Bart Ehrman- Misquoting Jesus

Misquoting Jesus

Textual critics have proven many parts of the modern bible were not originally a part of it. One example is the story of the woman who was about to be stoned to death but Jesus saved her by saying "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." It's been proven that this was added in hundreds of years after the NT texts were first written down.

Bart Ehrman Interview on "Misquoting Jesus"
video.google.ca...

Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus', with audio interview-
www.npr.org...

The book of Bart-
www.washingtonpost.com...

Scholar Bart Ehrman's new book explores how scribes -- through both omission and intention -- changed the Bible. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why is the result of years of reading the texts in their original languages.

Ehrman says the modern Bible was shaped by mistakes and intentional alterations that were made by early scribes who copied the texts. In the introduction to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman writes that when he came to understand this process 30 years ago, it shifted his way of thinking about the Bible. He had been raised as an Evangelical Christian.

Ehrman is also the author of Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which chronicles the period before Christianity as we know it, when conflicting ideas about the religion were fighting for prominence in the second and third centuries.

The chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Ehrman also edited a collection of the early non-canonical texts from the first centuries after Christ, called Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament.

Edited... please don't quote more than 2-3 paragraphs of any long article or more than 1-2 paragraphs of shorter articles (this is ATS policy and international copyright law.)

[edit on 6-10-2008 by Byrd]

It is a difficult thing to chart the loss of faith.

Where does it go, this belief in things not seen?

Let's look at "In the Beauty of the Lilies." This is John Updike's novel of the fictional Rev. Clarence Arthur Wilmot, a Presbyterian minister, and his loss of faith. Wilmot, beset by doubt one afternoon in the rectory, "felt the last particles of his faith leave him. The sensation was distinct -- a visceral surrender, a set of dark sparkling bubbles escaping upward . . . there was no God, nor should there be."

For Ehrman, the dark sparkling bubbles cascaded out of him while teaching a class at Rutgers University on "The Problem of Suffering in Biblical Traditions." It was the mid-1980s, the Ethiopian famine was in full swing. Starving infants, mass death. Ehrman came to believe that not only was there no evidence of Jesus being divine, but neither was there a God paying attention.

"I just began to lose it," Ehrman says now, in a conversation that stretches from late afternoon into the evening. "It wasn't for lack of trying. But I just couldn't believe there was a God in charge of this mess . . . It was so emotionally charged. This whole business of 'the Bible is your life, and anyone who doesn't believe it is going to roast in hell.' "

He kept teaching, moving to Chapel Hill, kept hanging on to the shreds of belief, but the dark bubbles fled upward. He was a successful author, voted one of the most popular professors on campus, but he awoke one morning seven years ago and found the remnants of faith gone. No bubbles at all. He was soon to marry for the second time and his kids were grown. He stopped going to church.

"I would love for him to be there with me, and sometimes wish it was something we share," says Ehrman's wife, Sarah Beckwith, a professor of medieval literature at Duke University, and an Episcopalian. "But I respect the integrity of decisions he's made, even if I reject the logic by which he reached them."

"Bart was, like a lot of people who were converted to fundamental evangelicalism, converted to the certainty of it all, of having all the answers," says Dale Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, and a friend of three decades. "When he found out they were lying to him, he just didn't want anything to do with it.

"His wife and I go to Mass sometimes. He never comes with us anymore."

Historians don't consider the KJV to be historically as authentic or original as some other versions

Most modern versions like the NASB, NIV, ESV (the 2001 English Standard Version) are based on the Westcott-Hort Greek text, which has differences of 5000 words and many whole verses from the New Testament Greek text that the King James Bible is derived from.

The W-H text is based mostly on two manuscripts called Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. These two texts disagree significantly with each other, let alone with the vast majority of all other texts, in over 3000 places in the gospels alone, and over 1000 times in the rest of the New Testament. Yet they form the textual basis of most modern bible versions.

Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were not found until after the KJV was already written, so they are older and more original. They are considred to show just how much a bible can change over time.

The Masocretic texts that the modern bible is based on are obviously historically inferior to Sinaticus and Vatinicus which are far older.


Cannabis and the Christ: Jesus used Marijuana
www.cannabisculture.com...



5 modern interpretations of scripture that are supposed to be able to objectably be proven false-

1. The story of the woman who was to be stoned

2. modern understanding of the meaning of the trinity

3. Nazareth, Jesus the Nazarene refers to the Essenes not Nazareth

4. Mary Magdalene being a prostitute and not head disciple of Jesus

5. The original texts did not contain the resurrection

The bible of today is still a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, and obscure teachings and often originally oral traditions

Here is another example where the real meaning of a greek word became completely lost. Jesus the Nazarene, meaning Jesus the Essene, became misunderstood as Jesus of Nazareth
jesusneverexisted.com...

However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god – surprise, surprise! – no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.

• Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Old Testament. The Book of Joshua (19.10,16) – in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area – records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.

• The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth, nor does early rabbinic literature.

• St Paul knows nothing of 'Nazareth'. Rabbi Solly's epistles (real and fake) mention Jesus 221 times, Nazareth not at all.

• No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth. It is first noted at the beginning of the 4th century.

The expression 'Jesus of Nazareth' is actually a bad translation of the original Greek 'Jesous o Nazoraios'. More accurately, we should speak of 'Jesus the Nazarene' where Nazarene has a meaning quite unrelated to a place name. But just what is that meaning and how did it get applied to a small village? The highly ambiguous Hebrew root of the name is NZR.

The 2nd century gnostic Gospel of Philip offers this explanation:

'The apostles that came before us called him Jesus Nazarene the Christ ..."Nazara" is the "Truth". Therefore 'Nazarene' is "The One of the Truth" ...'
(Gospel of Philip, 47)

What we do know is that 'Nazarene' was originally the name of an early Jewish-Christian sect – a faction, or off-shoot, of the Essenes. They had no particular relation to a city of Nazareth. The root of their name may have been 'Truth' or it may have been the Hebrew noun 'netser' ('netzor'), meaning 'branch' or 'flower.' The plural of 'Netzor' becomes 'Netzoreem.'

History also shows that even the concept of the Trinity as it is understood today, was not in the original greek manuscripts of the bible. The trinity is a later addition. Without that, the only thing I am aware of that can be viewed as a trinity that we know for sure is in the bible authentically, is the tetrgrammaton itself, YHWH.



video about it-
www.thegodmovie.com...

So to be sure, Jesus did exsist as a real spiritual teacher. He was an Essene teacher. An Essene teacher who was to come out and teach a bit more publically to succeed and surpass Jon the Baptist who was also an Essene. Jesus wrote the original version of the new testament so it is possible there is a gospel for every disciple

Video clips allegedly about their beliefs a little bit. Also talks about Jesus, Jon the Baptist, and the connections to the Essenes
nz.youtube.com...

Here's a clip talking about buddhism and christianity from the Documentary, Jesus in India
nz.youtube.com...

Jesus in India, documentary
www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...



[edit on 6-10-2008 by Hollywood11]

What Bart Ehrman does not expound on is that one other apologist, who has walked the same path as himself has reached a different conclusion.

Nevertheless, the book is a good read.

I recomend the book to all bible thumpers, fundys, Christians and Mormons. lol (oh yeah..JW's as well)

It will challenge them.

Of course if the truth frightens you and you are a believer you may not want to read the book!

As far as my own view point I was taught this in Higher and Lower Textual Crit. during my one year, two terms at Seminary.

I still believe the Bible but not in the way that most do.

5. The original texts did not contain the resurrection

in the book of mark...

matthew, luke, john and acts all have resurrection accounts in the earliest of manuscripts along with references to it in the letters. your making it sound like the resurrection is completely unfounded.

"In Matthew, Mark and Luke, you find no trace of Jesus being divine," he says, his voice urgent. "In John, you do." He points out that in the other three books, it takes the disciples nearly half of Christ's ministry to learn who he is. John says no, no, everyone knew it from the beginning. "You shouldn't think something just because you believe it. You need reasons. That applies to religion. That applies to politics . . . just because your parents believe something isn't good enough."

i actually find things like this hysterical. you take a doctrine like the divinity of christ which was added later, not to the bible but in the teachings of the church. then someone actually reads the bible and discovers hey wait a minute, this isnt scriptural. so instead of concluding that their church is not following the bible, they decide to give up completely and become agnostic.

its like going grocery shopping and you have a cart full of things but then you find out the store is out of orange juice, so you just leave the cart and walk away

Here, you play biblical translator. Look at this, an example in English, from Ehrman's book:

godisnowhere

Does it say: God is now here.

Or: God is nowhere.

workswithsimplephrasesbutnotwithlongeronesdoyoumeantotellmethatitisreallyamysterywhatimsayingnowsureitsisapaininthenecktoreadbutyoucanstillunderstandw hatimsayingwithlittleornocontroversy

The Bible simply wasn't error-free. The mistakes grew exponentially as he traced translations through the centuries. There are some 5,700 ancient Greek manuscripts that are the basis of the modern versions of the New Testament, and scholars have uncovered more than 200,000 differences in those texts.

"Put it this way: There are more variances among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament," Ehrman summarizes.

Most of these are inconsequential errors in grammar or metaphor. But others are profound. The last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark appear to have been added to the text years later -- and these are the only verses in that book that show Christ reappearing after his death.

wow 200,000 differences, which immediately puts a picture in the readers head that the bible is chock full of mistakes. adding ehrman´s summary serves to cement that thinking even after it is clarified in the next sentence. its an actual sales technique.

this of course besides the fact that theologians knew about the last 12 verses of mark a long long time ago. alot of this information isnt new

Another critical passage is in 1 John, which explicitly sets out the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). It is a cornerstone of Christian theology, and this is the only place where it is spelled out in the entire Bible -- but it appears to have been added to the text centuries later, by an unknown scribe.

old news. it is estimated that it was added around the 4th century. it raises the question, if the rest of the bible doesnt even mention the trinity and this scripture was added then logically what does that tell you about the trinity? it tells you that churchs that teach the trinity are not teaching god´s word.

"The evidence for the belief is that if you look closely at the Bible, at the resurrection, you'll find the evidence for it," he says. "For me, that was the seed of its own destruction. It wasn't there. It isn't there."

simply not true. even the oldest coptic versions have plenty of evidence of the resurrection

For Ehrman, the dark sparkling bubbles cascaded out of him while teaching a class at Rutgers University on "The Problem of Suffering in Biblical Traditions." It was the mid-1980s, the Ethiopian famine was in full swing. Starving infants, mass death. Ehrman came to believe that not only was there no evidence of Jesus being divine, but neither was there a God paying attention.

alot of people get hung up on why we suffer. the bible actually explains this

"I just began to lose it," Ehrman says now, in a conversation that stretches from late afternoon into the evening. "It wasn't for lack of trying. But I just couldn't believe there was a God in charge of this mess . . . It was so emotionally charged. This whole business of 'the Bible is your life, and anyone who doesn't believe it is going to roast in hell.' "

holding on to church doctrine while honestly reading the bible will do this to anyone. it should also be noted that ¨roast¨ing ¨in hell¨ is also not scriptural in any translation

"Bart was, like a lot of people who were converted to fundamental evangelicalism, converted to the certainty of it all, of having all the answers," says Dale Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, and a friend of three decades. "When he found out they were lying to him, he just didn't want anything to do with it.

jesus talked about building a house with good foundations on stone. im sure that checking the scriptures to see if what you are being taught is scriptural is part of that

-----

most of the information he stumbled on has been around since the 1850´s. in fact that why alot of scholars have been working on new translations since then.

Originally posted by Hollywood11
2. modern understanding of the meaning of the trinity

Well, this one from Matthew 28 is usually the clincher: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"

And there is this from the Gospel of Thomas: "Whoever blasphemes against the father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven."

3. Nazareth, Jesus the Nazarene refers to the Essenes not Nazareth

4. Mary Magdalene being a prostitute and not head disciple of Jesus

Well ... it's a theory.

5. The original texts did not contain the resurrection

Mark originally ends with the lines: "And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.... And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid."
The other texts, such as they are, do contain the resurrection.

Jesus wrote the original version of the new testament so it is possible there is a gospel for every disciple

Uh ... really? Where did you read that?

Cannabis and the Christ: Jesus used Marijuana
www.cannabisculture.com...

Now that's just silly.

[edit on 6-10-2008 by Eleleth]

Even in the NIV, exp. John 8, Mark 16, 1st John 5:7 etc. Has this paraphrase, these verses were not "found in the earliest manuscripts".

So if a modern "text" bible states that some verses were added later, Where is the conspiracy?

I think some people make a mountain out of a mole hill.