Misquoting Jesus
I am reading a very interesting book which I started reading because it looked like it would answer some nagging questions I had about the Bible.
The book is “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart D. Ehrman and the following paragraph is from his introduction to the book;
“In short, my study of the Greek New Testament, and my investigations into the manuscripts that contain it, lead to a radical rethinking of my understanding of what the Bible is. This was a seismic change for me. Before this-starting with my born-again experience in high school, through my fundamentalists days at Moody, and on through my evangelical days at Wheaton-my faith had been based completely on a certain view of the Bible as the fully inspired, in errant word of God. Now I no longer saw the Bible that way. The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book. Just as human scribes had copied, and changed, the texts of scripture, so too had human authors originally written the texts of scripture. This was a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs. Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own needs, their own desires, their own understandings, their own theologies; and these perspectives, beliefs, views, needs, desires, understandings, and theologies informed everything they said. In all these ways they differed from one another. Among other things, this meant that Mark did not say the same thing that Luke said because he didn’t mean the same thing as Luke. John is different from Mathew-not the same. Paul is different from Acts. And James is different from Paul. Each author is a human author and needs to be read for what he (assuming they were men) has to say, not assuming that every other author has to say. The Bible, at the very end of the day, is a very human book.”
For me, this explains quite a lot. I always wondered how come the New Testament was written in Greek, a language that very few people in the Middle East knew. If the so-called, old testament, was the word of God, and written in Hebrew-why the change? This book is very enlightening on many fronts but for me the bottom line is that it supports my long standing belief that God did not create Man but rather that Man created God.
The book is “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart D. Ehrman and the following paragraph is from his introduction to the book;
“In short, my study of the Greek New Testament, and my investigations into the manuscripts that contain it, lead to a radical rethinking of my understanding of what the Bible is. This was a seismic change for me. Before this-starting with my born-again experience in high school, through my fundamentalists days at Moody, and on through my evangelical days at Wheaton-my faith had been based completely on a certain view of the Bible as the fully inspired, in errant word of God. Now I no longer saw the Bible that way. The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book. Just as human scribes had copied, and changed, the texts of scripture, so too had human authors originally written the texts of scripture. This was a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs. Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own needs, their own desires, their own understandings, their own theologies; and these perspectives, beliefs, views, needs, desires, understandings, and theologies informed everything they said. In all these ways they differed from one another. Among other things, this meant that Mark did not say the same thing that Luke said because he didn’t mean the same thing as Luke. John is different from Mathew-not the same. Paul is different from Acts. And James is different from Paul. Each author is a human author and needs to be read for what he (assuming they were men) has to say, not assuming that every other author has to say. The Bible, at the very end of the day, is a very human book.”
For me, this explains quite a lot. I always wondered how come the New Testament was written in Greek, a language that very few people in the Middle East knew. If the so-called, old testament, was the word of God, and written in Hebrew-why the change? This book is very enlightening on many fronts but for me the bottom line is that it supports my long standing belief that God did not create Man but rather that Man created God.
posted by Michael at
8:47:00 AM
2 Comments:
Michael, did you by chance see The God Who Wasn't There this weekend? It might interest you. It's a broad swipe and as such not terribly nuanced.
The issue of who wrote the new testament and when is a sticky one. The gospels were written probably later than 70 AD. The only references to Jesus previous to that were by Paul, who never laid eyes on Jesus, and was unaware or did not write about the more myth-oriented earlier activities of Jesus. Even in Pauline and gospel references, there are suggestions that perhaps Jesus wasn't a factual creature.
When you consider as well that the early converts were largely gentile in mediterranean europe, the Greek language issue becomes less problematic. However, the fact that the gospels were written so long after the death of Jesus does bring some aspects into question. And why are some writings part of the New Testament and others apocrypha? Obviously, a human hand choose what would be included to support their own needs.
By
vj, at 11:25 AM
Thanks for your comments vj. I didn't see the show you mention but the title alone wouldn't have attracted me. I have completed my research into the Bible with the first few chapters of the book I was reading. The additional information about Paul just re-inforces my ideas. At this point of my life I don't try very hard explaining these items to others. I wrote to a cousin who got her PhD in Greek about this book and she told me her PhD thesis was on exactly these discrepancies 40 years ago.
By
Michael, at 10:05 AM
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