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Over the next several posts, I will present a series reviewing a very popular book by Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus. In my previous three posts, I have attempted to provide a very brief explanation of how textual criticism works so that the review of Ehrman’s book might be more effective.

Bart Ehrman, a well-respected New Testament scholar who chairs the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, has written this book…

… for people who know nothing about textual criticism but who might like to learn something about how scribes were changing scripture… for anyone who might be interested in seeing how we got our New Testament, seeing how in some instances we don’t even know what the words of the original writers were.

Ehrman does an admirable job explaining how the world of textual criticism works. Where he fails the reader, however, is in the interjection of his own skepticism and in his misleading spin on the facts. The title of the book itself is misleading in that almost nothing discussed in the book has anything to do with misquoting Jesus. In Ehrman’s defense, I understand this was not his preferred title, but that of the publisher.

First of all, let us overview Ehrman’s basic arguments in brief. Misquoting Jesus contains an introduction, conclusion, and seven chapters in between. The introduction is, unexpectedly, a personal testimony of how Ehrman journeyed from an evangelical view of scripture and a commitment to Christ to his present state of agnosticism and his view that the Bible is…

… a very human book. Just as human scribes had copied, and changed, the texts of scripture, so too had human authors originally written the text of scripture. This was a human book from beginning to end.

Next, a continued look at Ehrman’s basic arguments.