Bart D. Ehrman: Misquoting?

I was about halfway through Reinventing Jesus (which I mentioned a short while ago, and plan to review fully soon) when I decided to look at one of the major books it was written to counter: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Change the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman.

Dr. Ehrman's work has come up here previously, here, here, and here. I've had reason to doubt his assumptions, as explained in the last of those three links. In this book he relates his background as a conservative Christian turned doubter. That lends credence to his case, which is that the Bible we now have cannot be trusted as a faithful rendition of what was originally written. But does he really make his case?

This book has little to say about whether the original writings now in the New Testament were accurate or inspired by God. Ehrman concentrates instead on the many changes since then that make it impossible, he says, to evaluate what those originals (the "autographs," as they are known) might have said. Who knows whether they were true? And what difference could it make if they were, since we don't have them anyway?

Much is made in this book of the difficulties: the textual errors, the different families of manuscripts, the apparently theologically motivated changes. Ehrman presents the problems. What he fails to do is to recognize that the problems have solutions. He gives no recognition to the massive resources scholars have for reconstructing the originals, which are many orders of magnitude larger than for any other text of comparable antiquity. He spends entire chapters on textual problems that have been acknowledged in every Bible I've even seen (barring those that, for whatever reason, eschew all use of footnotes). He fails to note that of all the thousands of supposed changes, the very great majority make no difference whatsoever--they are variants of spelling, for instance, or they are easily corrected scribal errors with good attestation for what the original must have been. He glosses over the most important fact of all, which is that even where some passages remain disputable, not one of those disputes involves a significant matter of Christian doctrine or belief. (This information can be found, amply documented, in Reinventing Jesus; see also the links below.)

This book is one of several recent ones that have purported to show the New Testament cannot be trusted. The DaVinci Code is, of course, the most widely read of them all. Dr. Ehrman's work is certainly on a far higher plane than Dan Brown's. His book is of some value in its description of challenges scholars face in recovering the original text of the Bible. It should have gone further than the challenges, to present the solutions that have been found. The lack of this information reinforces my earlier conclusion: Dr. Ehrman's assumptions and presuppositions are highly suspect.

Further reading: Robert Gundry's review of the book, and some interesting discussion on same.

Posted: Fri - October 6, 2006 at 09:29 PM |

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Bart D. Ehrman: Misquoting?

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson