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    Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
    Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
    Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
    Audiobook9 hours

    Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

    Written by Bart D. Ehrman

    Narrated by Richard Davidson

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    About this audiobook

    For almost 1,500 years, the New Testament manuscripts were copied by hand--and mistakes and intentional changes abound in the competing manuscript versions. Religious and biblical scholar Bart Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself are the results of both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes. In this compelling and fascinating book, Ehrman shows where and why changes were made in our earliest surviving manuscripts, explaining for the first time how the many variations of our cherished biblical stories came to be, and why only certain versions of the stories qualify for publication in the Bibles we read today. Ehrman frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultra-conservative views of the Bible.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 10, 2006
    ISBN9781440780615
    Author

    Bart D. Ehrman

    Bart D. Ehrman is a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity and a distinguished professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author of six New York Times bestsellers, he has written or edited more than thirty books, including Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, The Triumph of Christianity, and Heaven and Hell. Ehrman has also created nine popular audio and video courses for The Great Courses. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, with over two million copies and courses sold.

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    Reviews for Misquoting Jesus

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Bart D. Ehrman walks you through the complexities of textual criticism and the various ways that the New Testament Bible has been revised over thousands of years. This is a great to begin with when learning about textual criticism. Extensive knowledge of the Bible isn't necessary to appreciate this book, this is geared toward the layperson.
    • 4/5
      An absolutely fascinating account of a textual critic concerning the New Testament. Ehrman carefully lays out the differences between different manuscripts, the history and biases of early Christianity, and the history of biblical transcription. A must read for all Christians, ex-Christians, or really anyone with any interest in the Bible.
    • 5/5
      Bart Ehrman has a down to earth way of describing how scripture became scripture.
    • 5/5
      Insightful viewpoints ! I’ve learned a lot from listening
    • 1/5
      a very liberal view of scripture with no real evidence for his conclusions. Ehrman denies miracles, draws his own unfounded conclusions and has a very low view of scripture and God's participation in its construction. You have to think... if God created the universe and the living cell and the molecules within everything, couldn't (wouldn't) He preserve the words about Him and the stories of what He wants to reveal about Himself to mankind. This book proclaims the opposite and buffs up the lies of Satan himself. Some people will fashion a God of their own liking and will listen to authors that tickle their itching ears.
    • 3/5
      The title is click-bait and now that it’s got your attention you can ignore it. This is a layman’s introduction to the textual criticism of the New Testament. What it will do is allow you to get through a conversation without looking like a total fool when the subject comes up at parties, as it invariably does.You don’t need any Greek. Ehrman has a couple of clever tricks to get around that problem. He never let’s a technical term slip by without glossing it. You could probably still follow the book if you had only the vaguest idea of what the New Testament actually was. He uses very interesting examples. A good teacher. It’s far more enjoyable that any book on the subject really deserves to be. The style is readable and somehow friendly. Very fast paced. Reminded me a bit of The Da Vinci Code.
    • 4/5
      Ehrman submits a good case for showing that the words we attribute to Jesus today are likely not his words. And the actions we think he performed likely weren't his actions. And that in fact we know very, very little about what Jesus said and did. And what little we know is questionable.
    • 4/5
      Never having had read the Bible I guess I came into "Misquoting Jesus" without any preconceptions. Ehrman lays out the evidence that the words that you're liable to read in the Bible aint necessarily so, showing us that there have been a lot of opportunities over millennia for people, by accident or design, to change the wording and meaning of the New Testament. Has there been a holy war resulting in deaths by the hectare because in the year 811 a monk couldn't read the handwriting of an earlier scribe and wrote something completely different? I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised as Ehrman shows that the later Gospels and the later scribes seemed determined to change Jesus from a self-doubting chap seemingly annoyed to have to cure a leper to the friendly hippy who hung out with prostitutes that we know today. Also illuminating is how the importance of women in the early Christian movement has seemingly been airbrushed from the Bible. To rectify this surely it's time for a female Pope.
    • 5/5
      If you’ve ever wondered why your Bible has those footnotes – “some translations say…” or the equivalent – then this is the book for you. Bart Ehrman knows the ancient languages and texts, and makes them eminently accessible to the lay reader. In so doing, he looks at how different versions of the same text are analyzed and compared, and how the serious student deduces which is original and which is changed. The results are fascinating and never simple. Not just a question of which copy is found most frequently, and certainly not of which copy best fits a preferred interpretation (though the latter, in history, often resulted in the same error becoming the most common version); this book shows how history, society, and even technology determined the translations of the Bible as it comes to us.The book can be read equally by believers and non-believers, revealing an unbiased approach to what is now believed, and what was believed in Christian churches through the ages. The information on how faith changed and how it stayed the same is fascinating – a much more nuanced question that the simple East-West, Catholic-Protestant divides that I grew up with.It’s fascinating to learn how experts recognize different hands writing the same text; how word choice and story structure make a difference; and how external influences often determined which version was preferred. For myself, as a mathematician, it’s cool to see how “little” is debatable, though those of a less mathematical bent might be disturbed instead by how “much.” But the result is a very approachable, informative analysis, that leaves the reader to choose where they will stand. I really enjoyed the book, and I really learned a lot.Disclosure: I’d delved into this book on occasion before, but this is the first time I’ve read it cover to cover, and I loved it.
    • 5/5
      Well done - good for resources.
    • 5/5
      A noted Biblical scholar and textual critic, Dr Ehrman explains the method by which the Bible was copied by scribes, how scholars track which versions (among thousands that exist) are the oldest or most authentic, how disparant versions were reconciled at different times depending on what beliefs were the most prevalent (such as during the Nicene deliberations), and how copying errors are discovered. One of the chapters discusses the Greek translations that were later used by the group who prepared the King James version. When some refer to reading the Bible 'in the original Greek' they are usually referring to this particular translation which was prepared in the 11th century, using manuscripts that were later found to NOT be the oldest or most faithful to the oldest known copies. The King James, which is the most popular English-language translation, was based on Middle Ages manuscripts that were known, both now and in the 16th century, as being more error-ridden than other better documented copies. Dr. Ehrman is quite readable and makes history interesting.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The Bible is the inerrant word of God. It contains no mistakes. Really?

      “How does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don’t have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes—sometimes correctly but sometimes (many times!) incorrectly? What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don’t have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.
      [...]
      I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them (and possibly even given them the words in a language they could understand, rather than Greek and Hebrew). The fact that we don’t have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn’t perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words.”
    • 4/5
      A highly informative account of the changes made in the original text of the new testament, whether by mere scribal error or intentionally for purposes of furthering a particular early Christian theology, to address challenges by other religions (pagan or Jew), etc. Another outstanding work which informs both believers and unbelievers as regards the most significant book in the Western tradition.Mr. Ehrman's books and lectures are all highly recommended,
    • 4/5
      I read this a few years ago. I heard him give a lecture at Stanford. I can't remember which happened before the other! I think I heard the lecture first. He is quite a scholar with a fascinating story of emerging from evangelical faith to scholarly skepticism.
    • 5/5
      I read Misquoting Jesus through carefully and thoughtfully and concluded it was an excellent book written by an author who clearly knows of which he speaks. Before I started reading it, I had read a number of reviews online, some supportive, some negative. The negative ones seemed to say that, yes, well, everyone knows there have been changes in the Bible over the years. Big deal. They’re minor and they don’t change the overall theme of the Bible. Well, after reading this book, I beg to differ. Like the author, I grew up believing the Bible was the inherent word of God – God’s chosen words as inspired to be written by several select human authors. You had to believe everything. Of course, as I grew older, I began to have doubts. For instance, take all of Leviticus. No one stones their children for being disobedient, people eat shrimp and bacon, men cut their hair and beards, etc. But if you followed the Bible like you were supposed to, you couldn’t do those things, right? So that prepared me for the cherry picking that Christians do with the Bible left and right to suit whatever agenda they have. So textual changes can make a big deal, yes, especially when non-changes like those in Leviticus make a big or non-big deal, depending on how you view things. Before, I go any further, let me state that I view myself as a Christian. A liberal one, not a fundie or even an evangelical, which is what I grew up as, but still, a Bible reading and respecting Christian. Doesn’t mean it’s 100% accurate though.Early in this book, just to show people what sort of things they’ll be exposed to, Ehrman shows us some discrepancies. He calls them mistakes. These include when Mark says Jesus was killed the day after the Passover meal, yet John says he died the day before it. And Luke indicating that Mary and Joseph had come to Nazareth a month after going to Bethlehem, while Matthew says they went to Egypt. And in Galations, when Paul says he did not go to Jerusalem after his conversion, while the book of Acts says that’s the first thing he did upon leaving Damascus. And on and on.So what happened to the Bible? Who changed it and why? Well, the author would have us believe that scribes, both professional and nonprofessional, made numerous changes, both unintentional and intentional over the course of centuries and that as these manuscripts were handed down as gospel, the changes were handed down, so that there was no longer any possible way to know what it was the authors of the Bible and specifically the New Testament wrote. He goes into elaborate detail on the details of scribes having to copy letter by letter books (letters) of the New Testament, as well as other documents, and showed that many of these scribes were barely literate themselves, if at all. One example of unintentional changes were that Greek at the time was written without spaces between words, so that a particular phrase that was meant to have meant one thing, could have actually meant something else when copied or transcribed or translated later on. Intentional changes were made by people who, perhaps, wanted to include an agenda against women in the church when none, perhaps, may have existed in the original texts.The book that the King James Bible was founded on was the Johannine Comma by Erasmus. The author takes great pains to show its flaws. Meanwhile, there were those who were intent upon translating the Greek New Testament and providing scholarship for it. One such person, John Mill of Queens College, Oxford, spent 30 years back in the seventeenth century compiling a list of “variations,” or discrepancies (or mistakes) in the various manuscripts he had available to him, dating back to the oldest texts available. He found over 30,000 discrepancies! That’s right – 30,000. The author then goes on to say that currently, we possess over 5,700 Greek manuscripts, 57 times as many as Mill, and that there are now known to be between 200,000 and 400,000 discrepancies in the New Testament, or more words than exist in it. It’s stunning. If that doesn’t show that the Bible is NOT the inherent word of God, I don’t know what will. And if you follow that logic, then if it’s not, then how can you believe any of it, or know what to believe or not believe?I had meant to write a much more detailed review, but feel that I’d never finish with it. Hopefully I’ve made my point. The author certainly made his with me. Needless to say, he no longer thinks the Bible is the inherent word of God, and I’m not sure I do either, or that I have for some time. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain words of God – just that it was written by people and they can make mistakes over the course of centuries. I’d strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in the subject.
    • 3/5
      This wasn't exactly what I expected but it was still chocked full of information. I really appreciate Bart Ehrman's ability to present very technical information to the layperson. The organization was logical and helped the reader to follow the process of textual criticism.

      This was a very long book that I could only digest in small bits. With that in mind, it soon became obvious that Ehrman was being redundant; reusing examples to make different points. It gave the appearance that there were not as many examples as the author described in his introduction and conclusion. Overall, this was an informative book and a pleasure to read.
    • 5/5
      _READ ANYTHING BY EHRMAN_ Think you know what the bible says? Guess again. It has been hand copied and copied and copied, the originals long since lost. Errors have crept in as well as deliberate changes. If you think the bible is the inerrant word of yahweh, you probably will not like this. But if you are prone to quoting the bible at people, you really should read this.
    • 3/5
      Decent exploration of how our modern day scriptures came to be. It gets redundant towards the end.

      Worth the read for anyone, secular or religious, with an interest in the Bible.
    • 4/5
      I found this book to be a highly informative and readable introduction into the analysis of Christian scripture. As a complete novice, I felt it was perfectly pitched, although I won't be going to Aramaic classes any time soon.
    • 3/5
      Equally fascinating and infuriating, this book sheds light on the early revisions of the New Testament of the bible. Somewhat repetitive, and told in a fairly simplistic fashion, it's still an interesting read. According to Ehrman (and backed up by convincing arguments) many of the things you know about Jesus are probably wrong, if you get your information from the King James Version of the bible. The infuriating parts are about how the early church fathers changed the texts to exclude women from being part of the church in any meaningful fashion.
    • 3/5
      A look at the work of textual critics. The thesis of this book is that there are so many variant readings in the NT manuscripts that it is a moot point whether God inspired the originals or not. Although Ehrman presents several examples, his arguments fall far short of proving this thesis. However, the book does awaken a new respect for the work of textual criticism and its role in obtaining a useful version of Bible that is as true to the original manuscripts as can be.
    • 4/5
      After a long dry streak, I'm hitting on a lot of books I'm really enjoying. This is one of those.Misquoting Jesus is a concise(ish) layperson's guide to alterations made to the Bible over its lifespan. The author is a noted Biblical scholar, and though scholarship doesn't necessarily lend itself to readable treatises, I was able to easily understand both his arguments and his explanations of the linguistics involved. Moreover, a lot of it was terribly fascinating stuff. At the very least, *I* found information about the compassionification of Jesus, the anti-Semitic edits, etc. to be fascinating. The author has an understated sense of humour about the topic that shines through at unexpected times, and he made me laugh more than once.Plus, a lot of additional recommended resources in the notes! Woo hoo!
    • 4/5
       It was Good to Pretty Good. Nothing earth shattering. Things get lost and lost in translation. Texts were written down and copied manually, which can introduce errors. Most errors don't matter but some may, depending. Some changes were made intentionally, for example as intentional corrections or in the context of the theological debates/controversies at the time. The people doing the copying may matter. Interesting stuff. Will think a bit more and write (maybe) write something (maybe) more profound later. I don't think this is a book that will change beliefs or opinions in either direction, but at least may raise awareness or provide examples of how of the issue that textual criticism (a field of exegesis) is important and context is critical.
    • 4/5
      A good general introduction to the ways scholars study the manuscripts of the New Testament to determine the earliest form of the texts available. Ehrman discusses some of the ways scribes altered the texts they copied, often accidentally, occasionally for ideological reasons. Some good discussions of individual instances of alteration, but this book is less strong explaining a unified theory of how to evaluate the readings. How, for example, to honor the earliest manuscripts available while realizing that later witness (sometimes small number of these) might represent earlier readings.
    • 3/5
      I had a similar experience while crossing the Nepali border from India. The border guard, not familiar with the English language, had to copy the information from my visa letter for letter into his records. The outcome did not resemble what was in my passport.This is a truly significant piece of history. Ehrman has boldly exposed the truth about the bible and how it has been passed down to us through the ages. Ehrman was interviewed on extension 720.
    • 2/5
      To be completely honest, reading this book was a waste of my time. I generally enjoy Ehrman's work, in spite of his sensationalist style, but I was very disappointed with this one. Misquoting Jesus was filled with page after page of Ehrman's typical version of "shock and awe," none of which is very often shocking or awing, but with none of the redeeming information and interesting facts that his other books usually contain.Rather than a scholarly and engaging look at the manuscript traditions of the New Testament and ensuing errors and alterations thereof which I assumed would be the content of this book, Ehrman spends the majority of the book speaking in the first person as a young, naive "'born again' Christian" being exposed for the first time to (what he believes are) the shocking facts that the King James Version isn't the inerrant Word of God and that the Scriptures didn't fall out of heaven one day. This reveals much less about the history and textual traditions of the New Testament than it does about Ehrman himself, who seems to live perpetually in that juvenile state and seems to honestly believe that every other self-professed Christian lives in the same state. This latter apparent view of Ehrman was revealed especially by the variety of inane statements throughout the book which seem to indicate his unfamiliarity with any form of Christianity outside of the evangelical "born again" version of his childhood (see below for an example of this).What scanty little real facts and information there were in this book were not only overshadowed by the above aspects of the book but were also basic enough that they could easily be gleaned by reading Wikipedia articles on the relevant topics (trust me, that's an insult). I've done a little reading in the area, but I'm no expert to be sure, and yet aside from a few minor dates and interesting stories, I was familiar with almost everything covered in this book.In the end, I wouldn't recommend this book at all. There's too much great reading in early Christian history and even specifically in the manuscript traditions of the New Testament (such as Jaroslav Pelikan's Whose Bible Is It? A Short History of the Scriptures, for instance) to waste your time reading such worthless trite. Rather than scholarship, you will receive a thinly-veiled attack on Ehrman's own straw-man of Christianity (he does, after all, begin the book with the story of his own conversion from "'born-again' Christianity" to atheism), made all the more pitiful for not only being possibly the weakest criticism ever leveled at Christianity but for Ehrman's halfhearted attempt to make his attack look like real scholarship.For your reading pleasure, a few outstanding examples of Ehrman's inanity in this book: "This is the account of 1 John 5:7-8, which scholars have called the Johannine Comma, found in the manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate but not in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, a passage that had long been a favorite among Christian theologians, since it is the only passage in the entire Bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons in the godhead, but that the three constitute just one God." Really? A purported New Testament scholar who is unfamiliar with Matthew 28:19? How about Titus 3:4-6? Still nothing? Oh well, I give up... Just out of curiosity, though: who are these "Christian theologians" amongst whom the Johannine Comma "[has] long been a favorite"? You'd think things like this would need more than vague assertions and non-arguments; not in Ehrmanworld, I guess. "... or consider all the different Christian denominations, filled with intelligent and well-meaning people who base their views of how the church should be organized and function on the Bible, yet all of them coming to radically different conclusions (Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Appalachian snake-handlers, Greek Orthodox, and on and on)." You'd think it would be a good idea for somebody who "chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill" (as the author bio on the back flap of the book says) to know enough about the two largest groups of Christians in the world, Roman Catholics and Orthodox, that he would not make the ignorant statement that these two groups "base their views of how the church should be organized and function on the Bible." Really? When did the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox pick up Sola Scriptura? And all this time I thought Tradition was the basis of our system of Church governance. In addition, there can't be much reason aside from sheer ignorance why he insists on saying "Greek Orthodox" specifically (he says it twice in this book and I've noticed it in others as well, where he gives a list similar to this one for a similar reason) given that there are 26 other Orthodox jurisdictions in addition to the Greek and that the Greek jurisdiction is not even the largest of them. I can only hope that somebody in a position of power at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is reading this and thinking about hiring a chair for their Department of Religious Studies(!) who is actually familiar with ... well ... religious studies. And, of course, saving the best for last: "Put it this way: There are more variances among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." Thanks to True Free Thinker for saving me the work on this one: Considering that [Bart Ehrman's] book Misquoting Jesus explored the issue of variant readings in New Testament manuscripts it may be surprising to some that Bart Ehrman’s book itself contains millions and millions of variants. Following are some examples of the variants: On p. 13 reference is made to “Timothy LeHaye and Philip Jenkins” as the authors of the Left Behind series of novels. However, the authors of the series are Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Thus, error 1. Tim has never published as “Timothy,” error 2. his last name is not LeHaye but LaHaye and error 3. Jenkins’s first name is not Philip but Jerry. On p. 110 error 4. “Timothy” is used as LaHaye’s last name. In the index Timothy’s name is error 5. again spelled as “LeHaye.” On p. 110 Hal Lindsey’s name is error 6. misspelled as “Hal Lindsay.” On p. 70 Desiderius Erasmus is error 7. misspelled as “Desiderus Erasmus.” …[snip]… Now, if you are paying attention—or are you like me and simply cannot afford to pay attention? :o)—you may be thinking 1) that is only 16 errors, 2) they are mostly merely misspellings, 3) they do not affect the contents of the text and certainly do not affect any major point which the book seeks to make. As for 2) and 3); thank you for noticing as this is precisely, word for word, how many of us feel about Bart Ehrman’s criticisms of the New Testament manuscripts. As for 1) how do 16 equal my assertion of there being millions and millions of variants? Well, let us learn some methodology, the sort that allows Ehrman claim, “Put it this way: There are more variances among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.” I do not know how many copies Misquoting Jesus has sold but it is reported that “Within the first three months, more than 100,000 copies were sold.” The way it works is as simple as it is deceptive: you multiply the 16 variants by how many times they have been reproduced. As the 16 have been reproduced 100,000 (in three months alone) you multiply these and so the total of variants in Misquoting Jesus equals: 1,600,000. And that, boys and girls, is how Bart Ehrman manages to make sensational claims that gain him notoriety and quite a few shekels. I highly recommend giving the whole post a read. It's a better than mine, I promise!
    • 4/5
      Interesting. A survey of textual issues in the new testament written by a former biblical literalist, which is an interesting perspective. Gets dragged down dealing with the many, many small textual variations in the new testament. A good companion to Who Wrote the Gospels, but not as good a read as that one.
    • 4/5
      "The New Testament is a very human book."Excellent popular introduction to NT textual criticism. I had not known that Dr Ehrman had such a strong background in textual criticism. It is very impressive to find that he had worked with Bruce Metzger.(Though the review below that suggests that the title (and cover notes) are misleading is absolutely accurate.)Through his insights into textual criticism Dr Ehrman presents the NT as a human book, not fully inspired, not dictated by the Holy Spirit. It is as a human book that the NT holds it power for me.This book presents, in a very engaging and readable manner as well as personal, the basics of textual criticism as well as its history and growth as a discipline.A point that Dr Ehrman made that was new to me - the shift in the types of textual changes from the amateur period pre-4th century and the professional scribal period post 4th century.Dr Ehrman looks at specific examples of significant changes and offers interpretations of the impact of those changes on theological, Christological, and social questions.I recommend this book to all who want a deeper understanding of the New Testament as a book that documents the human striving to understand the divine.It is a very human book.
    • 4/5
      I was a religious studies major in school and found this book highly disappointing. Ehrman wrote my New Testament textbook which was great. He has also written some of the best books on noncanonical Biblical literature. However, recently he seems to have become obsessed with writing popular works that appeal to a much broader audience while diluting a lot of the great scholarship he had done. This book holds a lot of valuable information and would probably have affected me more had I not already known a lot of the information.This book does not solve any questions and, in my opinion, does not further the discussion much either. It is effective at presenting this complex issue of how the Bible has changed over time. However, he oversimplifies his case into black and white and oversteps the boundary of how far he can take his argument. It has been known for a long time that the Bible contains a multitude of inconsistencies and it has proven to not to be the greatest challenge to Christianity. This would not be a problem if Ehrman had focused on the fascinating world of biblical criticism. However, he set up his book as a story about problems with the Bible and I am not convinced that that is a applicable. This has a lot to do with this being a book for a popular audience.Biblical criticism is fascinating but Ehrman's book turns it into more of a game. The facts involved are quite fascinating but not earth shattering. Ehrman should stick to his scholarly work instead of seeking publicity through simplifying immensely complex issues. Or perhaps I would feel better if he let go of his facade of scholarship. There are better books to read about Biblical criticism.
    • 3/5
      I was apprehensive about reading this book. I shouldn’t have been. I would feel good about recommending it to anyone, even staunchly fundamentalist Christians or atheists. It is simply a close look at how the New Testament portion of the Christian Bible came to be and the errors and additions and deletions that were made as decades and then centuries and then millennium passed. Reading this book gave me a new cautious feeling about the stories and thoughts within the New Testament.