DRAFT OF AN ARTICLE
Charles
P. Poole, Jr.
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Observations on Earlier Chapters
3. Specific Examples Cited in Misquoting Jesus
4. God Has Guided His Church
5. Generality of Current Attacks on Christianity
6. Concluding Comment
1. INTRODUCTION
In
his recent book Misquoting Jesus Bart
D. Ehrman provides misinformation about alleged
misquotations of Jesus. In a scholarly
work, whether or not it is written for fellow scholars or for the general
public, it is important to make clear to the reader what we already know about
the subject, and what the author adds to this known corpus of knowledge. It is certainly not appropriate to present a
great deal of very old information in a context in which the reader acquires
the impression that it is new material unearthed by the author. Information presented in this manner is in
reality misinformation, not in the primary sense of being false information,
but in the secondary sense of being misleading information. We will give several examples of this that
appear in Chapters 6 and 7 after commenting on the earlier chapters.
2. OBSERVATIONS ON EARLIER CHAPTERS .
The
autobiographical introduction gives us some insights into the thought processes
and motivation of the author, and we will refrain from commenting on it. Chapter 1 is informative and provides some
interesting insights such as the observation on page 20 that “Christianity at
its beginnings was a religion of the book.” Judaism and Islam were also book
oriented, but “books played virtually no role in the polytheistic religions of
the ancient Western world.” In Chap. 2
Erdman presents his views in the context of a community that shares many of
them, and on page 61 he points out that
“Readers have long noted” what he is telling us about Chap. 21 of the
Gospel of John. Chapters 3 and 4 provide
reasonably fair presentations, and in Chap. 5 the author acknowledges the
existence of other opinions. My main
complaint is that in Chapters 6 and 7 the author points out various examples of
what he calls misquotations without letting us know that many of them have been
extensively commented on and debated by other scholars during recent centuries,
or earlier. He gives the impression that
he has uncovered new information.
3. SPECIFIC EXAMPLES CITED IN MISQUOTING JESUS
The
author comments on the following particular passages of the New Testament:
1 Tim
3:16: “God [or Christ who] was made manifest in the flesh.”
On
page 157 Ehrman complains that a later scribe changed
the word “who” to “God,” and he asserts that this is misleading, and contrary
to the original rendering. In the 1994
edition of the definitive Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum
Graece (N-A) the opposite is the case; the Greek
word for “who” is in the main text and “God” is in the footnote with the few
attesting manuscripts indicated. Only
one of the eight texts in the Eight
Translation New Testament (Tyndale Publ.) expresses incorrectly “God made manifest,” and this
one is the King James Version which Ehrman considers
inferior in accuracy. Both the New American Bible (
Luke
On
page 159 Ehrman argues that the first text alone is a misquote,
and the text in brackets belongs
there. All eight texts in the Eight Translation New Testament have the
first reading.
Luke
22:43,44: “And
to strenghten him an angel of the Lord appeared to
him. He was in such agony and he prayed
so fervently that his flesh became like drops of blood falling on the
ground.”
Ehrman (p. 139, 164) asserts that
this text does not belong. Seven of the
eight translations do include it. The
Luke
24:51: “As he blessed them he parted
from them and was taken up to heaven.
They did him homage.”
Ehrman questions the authenticity of all this, but does not
tell us about similar discussions in footnotes of
John
1:1-18, the Prologue of John.
Ehrman questions the traditional wording of this Prologue,
but fails to let us know about the related discussions in the footnotes of
Concerning the sources that have been cited:
4. GOD
Ehrman is disturbed because what he calls the
“Proto-Orthodox” winners of the many controversies of the early centuries were
able to overcome contrary opinions so that the Church which emerged in the 4th
and 5th centuries was largely populated by Christians in agreement
on fundamental issues such as the divinity and the humanity of Christ, on the
summary of our beliefs in the Creeds, and on which books constitute the accepted
canon of the Scriptures. He fails to
mention that many, perhaps the majority, of the members of present day
Ehrman also fails to praise the constant efforts over the
centuries of Christian scholars, Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic alike, to resolve
textual problems, and prepare versions of the Bible as close to the original as
possible. Ehrman
himself recounted some of these efforts of Christian biblical scholars to
gather together better manuscripts and identify and correct errors in them so that
the newer versions of the Scriptures would be more authentic than those of
earlier generations. There has always been a persistent effort of Christian
scholars to identify and eliminate misquotations.
5. GENERALITY OF CURRENT
ATTACKS ON CHRISTIANITY
In
recent years a number of authors, among them Prof. Ehrman,
have been writing about the religious writings of the early centuries of our
era. They have maintained that the
original Christians were a very diversified group with
many variant beliefs, all of which at the present time deserve equal
consideration for authenticity. For
example, there are twenty-five gospels available to tell us what Jesus preached
and stood for, there are six Acts of the Apostles to inform us about the events
of the apostolic Church, there are nine epistles and related writings not in
the New Testament to be taken into account, and there are seven apocalypses or
Books of Revelation available for consideration. Thus in addition to the 27 books of the New
Testament there are almost twice as many other relevant books which as a group
should, according to Dr, Ehrman, be given equal
consideration.
We
noted above how Professor Ehrman himself pointed out
that “Christianity at its beginnings was a religion of the book,” but he failed
to note that prior to the adoption of the final definitive 27-book canon at the
Synod of Hippo in 393 AD the other proposed canons by Athanasius,
Eusebius, Origin and in the Muratorian Fragment were
quite close to it in content. These 27
works constitute our New Testament which has been acknowledged down through the
ages by virtually all Christians as “The Book” to be followed.
A
group founded in 1988 called the Jesus Seminar produced what they called the
Scholars Version of the New Testament.
They point out that their translation “is entirely free of
ecclesiastical control,” and they claim to have the most accurate
translation. They translate son of man as son of Adam and Eve and
In
our chapter Editing Scripture, which
has a link here on the sidebar, we show that almost all bibles mistranslate
Matt 6:27 “add one cubit to your span of life.”
The Scholars Version
rendering “add one hour to life” is also not correct. The Greek
word is B±PL< (pechun) meaning cubit, not hour.
See Sect. 7 of our chapter Editing
Scripture.
Much
of the current interest in these apocryphal writings arises from the
sensational novel and movie called the DaVinci
Code. It claims that Jesus did not die
on the cross, but rather married Mary Magdalen. The
claim is made that descendants of this marriage are alive today, despite the
fact that there is absolutely no evidence in any of the apocryphal writings to
support this assertion. It is pure and
unadulterated fiction. Another
motivation for this current interest is the discovery in 2006 of the Gnostic
Gospel of Judas. Since it is only one of
many apocryphal gospels it is not really so important. Its claim that Judas was a friend of Jesus is
not corroborated elsewhere.
6. CONCLUDING COMMENT
When
I read most of the noncanonical gospels and other early
century Christian writings, what impressed me the most was the extent to which
so many of them express views and described practices that characterized the
Church that survived the persecutions and became dominant in the Empire after
the Edict of Milan proclaimed religious freedom in 315 AD. The ones that do not conform to the beliefs
accepted by the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries were mainly Gnostic
inspired writings. The Gnostic
Christians emphasized the importance of the gnosis or special knowledge which
was only available to the elite to bring them salvation unavailable to the
majority of Christians. We all know that Jesus came to save all, not just the
elite with access to special secret knowledge. Gnosticism and elitism are
simply incompatible with true Christianity, and writings which espouse it
should be shunned by believing Christians. Professor Ehrman,
who apparently wants all the noncanonical Christian
writings to be given equal credence, should be strong in expressing his
objections to a Gnostic type of Christianity based on salvation available only
to the elite who are in possession of a secret knowledge to be systematically
withheld from other Christians.