I am trying to reconcile two of Bart’s comments about the “original text” of the NT. From misquoting Jesus:
pg. 252:
Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions – he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not – we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands.
From a talk on what does the “original text” mean using 2 Cor as the example “top scholars throughout the English speaking world have abandoned the idea that we can reconstruct some kind of original text”…
The talk for example suggests that sections of Pauls letters may have been left out during compilation of 2 Cor. Is Bart talking about the “original” or reconstructed text (ie a reconstruction of the original based on the tectual witnesses) in Misquoting Jesus? If material has been left out then he and Metzger would have had to be psychic to come up with the same original.
yeah i think he is sayin (given the same evidential documents) he and Metzger would ‘reconstruct’ the ‘original’ almost identically. their reconstruction may not be the original at all.
maybe tomorrow someone discovers a new 1st century manuscript of the letter to the Ephesians that looks very different than what current documents portray. then Ehrman after seeing that new document might then understand his yesterday’s reconstruction was wrong and come up with a new reconstruction ( and Metzer if it were possible would come up with the same)
Hi all,
I believe even if they were copied accurately, that would not enough to establish the authenticity of the New testament because we donot know who wrote certain the gospels and what were their sources and how reliable they were. With the lack of identities of the authors and their sources, doubts will be cast at the authenticity.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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