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New Testament Texts and Manuscripts

Specious Arguments for the Truth of the Bible

Professors who have taught the same subject for decades often get tired with covering the same material time after time and, as a result, answering the same questions time after time. I've had friends who teach New Testament tell me: "If I have to teach the Synoptic Problem ONE MORE TIME I am going to SCREAM…." I've never felt that way. It's probably just a matter of personality and brain chemistry. For me, teaching someone who doesn't know something that I’ve taught for many years just means they haven’t had the chance to learn it. It’s the same outside the classroom with questions/comments I get – the same questions all the time. I’ll admit that often in the first nano-second I sometimes think: Why don’t they just GET IT? But then I remember: Wait a second. This person hasn't heard the answer.... Here is a question that comes to me all the time. I got it again a few days ago. QUESTION: I have a brief question. I was a biblical studies major in college [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-27T10:26:09-04:00July 24th, 2022|Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts|

Does Luke Get Rid of the Atonement?

In my previous post I tried to argue that the longer version of the account of Jesus’ Last Supper in Luke could have been created by a scribe who wanted to make the passage sound more like what is familiar from Matthew, Mark, and John, and to stress the point made in those other accounts as well, that Jesus’ broken body and shed blood are what bring redemption. The passage as you recall reads like this: 17 And he took a cup and gave thanks, and he said: “Take this and divide it among yourselves; 18 for I say to you that from now on I will not drink from the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes.” 19 And taking bread he gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, “This is my body that is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 20 Likewise after supper (he took) the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood that is shed for you. 21 [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-20T18:24:19-04:00July 5th, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

How Do You Decide What an Author Actually Wrote? The Last Supper

In my previous post I started to discuss a textual variant that I covered in my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, a very important variant for understanding Luke’s account of Jesus’ last days, for grasping Luke’s view of the importance of Jesus’ death, and for seeing how scribes occasionally modified their texts for theological reasons. The passage has to do with what Jesus said and did at the Last Supper. Here is the form of the text as found in most of the manuscripts. (I have put verse numbers in the appropriate places) 17 And he took a cup and gave thanks, and he said: “Take this and divide it among yourselves; 18 for I say to you that from now on I will not drink from the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes.” 19 And taking bread he gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, “This is my body that is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 20 Likewise after supper (he took) the [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-20T18:20:35-04:00July 3rd, 2022|Canonical Gospels, New Testament Manuscripts|

What Did Jesus Say at the Last Supper?

Here is a seemingly simple but inordinately complicated question I received from a read on the blog: QUESTION: Although the gospel of Luke doesn’t have an atonement message, what are your thoughts about Acts 20:28: “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood”? This sure sounds like it has atonement implications. RESPONSE: When I got the question my idea was to give a direct and simple response. But I realized that would be neither easy nor satisfying. It would take a post. But then I realized that wouldn’t be enough either: it would take several posts. So, right – this will be a thread. I begin with some background. I have dealt with this particular question about Acts 20:28 only once in my life, to my recollection (never on the blog, I believe), in my book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. To set up that discussion I need to [...]

BDEhrman2022-06-20T18:14:34-04:00July 2nd, 2022|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

Teeth Will Be Provided

Teeth will be provided seems like a strange title right? Well, we will get to that soon. I have had a long thread of fairly heavy-hitting posts for over a week now, dealing with whether Matthew and his audience, were Jewish. I still have a few things to say about related issues (such as whether, at the end of the day, Matthew and the apostle Paul would have been able to see eye-to-eye, and whether rather than being Jewish Matthew should be considered *anti*-Jewish). But I think it’s time for a break from the hard-hitting discussions for something a bit different and humorous. And so I have an anecdote to tell about a passage that I quoted in one of my earlier posts from Matthew, where Jesus says: “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into [...]

BDEhrman2023-02-22T10:29:37-05:00April 10th, 2022|New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum|

Do Textual Critics Have to be Radical Skeptics? Guest Post by Kurt Jaros
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Do Textual Critics Have to be Radical Skeptics? Guest Post by Kurt Jaros

New Testament Manuscripts

Do Textual Critics Have to be Radical Skeptics? Guest Post by Kurt Jaros

Here now is the sixth and final video post by Kurt Jaros, connected to my views of Textual Criticism. As you know, Kurt is a conservative evangelical apologist who, unlike some others, is openminded about issues of biblical scholarship. May his tribe increase. Here he argues that the fact we have different manuscripts of the NT with different wording does not necessarily have to lead to a deeply skeptical view of the Bible. ****************************** Misquoting Ehrman – Part Six: Reject Radical Skepticism How does radical skepticism creep into some people's minds when they think about textual criticism? In this last episode of Misquoting Ehrman, I provide an important distinction which demonstrates how radical skepticism does not follow from the manuscript evidence we have. Then, I recap the series. Thanks for viewing!

BDEhrman2022-03-21T17:46:38-04:00March 31st, 2022|New Testament Manuscripts|

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 [...]

BDEhrman2022-03-25T11:05:13-04:00March 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 [...]

BDEhrman2022-03-16T09:32:28-04:00March 18th, 2022|Bart's Critics, New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

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 [...]

BDEhrman2022-07-03T16:45:29-04:00February 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.

BDEhrman2022-01-13T19:41:39-05:00January 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!”

BDEhrman2021-12-27T14:30:37-05:00December 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-12-08T14:21:37-05:00December 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-10-20T11:16:24-04:00October 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-10-29T19:36:42-04:00October 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-10-05T14:14:23-04:00October 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-10-09T11:19:07-04:00October 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-10-20T10:45:41-04:00October 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-10-10T13:27:38-04:00October 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-08-15T13:25:28-04:00August 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 [...]

BDEhrman2021-07-20T10:57:40-04:00August 1st, 2021|Bart’s Biography, New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

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