Book Review of Bart Ehrman’s ​“Mis­quot­ing Jesus : The Sto­ry Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why”

The book ​“Mis­quot­ing Jesus : The Sto­ry Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why” from Prof. Bart Ehrman can be described as an intro­duc­tion to New Tes­ta­ment tex­tu­al crit­i­cism for begin­ners, in which he explains the sub­ject in the con­text of his own back­ground, relat­ing his jour­ney from being an Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian to becom­ing a world renowned New Tes­ta­ment schol­ar. Besides D. C. Park­er’s ​“Liv­ing Text of the Gospels”, Ehrman’s ​“Mis­quot­ing Jesus” seems to be the only book on tex­tu­al crit­i­cism designed specif­i­cal­ly for the non-expert readers.

In short, Ehrman explains the copy­ing prac­tis­es of the ear­li­est peri­od and how the texts of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings were cor­rupt­ed as they were copied and recopied. He begins by intro­duc­ing the diverse writ­ings pro­duced by the ear­ly Chris­tians, such as gospels, Acts, apoc­a­lypses, Church orders, apolo­gies etc. Briefly, the for­ma­tion of the canon is also dis­cussed and we are informed about the lit­er­a­cy lev­el among the ear­ly Chris­tians. There­after we are intro­duced to the world of the copy­ists and Ehrman explains how the ear­ly scribes copied texts, the dif­fer­ent types of errors that were made (inten­tion­al and unin­ten­tion­al) and the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with the copy­ing of texts.

It is quite inter­est­ing to learn that even pagan crit­ics of Chris­tian­i­ty, such as Cel­sus, were quite aware at an ear­ly date that the Chris­t­ian writ­ings were being cor­rupt­ed by the scribes and even Ori­gen had to com­plain about the numer­ous dif­fer­ences between the gospel man­u­scripts. Mar­cion, an ear­ly Chris­t­ian, cor­rupt­ed the text of cer­tain New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings avail­able to him and Diony­sius is quot­ed who com­plains that his own writ­ings have been mod­i­fied just as ​“the word of the Lord” had been tam­pered. Mar­cion, of course, accused oth­er Chris­tians of cor­rupt­ing the texts. In an ear­li­er writ­ing, ​“The Ortho­dox Cor­rup­tion of Scrip­tures”, Ehrman demon­strat­ed in detail how pro­to-ortho­dox Chris­tians cor­rupt­ed the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings on occa­sions. It seems that the ear­ly Chris­tians were quite aware that the writ­ings in their pos­ses­sion had under­gone cor­rup­tion and were still being cor­rupt­ed and they fre­quent­ly accused each oth­er of tam­per­ing with the texts.

I was amazed to learn how sta­tis­ti­cal­ly small addi­tions or dele­tions with­in texts could change the entire mean­ing of pas­sages and even books. Ehrman dis­cuss­es at length cer­tain exam­ples in this regard and shows that even unin­ten­tion­al changes can result in changes that alter the mean­ing of texts. To quote Ehrman (pp. 207 – 208):

“It would be wrong, how­ev­er, to say — as peo­ple some­times do — that the changes in our text have no real bear­ing on what the texts mean or on the the­o­log­i­cal con­clu­sions that one draws from them. We have seen, in fact, that just the oppo­site is the case. In some instances, the very mean­ing is at stake depend­ing on how one resolves a tex­tu­al prob­lem : Was Jesus an angry man ? Was he com­plete­ly dis­traught in the face of death ? Did he tell his dis­ci­ples that they could drink poi­son with­out being harmed ? Did he let an adul­ter­ess off the hook with noth­ing but a mild warn­ing ? Is the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty explic­it­ly taught in the New Tes­ta­ment ? Is Jesus actu­al­ly called the ​“unique God” there ? Does the New Tes­ta­ment indi­cate that even the Son of God does not know when the end will come ? The ques­tions go on and on, and all of them are relat­ed to how one resolves dif­fi­cul­ties in the man­u­script tra­di­tion as it has come down to us.” 

The above are just a few prob­lems. Anoth­er inter­est­ing prob­lem is whether the doc­trine of the atone­ment is taught in the gospel accord­ing to Luke ? Fur­ther, there are immense tex­tu­al prob­lems with­in pas­sages such as the say­ings on divorce and remar­riage in the gospelsThis was not dis­cussed by Ehrman but addressed in detail in D. C. Park­er’s ​“The Liv­ing Text of the Gospels” and the Lord’s Prayer among others.

It is impor­tant to real­ize that Ehrman is not the first per­son to have dis­cov­ered these tex­tu­al prob­lems. Instead, tex­tu­al crit­ics are quite famil­iar with them but sel­dom are these tex­tu­al dif­fi­cul­ties dis­cussed in books aimed at the lay read­ers so that many peo­ple con­tin­ue to adhere to the mis­tak­en belief that there exist no sig­nif­i­cant tex­tu­al prob­lems with­in the New Tes­ta­ment effect­ing impor­tant the­o­log­i­cal mat­ters. Clear­ly, shod­dy apol­o­gists such as Giesler and Josh McDow­ell have done a lot to prop­a­gate a false image of the tex­tu­al preser­va­tion of the gospel text — mis­lead­ing count­less around the globe. Ehrman sets the record straight. In anoth­er recent book, co-authored with Bruce Met­zger, we read :

“Nor are these vari­ant read­ings, tak­en as a whole, of lit­tle con­se­quence. On the con­trary, many prove to be crit­i­cal for ques­tions relat­ing to the New Tes­ta­ment exe­ge­sis and the­ol­o­gy.“Bruce M. Met­zger & Bart D. Ehrman, The Text Of The New Tes­ta­ment : Its Trans­mis­sion, Cor­rup­tion, and Restora­tion, 2005, Fourth Edi­tion, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, p. 284

Thus it would appear that schol­ars are now begin­ning to dis­cuss the dif­fi­cult issues more openly.

It seems clear that the Gospels are not so well tex­tu­al­ly pre­served as some peo­ple would have us imag­ine and that there exist many vari­a­tions which have pro­found effects and bear­ings upon the mean­ing of texts and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Some may refer to the ​“the old­est Chris­t­ian man­u­scripts” and how these are ​“most reli­able”, not real­iz­ing that Ehrman, and oth­ers, have point­ed out numer­ous times that the ear­li­est man­u­scripts are pre­cise­ly the most prob­lem­at­ic — reveal­ing the most vari­a­tions, which indi­cates that the texts of the gospels were in a state of flux in the ear­li­est peri­od of their transmission.

A detailed dis­cus­sion of the man­u­scripts of the New Tes­ta­ment, based on writ­ings of schol­ars such as Prof. Ehrman and oth­ers, is to be found here.

More­over, the prob­lem of the ​“orig­i­nal text” is also dis­cussed by Ehrman and he states that many tex­tu­al crit­ics are now begin­ning to doubt even if there is such a thing as an ​“orig­i­nal” to be restored. He explains the prob­lem­at­ic nature of the issue and why we can­not get back to the ​“orig­i­nal” text itself in light of the copy­ing prac­tis­es of the first three cen­turies. There­fore, we can only hope to recov­er ear­ly forms of the text, not the ​“orig­i­nals,” and hope that these ear­ly forms are rel­a­tive­ly close to the lost ​“orig­i­nals”.

Besides the above issues, Ehrman pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of how the var­i­ous New Tes­ta­ment edi­tions were pro­duced, par­tic­u­lar­ly the one by Eras­mus based on a hand­ful of late man­u­scripts, and how Chris­tians react­ed when cer­tain indi­vid­u­als here and there stum­bled across vari­ant read­ings. The sto­ry of the inter­po­la­tion of 1 John 5:7 (the only clear for­mu­la­tion of the Trin­i­ty) is amaz­ing ? the way it was insert­ed into the text and the reac­tion of some when it was removed. More­over, Ehrman goes on to explain how he even­tu­al­ly came to the con­clu­sion that the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings were not inspired based on his eval­u­a­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment text and its transmission.

We would rec­om­mend this book to any­one who wish­es to learn about the tex­tu­al crit­i­cism and trans­mis­sion of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings. If the read­er does not know any­thing about this com­plex sub­ject, then this is where the read­er should start. After going through ​“Mis­quot­ing Jesus,” it should be much eas­i­er for the read­er to read books aimed at those who already know some­thing about the subject.