finitum non capax infiniti

Pictured are shelves with various English Bible versions on them. There are many, many different English versions available today and all are based on Greek texts that were reconstructed via the process of textual criticism. The discipline of textual criticism affects every Christian, whether they are aware of it or not.

In the conclusion, Ehrman summarizes his main points nicely. Throughout his studies he “realized just how radically the text had been altered over the years at the hands of scribes” (p. 207). Although he notes that most textual changes are of no real importance, he also adds that “it would be wrong, however, to say—as people sometimes do—that the changes in our text have no real bearing on what the texts mean or on the theological conclusions that one draws from them” (p. 207-08). His final conclusion is stated plainly:

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 circumstances that he didn’t preserve the words, the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn’t gone to the trouble of inspiring them. (p. 211)

Some people, however, escape this conclusion. Me being one of them.

Technorati Tags: Bart Ehrman, Book Review, Misquoting Jesus, Textual Criticism

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Pictured is p46, which is the earliest substantial New Testament manuscript known to exist (circa 200 CE) comprised of 86 leaves. The existing leaves contain (in this order) the last eight chapters of Romans; all of Hebrews; virtually all of 1–2 Corinthians; all of Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians; and two chapters of 1 Thessalonians. All of the leaves have lost some lines at the bottom through deterioration.

Ehrman’s agenda comes to the fore in his final main chapter of the book (the last chapter is comprised of concluding remarks). His contention is much like that of the former chapter, but in this chapter he does not focus on early church heresies but social issues. These social issues are (1) women, (2) Judaism, and (3) paganism. Ehrman argues that these issues caused scribes to alter the text of Scripture to serve their agenda in fighting their societal battles.

Technorati Tags: Bart Ehrman, Book Review, Misquoting Jesus, Textual Criticism

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Pictured is p52, one of the oldest extant papyri fragments, containing St. John 18.31-33. This papyri dates to the 2nd century CE.

The thesis of Ehrman’s sixth chapter is clearly laid out: “sometimes the texts of the New Testament were modified for theological reasons” (p. 151). He makes his point by examining key variants that deal with three early church heresies: adoptionism (a.k.a. the Ebionites), docetism, and separationists (gnosticism). Ehrman contends that scribes changed certain texts in order to combat these heresies.

Technorati Tags: Bart Ehrman, Book Review, Misquoting Jesus, Textual Criticism

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Pictured is an illumination of St. Mark from a 12th century Byzantine copy of the Greek gospels.

Chapter 5 begins the heart of Ehrman’s development of his main thesis: the NT cannot be trusted or given the status of “inspired” because of the vast number of textual variants in the extant NT documents.

There are two different types of evidence that text critic scholars use to reconstruct the text of the NT: external evidence and internal evidence. These are used together by textual critics, which makes them rational eclecticists.

External evidence is based on which manuscripts support any given variant. The date of the manuscripts and the textual “family” or “tradition” of the manuscript play an important role. Generally, the older texts from the Alexandrian textual tradition are the most trusted.

Internal evidence is broken down into two different kinds: intrinsic probabilities and transcriptional probabilities. Intrinsic probabilities are based on the author’s known writing style, theology, and vocabulary. Transcriptional probabilities are based on ways that the scribes probably changed the text. This goes back to Bengel’s rule that the more difficult reading is probably the original reading, since a scribe would be more inclined to introduce a variant for clarity’s sake, not to cause confusion or doubt.

Technorati Tags: Bart Ehrman, Book Review, Misquoting Jesus, Textual Criticism

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Pictured is a page of Codex Sinaiticus (circa 330-350 C.E.) containing Matthew 10.17-11.2, which was discovered by Lobegott Friedrich Constantine von Tischendorf, published in 1862.

Ehrman traces some of the biggest developments in the field of NT textual criticism by noting the most influencial scholars of the past 300 years. He begins with Richard Simons (1638-1712) who was a Roman Catholic scholar that attempted to destroy the protestant doctrine of sola scriptura by showing that the NT could not be trusted because of the number of textual variants. His point was that Scripture was foundational, but the Roman Church was necessary because it picks up where the texts fail. Richard Bentley came to the Protestant’s aid, but because of financial and time restraints was unable to publish a Greek text.

Technorati Tags: Bart Ehrman, Book Review, Misquoting Jesus, Textual Criticism

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Pictured is Desiderus Erasmus of Rotterdam who produced the first published edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516.

Ehrman’s third chapter is a well written history of the evolution of the texts of the New Testament from the early church to around the time of the translation of the King James version in 1611. While the texts in the early church period were copied by the educated lay people, when Constantine coverted in 312 C.E. it opened the door to the upperclass of society also being converted to the faith. This resulted in texts being copied by professional scribes, which brought the number of variants down. Because the trained professional scribes did a much better job copying the texts in front of them, the texts reached a certain level of stabilization. Texts in certain areas would all reflect the same kind of textual variants, since they would be traced back to a common parent text. Alexandria, it is argued by modern text critic scholars, were the most skilled scribes and preserved a very pure form of the text of early Christian writings (p. 72).

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This picture of Codex Vaticanus (circa 4th century C.E.) contains the latter part of 2 Thessalonians and the first two chapters of Hebrews. The oval-shaped addition at the bottom of the center column reads “Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don’t change it” because a redactor changed the verb pherwn (“bears”) to phanerwn (“manifests”) in Hebrews 1.3, which was subsequently changed back to the original reading by the later redactor who added this note.

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In the first proper chapter of his book, Bart Ehrman shows that Christianity, from its very beginnings, was a “religion of the book.” He shows that Christianity grew out of Judaism, which was a religion that was centered on Torah. This “bookishness” of Judaism and Christianity was decidedly odd in the first century, as most (if not all) pagan religions did not have a central book of “scripture” or beliefs, but simply sacrificed to and thanked their national or local gods or godesses.

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Ever since I took a course on New Testament Introduction with Stephen Taylor at WTS (to date one of the most enlightening courses I have taken), I have had a profound interest in the study of textual criticism. This lead me to scholars such as Bruce Metzger, F.F. Bruce, and Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman has intrigued me because he came from a fundamentalist background (attending Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College before Princeton Theological Seminary) and has taken a turn to agnosticism because of his study of textual criticism. His research is broad and penetrating. Many of the issues that he has brought up in his work are issues that are either ignored or glossed over by many evangelicals that I have read. His writing challenges me and invokes a response.

Technorati Tags: Bart Ehrman, Book Review, Misquoting Jesus, Textual Criticism

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