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Misquoting Jesus: the Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Pdf FREE MISQUOTING JESUS: THE STORY BEHIND WHO CHANGED THE BIBLE AND WHY PDF Bart D. Ehrman | 272 pages | 13 Sep 2011 | HarperCollins Publishers Inc | 9780060859510 | English | New York, United States Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman An accomplished scholar of early Christianity, Ehrman religious studies, Univ. He sketches the development of New Testament literature, the gradual accumulation of errors therein through the accidental or intentional revisions of copyists, and attempts beginning with Erasmus in the 16th century to reconstruct the original text. Since mainstream study editions of the Bible have long drawn attention to the existence of alternate readings, the Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why well-informed reader will not find much revolutionary analysis here. Recommended for all public libraries. The popular perception of the Bible as a divinely perfect book receives scant support from Ehrman, who sees in Holy Writ ample evidence of human fallibility and ecclesiastical politics. Though himself schooled in evangelical literalism, Ehrman has come to regard his earlier faith in the inerrant inspiration of the Bible as misguided, given that the original texts have disappeared and that the extant texts available do not agree with one another. Most of the textual discrepancies, Ehrman acknowledges, matter little, but some do profoundly affect religious doctrine. To assess how ignorant or theologically manipulative scribes may have changed the biblical text, modern scholars have developed procedures for comparing diverging texts. And in language accessible to nonspecialists, Ehrman explains these procedures and their results. He further explains why textual criticism has frequently sparked intense controversy, especially among scripture-alone Protestants. In discounting not only the authenticity of existing manuscripts but also the inspiration of the original writers, Ehrman will deeply divide his readers. Although he addresses a popular audience, he undercuts the very religious attitudes that have made the Bible a popular book. Still, this is a useful overview for biblical history collections. All rights reserved. Facebook Twitter YouTube. Accidental or Intentional Revisions of Copyists. From Booklist The popular perception of the Bible as a divinely perfect book receives scant support from Ehrman, who sees in Holy Writ ample evidence of human fallibility and ecclesiastical politics. Go to Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why - Bart D. Ehrman - Google книги Denver Seminary prepares men and women to engage the needs of the world with the redemptive power of the gospel and the life-changing truth of Scripture. Want to learn more about our academic degree programs? As you consider seminary, let us guide you through the process. We have a team of admissions counselors who are ready to assist you in any way you need. Here you will find one-stop shop for students to get connected to activities that will feed your spiritual and social life as well as equip you with resources to jump-start your academic career. Denver Seminary has a wealth of resources that are available to current students, alumni, and the Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why community. Here you will find access to the Denver Journal, Engage Magazineand the various initiatives organized by the Seminary. Bart D. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, ISBN It is uncanny how similar Bart Ehrman's and my backgrounds are. I had pieced some bits together from his other writings, but here he takes a fifteen-page introduction to tell his story. We both graduated from high school in We both went on to small, private church-related undergraduate colleges in Illinois he to Moody Bible Institue; I to Augustana Collegethen to Chicagoland evangelical schools he to Wheaton; I to Trinityand finally to internationally known university with prestigious divinity schools for Ph. Ehrman has taught for a considerable time now at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and become a prolific author of many widely selling books; Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why have done likewise here at Denver Seminary. I can also tell from his writings that Bart has a wonderful but slightly sick sense of humor that I suspect is very similar to mine! Today, nevertheless, Ehrman has distinguished himself as someone who at Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why the scholarly and popular levels loves to poke fun at conservative Christianity. He has rejected his evangelicalism and whether he is writing on the history of the transmission of the biblical text, focusing on all the changes that scribes made over the centuries, or on the so-called "lost gospels" and "lost Christianities," trying to rehabilitate our appreciation for Gnosticism, it is clear that he has an axe to grind. At times Ehrman wields it seemingly just playfully. Thus, in his book-length work on the historical Jesus published by no less than Oxford University Press, while illustrating how words change their meaning over time, he uses the example of "dude," which once meant a cowboy or a "pretty boy"then became the equivalent of "man," and now is just an exclamation at the beginning of a sentence. But he inserts into his discussion how he disgusted his son by explaining that the term was also once used for camels' gonads! Most of Misquoting Jesus is actually a very readable, accurate distillation of many of the most important facts about the nature and history of textual criticism, presented in a lively and interesting narrative that will keep scholarly and lay interest alike. In this respect, the title appears designed to attract attention and sell copies of the book rather than to represent its contents accurately! A brief conclusion returns to his personal story, reiterating how, in light of the numerous changes that preclude us from saying we either have the original texts or can perfectly reconstruct them, he finds it impossible to hold to biblical inerrancy or inspiration or even less strict forms of evangelical Christian faith and insinuates without ever saying so in so many worlds that reasonable persons should come to similar conclusions. Thus a substantial majority of this book provides information already well-known and well-accessible in other sources, such as Bruce Metzger's works on the text and transmission of the New Testament including one that Ehrman himself recently helped to revisebut in slightly more popular form that is likely to reach a wider audience. What most distinguishes the work are the spins Ehrman puts on some of the data at numerous junctures and his propensity for focusing on the most drastic of all the changes in the history of the text, leaving the uninitiated likely to think there are numerous additional examples of various phenomena he discusses when there are not. Thus his first extended examples of textual problems in the New Testament are the woman caught in adultery and the longer ending of Mark. After demonstrating how neither of these is likely to be part of the originals of either Gospel, Ehrman concedes that "most of the changes are not of this magnitude" p. But this sounds as if there are at least a few others that are of similar size, when in fact there are no other textual variants anywhere that are even one-fourth as long as these thirteen- and twelve-verse additions. A second supposition necessary for Ehrman's case is that the non-professional scribes that he postulates did most of the copying of New Testament documents until the fourth-century, when Constantine became the first emperor to commission new copies of the Bible, did not do nearly as careful a job as the professional scribes that he postulates did most of the post-Constantinian copying. Ehrman's discussion of Erasmus and the famous Johannine Comma 1 John is both lucid and entertaining. But, again, what is lacking is any acknowledgment that there is no other known example in all of the history of textual criticism of a similar insertion to a Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why Greek text being made on the basis of only one, most likely altered, late medieval manuscript. Moreover, Ehrman writes as if the doctrine of the Trinity stands or falls with this spurious addition, which ignores the numerous other Trinitarian references in the New Testament. One of the most valuable and least duplicated parts of the book comes in the chapters that discuss theologically and sociologically motivated changes. Ehrman's revision to Metzger's standard textbook introduces several of these as well, though Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why briefly, but most primers on the discipline largely ignore them. It is very helpful to understand how Mark's probable reference to Jesus' anger Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why Mark rather than compassion fits his overall presentation of Jesus, just as Luke's original "omission" of Jesus sweating great drops of blood in the garden in Luke reflects his picture of a more "imperturbable" Christ. Ehrman's suggestion that Hebrews originally read that Christ tasted death "apart from God" rather than "by the grace of God" seemingly founders on the sheer paucity of external evidence for the reading. But if Origen was right that the reading stood in the majority of manuscripts of his day, then perhaps it was original. No unorthodox theology results recall the cry of dereliction in the Gospelsbut one can see why the vast majority of scribess would have adopted the reading that is far better known today.
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