July 16, 2007

Misquoting Jesus

Posted at 8:05 pm by Richard and tagged , , , , , . Popularity: 20% [?]

I just came across a review of a book I’ve been reading off and on for the last month or so – Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why – on a couple of different sites. The review itself (at Powell’s Books) gives a nice summary of Bart Ehrman’s arguments regarding the impossible task of obtaining and understanding the “original texts” of the bible.

Many people have a vague notion that all the original biblical texts are preserved in vaults somewhere, and translators work from those original texts. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The earliest surviving versions of the gospels are handwritten copies dating from centuries after the original texts were written. Also, we don’t just have a single version of each gospel; we have many versions, and even more fragments. The trouble is, none of the versions agree with each other.1

If you haven’t read the book, I’d highly recommend it. Dawkins even mentions it in his recent “God Delusion” (so, it’s gotta be good, right?). Ehrman details many specific examples of differences between versions of the biblical texts, and also examines how the specific books were chosen and compiled.

Also, if there’s any Christians reading this – please, tell me – how DO you reconcile the problems Ehrman mentions? Were all of the copies of the bible divinely inspired? Was there one particular version that was divinely inspired? Please… I’m dying to know!

Popularity: 20% [?]

  1. Brown, Doug (2007) Review of Misquoting Jesus, Powell’s Books [↩]