Modern Bibles are the Result of Many Edits:

For all those folks following the Good Book, we have some bad news. Turns out a lot of our modern Bible was tacked on, scratched out, and just plain garbled from the original Gospels as scribes over the millennia tried to present Christianity in what they thought was its truest light.

In fact, many of our modern Bibles are based on the wrong originals, says Bart Ehrman in his best-selling book Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind who Changed the Bible and Why. Even our beloved King James version has several segments based on a 12th-century manuscript that scholars now say was one of the most error-riddled in the history of the New Testament.

Some of those changes hit sore spots even today. For instance, St. Paul may not have been as critical of women as we have been led to believe. Prof. Ehrman, chairman of the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says it was not Paul but a second-century follower of his who wrote in 1 Timothy 2:11-15: "Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent."

Similarly, says Prof. Ehrman, scholars doubt Paul wrote a passage in Corinthians saying "let the women keep silent."

It appears these later additions were intended to address a power struggle in the early Church. For one thing, why would Paul say women should only speak with their heads covered in 11:2-16 of 1 Corinthians, only to say elsewhere they may not speak at all?

To date, 5,700 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament have been discovered, the earliest a tiny fragment of John 18 written around 120 CE. Including the 10,000 Latin Vulgate versions, and the thousands in other languages, we have between 200,000 and 400,000 variants of the New Testament today.

Scholars can compare the scripts to determine which was likely the earliest and had the fewest errors, either accidental copying mistakes or intentional changes or additions tacked on by later writers to make a point or "clarify" something.

From the moment Christ left Earth, His followers were debating what His life and death had really meant, and how His teachings ought to be preached. All manner of letters and gospels were produced, many in conflict with one another. These authors setting down the story of Jesus saw themselves as writers creating a new story, not scribes transcribing an old story.

Most people expected Christ to return imminently and overthrow evil once and for all. When it became apparent that wasn't going to happen, the early Church realized it had to get more structured if it was to survive. At that point, leaders began to decide which gospels were legitimate, and which were not. They not only had to contend with external persecution but a constellation of different varieties of Christianity all clamouring for legitimacy. It was not until 367 CE that a canon was finally established.

Even though the Church had settled on which texts to use, it had trouble making true copies of them. Almost nobody could read and write very well. Even village scribes could barely comprehend what they were writing.

Prof. Ehrman began his academic career as a fundamentalist and evangelical who took the Bible as literal truth. Now, he sees the Bible as "a very human book with very human points of view, many of which differ from one another, and none of which offers an inerrant guide to how we should live."

[1] A Review of Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities http://www.tektonics.org/books/lostehrman.html

Our rating: Thumbs down. Marginally Useless Lost: Heretic. No Reward. |

The curse of political correctness has brought down upon us yet another tome of self-righteous certainty. It is not that Ehrman gives what he admits are later Christianities equal chance of being right -- that question is avoided with the skill of a seasoned politician -- but rather, he wants to give them equal time to be heard, never quite telling us why, if they don't have a chance of being right, there is any sense in hearing from them to begin with.

Ehrman remains a paragon of naivete, clearly insulated from the world around him as he pursues his scholastic fantasies.

Christianity of the patristic period is said to be "more diverse" than what is even loosely called Christianity today, a difference by which those of today "pale by comparison"; clearly Ehrman has not got on with learning about what is offered by Mormons, JWs, Unitarians, and the entire lot, for otherwise he would know the absurdity of that statement. He is too busy rather implying that there is something wrong in denying the name Christian to someone like David Koresh [1] or to Arians who denied the divinity of Christ [2], though presumably he would not happily allow just anyone to affix to themselves the term New Testament scholar with the same level of permissiveness.

It is not that Ehrman is evil, or ignorant (as a scholar, he deserves great respect); it is that he follows the steps of Pagels in being so afraid to offend that he doesn't bother to think his way through his own presentation. It is not sufficient to whine that there was one "form" of Christianity that came out the winner; the question is, did the winner deserve the trophy, and as with his other prior work (Orthodox Corruption of Scripture) Ehrman is monumentally silent about this. There is breathing about variations on Trinitarianism, but not a word about pre-NT Jewish Wisdom theology that backs up the Niceans. Ehrman even admits readily that the heretics forged books [9] (while of course accusing the orthodox of doing the same; no discussion of course, though a note is given to his own guide to the NT) so he obviously is not incapable of delivering an assessment of who is (if anyone) actually on the side of truth. It is just that he does not want to.

The bulk of the book offers sometimes interesting discussions of partricular heretical stances, and how the world today may have been different had a heretical variety won out; here there are times when Ehrman's tolerance becomes so blind that he has to forge a path in which he wants to appreciate docetists or even anti-Semites in spite of themselves; in the process I cannot help but be reminded of local female librarians who were all for unlimited free expression and not putting filtering on public Internet terminals, a fine and dandy state of affairs until vagrants parked next to their desks and started viewing pornography, denigrating to their own womanhood, in their sight. The stumper for "tolerance" builds a mighty petard upon which to hoist themselves indeed. Readers may still appreciate Ehrman's look at these sects. Still and all Ehrman admits that they all cannot have been right [91] but waves this off as a concern first because the polytheistic Romans didn't care about such things (ahem...though Judaism, Christianity's parent, did with a vengeance, as he also admits); second, by hiding behind a list of questions about what proper belief actually would be; third, by noting as he did before that the other groups claimed apostolic succession as well (never mind that the docetists claiming back to Peter requires the absurdity of a Jewish, Galileean peasant holding a Greek view of the material world). Ehrman never gets past, "they thought they were right" and to "which of them was right". Here's a clue: Completely missing from Ehrman's bibliography is the quite sensible Hidden Gospels by Jenkins, who unlike Ehrman, did not shrink from that crucial question.

A few notes of interest to me. The Impossible Faith maven in me found some amusement in Ehrman explaining how Marcion's movement was doomed for precisely a reason I say Christianity could never have survived (newness). Ehrman makes issue of "vitriolic" attacks by Paul, et al. (see especially Chapter 9) but apparently has never heard of challenge-riposte. He notes some poor answers to heretics by Irenaeus and Tertulian, for example, on Jewish laws; but this hardly erases much better answers they were unaware of (rooted in ritual purity -- not that Ehrman is motivated for real answers to begin with. Again and again, his naivete is made clear with such statements as, "...put a dozen people in a room with a text of Scripture, or of Shakespeare, or of the American Constiution, and see how many interpretations they produce." [195] Hmm. I say put in that same room Shakespearian scholars, or a copy of The Federalist Papers, or material establishing interpretive contexts, and those "many interpretations" can take a proverbial hike off the dock.

A bit more naivete in that Ehrman wonders how Ephiphanius would have had knowledge of heretical rites. He supposes that the details of such sexual rites as described would have been revealed to a potential convert; it seems not to occur to him that such details are precisely what would be prime evangelism material for such a group. Once again, Ehrman's naivete concerning what cultic groups do today betrays him into a delusion of the Mister Rogers' Neighborhood variety. Ehrman's complaint that Epiphanius does not name his sources [201] ignores that this was a normal mode of operation for ancient writers.

That's all that really needs saying. Like Pagels before him, but with more depth, Ehrman here dives into the sea of tolerance and ends up soaking wet with nothing to show for it.

*

[2] Textual Trysts http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nttextcrit.html [Textual Criticism of the NT: Basic Assertions and Problems] [Advice from Secular Textual Critics] [Agreement Among NT Critics] [Is Our Faith Affected By Variants?] [Was There a Conspiracy to Change the NT?] [Textual Reliability and Historical Reliability] [ Case Study: Bart Ehrman]

"How about that the transformation of the word Passover to Ishtar oh I mean Easter?"

You really mean "Eostre" or "Ostara", an ancient fertilitiy Goddess whose symbols were the Egg and the Rabbit, and who is closely associated with Celtic rites of the spring solstice (always forget if this is Samain or Beltain). You'd be hard pressed to find any ancient civilization capable of even the most basic astronomy that was not able to calculate the occurrances of the solstices and which did not imbue those times with supernatural power of some sort.
Whether that is known as Passover, Easter or any of a hundred other names is besides the point; they are universally known and celebrated events that predate Christianity by thousands of years.

This, of course, is not to be confused with the cult of Mithras, an ancient Oriental god,who was born to a virgin in a cave, who died and was reborn, and who represented the ultimate victory of light over darkness, and whose followers celebrated the Winter Sostice (the return of the Sun)by giving each other gifts of wreaths woven from evergreen boughs.

Hmm. Seems there is nothing new under the Sun, nor in the Bible. Says even less about Christian theology that it was willing to freely and unashamedly borrow pagan traditions to suit it's own ends, in my opinion.

But then again, when has fact ever been allowed to blunt faith?

The author is absolutely right: the Bible as we know it is the result of a long string of translations from Hebrew and Aramaic, to Greek and Latin, and finally to the vernacular languages. Numerous mistakes in translation were bound to occur and be accepted literally. We won't even begin to argue about the political/ecumenical agendas of those who shaped what's in there, selecting this or that text because it suits a particular need or point of view, and chucking the rest.

My big question is "why now?" Why does the Gnostic heresy raise it's ugly head again, just in time for the resurgence of Jihadi militants? Whose interests are served?

See here... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1626986/posts?page=15#15

And...

Hobbes' Leviathan:

Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.

[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.

[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in [Israel], and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness

[1] Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air"; [Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world" [John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.

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