Ehrman Misquoting Ehrman

An interesting point of fact.  Bart Ehrman co-authored with Bruce Metzger the 4th edition of The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration.  Ehrman and Metzger state in that book that we can have a high degree of confidence that we can reconstruct the original text of the New Testament, the text that is in the Bibles we use, because of the abundance of textual evidence we have to compare.  The variations are largely minor and don't obscure our ability to construct an accurate text.  The 4th edition of this work was published in 2005 - the same year Ehrman published Misquoting Jesus, which relies on the same body of information and offers no new or different evidence to state the opposite conclusion.

Metzger and Ehrman's conclusion in their co-authored book has been the settled conclusion of the majority of Christian and non-Christian textual criticism scholars for a very long time.  So since there's nothing new to change the original conclusion, I'll stick with that one.

Greg interviewed Michael Kruger, author of The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture's Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity, which is a very helpful and readable response to Ehrman's later claims.

Comments

[SteveT]

Well, to be fair, Metzger has been with the Lord for a number of years. Ehrman largely left Metzger's text as it was in the 3rd edition and added 100 pages of his own material. So the comments talking about how reliable the Scriptures are come from Metzger.

Still, the fact that he was willing to have his name on a book that is basically arguing against his real beliefs is interesting. Perhaps he figures that he doesn't believe it, but might as well make a buck off those fools who do?

[Paul]

This is a quote from Bart Ehrman's book Lost Christianities in which he discusses the topic of reconstruction of the originals:
In spite of the remarkable differences among our manuscripts, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the oldest form of the words of the New Testament with reasonable (though not 100 percent) accuracy. p.221

So, apparently Ehrman himself believes this, or at least did when he wrote this book.

[eric]

I would be interested to see the specific quotes where Ehrman contradicts himself. If Melinda, or anyone else, can provide these, that would make it easier to evaluate whether or not he is guilty of the contradictions of which is is being accused.

As Paul indicates, I remember Ehrman being very specific and very upfront about which conclusions he was criticizing. I don't recall him saying that the text is not generally reliable (meaning reasonably close to the original, not meaning factually correct in everything it asserts).

[Jon]

Melinda, there's a difference between saying that the NT text can be accurately reconstructed and saying that the NT text accurately quotes Jesus.

[Paul]

Here are some areas that I believe that Ehrman pushes the envelope toward contradiction. I believe that he takes liberties in MJ that he wouldn't get away with in a peer reviewed work. Here are some examples:

It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but the reality is that we don’t have the originals – so saying they were inspired doesn’t help me much, unless I can reconstruct the originals. MJ - p.10

If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don’t have the very words of scripture?...It is a bit hard to know what the words of the Bible mean if we don’t even know what the words are! MJ - p.11

If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them (and possibly even given them the words in a language they could understand, rather than Greek and Hebrew). The fact that we don’t have the words surely must show, I have reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn’t perform this miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words. MJ - p.11

These are just three examples from early in the book. I find the last to be especially telling. In what language did Ehrman expect God to preserve his word, English? These people were Greek and Hebrew speakers who had the original writings. He also assumes that we don't have the original when it is only possibly 10% of the original that he and other scholars are uncertain about.

He also draws a non-sequitur in claiming that if God didn't preserve his word then it discounts earlier miracle claims. In other words, since (as he claims) God didn't perform the miracle that he wanted to see, then he didn't perform any. That doesn't follow. It also doesn't follow that because we are unsure about a small percentage of the original text that we don't have any of it.

I believe that these are areas where I find Dr. Ehrman to be at worst contradictory and at best, logically problematic in his argumentation.

[Steve]

Dr Ehrman's conclusions on the reliability of the NT manuscripts focus not on whether or not they reliably present what the original authors wrote, but, first, that we cannot be 100% sure of who the authors were, and secondly, whether or not they present accurate, unembelished biographies of Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that he would reach the same conclusions concerning the reliability of the manuscript copies of the NT as his mentor,Dr Metzger is no real contradiction to his position on whether or not the NT narratives are historically true. The bottom line is that his conclusion on the latter position is, and can only be, one of conjecture, as are anyone's. Without the testimony of the Holy Spirit as the most reliable testimony of the Living Christ, even the professed Christian is left to turn to his/her own desires or wishes when it comes to absolutely accepting the resurection and miracles of Jesus as fact.

[Paul]

Steve, I would have to beg to differ with you on your first points. As I have shown in the quotes above, Ehrman is concerned with whether what we have now is what was in the originals. That is one of his main points in Misquoting Jesus. He doesn't make as big of a point about who the authors were as he does as to whether we have what was in the original autographs.

As to your second point, it plays off the first point of whether we have what was in the originals. If we can't trust that we have what was in the originals, then we cannot trust what we have, including what it says about Jesus.

However, as I have shown from his quotes, he does believe we can get back to over 90% of what was in the originals. Metzger said that the other 10% doesn't significantly affect our understanding of doctrine and teachings. The bottom line is that we can trust what we have.

[Paul]

Steve, I would have to beg to differ with you on your first points. As I have shown in the quotes above, Ehrman is concerned with whether what we have now is what was in the originals. That is one of his main points in Misquoting Jesus. He doesn't make as big of a point about who the authors were as he does as to whether we have what was in the original autographs.

As to your second point, it plays off the first point of whether we have what was in the originals. If we can't trust that we have what was in the originals, then we cannot trust what we have, including what it says about Jesus.

However, as I have shown from his quotes, he does believe we can get back to over 90% of what was in the originals. Metzger said that the other 10% doesn't significantly affect our understanding of doctrine and teachings. The bottom line is that we can trust what we have.

[Dissertation help]

Its great to see that people are sharing quite profitable information with each other and now we can move our selves to a new era.

[John]

"Still, the fact that he was willing to have his name on a book that is basically arguing against his real beliefs is interesting. Perhaps he figures that he doesn't believe it, but might as well make a buck off those fools who do?"

I have another hypothesis: Misquoting Jesus sells books. His more scholarly works do not. The man is a hedonist, simple conclusion if you read the last three pages of another of his books, God's Problem.

[Lyndon Unger]

Ehrman is notoriously double tongued on these issues. When he's talking with scholars like Dan Wallace, Pete Williams or James White, he basically goes along with the scholarly consensus that the textual differences are neither significant nor corrupting to the New Testament in any doctrinally discernable way.

When he's getting interviewed by popular figures (like Steven Colbert or the Infidel Guy), he goes all "chicken Little" and rants about all the differences and corruption in the NT text.

I've started basically ignoring him, seeing that he's clearly a sensationalist simply looking to make some fast cash by fueling the unbelief of street-level skeptics.