Misquoting Jesus

In 2005, Bart D. Ehrman wrote a best seller book titled, "Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why." Definitely the best book that I've read on the subject of the origin of the New Testament (NT) Bible since I've always taken it for granted that there was a consensus among the experts regarding the origin. I thought that the debate was centred around interpretation.

Bart Ehrman begins by astonishing me with the fact that some of the oldest manuscripts are close to 400 years after the death of Jesus. There are some within, say, 100 years, but there are problems with copies made from them.

In any case, after finding out that the writers of the New Testament were not witnesses of Jesus' life, but witnesses of witnesses, Ehrman then goes on to explain how copies of these manuscripts were made before the invention of the printing press (in the 1450's). Back in the early second, third and fourth centuries where there was no such thing as copyright law. What happened is that a letter would be written, say by Paul, and sent to a church with instructions that it be read to all the followers and then passed on to the next church in the chain. However, someone at the church, wanting to keep a copy, would find a literate member and ask them to make a copy. Later, towards the fourth century, professional scribes would fill in the place of these lay person scribes and copy jobs improved.

But in the early copy days the scribe copying text would sometimes, inadvertently, change the text. Changes by omission or even poor spelling. Other changes were more notorious. Changes to text by actually changing the words because the meaning was difficult. An effort to simplify in some cases and in others changes to align more with the beliefs of the scribe and the church they attended.

Ehrman's claims are that there are more discrepancies among the thousand of manuscripts than they are words in the New Testament. Estimates are in the hundreds of thousands.

Having described the process of copying, the illiteracy rate during that period of time, he then moves on to a layman's description of text criticism. The process by which theologians use to arrive at original text when faced with a barrage of manuscripts. The process is complex but he does a great job to give an appreciation on the struggle that theologians face when reconciling differences to arrive at an original text. However, even though for some of the major theological points there is a general agreement among experts, there's still disagreement among textual critics.

The book was wonderfully received and climbed to New York's best seller list. Obviously, the subject was digestible by non-theologians who took it well. The more hard core theologians took the book as deceptive and not presenting the truth in a scholarly, or responsible, manner. Most of the hard core critics claim that the conclusions don't match the arguments presented and that Ehrman had an agenda in presenting his case. A well spoken academic who writes well and can reach the general public, most of the pounding came from the more vocal and theologians. A good discussion can be found here:

http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2006/03/misanalyzing-text-criticism-bart.html

It's a healthy debate but one that begs a number of questions. For example, nobody disagrees the information presented by Ehrman is common knowledge among the theological community. The fact that everybody knows about these textual problems comes only as a surprise to the layman. And even though the religion has only been around for just less than two thousand years, it's quite amazing that those charged with spreading it and gathering more people into the flock haven't been so open.

It's reminiscent of the secrecy and drama surrounding a lot of activities that the church does. Dan Brown's very popular book, The DaVinci Code, wasn't the first in a line of books to criticise the church. In fact Dan Brown was sued, unsuccessfully, by the authors of the book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh for plagiarism. Dan Ehrman also spent some energy rebuking Dan Brown, not only in writing, but also at a University lecture series. So it seems that the church is a hot topic.

But what I was trying to say is that the mystery shrouding the church is not new. In the past it was mainly illiteracy that stopped a lot of the questioning. Then the power of the church exceeded that of the state. The church was the state. People were tortured in the name of religion, and not just Christianity. But the hierarchy of the church's autocracy and the increasing levels of bureaucracy with ever increasing layers of complexity have distanced the church's members from their God. I'm surprised that I never bothered questioning the origins of the Bible more since I had no knowledge that there was so much disagreement amongst the ranks. The mere fact that there are so many splinter groups professing differing interpretations of the text should be enough to raise more than an eyebrow.