First of all, this Intro is a journey narrative so I feel particularly drawn to it. Ehrman recalls his changing faith in Christianity—from an apathetic Episcopal (his natal faith) to an evangelical Christian during his teen years. As his desire for a greater understanding of the New Testament brought him to Moody Bible College and later to Princeton Theological Seminary, he was plagued with the same, seemingly unanswerable, question:
“How does it help us to say that the Bible is inerrant the word of God if in fact we don’t have the words that God correctly inspired, but only the words copied by scribes—sometimes correctly but sometimes incorrectly?”(7).
His answer to this question is hinted at in the Intro, as we know that Ehrman no longer believes in the Bible as an infallible book, rather he believes that it is a human book, written to meet specific human needs. Thus, _Misquoting Jesus_ is his attempt to explain for a lay audience “how scribes were changing scripture and about how we can recognize where they did so.” That all sounds very interesting. But what I'm looking forward to is the answer(s) to why the scribes changed the Bible. In my mind, that is the more compelling question and I'm curious to see how Ehrman will tackle it.
10 comments:
As am I.
But if I had to come up with an answer on my own I'd recall the god of Mormonism feeling very strongly that "the lost 116 pages" of the Book of Mormon were certain to be changed...in fact, so certain that a plan was made in advance to compensate. Whether you believe it was god's omniscience or Joseph Smith's caution, the tell is that humans like to change things in order to better accommodate their vision of the world.
I too was appreciative of his biographical remarks. It gives the book a certain honesty that so many religious texts lack.
I am interested in understanding the methodology involved in distinguishing between the more reliable and the less reliable passages.
After that I want to get clear on what the "Human Book" thesis amounts to. I am particularly interested what happens after one accepts the idea that the bible is a human book. One reason why I am interested in this question is due to Eliade's thesis that any object can become a hierophany and thus "manifest the sacred." I am wondering what possibilities like that exist for a "human" bible.
I only read the first 6 pages of the introduction--the sample pages at Amazon, since I'm still waiting for my book. But I was interested to read Ehrman's reinterpretation of his "born-again" experience in light of his later beliefs. I had a similar born-again experience in college, which likewise was subject to reinterpretation after I converted to Mormonism.
It seems to me that those who leave the Church or at least change their views about the fundamental tenets of Mormonism face the same dilemma: how to interpret a "conversion experience."
Ehrman disappoints me, as he seems to deny the validity of the experience. I'm reading him to say that all teenagers confront a "void" which is just crying out to be filled with something that seems meaningful. Asking Jesus into one's heart seems to fill the emptiness, but may not be a valid religious encounter.
Those of you who have reinterpreted a conversion, or any of your religious experiences due to changing philosophies: are you able to affirm the presence of the spiritual or mystic, or have you had to give up your "encounter with the divine?"
BiV:
I was struck by the same thing that you mentioned--his easy dismissal of his powerful conversion to evangelical Christianity.
I struggle with making sense of my earlier religious fervor. I have gone through periods of my life where the church was _everything_ to me, and I had many powerful spiritual experiences. Now I don't deny that I experienced those things (tho I do sometimes think I was a bit naive), but I view them with a different filter (a more skeptical one, perhaps)--that distances me from their earlier potency.
It's interesting to me that I've chosen a new religious tradition that may even place more significance on personal revelation than Mormonism. An example: a few weeks ago I experienced a 'leading' to do something that I've since talked myself out of doing. Now I am questioning the validity of that earlier leading. And this is all complicated by the fact that I don't really believe that my leading was from God, but rather from my own godliness. So how to interpret a spiritual prompting? I don't know yet. I am thinking on it.
BIV,
This question haunts me. I cannot escape it. Unfortunately I have found nothing satisfying. I have wondered what it would take for me to be satisfied. In other words, I also ask myself, "What kind of answer are you looking for?" And I don't even have an answer to that.
Jana - I like the idea of a leading coming from one's own godliness. Although I do still believe that inspiration comes from God, I wonder if myself and others who also believe that tend to use it too often. That is to say, if we attribute to God's inspiration that which is really just our own rational minds, or our own desires. I also believe that we have a certain amount of inter-connectiveness as human beings - and much better perception abilities than we typically acknowledge - that can allow us to "pick up" on another's need or emotion and respond to it.
BiV - I still interpret some of my spiritual experiences as real. But others I attribute to social pressure or social conditioning. Sometimes when every one else is having a shared experience (or if I perceive every one else as having a shared experience, whether they are or not), I find myself having that experience, too. Actually feeling it. This can happen with spiritual things, but it also happens physically. Like when I'm sitting in my office perfectly fine, and six people mention being cold, and I actually get cold. But I wouldn't have, if no one had mentioned it.
Another example is I grew up in a community VERY patriotic, and I was conditioned to feel a sense of pride every time I saw the flag. That same feeling of patriotic pride occurs, even if the flag is being disrespected or used to make fun of America. The sight of the flag just has that Pavlov response effect on me, regardless of the circumstances.
Hmm.
Well, without giving too many spoilers, Ehrman gives a pretty good discussion of how-and-why some changes are believed to have taken place. The intro is short on detail, but he makes up for that later on.
What I found fascinating is that the book echoes so many of the basic ideas that Mormons believe in, but then uses particular evidence to come to near-opposite ultimate conclusions.
The church is _completely_ on board with the idea that scribes changed biblical texts. We're relatively unique in that respect -- hell, we've _canonized_ the broader idea that scribes changed biblical texts. (See, e.g., A of F about the Bible, or the BoM passages about people taking plain and precious things from the book).
So on the overarching thesis, Ehrman's book is completely in accord with mainstream church belief.
Where it differs is in the implementation. That is, Joseph Smith said, "scribes have adulterated the Bible, and so we need a modern prophet." Ehrman says, "scribes have adulterated the Bible, and so we need to go back to the earliest manuscripts and try to perform forensics to figure out what's been changed."
Without giving away too much, Ehrman points out that scholarship and research suggest some specific changes that were made -- and some of those changes deal with verses that have been widely accepted as LDS doctrine.
So I think that you could take (most of) the introduction to Sunday School, and you'd get bored nods. And much of the first few chapters as well. But the substance of the later chapters would be likely to cause a riot in Sunday School, since cherished verses are pointed out as likely later add-ons.
Oh, one other thing. An evangelical review of Ehrman's book that I thought was rather good -- a Chapter 8, so to speak -- is at http://www.denverseminary.edu/dj/articles2006/0200/0206.php . The reviewer is Craig Blomberg (who co-authored How Wide the Divide), and the review points out some useful things that I didn't know.
BiV said: Those of you who have reinterpreted a conversion, or any of your religious experiences due to changing philosophies: are you able to affirm the presence of the spiritual or mystic, or have you had to give up your "encounter with the divine?"
Though I've reinterpreted all of my LDS spiritual experiences, they haven't necessarily lost their spiritual or mystical qualities. The writings of Ken Wilber, more than anything else I've read so far, have helped me reconcile and acknowledge BOTH the spiritual/mystical in my experiences AND the rational/scientific/physiological/etc aspects of the same experience. In other words, one need not give up on spirit and mysticism to embrace reason and science. You can have your cake and eat it too.
Somewhere out there I hear a cacophony of Mormons and other members of literal-minded faiths cheering, "Hear Hear! Well said! You can have it both ways!"
Umm, not quite.
The literal-mindedness and/or conclusions most mainstream Mormons jump to stemming from a spiritual experiences make me uncomfortable. The less I "translate" any kind of spritual experience the better. If someone forced me to explain what "X" spiritual experience "meant," the most I'd be willing to say is "It felt good," or "It felt right," or "I felt connected to something bigger than myself." Anything more than that would feel like conjecture or hubris.
I'm going to go back to your question "why the scribes changed the Bible." I believe the most disputed issue today is what are the bible sources and how they were translated. wikipedia has a great post on types of translations, sources of the bible and what the differences are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_version_debate
It's very fascinating to read about the different sources of the bible, and to see which ones were picked and why, and which ones were left out.
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