Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2006 by Kruger, Michael J

Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman. New York: Harper San Francisco, 2005, x + 242 pp., $24.95.

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There has been a long-standing discussion in the world of textual criticism concerning the degree to which scribes intentionally altered passages of the NT to conform more closely to their own theological preferences. Ever since the well-known statement from Westcott and Hort that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes" (Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882] 282), there has been a steady chorus of scholars intending to show the opposite to be the case. The idea of theologically motivated scribal changes can be traced back to Kirsopp Lake and J. Rendel Harris and more recently to scholars like Eldon J. Epp and his well-known book, The Theological Tendency of Codex Cantabrigiensis in Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). Bart D. Ehrman joins this chorus in his recent book, Misquoting Jesus, and argues that scribes in the early church were not merely disinterested copyists who mechanically transmitted the text in front of them, but, in one sense, continued "writing" the NT text by changing it to adapt to the theological and social challenges of the day. Of course, Ehrman has written on this topic numerous times before-most notably in his more technical book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)- and it has become the most dominant theme of his academic career. Ehrman laments the fact that textual variants are often overlooked and discarded like scraps on the cutting room floor and argues that they should instead be viewed as a "window" into the history of early Christianity and the struggles and challenges it faced.

In contrast to many of Ehrman's prior works, Misquoting Jesus is written for a more popular audience and begins not with a survey of academic works on the subject but with somewhat of a personal "testimony" from Ehrman himself, cataloging his transition (or transformation) from naïve evangelical at Moody and Wheaton to enlightened scholar at Princeton Seminary. He describes how it was his early studies in textual criticism, and his subsequent awareness of scribal "mistakes," that first alerted him to the fact that his view of inerrancy might be flawed. Having finally admitted that the Bible has errors and mistakes, Ehrman said that the "floodgates opened," and he began to change his view of the Bible radically, concluding that the Bible was "a human book from beginning to end" (p. 11). Ehrman's personal testimony in the introduction, although interesting, strikes the reader as rather out of place for a piece of scholarship coming from the secular academy-after all, are not evangelicals prohibited from appealing to their personal experience in their scholarly works? Ironically, as Ehrman distances himself from his evangelical past, he actually engages in a sort of reverse-evangelism with the reader, hoping to convince any readers who are "literalists" (p. 14), "fundamentalist" types (p. 6), and "one-sided" (p. 13) that they should reconsider their view of Scripture and adopt his own. Ehrman's appeal to his personal journey, if nothing else, gets his agenda for this book squarely on the table: to use the field of textual criticism as a means to challenge the evangelical doctrine of Scripture.

Although Misquoting Jesus is divided into seven different chapters, Ehrman's actual argument can be best conceived of in three parts. Let us address these three parts, one at a time. First, Ehrman begins his critique of the NT by arguing that the scribes of early Christianity-the first three centuries to be exact-were not in a position to make reliable copies, since they were not professional copyists but simply literate believers (some even illiterate!) who were willing to give it a try. Moreover, argues Ehrman, scribal activity in general was "maddeningly slow and inaccurate [and] that the copies produced this way could end up being quite different from the originals" (p. 46). Two responses are in order here. (1) If the overall transmission of manuscripts in the ancient world is as Ehrman describes, then one wonders how all of ancient history is not thrown into obscurity and uncertainty. Indeed, if manuscript production was such a "hit and miss" affair, we have no grounds to think that any account of ancient events should be received with any confidence-not to mention the very ancient testimonies that Ehrman appeals to in order to show that scribal activity was uncertain (testimonies which themselves are preserved in manuscripts!). Of course, Ehrman does not question the authenticity of these testimonies, because it is clear that he only desires to call into question the value of Christian manuscripts. (2) In order to argue selectively against Christian manuscripts, Ehrman must show that Christian copying was worse than most, which he has tried to do by arguing that Christian scribes were non-professional (even at times illiterate) and therefore prone to mistakes. At this point, Ehrman leans heavily on the study of one of his own Ph.D. students, Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). However, Haines-Eitzen has been critiqued for drawing a false dichotomy between formal scriptoriums and haphazard/non-professional copying, as if these were the only two choices on the table. Even if there were not formal scriptoriums in the second century (and we are not sure), there are substantial indicators that an organized, structured, and reliable process of transmission was in place amongst early Christians. For example, scholars have long recognized that the virtual unanimity throughout all of early Christendom in its use of the codex (as opposed to the roll) reveals a striking degree of structural unity. Moreover, scribal features such as the nomma sacra, which are also found in virtually all early Christian manuscripts (even second-century copies), show "a degree of organization, of conscious planning, and uniformity of practice among the Christian communities which we have hitherto had little reason to suspect, and which throws a new light on the early history of the church" (T. C. Skeat, "Early Christian Book-Production," in The History of the Bible [ed. G. W. H. Lampe; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969] 73). Recent books, such as David Trobisch's The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), have also continued to discuss these features and the remarkable degree of uniformity within early Christian scribal activity. Incredibly, such textual evidence is simply ignored by Ehrman (and downplayed by Haines-Eitzen) in order to bolster the claim that Christian scribal activity was unreliable.

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Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2006 by Kruger, Michael J

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