Loading...Probably more than any of my other books, Misquoting Jesus provoked a loud and extensive critique from scholars – almost exclusively among evangelical Christians, who appear to have thought that if readers were “led astray” by my claims in the book (in many instances, these critics pointed to claims that in fact I never claimed!) they might be in danger of losing their faith – or worse – changing what they believed so that they would no longer be evangelical.
I’m not so sure there is really much danger in presenting widely held scholarship to a lay-readership, and so I was a bit surprised at the vitriol I received at the hands of some of my evangelical critics. There were four entire books written to refute my discussion: (1) Dillon Burroughs, Misquotes in Misquoting Jesus: Why You Can Still Believe; (2) Timothy Paul Jones, Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman’s “Misquoting Jesus”; (3) Nicholas Perrin, Lost In Transmission?: What We Can Know About the Words of Jesus; and (4) Gregory Koukl, Misquoting Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman.
More of this post can be read after you join the blog!
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Some of Ben Witherington’s most popular books are The Jesus Quest, and The Problem with Evangelical Theology.
I have read Dr. Witherington’s critique, as well as others, and what struck me most were comments like the one you mentioned ‘NONE of these differences affect “any cardinal doctrine”‘. The word “affect” has a pretty clear meaning and even if a given passage is not the only basis for a particular doctrine, removing it does “affect” it, even if the effect is slight.
For me, the classic example is the Comma Johanneum. Remove that and the doctrinal support for the trinity is based on a specific interpretation of various other passages. It seems to me that, the other versus simply support the Comma Johanneum and by themselves (or even together) do not serve to directly support the doctrine of the trinity. Then there is what you pointed out that “Changes in the Bible can be significant without affecting any cherished doctrines of the evangelicals”.
I also find it humorous that Witherington, Daniel Wallace, Dillon Burroughs, etc, ad nauseam maintain your goal is to cast doubt on the entire New Testament. As you point out here, (as well as in an email to me once) “But that is not my claim and never has been my claim. ” It seems that evangelicals fear books like “Misquoting Jesus” as they think they are a “wedge”. That is, once doubt has been cast in the inerrancy of the bible, all of it is suspect. It’s ironic because that is the approach many evangelicals are taking with teaching intelligent design.
In his critique, Daniel Wallace said, “A good teacher does not create Chicken Littles.” True enough. However, a good teacher also does not create ostriches who hide their head in the sand. Thank you for not allowing people to be ostriches!
This is great. I’ve been wishing I could hear responses to some of these attacks on your work for some time (for most of them, just about any able-minded, educated person could respond to them). One recurring critique that you may or may not consider worth your time can be found (apparently) in the Jones book cited above. At this website (http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?isbn=0830834478&event=AFF&p=1022507) the author/publisher makes the offhand comment: “Published by a popular secular publishing house, Ehrman gets no true peer review for his writings.” I’ve seen this regurgitated in other places as well. This of course goes along with the inconsistent charge that you are at once saying “nothing new” but then saying all sorts of horribly wrong stuff. But at any rate, they seem to be unaware of your scholarly publications (or feigning unawareness).
Thanks for addressing these issues. I’ve been wondering what your thoughts are on this question for sometime.
In his eulogy here of Dr. Metzger, he discuss their relationship:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/februaryweb-only/107-43.0.html
This quote is especially interesting:
Several years later, in 1977, after doing summer study with him, I asked Professor Metzger’s advice about where I should pursue my doctoral work. He told me I could work with him and do a thesis on Didymus the Blind (!). I had no idea who that was, but I assumed he was important.
Joshua, that’s actually an interesting point. If Ben (I can use his first name, because he and I were on the same continent at one time) didn’t then know who Didymus the Blind was, while attempting to pursue a doctoral thesis with Bruce Metzger, then I can be pretty confident that someone like me – an avid reader and not much more – has more knowledge at his disposal than some of Bart’s critics!
That gives me just a wee bit of confidence that I’m not just talking through my hat when I participate in discussions on this subject.
Heck, that admission of Ben’s is about as curious as a potential chemistry doctoral student not knowing the decay rate of radioactive caesium. “Cesium’s radioactive?”. ^_^
Dr. Ehrman,
I’ve followed the blog for about a year now even though I haven’t read every post in this year. We have connected via email in that time (which I have greatly appreciated); but instead of emailing I wanted to comment, here, on your first post. I’ve decided to start from the beginning and work all the way through; the goal being to read every post that is on the blog. I intend to read at least one post per day until the end, ha-ha. Has anyone else done this that you know of?
Best,
M
Uh, nope!
Ha-ha, awesome! Never hurts to be the first.
I’ve just begun reading this all from the beginning too! I’ve been looking for an accessible source of New Testament scholarship for a while. I came from a background where our actual education in school included being instructed from videos by Ken Ham and Kent Hovind as well as books by David Noebel and Lee Strobel. It’s striking how easy it is outside of that community to find works by both religious and nonreligious authors discussing why Genesis 1 isn’t a science textbook but how difficult it is to find accessible discussions of the resurrection made by anyone other than evangelical Christian apologists. I’m ecstatic to discover a historian trying to get scholarly information from another perspective out there.
I just signed up for the blog today, and have decided to follow that route, once I noticed that there was a lot of “part 2” (with no part 1 in the immediate vicinity) in post titles, or a cluster of posts on a connected topic (the NRSV, for instance), and figured it might make more sense to read them in order. Yeah, and that will include reading all these comments.
I know you have stated many times in your books and other writing that the discrepancies/ contradictions/ forgeries/ historical inaccuracies etc. etc. in the bible need not cause someone to lose their faith. Do you think, though, that a belief in an orthodox version of Christianity (i.e. the beliefs laid out in the Nicene Creed) can be maintained in the face of all of these or really would it be a much more liberal flavour, as you describe your own beliefs ultimately evolving towards? Do believing academics in your field generally subscribe more to the latter than the former?
Yes indeed. I have scholar friends who completely affirm the creed and agree with everything I think about the Bible. If you want to pursue the matter, you should look at Dale Martin, Biblical Truths.
Forgive me for this extremely petty (but humorous) observation. You quote Ben as saying,
“It is simply not the case that any significant theological truth is at issue with the textual variants that Ehrman wants to make much of.”
I note that for a man claiming to be a scholar, he chooses to end a sentence with a preposition. As my homiletic teacher at Messiah College (Dr. Robert Ives) would note:
“That is one rule with which up I will not put!”
Ah, that’s a paraphrase of a statement by Winston Churchill, reported a variety of ways; the way I first heard it was “Thats’t the kind of errant pedantry up with which I will not put”! Great comment, no matter you phrase it how.
I’m having trouble understanding something. I live in a country where the majority of the population is Muslim, and for a Muslim, adding a verse from the Quran refutes all Islam. Because, according to Islamic Theology, Allah protects Qur’an.
When I look at Christian Theology, Christians can accept verse additions to the Bible (7:53-8:11,Mark 16:9-20)If the same thing happened in Islam, there would most likely not be a religion called Islam right now.
After it became clear that additions to the Gospel of Mark was made as a result of the Textual Criticism, how did Christian theology react to these additions? Did they say “It’s perfectly normal for these to happen. It’s been a long time. Let’s find God’s revelation,” or did they say “There’s no addition to God’s word. These are absolutely false results”?
Did the additions of the Bible lead to a revolution in Christian understanding of the Bible ?
Did adding a verse to the Scriptures pose a theological problem for Christians?
As far as I know, Christians used to think that there were no additions to the Bible. Over time, science disproved their views. Could you help me with this?
Islam is unique among religions in consistently insisting that a sacred book needs to be completely infallible and never changed by a scribe in order to be accurate. Oddly many Muslims claim that since the Qur’an was never changed, that’s evidence that it is true. I say that is odd because today EVERY book that is published is published without scribal changes, but that certainly is not evidence tha they are therefore true!