Misquoting Jesus
Hello. I am reading a very exciting book called Misquoting Jesus. It is written by Bart D. Ehrman. This is a book that Mary bought me for my birthday. It is all about how the new testament books and letters were changed over the years through mistakes and intentional alterations. It is fascinating. For example, did you know that the story of Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultury (John 8:3-11) didn't appear until centuries later? It was added at a later date. I didn't realise that a lot of Paul's letters were written psuedonymously to give them more credence. Lots of interesting things and I've only just started it.
I'd be interested to hear other people's reactions to this book, so if anyone wants to read it after me, let me know.
posted by Pete at 2:14 pm
17 Comments:
could borrow it...
could also confiscate it and burn you at the stake with all the other heretics!!!
seriously tho, is it a factual historical book or a fictional inspired book?
2:31 pm
Oh no. It's factual historical. None of that other nonsense. It's supposed to be the only book of its kind for the layperson. A very intelligent book, communicated well (which, from an academic, is impressive considering they usually struggle to communicate effectively).
3:21 pm
i'm not sure reading it would be overly healthy for me given my already cynical view of the bible... but then if it is fact, how can it not be healthy?
you sure its not another da vinci code-esque hoax presented as/ pretending to be the truth?
i mean there was stuff in the film stigmata that talked about a gospel of st thomas that was pretty negative about the institution of church/ very liberating of someones view of the holy spirit depending on how you look at it - "lift a rock and you will find me, split wood and i am there" or something...
dont know how true it is.
and then you have all the stuff about the bible being inspired by God, helpful for teaching rebuking etc... so where does that leave you?
very confusing - maybe finish the book and tell me.
having said that i never read books anyway, so its pretty unlikely i'll ever read it.
10:17 am
here we are - the gospel of st thomas:
from wikipedia
and more specifically an interesting bit about the philosophy of st thomas
its kinda getting into apochryphal teachings though....
10:53 am
Firstly, it's not a da vinci code style book or anything like that conspiracy bullshit. This guy is a biblical historian. He actually comes from an evangelical background (went to an evangelical bible college etc.) and just got curious about all the contradictions he kept finding in the new testamant. His research is entirely based on historical documents - manuscripts that are available now.
Secondly, we know that there were dozens of gospels written - the canon of the bible (both new and old testament) was constructed by people! The process took hundreds of years! (many debates took place over which gospel represented their faith the best)
Interestingly, the canon of the old testament didn't appear 'til after Christianity had been formed (I found that quite interesting).
Thirdly, does it change how you look at the bible? I would hope so. But if you believe that the bible is the innerant word of God, we are actually reading documents that are completely different (in emphasis, tone, wording etc) from what the original writers wrote. So if their words were God-breathed, God-inspired, whatever, then we don't have access to them! Isn't that incredible?!
11:24 am
Yes, I do find it helpful, but perhaps I am looking at it from a different perspective. But I think it would be great for Christians to read. It doesn't mean that the bible isn't important. I remember when the writer was on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart said that after he read it, it made the Bible feel more like a living document, that it has a history and has developed so much. I think that's an interesting way of looking at it.
Remember, evangelicals are wholly different from many other Christians in placing so much significance on the Bible. So many of them believe that the credibility of their faith rests on it all being the perfect word of God. Personally, I find that a little ridiculous. Why can't the stories, poems, laws, and teachings be valuable anyway, as a tool? DO we have to prove that God breathed the actual words. Seems a bit silly. I mean, look at the creationism debate in American schools. Thank God the Archbishop of Canturbury has dismissed the theory as ridiculous.
11:32 am
I really wanna hear a Christian's reaction to the book though, and I'd really love to talk about it with someone who's read it. It's really not just a cynical book for the sake of it. Honest.
11:35 am
Cool. Surely it's better to know that the Bible is riddled with errors, then we get on with seeking the truth more honestly. If that's unhelpful, then maybe we should deal with that discomfort. Else we're just burying our heads in the sand.
12:37 pm
DO we have to prove that God breathed the actual words?
playing something of the devils advocate (or Evangelical's advocate to be precise) i guess they would say you need certainty in the scruptures, the word of God, so you have certainty in your faith - and its that faith that the power of god is called upon and underpined by.
i think within that there tends also to be a belief that the word, if it does have any failings of translation or whatever then the holy spirit is there to refine this understanding into line with the truth as it was initially intended and written down as.
similarly they tend to believe that when the bible was compiled way back, that God would himself have been integral to that process, so the bible we have today is the bible god wanted, nothing more, nothing less.
beyond that the conservative evangelicals, not so much believing in the power of God working in a healing, prophetic etc manner also dont believe the holy spirit has any role to help understand the bible and "breath life into it" as the charismatics do - they have to believe in every word quite literally, hence the fire and brimstone, and their response to charismatics that they go to a "bible believing church".
of course the Evangelical faith (separate from all forms of christianity around these days) is obsessed with Gods power, as all modernists are.
the alternative like you said, is taking a more adventourous approach towards the bible, as a post-modernist is likely to do.
and in terms of geting "on with seeking the truth more honestly" i think a lot of evangelicals would seriously struggle to do that if the bibles was discredited as being "riddled with errors", or at least called to question, as its their baseline, the one thing they know to be true - with out it they have no foundation for anything other than experience which is far too subjective for an evangelical to trust - then you may as well be a wooly liberal! and we all know if there one thing God hates more than a homosexual, its a liberal.
so back to myself now, i think it would be healthy to read it and question things, but i also am a little hesitant to as my faith is shaky enough as itis at the moment.
whilst it may well strengthen it, my current faith already has enough incongruities with bea's, without deciding the bible is nothing more than just a bunch of stories and ideas.
of course bea could read it too (and like i said, with my record of reading, she's more likely to) and find enlightenment.
we did after all find greenbelt a bit too "christian" last year... so who know... maybe God, but if so he/she/it's not letting on!
1:50 pm
But the Bible today is simply a different document to the books which were written way back. They've been changed. There are more alterations in the new testament than there are words. How is God in this process? Over the years people have believed different things because of the development of the text? He becomes a different God.
If the Bible is their "baseline" of truth, then I think it is important for them to be aware of the process of change that occurred. One of the reasons it is important to question these things is because much righteous indignation that blurts from the mouths of Christian comes from an absolute belief in the text's truth. And when we question that, we are humbled by it. We're humbled by the uncertainty.
2:05 pm
dont get me wrong - the evangelical absolutionist attitudes does my head in too.
the right-on charismatic would believe that God still can breathe his spirit into the words, in the same way he might with the matrix or whatever.
the conservative would just argue with you and call you a heretic who's simply wrong.
i s'pose i'm probably guilty of this... i know i have been in the past (certainly when in one of my alcohl induced moments of lucid enlightenment!), but i get annoyed with people changing their theology thinking all other theologies are out of date/ superceded/ incorrect and that God's been nice enough to show THEM the real truth and now we've got to go and enlighten the heathen with it.
good example: healing
god can heal but doesnt always -> god wants to heal everyone and he will heal them, all you have to do is have faith and ask -> god wants to heal everyone, but he cant always do it, as some spiritual things are able to stop the almighty God who created this universe from healing a common cold, even though he really does want to, honest -> dunno - stopped going to church at that point.
maybe god just doesnt want to heal everyone.
2:32 pm
personally i've got no problem with there being 'errors' (whatever that means) in the bible. i mean, we, as God's people and his representatives on earth, have plenty of errors and misrepresent him, so it's fair to assume that the bible, written by ordinary people who witnessed and interpreted events through the filters of their own experience, are going to get things wrong slightly, somehow. paul said himself that we only see through a glass darkly, and that includes the bible's writers. it doesn't mean God's not sovereign, and in my opinion just proves how unique he is that he's willing to risk there being errors in the bible.
4:54 pm
Straight from the horse's mouth:
"The problem is exacerbated by the fact that once a mistake was made, it could become firmly embedded in the textual tradition, more firmly embedded, in fact, than the original.
That is to say, once a scribe changes a text - whether accidentally or intentionally - then those changes are *permanent* in his manuscript (unless of course, another scribe comes along to correct the mistake). The next scribe who copies *that* manuscript copies those mistakes (thinking they are what the text said), and he adds mistakes of his own. The next scribe who copies *that* manuscript copies the mistakes of both his predecessors and adds mistakes of his own, and so on. The only way mistakes get corrected is when a scribe recognises that a predecessor has made an error and tries to resolve it. There is no guarantee however, that a scribe who tries to correct a mistake corrects it correctly. That is, by changing what he thinks is an error, he may in fact change it incorrectly, so now there are three forms in the text: the original, the error, and the incorrect attempt to resolve the error. Mistakes multiply and get repeated; sometimes they get corrected and sometimes they get compounded. And so it goes. For Centuries." p.57 Ehrman
5:44 pm
The earliest copy of Galatians available to us is written 150 years after the letter was originally written - fifteen decades of mistakes. These weren't professional scribes either, more likely one of the few educated (literate) people in the church.
5:49 pm
I hope that answers your query on what a 'mistake' is. In this instance, we're talking about alterations from the previous text. Often the alterations are tiny, not so significant. But in other cases, large sections are inserted centuries after the orginals were written. What you are reading is different to what is intended. Which one is God's book? The original idea or bastardised version?
5:55 pm
don't think you can edit your comments, not even me, your distinguished editor-in-chief.
can edit the initial post tho...
10:22 am
Yeah, I was wondering how to do that! Rush of blood to the head...
It's all good. (And for the record, I beleive it's history and thousands of changes makes the bible a very exiting text - I'm not trying to beat it up.)
2:36 pm
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