Misquoting Jesus

[El JoNNo]

This is an interesting lecture on how the bible came about and it's many variations. I thought in light of the many convo's about what the bible says and so forth this might be interesting to all of you as well.

youtube discription.

"Misquoting Jesus: Scribes Who Altered Scripture and Readers Who May Never Know," a textual criticism of Biblical manuscript tampering by Bart Ehrman, Professor or Religious Studies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cK3Ry_icJo

P2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfSuninCn0&feature=related

P3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6m07nmLe60&feature=related

P4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkZnIJoY3ZY&feature=related

P5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDjZK8SMBxE&feature=related

P6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogG38VaSG3I&feature=related

P7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YKMsJvBLag&feature=related

P8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QSmdtgehQE&feature=related

P9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWJdq7MysUk&feature=related

P10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TffAToyojg&feature=related

[William Wallace]

Smart guy, great writer, but tends to invent problems where there aren't any in the text.

[bosk1]

Smart guy, great writer, but tends to invent problems where there aren't any in the text.

[rumborak]

May I ask how much you two watched of the videos before posting this?

rumborak

[bosk1]

None, but I am familiar with Ehrman and with this issue in general.

[William Wallace]

May I ask how much you two watched of the videos before posting this?

rumborak

Read the book, chief. Thanks.

[rumborak]

Hmm, the fact that Mark's gospel's ending was not in the original one I find is pretty significant (incidentally, I remember thinking "Wow, this seems out of place" when reading that section).

rumborak

[hefdaddy42]

I haven't watched those videos, but I am VERY familiar with Ehrman (I've read most of his books).  While I think his older work shows real scholarship, I am disturbed that he is seemingly attempting now to make a living on making mountains out of molehills, especially when a lot of his newer books simply regurgitate material from his older books.

[El JoNNo]

Smart guy, great writer, but tends to invent problems where there aren't any in the text.

Do you have any examples, as most of what he was saying sounded pretty logical.

[William Wallace]

Smart guy, great writer, but tends to invent problems where there aren't any in the text.

Do you have any examples, as most of what he was saying sounded pretty logical.

For example, he makes a big deal out of the fact that "there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." The problem is that he doesn't qualify that statement by explaining that most of those variants are minor, most related to spelling and word order. Almost none deal with theological issues.

[hefdaddy42]

Smart guy, great writer, but tends to invent problems where there aren't any in the text.

Do you have any examples, as most of what he was saying sounded pretty logical.

For example, he makes a big deal out of the fact that "there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." The problem is that he doesn't qualify that statement by explaining that most of those variants are minor, most related to spelling and word order. Almost none deal with theological issues.

He does in his older, more scholarly work.  But that doesn't sell books, DVDs, or tickets to see him speak, so he doesn't stress it now.

[El JoNNo]

Smart guy, great writer, but tends to invent problems where there aren't any in the text.

Do you have any examples, as most of what he was saying sounded pretty logical.

For example, he makes a big deal out of the fact that "there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." The problem is that he doesn't qualify that statement by explaining that most of those variants are minor, most related to spelling and word order. Almost none deal with theological issues.

He actually says it more than once during that lecture. He states that most of the variations are nothing more than spelling mistakes and re-wording of sentences and that these changes don't actually change what the scripture says. He makes a point to say it more than once, as I recall.

[William Wallace]

Smart guy, great writer, but tends to invent problems where there aren't any in the text.

Do you have any examples, as most of what he was saying sounded pretty logical.

For example, he makes a big deal out of the fact that "there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." The problem is that he doesn't qualify that statement by explaining that most of those variants are minor, most related to spelling and word order. Almost none deal with theological issues.

He actually says it more than once during that lecture. He states that most of the variations are nothing more than spelling mistakes and re-wording of sentences and that these changes don't actually change what the scripture says. He makes a point to say it more than once, as I recall.

I haven't watched those lectures for a long time. But throughout the book he makes that argument without providing the necessary clarification. Either way, I think it's misleading to bring up that point when it is actually insignificant in the grand scheme of things. "Look at these 400,000 changes; I'm going to talk about five of them."

[rumborak]

Yeah, he says it several time during the lecture, and in the book too (which I'm reading now) that the vast majority of those differences are spelling mistakes and word order differences that have no consequence.
But I also don't think that this figure is supposed to give the impression that the whole Bible is wrong. I think it's rather for giving the reader/listener an idea of how much change the books in the Bible have undergone, and even the "official" versions of the Bible's books are nowhere near the original wording of them. From what I could gather so far, Ehrman's over-arching point is that the literalists out there who believe the Bible is the true inspired word of God have absolutely no clue how much discrepancy there is and was between the version of the books of the Bible, and whatever they have in front of them as "the Bible" is nowhere near what Jesus actually said. For example, the story about the "woman taken in adultery" was added later by a scribe who (I guess) thought it exemplifies Jesus' teaching well and thus put him into that story.

rumborak

[William Wallace]

Yeah, he says it several time during the lecture, and in the book too (which I'm reading now) that the vast majority of those differences are spelling mistakes and word order differences that have no consequence.
But I also don't think that this figure is supposed to give the impression that the whole Bible is wrong. I think it's rather for giving the reader/listener an idea of how much change the books in the Bible have undergone, and even the "official" versions of the Bible's books are nowhere near the original wording of them. From what I could gather so far, Ehrman's over-arching point is that the literalists out there who believe the Bible is the true inspired word of God have absolutely no clue how much discrepancy there is and was between the version of the books of the Bible, and whatever they have in front of them as "the Bible" is nowhere near what Jesus actually said. For example, the story about the "woman taken in adultery" was added later by a scribe who (I guess) thought it exemplifies Jesus' teaching well and thus put him into that story.

rumborak

The implication is that the meaning of the original text cannot be understood. He could have made the point you just made without the unnecessary panic. By the way, even Ehrman has said that the original text was quite similar to what we have today. Yes, some modifications have been made, but few have anything to do with Jesus' words, and none seriously jeopardize the theology of the New Testament.

[rumborak]

I think how much of the textual criticism affects the theology depends on your theology. If your theology rests on literalism,  you're gonna have issues.  If your theology always was that the Bible was inspired word that passed through centuries of human error and modification, then this probably won't faze you.
That said,  I think there's a serious amount of downplaying going on if you say that the non-factual addition of the adultery story, or the addition of the post-resurrection account doesn't affect Christian theology. On top of that,  it begs the question how many more changes happened that we don't know about, simply because we lack documents that were lost.

rumborak

[William Wallace]

I think how much of the textual criticism affects the theology depends on your theology. If your theology rests on literalism,  you're gonna have issues.  If your theology always was that the Bible was inspired word that passed through centuries of human error and modification, then this probably won't faze you.

That's the key. Historically speaking, word for word translations weren't that important during the period that the New Testament was written, and they aren't necessary to preserve the meaning of the text. People who believe that the the Bible is perfect in every sense are wrong wasting effort defending the unnecessary.
 

That said,  I think there's a serious amount of downplaying going on if you say that the non-factual addition of the adultery story, or the addition of the post-resurrection account doesn't affect Christian theology. On top of that,  it begs the question how many more changes happened that we don't know about, simply because we lack documents that were lost.

rumborak

The changes are significant, but they don't challenge the tenets of Christianity. It's also important to note that scholars have known that those changes were made for many years. Your last comment is just argument from ignorance. The text of the New Testament has been preserved as well as any other text has. We know that with a good degree of certainty.

[rumborak]

The changes are significant, but they don't challenge the tenets of Christianity.

Well, the divinity of Christ is on very shaky grounds if you bracket out John (and there are many reasons to do so). I would call that one a tenet of Christianity.

The text of the New Testament has been preserved as well as any other text has. We know that with a good degree of certainty.

Far from it, right? Unlike other documents of the same time period, which were copied by professional scribes, Christian texts were copied by "interested laymen" for the first two centuries. The oldest existing fragments are actually the most differing across each other.
There's actually an interesting point that occurred to me yesterday; if you agree that Mark was used as a source for the other gospels (I would think you do), the discrepancy between the gospels (i.e. between Mark, Luke, John etc.) then shows how willing authors (scribes) were to merge different texts and just create their own. For example, as Behrman points out, Luke took over many sections from Mark, but then proceeded to delete all mentions of anger from Jesus, and other emotional outbursts. Other than that, the sections are essentially verbatim, it's only that Luke brought his manuscript "in line" with his idea of Jesus as a calm-demeanored man.
Once you're at that point, you can only ask "Given this willingness of authors and scribes to change things around, what can be trusted?"
Trying to discern the divinity of Jesus from a specific wording in a gospel is a ridiculous undertaking in that light.

rumborak

[bosk1]

rumby, your conclusion rests on several very shaky assumptions, each of which is alone grounds to reject your final argument.

1.  There is no good literary or other reason to "bracket out" John. 
2.  Mark likely is not the source material for the other gospels.  Jesus' life was.
3.  There is no evidence Luke "deleted" anything (unless, again, you are assuming he intentionally lifted sections from Mark word for word and decided what was in and what was not, which does not fit either his style or his theme)
4.  I'm not sure I would agree that Luke uniformly portrays Jesus as a "calm-demeanored man" any more than the other gospels.
5.  You assume other authors and scribres "change things around," as you put it, without any real basis that I can see.

[rumborak]

Bosk, you're a die-hard literalist. With any argument I could post here I wouldn't be arguing against actual evidence, I would be arguing against your faith. The list you just posted is already so far removed from a critical view of the gospels, I don't see much point posting a rebuttal.

Out of laziness, this image:



It would be a joke to claim that these two gospels were created independent of each other.

rumborak

[bosk1]

How so if they are based on precisely the same facts (not to mention having the same author telling them precisely what to write)?

[William Wallace]

Bosk, you're a die-hard literalist. With any argument I could post here I wouldn't be arguing against actual evidence, I would be arguing against your faith. The list you just posted is already so far removed from a critical view of the gospels, I don't see much point posting a rebuttal.

Out of laziness, this image:



It would be a joke to claim that these two gospels were created independent of each other.

rumborak

This is a good, or better than usual, conversation. I will dig into some books on shelf tonight and we'll continue tonight.

[rumborak]

How so if they are based on precisely the same facts (not to mention having the same author telling them precisely what to write)?

When was the last time you heard two different people recount a word-identical account of an event both saw?

I'll a quote from The Lives of others, uttered by a Stasi investigator (paraphrased):
"If someone is recounting something they were a witness of or they did, they will never use the same wording the next time they tell the story. They were there, and they give many different angles to what they saw."

If the authors of Matthew and Luke really had witnessed the events first-hand and independently written down their accounts, they would never use exactly the same wording. Just as two witnesses of a car crash never use the same wording either.

rumborak

[soundgarden]

5.  You assume other authors and scribres "change things around," as you put it, without any real basis that I can see.

Knowing human nature, do you really believe that the various men involved thought the centuries did not put their own "taste" into the translations and transcriptions to suit their own perceptions, wishes, biases, intents, etc..

[bosk1]

How so if they are based on precisely the same facts (not to mention having the same author telling them precisely what to write)?

When was the last time you heard two different people recount a word-identical account of an event both saw?

I'll a quote from The Lives of others, uttered by a Stasi investigator (paraphrased):
"If someone is recounting something they were a witness of or they did, they will never use the same wording the next time they tell the story. They were there, and they give many different angles to what they saw."

If the authors of Matthew and Luke really had witnessed the events first-hand and independently written down their accounts, they would never use exactly the same wording. Just as two witnesses of a car crash never use the same wording either.

rumborak

In every day life in 2010, I wouldn't disagree with you in the slightest.  But the ancient Jews were trained from the time they were children to memorize and recite verbatim things that were of a religious significance, which is why faithful reproductions of various OT passages (and, in fact, entire books) appear throughout their history.  Their oral tradition was very strong and they had a long history of oral reproduction of their holy scriptures and other things that were important to their culture and identity.

[soundgarden]

How so if they are based on precisely the same facts (not to mention having the same author telling them precisely what to write)?

When was the last time you heard two different people recount a word-identical account of an event both saw?

I'll a quote from The Lives of others, uttered by a Stasi investigator (paraphrased):
"If someone is recounting something they were a witness of or they did, they will never use the same wording the next time they tell the story. They were there, and they give many different angles to what they saw."

If the authors of Matthew and Luke really had witnessed the events first-hand and independently written down their accounts, they would never use exactly the same wording. Just as two witnesses of a car crash never use the same wording either.

rumborak

In every day life in 2010, I wouldn't disagree with you in the slightest.  But the ancient Jews were trained from the time they were children to memorize and recite verbatim things that were of a religious significance, which is why faithful reproductions of various OT passages (and, in fact, entire books) appear throughout their history.  Their oral tradition was very strong and they had a long history of oral reproduction of their holy scriptures and other things that were important to their culture and identity.

but your assuming perfection of the human mind.  What about unintentional errors?  The greatest physicists make math errors, the greaters writers makes spelling errors.  Human's forget things sometime, its a biological fact that cannot be trained away from...

[rumborak]

In every day life in 2010, I wouldn't disagree with you in the slightest.  But the ancient Jews were trained from the time they were children to memorize and recite verbatim things that were of a religious significance, which is why faithful reproductions of various OT passages (and, in fact, entire books) appear throughout their history.  Their oral tradition was very strong and they had a long history of oral reproduction of their holy scriptures and other things that were important to their culture and identity.

Bosk, how can you say something like that when the oldest surviving documents, the Greek manuscripts, show the widest disagreements between each other, on the order of thousands of differences.
The gospels in the beginning were handed from one community to the next, and whoever there was assigned to be "the scribe" was tasked with copying that gospel, no matter his actual proficiency of doing so. On top of that, the gospels were written in Scriptio continua, which often left the copyist guessing as to the word boundaries.

rumborak

[bosk1]

5.  You assume other authors and scribres "change things around," as you put it, without any real basis that I can see.

Knowing human nature, do you really believe that the various men involved thought the centuries did not put their own "taste" into the translations and transcriptions to suit their own perceptions, wishes, biases, intents, etc..

 I'm not really sure how your point is relevant to the part of my post that you quoted.  But to answer your question anyway, yes, absolutely people have attempted to alter the text, for perhaps a variety of reasons that we can only guess at or that aren't relevant to our discussion.  But we know what was in the original texts because we have numerous VERY early copies.  And to keep it simple, here is a paraphrase of the result:

1.  There is no dispute about the vast majority of the text, probably around 98-99% of it.  It is all the same in all the manuscripts.  There are many copies, and there is no real variance.  There is no real dispute that this content is all authentic from the original manuscripts.  
2.  There is a second set of manuscripts that are all fairly consistent with one another.  They also contain all the content from the first set mentioned above.  But they also contain a few other things (that additional 1-2%).  A few verses at the end of Mark are an example of this.  So to use that example, if we are looking at Mark, we can say we are fairly certain 15 3/4 chapters are what was in the original manuscript.  There isn't really much debate over that.  Is the other 1/4 in there?  We don't know for certain.  There are good arguments for, and good arguments against.  Either way, does that additional 1/4 of the chapter change anything in Mark or in our understanding of Jesus?  Not really.  Is it inconsistent with anything else in Mark?  Not really.  Is it either (a) consistent with or duplicative of something we find elsewhere in NT writings, whereby we have good reason not to discount it, or (b) of such little consequence that it does not alter our understanding of the text whether it is in or out?  Yes.  And that is true of the other few passages that may be somewhat "in doubt."  Again, as was said at the very beginning of the thread, there is much more modern invention of supposed problems in the text than there are actual problems.

[hefdaddy42]

1.  There is no good literary or other reason to "bracket out" John. 
2.  Mark likely is not the source material for the other gospels.  Jesus' life was.
3.  There is no evidence Luke "deleted" anything (unless, again, you are assuming he intentionally lifted sections from Mark word for word and decided what was in and what was not, which does not fit either his style or his theme)
4.  I'm not sure I would agree that Luke uniformly portrays Jesus as a "calm-demeanored man" any more than the other gospels.
5.  You assume other authors and scribres "change things around," as you put it, without any real basis that I can see.

While I take issue with most of this, you are still correct that the vast majority of the text of the NT is intact.

[rumborak]

What does "intact" in this context mean, Hef? All that can be reconstructed are documents at the stage they most likely were in the second century, that is after 150 years of copying (textually and orally), merging and adding/deleting. Again, Luke quoting Mark but removing "offending" words points pretty heavily to that whatever we can reconstruct, is probably still nowhere near to what the original(s) were. If whatever version of Luke we have these days were actually close to an eyewitness account, Luke wouldn't have needed to copy Mark.

rumborak

[hefdaddy42]

I don't believe there is a single written record in the New Testament by an eyewitness of Jesus.  However, I think that we still have pretty much the original versions of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as they were written, with some exceptions/additions/deletions.  But, substantially, we have what was written, as of the end of the first century.

One of the things I love about the New Testament is the use of Mark by Matthew and Luke.  You can see how they adapted Mark's text to fit their particular theological viewpoints in presenting their versions of the gospel of Jesus.  It's fascinating stuff.  But that is a different topic altogether. 

[rumborak]

I finished the book ("Misquoting Jesus") yesterday, I can only recommend it to everyone. A very interesting and knowledgeable account of the transmission and origin of the gospels.

rumborak

[El JoNNo]

I'll have to pick up a copy, thanks.

[hefdaddy42]

I finished the book ("Misquoting Jesus") yesterday, I can only recommend it to everyone. A very interesting and knowledgeable account of the transmission and origin of the gospels.

rumborak

For a more interesting (but more dense) book, get this one: https://www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Corruption-Scripture-Christological-Controversies/dp/0195102797/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280658221&sr=1-10

[rumborak]

Thanks Hef, I will see whether I can even download this on my new e-reader.

I don't believe there is a single written record in the New Testament by an eyewitness of Jesus.

It is indeed rather interesting that the oldest gospel, Mark, was written ~70 AD by one of Peter's listeners. Apparently, because the author makes geographical mistakes that Peter wouldn't have, I guess there was no vetting process, i.e. Peter might never had read this account of Jesus.
It seems the later gospels were "enhanced" theologies based on years of reflection on the texts and people's own interpretation of the text(s). As you say

You can see how they adapted Mark's text to fit their particular theological viewpoints in presenting their versions of the gospel of Jesus.

I think just as the Roman Catholic Church added to their Christology by deriving (questionable) theological truths based on the existing scripture, I think the actual writers of the gospels did too, and of course someone like Mark as well (as he was already no longer a direct eyewitness).
Even more, I think the apostles are 90% of Christian theology, not Jesus himself. They were all part of Jesus' circle, waiting for the end of days and the inauguration of the Kingdom. And then Jesus gets killed, essentially over something asinine. And the end of days never comes. Sure, Jerusalem gets destroyed, but after that there's still no Kingdom. And I think in face of all those sobering facts, things started to move, theologies were developed to accommodate those facts. And I think that's what we see these days as "Christology".
I tihnk the understatement of Jesus in Mark as compared to the other gospels is not incidental; I think it was written right at the cusp of where things started to move, and thus still reflects the old, more "realistic" Christology somewhat.

rumborak