Monday, March 22, 2010

Unbelievable? 3 Jan 2009 "Misquoting Jesus" Ehrman & Williams

Misquoting JesusImage via Wikipedia
I'm fascinated by the work of Bart Ehrman. How can he do such very good scholarship deciphering textual criticisms yet come to such different conclusions about how reliable the Bible is than Peter Williams, Dan Wallace, or James White? Why does he overstate the differences the textual variants make? These variants have been known for centuries, why would it only matter now? If Christian theology rose and fell on these variants,  why hasn't it affected Christian doctrine. The funny thing is that most of the cults and theological differences giving rise to so many different generations are not based on the important differences in manuscripts. Ehrman's arguments are based on the New Testament because there are far fewer textual variants of the Old Testament. Ehrman is also not willing to apply the same rules for accepting historical documents for other historical documents than he does for the New Testament. Ehrman also ignores the wide spreadness of the manuscripts and there are more than one line of transmission,

One thing that is very interesting  in this discussion centered around Mark 1: 41. Ehrman argues that a few manuscripts say Jesus became angry instead of  Jesus being filled with compassion and that shows the manuscript was changed.  I liked how Peter Williams answered that. I think that Williams is right.

Unbelievable? 3 Jan 2009 "Misquoting Jesus" Ehrman & Williams

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