Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 49:2 (Jun 2006)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman. New York: Harper San Francisco, 2005, x + 242 pp., $24.95.

There has been a long-standing discussion in the world of textual criticism concerning the degree to which scribes intentionally altered passages of the NT to conform more closely to their own theological preferences. Ever since the well-known statement from Westcott and Hort that “there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes” (Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882] 282), there has been a steady chorus of scholars intending to show the opposite to be the case. The idea of theologically motivated scribal changes can be traced back to Kirsopp Lake and J. Rendel Harris and more recently to scholars like Eldon J. Epp and his well-known book, The Theological Tendency of Codex Cantabrigiensis in Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). Bart D. Ehrman joins this chorus in his recent book, Misquoting Jesus, and argues that scribes in the early church were not merely disinterested copyists who mechanically transmitted the text in front of them, but, in one sense, continued “writing” the NT text by changing it to adapt to the theological and social challenges of the day. Of course, Ehrman has written on this topic numerous times before—most notably in his more technical book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)— and it has become the most dominant theme of his academic career. Ehrman laments the fact that textual variants are often overlooked and discarded like scraps on the cutting room floor and argues that they should instead be viewed as a “window” into the history of early Christianity and the struggles and challenges it faced.

In contrast to many of Ehrman’s prior works, Misquoting Jesus is written for a more popular audience and begins not with a survey of academic works on the subject but with somewhat of a personal “testimony” from Ehrman himself, cataloging his transition (or transformation) from naive evangelical at Moody and Wheaton to enlightened scholar at Princeton Seminary. He describes how it was his early studies in textual criticism, and his subsequent awareness of scribal “mistakes,” that first alerted him to the fact that his view of inerrancy might be flawed. Having finally admitted that the Bible has errors and mistakes, Ehrman said that the “floodgates opened,” and he began to change his view of the Bible radically, concluding that the Bible was “a human book from beginning to end” (p. 11). Ehrman’s personal testimony in the introduction, although interesting, strikes the reader as rather out of place for a...

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