New Testament Manuscripts Archives - Page 5 of 19 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Faith and Inerrancy, In My Case — Did the “Young Ehrman” Get it Wrong?

Here I pick up from my previous post about evangelicals misunderstanding my journey of faith, first by repeating its final paragraph: ****************************** My sense is that there is a simple reason that a lot of evangelical apologists think I “threw the baby out with the bathwater” (the baby of faith with the bathwater of fundamentalism). I might be wrong about this, but my sense is that taking this view allows them to explain why I left the faith without compelling them to address the ACTUAL reasons I did for themselves. It is easier to caricature me and what happened and to point out my “mistake.” I do not think that’s true of Kurt Jaros (see my previous post). I think he has simply misread what I said. And I can see how that misunderstanding is understandable, so to say. Here’s why: In Misquoting Jesus, I say the following: This kind of realization coincided with the problems I was encountering the more closely I studied the surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. It is one [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:57:21-04:00March 19th, 2022|Bart's Critics, Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

The “Young Ehrman’s” Faulty Understanding of Inspiration

In my previous post I talked about evangelicals who argue that if I had only had the right understanding of evangelical theology, I would not have left the faith once I realized my (errant) views were problematic. I would say that this is true of the video about me that Kurt Jaros posted a couple of weeks ago, here: https://ehrmanblog.org/did-i-have-an-errant-view-of-inerrancy-guest-video-post-by-kurt-jaros-5/ I have enjoyed Kurt’s video posts on the blog very much and really appreciate him setting the record straight for evangelicals who have misunderstood or misrepresented my views on textual criticism. And I decidedly do NOT think that he has “misrepresented” my views about inspiration (the views of the “young Ehrman”). But I do think he misunderstood them. He inferred from things I said that I must have held views that in fact I did not hold. The issue has to with the fact that we have so many manuscripts of the New Testament but there are so many *differences* among them. Kurt says that when I was shocked to learn this, it directly led [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:57:21-04:00March 18th, 2022|Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

How Would We Know If We Found an “Original” Manuscript?
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How Would We Know If We Found an “Original” Manuscript?

New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum

How Would We Know If We Found an “Original” Manuscript?

A reader recently asked a question I had dealt with on the blog many years ago. When originally asked it, I responded by saying I had never thought about it before. (!) Below is the question and my initial reflections. My views haven’t matured much during the past seven years (and they ain't the only thing), so I give my initial response. If someone can improve on it, let me know. First here is this week’s way of asking the question: QUESTION: Suppose someone did claim to have found the original…. I get that you can show something isn’t original, such as by dating it to two hundred years later. But is there anything you can do to show it is likely original? Here now is the original post. ****************************** READER'S QUESTION: Were we to have any *original manuscript* of any NT document in our midst, would we be able to recognize and confirm it as such? If so, how? BART'S RESPONSE: Now that’s a question I’ve never been asked before! And in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:50-04:00February 26th, 2022|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

Did My Shift in Thinking Destroy my Own Views? Guest Video Post #4 by Kurt Jaros
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Did My Shift in Thinking Destroy my Own Views? Guest Video Post #4 by Kurt Jaros

Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts

Did My Shift in Thinking Destroy my Own Views? Guest Video Post #4 by Kurt Jaros

Kurt Jaros provides here the fourth in his series of videos about my views of whether we can know what the authors of the New Testament actually wrote. It is an intriguing series: Dr. Jaros is a conservative evangelical Christian scholar who thinks that other public evangelical figures have misrepresented my views. But this is a tricky one. What do you think? Dr. Jaros will be willing to address any comments/questions you have. ****************************** Misquoting Ehrman – Part Four: Ehrman’s Shift Oops! Did I get Dr. Ehrman’s position wrong? In a debate against Dan Wallace, Ehrman claims to have changed his mind on whether we can speak meaningfully about the original text. Does his shift lead to a significant change about the knowledge we can have of the original wording of the text? In this video, I look at the distinction between the “original” and the “earliest available form” of the text.

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:37-04:00January 13th, 2022|Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts|

Evangelical Support for Misquoting Jesus: Kurt Jaros, Guest Post #3
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Evangelical Support for Misquoting Jesus: Kurt Jaros, Guest Post #3

Book Discussions, New Testament Manuscripts

Evangelical Support for Misquoting Jesus: Kurt Jaros, Guest Post #3

Here now is the third of Evangelical theologian and apologist Kurt Jaros's videos supporting my views of the manuscript tradition of the New Testament against critiques leveled by fellow evangelicals. Watch, see, and enjoy! Misquoting Ehrman – Part Three: Methods “After describing how some Christian scholars have built a strawman out of Bart Ehrman’s view, I offer a theory as to why some Christian apologists and scholars have misunderstood Bart Ehrman's position. It is not because they intentionally seek to destroy Ehrman, but because they conflate some ideas. One scholar in particular does a far better job at understanding Ehrman's view from Misquoting Jesus than others. Also, the video ends on a cliff hanger, so watch all the way through!”

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:22-04:00December 26th, 2021|Book Discussions, New Testament Manuscripts|

An Evangelical Apologist Who *Supports* My Book Misquoting Jesus!
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An Evangelical Apologist Who *Supports* My Book Misquoting Jesus!

Book Discussions, New Testament Manuscripts

An Evangelical Apologist Who Supports My Book Misquoting Jesus!

In October 2019 I was invited to a Christian apologetics conference in Chicago to give a talk. (click the link to see my post about it). As you may know, "apologetics" is big in evangelical Christian circles; it is the attempt to demonstrate the intellectual reasonableness of the faith, to "defend" the truth of Christian claims (for example, mounting evidence for the actual resurrection of Jesus, for the infallibility of the Bible, and so on). It is highly unusual for a non-evangelical to be invited to talk at one of these things, but they wanted me to come to speak alongside three very conservative Christian apologists so that the audience could hear "the other side." We all talked about contradictions and inconsistencies in the Bible. I said they were numerous and signficant and, short story, the others said they were not. You would think I'd be entering the Lion's Den, but in fact it was great fun and everyone was well behaved and good natured. The scholar who organized the conference was Kurt Jaros, a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:56:09-04:00December 8th, 2021|Book Discussions, New Testament Manuscripts|

Do I Hold a Grudge against Bruce Metzger?

I'll end this set of reflections on my relationship with Bruce Metzger with a surprising question about my relationship with him, and my response. (My sense is that those who have been reading this thread will not be surprised by what I say) ****************************** QUESTION: A more personal question: did you have a grudge against Dr. Bruce Metzger? I have always seen conservative textual critics and scholars pit you against Dr. Metzger's views. RESPONSE: When I first read this question I was very surprised indeed. A grudge against Bruce Metzger??? Metzger, as many readers of this blog know, was my teacher and mentor, and I never had anything but the most profound and utmost respect for him, from the moment I first had the privilege of meeting him until the time of his death – and still today. I don’t think there’s anyone in the known universe who would disagree that Bruce Metzger was the greatest NT textual scholar ever to come out of North America. I first heard about him when I was [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:55:39-04:00October 31st, 2021|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts|

Why Would Later Scribes Be Interested In Having Jesus “Sweat Blood”?

I have explained why it is almost certain that Luke did not himself write the passage describing Jesus “sweating blood” in Luke 22:43-44; the passage is not found in some of our oldest and best manuscripts, it intrudes in a context that otherwise is structured as a clear chiasmus, and it presents a view of Jesus going to his death precisely at odds with what Luke has produced otherwise. Whereas Luke goes out of his way to portray Jesus as calm and in control in the face of death – evidently to provide a model to his readers about how they too suffer when they experience persecution – these verses show him in deep anguish to the point of needing heavenly support by an angel, as he sweats great drops as of blood. But if the verses were not originally in Luke, why were they added by scribes? The key to answering the question comes from considering two data points. First, when were the verses added to the text? And second, how were they first [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:55:39-04:00October 24th, 2021|New Testament Manuscripts|

Was Jesus in Agony Before His Arrest? The Unexpected Answer in Luke.

This mini-thread within a thread started out with my indicating that among the difficulties I have with the NRSV translation is that it includes as part of the text the account in Luke 22:43-44 of Jesus in agony -- the passage commonly referred to as the account of Jesus' "Bloody Sweat" (from which we get the phrase "sweating blood," even though he doesn't sweat blood but sweats sweat like blood drops -- presumably meaning "big" drops?) I've already explaine why I don't think Luke wrote the account. There's more than can be said, but maybe I've said about enough. If you want the fuller scoop, you can find a fuller discussion in my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. For the purposes of the blog, two main questions remain: why would Luke change Mark’s portrayal of Jesus going to his death so that now he is so clearly calm and collected? And why did later scribes change Luke’s portrayal by adding the two verses in question? In this post I'll deal with the first question [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:55:38-04:00October 20th, 2021|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts|

An Unexpected Argument Against Jesus’ “Sweating Blood”

In the previous post I mentioned that I first got interested in the textual problem of Luke 22:43-44 (“the bloody sweat”) when I was taking a graduate seminar at Princeton Theological Seminary, my first year in the doctoral program. The seminar was devoted (the entire semester) to the Greek exegesis (interpretation) of Luke. My fellow student, Mark Plunkett, presented a seminar paper in which he dealt with the passage. He was not at all interested in the textual question of whether vv. 43-44 were original. He was assuming that they were not, but it had nothing to do with his presentation. In his presentation he argued that there was a clear structure to the passage of Jesus’ prayer before being arrested (in Luke’s source this takes place in the Garden of Gethsemane, but Luke doesn’t say so) and he made a convincing argument (to my mind). And then I realized that the structural argument was relevant to the textual problem of whether the verses were original or not. While we moved on to other things [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:55:38-04:00October 16th, 2021|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts|

Can We Reconstruct the New Testament from the Writings of the Early Church Fathers?

Can We Reconstruct the New Testament from the Writings of the Early Church Fathers? Christian apologists sometimes say that the historical record for the New Testament is so robust that the New Testament could be recreated from the writings of the early church fathers alone. Does this popular claim hold up? For example, here are Norm Geisler and Frank Turek in I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, p. 228: The early church fathers—men of the second and third centuries such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and others—quoted the New Testament so much (36,289 times, to be exact) that all but eleven verses of the New Testament can be reconstructed just from their quotations. There are 7957 verses in the New Testament, so “all but 11 verses” means that 99.9 percent could be reconstructed. And note the word “reconstructed.” They imagine recreating the original words or at least an identical meaning. These are bold claims. Let’s track down the evidence that supports this claim. As we do so, note the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:55:38-04:00October 12th, 2021|New Testament Manuscripts|

Another Problem with the NRSV: Knowing What To Translate

SORRY Y'ALL. AS roughly 82,000 people have pointed out to me: This post was already posted four days ago. It was a glich in the system. The system is ... my brain. UGH. So if you read Oct. 6, don't bother today!.... Translators of the Bible have a terrifically complicated and difficult (and usually thankless) task. I always knew that, of course, with my head – ever since taking Greek back in college. But I did not relate to the problems emotionally until I started publishing translations of my own. It’s HARD. My first translation project was a two-volume edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library (published by Harvard University Press). It was at that point that I realized that what translators do is not at all what the rest of us do who can teach the ancient languages and read Greek and assign Greek translation exercises to classes of graduate students. When you are with a class of students, you can sit around the table, discuss the various options about how [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:55:37-04:00October 10th, 2021|History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts|

Bruce Metzger and Me: Reminiscences on my Dissertation

I have been enjoying reposting these reminiscences of my relationship with Bruce Metzger, widely seen as the most learned and important textual scholar in North America in the 20th century. I was privileged to study with him and honored to be his final student. Here I reflect on his supervision of my dissertation. Different dissertation advisors have different approaches to supervising a dissertation. Some are extremely hands on, to the point of working over every thought and every sentence. Not too many are like that, because if they were, they would never do anything else with their life. Plus, the idea is for the student to figure it out and get good at it. That takes some trial and error. Other advisors go for the big picture and like to talk over the big ideas. Others basically don’t give a rip how the dissertation is coming along – they want to see it at the end, and when it’s done, they’ll tell the student whether it’s good enough or not. Others … well, there are [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:53-04:00August 28th, 2021|New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

More On Bruce Metzger and Me: How I Got Interested in my Dissertation Topic

THIS POST RESUMES MY RECOLLECTIONS OF MY INTERACTIONS WITH BRUCE METZGER, MY MENTOR. Remember: when I say "textual criticism" in this post, I am NOT referring simply to the "study of texts." Textual criticism is the technical term used by scholars (in all fields) to refer to how we establish what an author wrote if we don't have his/her original writing itself. For the New Testament that involves studying ancient Greek manuscripts and other sources; since all the surviving sources word the NT in different ways -- usually completely insignificant ways, but sometimes important -- we need to figure out what the "originals" said and how scribes changed them. That's "textual criticism." ****************************** When I entered my PhD program at Princeton Theological Seminary, I knew already that I wanted to specialize in the study of the Greek manuscript tradition of the New Testament. As I indicated in my earlier posts, that’s why I went there, because Metzger was the country’s leading expert in this field, and one could argue the leading expert in the world [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:37-04:00August 1st, 2021|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

Texts and Towns that Allegedly Didn’t Exist (So Did Jesus?)

Here I continue to answer questions from my evangelical colleague in the field, Ben Witherington, as addressed some years ago, These again deal with the claims of "Mythicists," who insist that there never actually was a man Jesus, but that he is simply made up, a complete myth. One way they support their point is by saying that some passages in the ancient world that mention him in fact are later "interpolations" into the original writings (that is, some nefarious editor stuck references to Jesus into a text that originally didn't mention him) and that his hometown, Nazareth, actually did not exist at the time. Is either claim credible or, well, supported by any actual *evidence*? Here are Ben's queries and my responses. Q. Mythicists seems to often uses the interpolation theory to explain away NT texts that are inconvenient to their agendas. Yet it is also true that some NT scholars use interpolation theories to the very same end, even when there is apparently no textual basis for the interpolation theory. Explain how [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:54:05-04:00June 24th, 2021|Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, New Testament Manuscripts|

How Then Do Most Ancient Manuscripts Get Discovered?

I have been discussing documents from early Christianity that I would very much like to have see with my own eyes. In my last post I mentioned the fact that documents that *do* tend to be discovered are either copies of books we already have (the Gospel of John, the book of Revelation, etc.) or of books that we did not previously know existed (the Letter of Diognetus, or most of the writings in the Nag Hammadi library). Here is a related question from a reader of the blog. QUESTION: Are there researchers who systematically attempt to find these ancient documents or when documents come to light is it pretty much by chance? ANSWER: Well, not so much, not these days. For a simple reason: how does one go about trying to discover a manuscript? Do you fly to Egypt, hire a taxi to take you out to the desert, and start digging? There were basically two ways that past researchers tried to discover manuscripts. Sometimes they were spectacularly successful. But one of these ways [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:51-04:00June 15th, 2021|History of Biblical Scholarship, New Testament Manuscripts|

The Value of Amulets for Reconstructing the New Testament Text: Guest Post by Brice Jones

Now here is a topic I bet you've never heard of before. The value of what? Amulets? For what? Really? Yup, really. Sometimes the most interesting issues are ones you haven't heard of before. And hey, now you'll be able to talk about it. This is a guest post from Brice Jones, a textual specialist on this topic, who has written the definitive book about it. I've asked him to tell us about it in layperson's terms. This will take him a couple of posts. Here is a brief bio on him so you have a sense of who he is, followed by post number one, in which, among other things, he tells you what this is all about. - Brice Jones is the author of New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets from Late Antiquity and Matthean and Lukan Special Material. ************************************ Brice C. Jones is an ancient historian specializing in the study of Early Christianity and papyrology. He received his Ph.D. in Religion from Concordia University (Montreal) and his M.A. in New Testament from Yale University. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:53:04-04:00March 18th, 2021|History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts|

The Oldest View of Christ: Found in Only One Greek Manuscript of Luke!
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The Oldest View of Christ: Found in Only One Greek Manuscript of Luke!

Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum

The Oldest View of Christ: Found in Only One Greek Manuscript of Luke!

The oldest view of Christ is found in one Greek Manuscript of Luke. I’d like to address the issue of early Christology from a slightly different angle in this post. So far I have talked about how an “exaltation” Christology, in which Jesus, the man, is made the Son of God. At some point of his existence he can be found in various parts of the New Testament (Rom 1:3-4; speeches in Acts), and how different early Christians located that exaltation to different moments in Jesus’ existence (resurrection, baptism, birth, pre-existence). As it turns out, this view of Christology relates to an important textual variant in the Gospel of Luke. Only One Greek Manuscript of Luke So, by way of background for anyone new to this kind of discussion. We don’t have the original copy of Luke’s Gospel (or of any other NT book or, actually, of any book at all from the ancient world!). What we have are copies made from copies made from copies that were made from copies. We have thousands of copies [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:17-04:00February 4th, 2021|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

How the Trinity Got Into the New Testament: Part 2

I continue now with the story of how the doctrine of the Trinity as stated in 1 John 5:7 (the only passage in the entire Bible that states that there are three divine figures and “these three are one”) was actually not originally part of 1 John – or the Bible at all. It was a later addition. But how did it come into the King James Bible then? Read on! This is how I explained it in my book Misquoting Jesus. (If you haven’t read the previous post, it provides some background) (it also does even if you did read it). ************************** Even though the Complutensian Polyglot was the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament, it was not the first published version. As I pointed out, even though the work was printed by 1514, it did not actually see the light of published day until 1522. Between those two dates a famous and enterprising Dutch scholar, the humanist intellectual Desiderius Erasmus, both produced and published an edition of the Greek New [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:59-04:00January 9th, 2021|Catholic Epistles, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

How the Trinity Got Into the New Testament

In my previous post I began to discuss the doctrine of the Trinity, which states that the godhead comprises three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are completely and equally God, with no one superior to the others, all of whom have existed forever, and all of whom are of the same essence/substance. But these three are actually one. So there is only one God, but he is manifest in three persons. I maintained in the post that this doctrine is not taught in the New Testament, but I pointed out there is one apparent exception, depending on which translation you are reading. In the King James Version you will find the following passage in the letter of 1 John: There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water and the blood, and these three are one (1 John 5:7-8). That first part does [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:51:59-04:00January 7th, 2021|Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

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