A Non-Evangelical Reads Misquoting Jesus

Bart Ehrman has from time to time expressed surprise that Christians and particularly Evangelicals reacted so negatively to his book Misquoting Jesus. In his follow-up book Jesus, Interrupted he writes, for example, that

The conservative evangelical response to my book surprised me a bit. Some of these critics criticized Misquoting Jesus for “misleading” people—as if facts such as those I have just cited [about the originals being lost, there being hundreds of thousands of variants, that some of these mistakes matter a lot, etc.] could lead someone down a slippery slope toward perdition. A number of critics indicated that they didn’t much appreciate my tone. And a whole lot of them wanted to insist that the facts I laid out do not require anyone to lose their faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God. (pp. 184–185)

Ehrman then goes on to take issue with this last point since he thinks the facts are incompatible with belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God. Still, he clarifies that he had no intention of making people lose their Christian faith as a whole. From there he goes on to make a summary case for why he’s fine saying that the vast majority of variants don’t matter but that some still matter a lot. I don’t really have any complaint about that way of saying it, although I might demur on some of the particular ways Ehrman thinks they matter.

Be that as it may, the question I think is worth considering is the degree to which Misquoting Jesus does, in fact, mislead people. I have long felt that most of the book is quite good and makes for a nice, eminently readable introduction to textual criticism for those who know next to nothing about it. But I did close the book thinking—and I know others who did as well—that Ehrman had overcooked his goose, especially as regards inspiration. But, then, I’m an Evangelical and so, according to Ehrman, maybe that explains it.

What, then, do non-Evangelicals take away from the book? Asking that question recently reminded me of an early review of the book from an unlikely source: the creator of one of America’s most beloved cartoons and a man who is quite certainly not an Evangelical.


Scott Adams is the artist behind the very popular Dilbert series. As it happens he read Misquoting Jesus back in the day and blogged about it. Quoted below is that blog, which you can still find on the Wayback Machine.

Despite Adams’s penchant for exaggeration, it’s an instructive example of a non-Evangelical’s take on the book. It suggests to me that Evangelicals weren’t exactly barking up the wrong tree when they complained that Ehrman’s book leaves the uninitiated reader with the wrong impression. But read for yourself and see what you think.

I’m reading a fascinating new book called Misquoting Jesus, by Bart Ehrman. The author is an expert at looking at ancient documents, especially biblical stuff, and figuring out what’s original work and what got altered by subsequent scribes. Apparently there are a lot of experts in that field.

I never knew that there are about a zillion different versions of the Bible because (and I am summarizing Ehrman’s entire book here) it was copied and recopied by hand, by semi-literate, opinionated morons for hundreds of years. Sometimes the copiers left stuff out, sometimes they added their own explanations where things didn’t seem to make sense, and other times they simply made errors. Each time a new semi-literate opinionated moron made a copy of the copy, most of the errors were preserved while new ones were added.

After a few hundred years, professional copiers started doing the copying, so the error rate went down. But among the document experts, no one has a clue what the original books of the bible said. The first copies no longer exist.

Just to give you a flavor of the magnitude of the problem, according to Ehrman, there are more changes (both intentional and unintentional) in the Bible than there are words in the New Testament. The estimates range from 200,000 to 400,000.

Yesterday I read that half of the people who voted for President [George W.] Bush believe that the popular King James version of the Bible is the literal word of God. How does one reconcile that belief with the fact that experts know the Bible is riddled with human additions and errors? Here are the only arguments I can think of:

1. You infidel! 200,000 changes isn’t that many.
2. Those document experts are Satan’s helpers. There are no changes.
3. I never knew about those 200,000 changes. I renounce my faith!
4. God works in mysterious ways. In this case he used thousands of semi-literate, opinionated morons to edit the Bible until now it’s perfect.
5. Let me freshen your drink.

I’ve noticed from the comments here that a number of you are believers. Let me know if I left anything off the list. Seriously. I kid, but I have no idea what the real argument is.

From “Uh Oh,” an April 14, 2006 blog post. HT: Stephen Carlson’s old blog for the reminder.