Much of our knowledge about the Bible and many of our modern editions of the text draw(s?) heavily on the practice of ‘textual criticism’ – a technique of analyzing texts developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Misquoting Jesus is an introduction to the techniques of textual criticism, their origins, and some of the possible implications for our understanding of the Bible. It is divided roughly into two parts – first, a history of / introduction to textual criticism and the New Testament and second, an application of textual-critical tools to selected inconsistencies between surviving manuscripts of the New Testament. In homage to the author (who does not shy away from controversy, stating that he thinks the Bible is not the inspired, literal word of God and that the text we have was both accidentally and deliberately changed over the years), I would like to come right out and say that I believe the following:
If you are a Christian, you must read the Bible.
If you ever read or plan to read the Bible you cannot
responsibly do so without:
(1) an
understanding of how we got the Bible we currently have
(2) thinking
(seriously) about the implications of that knowledge for your faith
Ehrman’s book provides a reasonable introduction to (1), and makes an argument about (2) that will not be acceptable to everyone. The book provides a number of examples that justify these as important. One example is the treatment of Mark 16:9-20 (see pages 65-8 of Misquoting Jesus). Read Mark 15 and 16. If (as Ehrman argues and other scholars seem to agree) the story as first written ended at Mark 16:8 (verses 9 to 20 are a later addition), what an amazing change in the original meaning of the gospel!
One of the most important arguments implicit (actually explicit but I’ve forgotten the page #) in the book is that each gospel must be read on its own, as though each was written by a different person (because they were). According to Ehrman, one of the likely sources of deliberate (if well-meaning) changes to the text of the Gospels as they now exist was the desire of scribes to ‘harmonize’ the texts, to iron out small inconsistencies between the four writers. According to Misquoting Jesus, trying to combine the gospels by simple addition into one Über-Gospel that tells the full and complete story of Jesus’s life is a mistake because it erases and effaces significant differences between the perspectives on Christ brought by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Ehrman’s work has not gone without comment – check the internet if you don’t believe me. The heart of the controversy sparked by Misquoting Jesus can be boiled down, I think, to an issue of authority. What is the Bible? What can/can’t we do with it? Ehrman makes a good case that we cannot treat the Bible as a univocal, unequivocal, absolute determinant for proper/improper belief/behavior. This reasoning may be troubling (or not), but I consider myself persuaded (perhaps pre-persuaded – I am not the best devil’s advocate you could find on this book).
No matter how much one reads the Bible, studies, and prays, I don’t believe that one can ever be certain that the answers arrived at are the right ones, only that they are the best ones available at the moment. [If you’ve seen Jesus camp, this is part of why I found the brief moment with the young girl trying to evangelize the old men in lawn chairs so hilarious.] The impossibility of certainty is partly due to the nature of humanity and the limits of our minds (or the inherent twistedness of human reason on account of the Fall, if you’re Augustine). Another important factor, it seems to me, is the limit of the source material we have to work with.
I’ve now successfully sat on this book long enough, having read but not reviewed it, that another book on a similar subject has come to my attention. For another take on how we got the Bible we have (this one rejecting form criticism in favor of cognitive psychology / memory studies / the study of oral traditions) you might look at Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. I haven't read it, so I can't vouch for it, but it looked interesting.
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