Misleading Readers (Conclusion)
This concludes my 9-part review of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus.
Finally, Ehrman expresses his sentiment that one should not be too harsh on the scribes for their tendency to change the text. After all, we all do it! He informs us that he has now given up on his…
… rather unsophisticated view of reading: that the point of reading a text is simply to let the text ‘speak for itself,’ to uncover the meaning inherent in it words. The reality, I came to see, is that meaning is not inherent and texts do not speak for themselves.
In his conclusion, Ehrman espouses a postmodern worldview. Ehrman argues one creates his own meaning in the text as he reads it. Meaning is what the reader says it is, not what the author originally intended. Kruger comments:
Of course, if this is true, then one wonders why Ehrman wrote this book in the first place… Ehrman’s own book shows that he assumes some agreed-upon reality with his reader where words mean things and texts can be understood – including his own.
I conclude with Ben Witherington’s final assessment of Misquoting Jesus:
This author has a strong ax to grind, and the fact that he grinds it well in fluid prose makes it all the more beguiling. As my granny used to say – Don’t be so open minded that your brains fall out!