Misquoting Jesus-a must read

by dawg 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  needproof

  I agree, and besides that, there are countless books that didn't make the canon.
• 

  Sad emo

  Just for the sake of a balanced critique:

  http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=4000

  This is by Daniel B. Wallace, possibly one of the foremost evangelical scholars of Biblical Greek. He obviously has his own slant but he does give fair arguments for any negative comments.
• 

  dawg

  Thanks all.... Again, no dissenters will take the job of showing me a scholar that beleives the NT was actually written by the apostles...
• 

  yaddayadda

  Dawg, what scholarship have you been reading besides Ehrman? Have you read any refutations of "Misquoting Jesus"?
  
  The trick is to get a balanced view, which I doubt you have.
  
  British NT scholar Richard Bauckham gives an excellent treatment of the authorship of the gospels in his recent book "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses - the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony". I'd also highly recommend "Jesus remembered" by scholar James D G Dunn.
  
  There are many good reasons why we can believe that the authors ascribed to the gospels, ie, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the actual authors (Mark and Luke obviously weren't apostles, and there is some debate on whether the 'John' of the fourth gospel was the apostle John or some other John). Just because some of the books of the NT weren't written by original apostles is hardly enough to mean they are not trustworthy. Often writers in those days would use an emanuensis to do the actual writing for them, as Paul clearly does, telling them what to write but often allowing them some latitude in the phraseology. They would then check that they approved of what was written. We can compare this to some extent with how a good personal secretary might be used today.
  
  Contrary to Gumby's comment, the apostle Paul was indeed an apostle and was recognised by the Jerusalem based apostles as such, but he wasn't an eyewitness of Jesus life and ministry (hence why he hardly comments on Jesus life and ministry).
  
  If you do some searching on the internet I'm sure you will find lots of arguments for and against on the subject.
• 

  Leolaia

  Some of you have made statements that the NT was actually written by the Apostles, which I refuted, and after asking for and not reciveing information from you believers any Bible scholars anywhere that would go on record saying they believed the NT was in fact written by the apostles; i decided to researcht he subject on my own. I could find no scholars that believed the apostles wrote the NT; as a matter of fact, they all said the apostles couldn't have written them.

  Ummmm....the vast majority of scholars agree that the apostle Paul wrote at least some of the Pauline correspondence. BTW, not even tradition claims that "the apostles wrote the NT" as a whole (e.g. Luke and Mark were not apostles in tradition), so if you are only counting the NT as a whole, not even tradition claims this.

  show me where any scholar-i'm talking a person in a secular position at any University that will state on record that he/she believes the apostles actually wrote the NT.

  Few would claim affirmatively that all the NT was written by apostles, but probably fewer would claim that none of it was written by apostles. Are you really asking for the names of scholars who accept the Pauline authorship of, say, 1 Corinthians? Just doing a quick search of the articles I have on my computer, Pauline authorship of this letter is presumed in articles by Dietmar Neufeld (U. of British Columbia), Alan Segal (Columbia U.), George Nickelsburg (U. of Iowa), Boykin Sanders (Andover-Newton), Jouette M. Bassler (Georgetown U.), Jason BeDuhn (Northern Arizona U.), Vincent Branick (U. of Dayton), Will Deming (U. of Portland), Troels Engberg-Pedersen (U. of Copenhagen), James Hanges (Miami U.), Elaine Pagels (Columbia U.), Stephen Smalley (U. of Ibadan), Rosamond Sprague (U. of South Carolina), C. M. Tuckett (U. of Manchester), Gary Collier (U. of Denver), Ronald Herms (Northwest U.), David Horrell (U. of Exeter), Wayne Meeks (Yale U.), V. George Shillington (U. of Winnipeg), Wendell Willis (Southwest Missouri State U.), Charles Wanamaker (U. of Cape Town), and Bart Ehrman (U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Moreover, while various parts of 1 Corinthians are open to question as post-Pauline interpolations, I haven't seen any scholar claiming that the epistle itself is non-Pauline. Of course, you must have read pp. 21-23 of Misquoting Jesus as well.

  I've just finished 6 books on the subject, all of the writers were sceptical of the NT's orgins; everyone of them agreed that the apostles didn't write the NT; everyone of them said the NT was filled with errors.

  Those are two separate issues.

  In my mind, tHe best book by far was written by Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman and is called "misquoting Jesus" his research shows the NT is filled with errors and was definatly used by the Catholic Church to further doctrines they already beleived before Nicea in 325.

  BTW, I saw Bart Ehrman last month and when he was asked about the Da Vinci Code claim about Nicea in 325 AD, he of course said that it has no basis in fact.

  One early Bible scholar found over 30,000 errors from previous transcripts that conflicted with the NT message

  No, most of the variants in John Mill's apparatus or in modern critical editions make no or little difference in meaning, such as spelling mistakes, variances in word order, etc. And there is no single "NT message" for copyist errors and alterations to conflict with, other than the "original" text itself (whatever it may be).
• 

  Leolaia

  "The first thing to notice is that many different kinds of writing were significant for the burgeoning Christian communities of the first century after Jesus' death. The earliest evidence we have for Christian communities come from letters that Christian leaders wrote. The apostle Paul is our earliest and best example. Paul established churches throughout the eastern Mediterreanean, principally in urban centers ... After Paul had converted a number of people in a given locale, he would move to another and try, usually with some success, to convert people there as well ... Paul would write a letter back to the community, dealing with the problems. These letters were very important to the lives of the community, and a number of them eventually came to be regarded as scripture.... We can get a sense of how important these letters were at the earliest stages of the Christian movement from the very first Christian writing we have, Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, usually dated to about 49 C.E., some twenty years after Jesus' death, and some twenty years before any of the Gospel accounts of his life" (Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, pp. 21-22).
• 

  blondie

  Boy, Leolaia, I wish you could teach a course about the Bible I could attend. I just learned so much.

  Blondie
• 

  Shazard

  blond, leolai... sign me in :)
• 

  drew sagan

  Good points Leolaia,
  
  I understand many of Ehrman makes in the book, but also feel that some of the conclusions he makes are more of a commentary on the American evangelical movement rather that the Bible itself. All together I think it was a good read, but not as shocking in its conclusions as it claimed to be.
• 

  Pistoff

  I enjoyed this book; the book is written for the lay person untrained in Greek.

  I thought it was balanced; it does not suggest that the NT be tossed, just that over the centuries changes to the text are found, whether additions or subtractions, and from what likely source. It documents the pressure on the text from religious sources, mistakes by scribes, etc.