Sharing thoughts on Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus

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I read it (or about 95% of it, anyway) about a year and a half ago. I admit being at a loss for a good apologetical answer to some of the charges he makes against the belief that the Bible is divinely inspired, in light of the evidence he presents. I guess the biggest problem his arguments present for myself as a faithful Catholic are: since there were these other “Christians,” the early heresies like the Ebionites, docetists, adoptionists, etc. right along side the early orthodox/catholic Christians, and each group claimed apostolic succession and inheritance of apostolic teachings, who’s to say who the heretics were? (not unlike the problem faced by sola scriptura protestants be they Lutherans or baptists or whatever who all claim the guidance of the Holy Spirit but come to different conclusions on what scripture means)
 
On the other hand, I think the reviews you provided links for and other reviews I’ve read of his work make some good points about the weaknesses in his arguments.

For example, I do believe that whoever God chose to write the first copy of each letter and gospel of the Bible wrote it down correctly and in a manner consistent with Catholic christianity, whether they were the Apostles themselves or their disciples, being divinely inspired.

But I recognize that later scribes have the freedom of will to introduce a change to copies of the gospels or epistles or they might simply slip up and make a mistake in translation, copying, whatever. Or, because of the teaching of the Church, they might introduce a needed correction into the text.

However, scripture is not all we have. The early Christians had oral tradition as well, the teaching of the Fathers. Copies of the gospels and epistles, even if they did contain errors, are subject to that teaching and can be “ironed out” by it.

All of the alterations Ehrman points out took place before the canonization of the New Testament by the councils of the Catholic Church in the late fourth century, if I’m not mistaken. It could be that in the time prior to this, God was “ironing out” errant copies of the scriptures through the instrument of his Church.
 
Furthermore (and I’m just speculating here because I’m a layman when it comes to the history of the New Testament and textual criticism, this is subject to correction), since these alterations took place before canonization, I wouldn’t think you could look at the history of the changes and say, “at point A in the early Church the Bible said this, at point B it said this,” all you could say would be “at point A **these copies **of the Bible said this while other copies maintained the traditional translations,” for example.
 
CollegeKid said:
I read it (or about 95% of it, anyway) about a year and a half ago. I admit being at a loss for a good apologetical answer to some of the charges he makes against the belief that the Bible is divinely inspired, in light of the evidence he presents. I guess the biggest problem his arguments present for myself as a faithful Catholic are: since there were these other “Christians,” the early heresies like the Ebionites, docetists, adoptionists, etc. right along side the early orthodox/catholic Christians, and each group claimed apostolic succession and inheritance of apostolic teachings, who’s to say who the heretics were? (not unlike the problem faced by sola scriptura protestants be they Lutherans or baptists or whatever who all claim the guidance of the Holy Spirit but come to different conclusions on what scripture means)
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I am not familiar with Ebionites, Docetists, Adoptionists. Probably because if they were the ones that were right, there would be more of them around! Jesus promised his message would be spread to the ends of the earth and the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church. The Catholic church more than any other has spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth and is still going strong 2,000 years after Jesus Ascended.
 
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