripture: simply look at the hundreds, or even thousands, of ways people interpret the book of Revelation, or consider all the different Christian denominations, filled with intelligent and well-meaning people who base their views of how the church should be organized and function on the Bible, yet all of them coming to radically different conclusions (Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Appalachian snake-handlers, Greek Orthodox, and on and on)…

Once readers put a text in other words, however, they have changed the words. This is not optional when reading; it is not something you can choose not to do when you peruse a text. The only way to make sense of a text is to read it, and the only way to read it is by putting it in other words, and the only way to put it in other words is by having other words to put it into, and the only way you have other words to put it into is that you have a life, and the only way to have a life is by being filled with desires, longings, needs, wants, beliefs, perspectives, worldviews, opinions, likes, dislikes- and all the other things that make human beings human. And so to read a text is, necessarily, to change a text.

That’s what the scribes of the New Testament did. They read the texts available to them and they put them in other words. Sometimes, however, they literally put them in other words. On the one hand, when they did this, they did what all of us do every time we read a text, but on the other, they did something very different from the rest of us. For when we put a text in other words in our minds, we don’t actually change the physical words on the page, whereas the scribes sometimes did precisely that, changing the words so that the words later readers would have before them were different words, which then had to be put into yet other words to be understood.

In that respect, the scribes changed scripture in ways that we do not. In a more basic sense, though, they changed scripture the way we all change scripture, every time we read it. For they, like we, were trying to understand what the authors wrote while also trying to see how the words of the authors’ texts might have significance for them, and how they might help them make sense of their own situations and their own lives. (p. 215-218)

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Misquoting Jesus

Frederic P. Miller (Editor), Agnes F. Vandome (Editor), John McBrewster (Editor)

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Frederic P. Miller

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