Misquoting Jesus

By: Bart D. Ehrman

Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson

Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

When world-class biblical scholar Bart Ehrman first began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman tells the story behind the mistakes and changes that ancient scribes made to the New Testament and shows the great impact they had upon the Bible we use today. He frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultraconservative views of the Bible.

Since the advent of the printing press and the accurate reproduction of texts, most people have assumed that when they read the New Testament they are reading an exact copy of Jesus's words or Saint Paul's writings. And yet, for almost fifteen hundred years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological, and political disputes of their day. Both mistakes and intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct. For the first time, Ehrman reveals where and why these changes were made and how scholars go about reconstructing the original words of the New Testament as closely as possible.

Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our cherished biblical stories and widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes -- alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.Bart D. Ehrman chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a widely regarded authority on the history of the New Testament.

©2005 Bart Ehrman (P)2006 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Engaging and fascinating." (Publishers Weekly)

In the words of the Translators

Misquoting Jesus really opens ones eves to the book that most people claim to be the word of God. I didn’t feel as though it tried to establish the validity or invalidity of the Bible but more a look at the path of the current bible back to its origins and obstacles. People writing what they wanted the Bible to be based on their beliefs and short comings. The Illiteracy of the early Christian who couldn’t read. The Illiteracy of the scribes that could read but copied. How so many variations of the Bible couldn’t be reconciled to the original text. How Paul referred to the God of Jesus and God of the Old Testament not the same god. How scholars would change words and add text that they thought should be in the text. How letter of the Bible were transcribed as word for word for Galatians or highlighted to a scribe. Finding the earliest from of text would be closest to the original text or would it. The gospels being written centuries after the death of Christ.
The author ventures into the piece of the Bible that were not originally parts of the manuscripts. According to him, thousands of inserts not in the originals. He focus on three specific parts in the gospels. The insert of the woman who was going to be stoned for adultery. He who has no sin cast the first stone. He identifies it as a story that wasn’t part of the earliest manuscripts that was probably an oral story that was inserted later. He talks about the talking in tongues wasn’t part of the manuscript either. And neither was the ending of Mark, which was viewed as so deficient that the last ten verses were concocted to give it a clear ending. The book talks about the genealogy of the bible. How they were converted into greek bibles in 1400-1500AD. The greek version were many which were used to create the Latin Vulgate. The Latin Vulgate was considered the bible of the church of Catholicism and was eventually converted to Greek before being translated into an English version know as the King James Version. It also talked about bibles that had columns of Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Then notes describing alterations. The Gutenberg Bible was touch because of the ability to mass produce a version from the printing press in which there were no disparagements like in manually copied versions of the same text and no so called heretics altering the words and meanings. It also talked about realigning the bible with the earliest known manuscripts to get back to a more homogeneous version to the original.
The books talks Mills’ effort over getting back to the original text by trying to correct the Bible by going back to the earliest Syriac and coptic version. He discover 30,000 variance. Today it is 400,000 variances. There are more variances than words in the current bible.
He moves from the variances to the reasons for the variances or reasons why words have been changed from the original text as he describes words that were abbreviated when written from scribes and once later scribes interpreted the abbreviations the had multiple words of similar construction and in many cases choose the one that made the most sense and sometimes obliviously choose a word that didn’t make sense. To alleviate misinterpretation or errors, they would rewrite section to represent what they thought should have been said.
After the pretense of variances, the book looks in the divinity of Christ. Questions arose from scholars regarding text that surrounded Jesus’ claim to divinity. Words were changed in different version that precluded Jesus as God and others that excluded Jesus as God. The topic of God the father and the son were even questions as biblically accurate according to manuscripts.
The book talks about the proto-orthodox Christian. And the Christian sects that believed that there were that either one, two, twelve or three hundred and sixty-five gods. Of course the one god orthodox Christian sect won out. This book was bery interesting and worth reading.

If history can entertain, this is a good example.

The idea that the history of textual criticism could be fun to learn sounds improbable, but that's exactly what this book accomplished. I would have preferred if it had been read by the author, but the reader did a fine job.

a headline

bone tickling and bone breaking at the same time but not in the same way. Jesus is resurrected in all his glory.

foundational

The content is excellent, and thorough as it can be for the subject. Narrated well, not monotonous or boring. You need a genuine interest in the subject, or you may be overwhelmed. Excellent work!

Misquoting on Audible

An obvious work of superior scholarship. The presentaion on audio greatly increased my understanding, retention and grasp of the material. What would have been an extended work of labor if I had to read the text version became an easy pleasure on audio. I have listened to the entire book three times and am going to gift it to two friends.

Quite the revelation!

A fascinating book with a neutral position on religion and an academic approach to the evolution of the Bible.

'Misquoting Jesus' is historically based and so full of new information (to me) that I'll have to go through it at least once more to fully absorb all that it offers. His treatment is scholarly, yet easily accessible. It clarified how very many questions I had had about the origins of the books of the Bible and the timeline from the time of Jesus to the latest interpretations. What I thought was the Bible's short, straight path from the apostles to King James is far more convoluted and obscured.

My only challenge is: the role of scribes, as functionaries of a larger church, (of many larger churches), was not adequately explored. In the beginning, I puzzled over how Ehrman could attribute so much independent thought and deed to mere monks but gradually learned to read the word 'scribe' more broadly.

"Misquoting...' won't threaten a reader's view of the Bible unless that view is that the Bible is the unadulterated word of God. For all else, it will likely be an education and a revelation!

give this to fundies

This book completely demolishes the notion that the bible is the inerrant word of good. It traces the history of the new testament through the ages and examines the many variations. It's a bit tedious but presents a huge amount of information. Overall, I liked Jesus Interrupted better, but this is definitely *the* book to give christian fundies to put them on the path to enlightenment.

Good book. Excruciating reading.

I purchased this book having just read the excellent Jesus Interrupted, also by Ehrman. It's really hard to make a judgment on the book itself because, as other reviewers have noted, the narration is execrable. I wasn't aware narrations could suffer from over-acting. Well, I'm now more educated. The narrator should be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

If you're looking for a good survey of the problems of the NT, I highly recommend Jesus Interrupted. Now, I have to see if I can make it through the rest of this book. Really, the narration is that awful.

Great Read

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

At first, it was quite difficult to take in the author's thesis. Throughout reading Misquoting Jesus, I had to ask myself if what was being asserted affect my faith or not, but in the end, it did not. Dr. Ehrman explains clearly what literal criticism of the Bible entails and how he got his conclusions, creating a different way to look at Christianity's holy text. What really affected me was when he explained how just because the wording may have changed over time, that does not mean the essence of the Bible has been lost, or that it should be in any way taken for less than before reading.

Enlightening Listen

This was a great listen, and it certainly set my brain to working overtime. Great material. Learned a lot about the history of the interpretation of the bible I didn't know, and am glade that I now have that knowledge.