Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, research question

[Cpt_RSA]

Hi Everyone,

Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the
Bible and Why has been around for a while now. He has also delivered a series of lectures at Stanford. In the book he basically says that the Bible we know is full of mistakes and that the strongest Church movement won. This is used as a source of argument for many inflammatory attacks by ex-Catholics and militant atheists on some forums against the Trinity, the Church and the whole Christian church for the matter and even Christ Himself. The said attackers say that ‘scientific research’ was conducted and it shows ‘your bible is not true’ and that type
of rhetoric.

My question is, is there any Vatican or Catholic research into
early Bible history - the 300 years post-Christ which can comment, disprove or enlighten us about Ehrman’s research.
Was Ehrman’s reseach superior to that done by the CC?
(I seriously don’t belive that. I wouldn’t believe one study no matter
the subject of the study.)

I cannot believe that the Catholic Church with it’s universities and institutes does not have some Google’ble historical or otherwise translation note material from these old manuscripts or other research on the subject. Did one old-ex Fundamentalist chap do all the research and the rest of the community has been doing nothing? I’m also suprised by the lack of scientific community commentary on this particular subject.

Perhaps I’m asking for the wrong type of material. Maybe the CC has covered these translation issues long ago. Maybe this is just much ado about nothing but I’d still appreciate some (name removed by moderator)ut about this from you good ppl

Some of these lectures can be found here:
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7cK3Ry_icJo

Hope you folks can help.

BTW Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

 

[Epistemes]

There are sound reasons for rejecting Ehrman’s positions…

It’s no news that New Testament textual criticism and the study of church history overlap, or that textual and historical data complement one another. What IS news is how Dr. Ehrman attempts to re-define New Tetament textual criticism as a branch of historical research. He calls the goal of reconstructing the original text a “myopic” concern.

However, the reconstruction of the original text is and ought to be ***the ***concern, ***the ***goal, of New Testament textual criticism. Reconstructing transmission history is an important part of that task, but for the textual critic it’s relevant as a step toward the goal, not as a separate goal. When it’s a separate goal, a separate discipline is entered. One of Bart’s weaknesses is that he attempts to engage in theology, in an effort to refute his “fundamentalist” past alongside his objective discipline. The study of biblical inspiration is of theological concern. The 18th and 19th centuries saw a great increase in the number of texts and versions of the Bible available for study. This proved fatal only for verbal inspiration of the texts, but by no means has it proved fatal for the whole of biblical inspiration.

Bart Ehrman’s books (e.g., Misquoting Jesus, Lost Christianities and The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture) build on a specific model of Early Church history suggesting that what was later recognised as ‘Orthodoxy’ was just one of many groups which cannot be said to be “true representatives of Christianity.” This is a position which non-Christians, like Mr. Ehrman himself, frequently tout in defense of their otherwise already preconceived notions about Christianity and the New Testament writings.

Ehrman’s been peddling the notion for years that the Gnostic gospels and other apocrypha represent “authentic Christianity” – and that even these competing Christianities were little more than a warmed-over paganism. This is a useful fiction for those who do not believe in God, or for the majority of potential apostates seeking a presumably academic reason to abandon Christianity: Ehrman has uncovered the “conspiracy” at the heart of Christianity and has confirmed their biases and granted them the insider status they seek.

Bart still seems not to differentiate between having the original papyrus and ink, and having the original message that was communicated by the original papyrus and ink. He asked in Misquoting Jesus, “What good does it do to say these original texts were inspired if we don’t have them?”

First of all, we DO have them. Where difficult variants are concerned, we have them along with competing alternate readings (which, ironically, is the subject of Ehrman’s book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture). How many variants does Dr. Ehrman think there are in which a.) the original text cannot be reasonably determined via textual criticism and b.) there is an appreciable difference of meaning between the variants? 40? 160? 400? It’s a very small percentage, which other textual critics (such as Bruce Metzger and Kurt Aland) have maintained in the past.

The question ought to be more like this: “What good does it do to say that these original texts were inspired if we can only confidently eliminate 99.9% of the non-original variants from consideration?”

Even in cases where we face competing, evenly supported variants, and are thus unsure of exactly what the divinely inspired words are, there is still an obvious limit as to what they could possibly be. Thus even a reconstructed New Testament text with 40, or 160, or 400 significant points of instability is capable of communicating God’s truthful and authoritative message.

But, as stated above, Muslims and other non/anti-Christians frequently cite Ehrman’s works like Scripture itself, even though, even on this forum alone, I have seen his works put in their proper context by individuals far more knowledgable on the textual criticism of the Bible. Ehrman’s works should be read, no doubt, and he should be taken seriously since the New York Times Bestsellers list indicates that the American public is taking him seriously, but Ehrman’s books should be placed on the shelf alongside others by Martin Hengel, James Dunn, Joseph Fitzmeyer, and Bruce Metzger (Ehrman’s mentor) who would not agree with Ehrman on all accounts. [Point being, we don’t need the Catholic Church alone to point out the weaknesses in Ehrman’s arguments.]

 

[junostarlighter]

i asked about misquoting jesus to dr. john bergsma of franciscan university this question a while back in an email. he wrote back to me the following:

OK, Ehrman’s book makes bigger claims than it actually delivers. When you take out all the fluff and the background information about how to do textual criticism, you are left with 1/2 dozen significant instances where some manuscripts may have been altered by scribes to highlight or make more explicit a theological claim of Christianity. The problem with Ehrman’s book–and I was there for the live panel discussion at the Society of Biblical Literature when this point was made (last November [2007] in Washington)–is that in no case are the dubious texts Ehrman cites the only or even the primary texts for any of the Church’s dogmas. In other
words, even if Ehrman is right, and you said, OK, let’s excise the six texts he points out, you would still have plenty of other texts whose wording is NOT in doubt which teach the doctrine in question.

I also wrote to dr. scott hahn’s office and his research assistant wrote this in reply to me:

Erhman used to be a fundamentalist at the Moody
Bible Institute.While he was there, he took the Bible as being the sole rule of faith and believed that every single accent, spelling, punctuation, etc. of the Bible was inerrant. So when he started studying form criticism and saw that there were some copying errors in the transmission of the Bible (which were corrected and the existence of copyist errors was very rare), he
completely lost his faith. If he had been Catholic and understood that the Word of God is expressed in both Scripture and Tradition, he would not have been phased by his studies in form criticism. Even now he has the fundamentalist mentality (although not as a believer anymore) which causes him to come up with the conclusion that orthodox monks purposely altered the original manuscripts to make Christ divine. This is of course complete nonsense, because we can look at the oldest manuscripts we have and see that they are very accurate with matching up to the texts we use today. We can also look to the Apostolic Church Fathers (we were alive at the same time as
the Apostles) and see that very early in the Church they had the same beliefs as the NT writers (which should be no surprise).

To the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been a Catholic author/theologian who has dedicated a work to counter his Ehrman’s claims, but I would recommend the following titles that address the claims he purposes…

Pope Benedict’s “Jesus of Nazareth”
Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”
Craig Evans’ “Fabricating Jesus”
Timothy Paul Jones’ “Misquoting Truth”

 

[Cpt_RSA]

Thank you, both of you. The info looks good .
It’s the type of academic information I’ve been looking for.

I find it inconceivable that one man would suddenly
uncover some form of early Christian cover-up. As if suddenly
Erhman had access to newly discovered manuscripts or the previous literary scholars of these books have been too intellectually impaired to recognise these ‘errors’ or maybe
did so on purpose as giant cover up which supposedly originated
in the early years following Christ’s Ascent.

Lee Strobel
books.google.co.za/books?id=qn1FU3lLcnsC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=vatican+ehrman&source=web&ots=psFk6Hh4qW&sig=96OCzSfxieW8Uf9vNPGQJRqqxxs&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA71,M1
has quoted Wallace

and Dr Daniel Wallace has produced a response too:
isca-apologetics.org/A%20Response%20to%20Bart%20Ehrman.pdf

and

bible.org/page.php?page_id=4000

 

[Verbum]

Hi RSA,

These people assume from the start that the gospels have a historical or biographical purpose. Instead they are teaching tools and spiritual resources used by the early Christian communities. They were first developped orally and were put into writing after they had achieved a definitive form. The facts of Jesus’ life and teaching are used for teaching doctrine and strengthening spiritual lilfe. One evangelist may use a parable in the first year of Jesus’ public life, while another one may use in the third year, in order to make a different point.

This does not, of course, mean that there is no history in the gospels, but history as it was understood at the time they were written. I remember studying Livy in college. At some point he has a long speech by Hannibal supposedly spoken before he crossed the Alps with his elephants. Now there were no recording devices in Hannibal’s days. Livy’s cites no archives or records or witnesses. The fact is that, in those days historians made up speeches to dramatize their account. They tried to be as faithful as possible to the mentality of the speaker and to make sure the speech jived with known history. Why should not the evangelist do the same thing? We can for example surmise that the discourse on the mountain is a summary of Jesus’ teaching that he never actually spoke, faithful nevertheless in every detail.

We can also assume that the gospels reflect the Christian communities’ reflection on the teaching of Jesus with formulations that Jesus never actually used. For example, did Jesus really say “Take up your cross and follow me” before he was crucified? Nevertheless that formulation is 100% faithful to Jesus’ teaching and spirit and has inspired millions of Christians.

The study of the origins and literary nature of scripture is encouraged by the Church and will certainly never end. But it has to be done within the doctrinal confines of that Church. Those who do not accept those restraints are liable to wander into paths that lead away from the truth.

Verbum

 

[Cpt_RSA]

Hi RSA,

These people assume from the start that the gospels have a historical or biographical purpose.
Verbum

I agree 100% with you. My question is more academic from a scholastic POV than from a faith POV. Translation issues like these don’t raise issues of faith because as you say, the core of the message is important and not the grammar or detail, also the
mistakes Ehrman points out do not change anything significant.

However, I assumed, once knowing a Polish Franciscan monk here in Cape Town who did much research himself in these old manuscripts at the Vatican and also knowing how the Vatican has kept most
of these manuscripts (I presume) that they did a fair amount of
translating themselves – after all it was the Catholic Church which compiled the Holy Scripture and not the Moody’s Bible Institute.
Hence I’m interested to hear the response of any Catholic Church or Vatican academics to this. Perhaps this issue is so trivial it doesn’t even merit a response. In particular I’d like to know if Ehrman is correct or is just making too many assumptions
or if he is correct it could be considered - for lack of a better word - embarrasing for some academics why they haven’t picked some of these issues up. I’m sure that’s not the case at all.

The response by Wallace was academic and not spiritual for example and includes faults including faults of logic Ehrman comitted in his research. Maybe similar peer review exists from
Catholic Church academics?

Thanks again and have a Blessed Christmas.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

The fact is there is nothing much new in Ehrman’s work. He simply wrote it for a lay audience. This type of serious exegetical work has been done for years and is the accepted general belief of the great majority of biblical experts. There is no question that the texts we have today are not original and everything is based on copies of copies of copies. That there is not a greater disparity between the originals and what we have today is a testament to the desire of the scribes to faithfully copy. They did for the most part, but there are well known instances which are easy to find wherein scribes mistakenly thought that the author meant something that was not clear and they did alter texts to reflect their “understanding.” Sometimes they were not correct. There is even an instance where a writer wrote in the margin of his manuscript that care should be taken in the copying, since apparently “mistakes” or deliberate changes were well known at the time.

What is important throughout is the fact that the main ideas were faithfully transmitted. In essence, the ideas that Jesus and others attempted to convey were conveyed, though the exact wording has been changed often and pieces have been inadvertently omitted by oversight. Such in no way should be taken to limit the impact and usefullness of the scriptures.

 

[patrick457]

The fact is there is nothing much new in Ehrman’s work. He simply wrote it for a lay audience. This type of serious exegetical work has been done for years and is the accepted general belief of the great majority of biblical experts. There is no question that the texts we have today are not original and everything is based on copies of copies of copies. That there is not a greater disparity between the originals and what we have today is a testament to the desire of the scribes to faithfully copy. They did for the most part, but there are well known instances which are easy to find wherein scribes mistakenly thought that the author meant something that was not clear and they did alter texts to reflect their “understanding.” Sometimes they were not correct. There is even an instance where a writer wrote in the margin of his manuscript that care should be taken in the copying, since apparently “mistakes” or deliberate changes were well known at the time.

What is important throughout is the fact that the main ideas were faithfully transmitted. In essence, the ideas that Jesus and others attempted to convey were conveyed, though the exact wording has been changed often and pieces have been inadvertently omitted by oversight. Such in no way should be taken to limit the impact and usefullness of the scriptures.

I agree. Ehrman would only seem very shocking if one believes in the belief that anything in the Bible is totally literal, inerrant and infallible in the sense that many branches of Protestantism define them. His views aren’t really new; it’s merely the stuff already known and taught for years, with a coating of controversial statements.

 

[Ruthie]

Many people (apparently including Erhman) approach the passing on of the Scriptures from a modern point of view, that is, from a point of view that does not include the ability to remember someone’s words exactly.

This is a recent development, a product of the information age, and of schools dropping the requirement to memorize things.

I have two copies, written from memory, of the eulogy given at the funeral of a relative of mine, who died in the Civil War. They were written by two different people. They are virtually identical. And that was an age where books were fairly common - but students were expected to memorize and recite speeches and poetry.

Memory would be even more essential in a day when the only way to own a book was to pay someone to copy it, or copy it out yourself. And a good memory would be pretty widespread among the Jews, whose children memorized the Torah. (I wish I could cite a source for that, but it is buried somewhere in the notes I took for a class.)

A happy and blessed new year to all of us!

Ruthie

 

[SFH]

While slightly off point, I think it speaks volumes that when the Fathers met at Nicea in 325 to address the Arian heresy, there was hardly any dispute among the Fathers about the Divinity of Christ (big Christological debates on the council floor would boil up in later councils). It was almost treated as a “duh” by the Fathers that Christ was Divine. And they had little trouble condemning Arius and approving the Nicene Creed with its affirmation of Christ’s Divinity.

At least, that’s the distinct impression one gets from reading the Fathers and historians who were present at the council and later wrote about it.

If there were all these “secret” sects out there at the time of the council, then I would have expected them to make a better showing when the issue was raised at the Council of Nicea.

 

[SFH]

Many people (apparently including Erhman) approach the passing on of the Scriptures from a modern point of view, that is, from a point of view that does not include the ability to remember someone’s words exactly.

This is a recent development, a product of the information age, and of schools dropping the requirement to memorize things.

I have two copies, written from memory, of the eulogy given at the funeral of a relative of mine, who died in the Civil War. They were written by two different people. They are virtually identical. And that was an age where books were fairly common - but students were expected to memorize and recite speeches and poetry.

Memory would be even more essential in a day when the only way to own a book was to pay someone to copy it, or copy it out yourself. And a good memory would be pretty widespread among the Jews, whose children memorized the Torah. (I wish I could cite a source for that, but it is buried somewhere in the notes I took for a class.)

A happy and blessed new year to all of us!

Ruthie

Nor should one downplay the power of the Holy Spirit to inspire and recall to the minds of the Evangelists the words and events in Christ’s life.