Monday, March 25, 2019

A Non-Evangelical Reads Misquoting Jesus

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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.

18 comments

  1. It amazes me that such a scholar has this cognitive dissonance. He and Dr. Metzger went came to polar opposite conclusions on their faith after engaging in the TC field. Bock and Wallace's Dethroning Jesus has a great chapter interacting with Erhman's writings.

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    1. Even if the Gospels have been perfectly preserved, every aspect of them is fiction.

      Jesus riding on a donkey is from Zechariah 9

      Turning the other cheek is from the Greek text of Isaiah 50.6-9

      Clearing the temple is based on an ancient faulty translation of Zechariah 14.21

      I can go and on.

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  2. This is very interesting. Perhaps those who are more well versed in TC would not feel this way specifically because they are filtering their reading through their knowledge of the field in general. This was very illuminating!

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  3. So what is the point of this post?

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    1. You mean besides the Dilbert reference?

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    2. I am asking the author of this post what the reference to the Dilbert author does for you? Doesn't seem like he has any answer(s), he just said that he apparently doesn't know what the argument of the book was. How does his take help evangelicals claiming Ehrman leaves the uninitiated with the wrong impression?

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    3. It seems to me that Adams shows that he knows pretty well what the argument of Ehrman's book is.

      Also, it helps us (whether evangelical or not) see how Ehrman leaves the uninitiated with the wrong impression just by how he misled Adams.

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    4. Adams: "I kid, but I have no idea what the real argument is."

      Cool, super helpful. #yawn

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    5. I believe that in that sentence Adams is referring not to Eherman's own argument, but to any potential argument that believers could use to answer Ehrman.

      Ehrman left Adams with the impression that the case against the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts is so strong that Adams can't conceive of any potential counterargument to the case Ehrman makes.

      To me, this highlights precisely Gurry's point.

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    6. David, sorry the point wasn’t clear. Eric appears to have put his finger on where you got stuck. Adams’s last line is saying he has no idea how Christians can maintain their faith given Ehrman’s case in the book. His five arguments before that are facetious.

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    7. Jesus is the same fictional Jesus from the LXX version of Zechariah.

      Paul only ever indicates 2 sources of Jesus info, Scripture (the LXX) and dream teachings.

      Paul never indicates Cephas or anyone else was a disciple of Jesus. Apostle doesn't mean disciple.

      Philo independently confirms Jesus is the same Jesus from the LXX version of Zechariah:

      https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13541

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  4. Anecdotally, the sound-byte that most lay people I've talked to seem to take away from the book is the same one that stood out to Adams':
    //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.//

    And the way Adams puts this illustrates very well how Ehrman is deceptive in the way he presents the evidence.

    I can't blame Ehrman's readers for thinking that that number of variants is a huge number, and also for thinking that because it's such a large number it casts great doubt on the reliability of NT manuscripts.

    But they're wrong about both of those assumptions. And while it's understandable for the lay readers not to grasp why, Ehrman absolutely should know better. Indeed, he surely does know better. But he's not trying to present the facts dispassionately, as he pretends. He's being a propagandist.

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    1. Regarding how Ehrman presents the magnitude of the problem in terms of variants, I think the following takeaway by Adams is also instructive:

      "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."

      While Ehrman is accurate on the number of variants in the NT, he doesn't qualify this by discussing the nature of those variants. As the more complete collations of recent years demonstrate, the vast majority of variant readings are singular or have simple mechanical explanations. Deliberate omissions and interpolations are comparatively rare, but Ehrman seems to leave his readers with the impression that such changes were on par with scribal errors in terms of their frequency.

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    2. Fully agree. It has long been recognised that Ehrman clearly has an agenda in his 'popular' writings - to make people doubt the reliability of the NT, particularly the Gospels. As you said he gives no proper explanation of the variants, thus ensuring his readers, most of whom have no knowledge whatsoever of TC, conclude the NT is wholly unreliable and we have no way of knowing what was in the original text. Yet, strangely, he has also said that he and Bruce Metzger would agree the original text, with very few disagreements! I am glad some scholars have called out Ehrman's nonsense, but sadly those who read his popular books are unlikely to read those books negating him.

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  5. I totally forgot I had blogged this! Thanks for the hat-tip.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. "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 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? ... a man who is quite certainly not an Evangelical."

    Personally, I doubt Ehrman would have ever intended to mislead anyone. That he also did not provide Scott Adams with a sufficiently nuanced theology of inspiration to replace the common view among lay people, yes, including non-evangelicals, should also not be placed at his feet since Ehrman is not a Christian, let alone a Christian theologian.

    The real problem is with silly doctrines of inerrancy that cannot deal effectively with the realities of the human scribal tradition and with church pastors in general who prefer to let their congregations remain ignorant not only of issues of text cricism specifically but of common consensus views of critical biblical scholars in general. In America this is part of a long religious history of pietistic anti-intellectualism dating back to the Christian religious wars following the Reformation when the persecuted fringe religious groups came to the so-called New World to practice their religious faith in freedom. 

    Just my two cents.

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    1. Sorry but he is clearly purposefully misleading his popular readership when he does not present all the facts despite knowing them.

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