The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament

Media:	Paperback
Author:	Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Release date:	01 February, 1996
Our price:	$22.95

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament

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Confirmation vs. Polemic

The review on this web-page says that Ehrman regards the
(proto-)orthodox corruption of scripture as serving a polemical purpose, whereas Ehrman argues that the 'heretics' had their own method of interpretation that was immune to polemics; therefore, the purpose of the corruptions was to re-inforce the commitment of the proto-orthodox to their understanding of Jesus.

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament - Bart D. Ehrman

If literalness is important, be sure to change it as needed

I haven't seen the scribes' copies of the New Testament which were compared for this book. I don't read Greek anyway. So that puts me at a severe disadvantage when it comes to judging Ehrman's findings. I trust to Bible scholars to verify Ehrman's accuracy. As to his selection, it seems he has presented a great many examples of changes in the texts that seem made during early Christianty to rule out heretical interpretations. It seems he has done an incredible amount of reading and comparing of these early texts.

There's a lot of scholarly details. Ehrman is sensitive to that: he recommends in the introduction that non-scholars may want to just read the beginning and conclusion of the four chapters that are very detailed. However, a lay reader could profit from reading everything.

Ehrman selected four significant heresies to focus on. Each has a chapter. Each of those chapters presents textual changes that would make sense if scribes were trying to avoid the heresy covered in that chapter. There is also a introductory chapter and a concluding chapter. I was surprised how many textual changes Ehrman was able to present in each chapter. Sometimes it wasn't clear to me how the change led to text less likely to support a heretical view, but many of the changes seem quite plausible. I didn't feel that Ehrman was pushing convenient interpretations on me; it seemed that the textual changes spoke for themselves. But I did appreciate the historical background Ehrman provides. He seems to have a good understanding of the various Gnostic Christian beliefs present during early Christianity.

Elaine Pagel's "The Gnostic Gospels" is a top down look at Christian Gnosticism, with a lot of her conclusions and some selected reference to details. Ehrman's book is instead a bottom up look, that presents a huge amount of details and a brief conclusion. Although it was more work for me to read Ehrman, it felt like I was participating in the process that led him to his conclusions rather than just hearing afterward of the conclusions he had arrived at. I like having so much exposed of what led an author to his/her conclusions, so I value Ehrman for his approach.

Being from an age of print and electronics, I'd never considered that the New Testament texts wouldn't match the originals, but often not quite exact copies made by scribes who may have taken small, but significant, liberties with the text. Because the meanings appear to differ (even if subtly) in most if not all of the examples Ehrman provided, it makes one wonder how literal an interpretation of a modern New Testament can be, as it depended not only on passages changed in the Greek but also translated.

Like translators, scribes have some power indeed.

Bart D. Ehrman - The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament

EHRMAN IS TOO POLITE

Ehrman does a terrific, but respectfully polite job of elucidating the realities of the state of the extant gospels and how accurate or corrupted they have become over the eons. I am nearly not as polite or respectful of the men who, sometimes knowingly culpable, and other times because of incompetence, corrupted what might have been historic if not sacred documents.

More than 5400 copies in various states of completion of the New Testament (NT for short) are extant. The very earliest copies are copies of copies, of copies of copies. If one is capable of learning to translate for themselves from Coptic, Greek, Latin, Archaic Aramaic, Hebrew and other languages and does so sans bias, or if one reads only the works of non-biased scholars, one easily finds that some of the stories and events, and crises of the earliest copies of the NT are significantly different from the next batch of copies immediately following them in age and so on. It isn't simply that the stories are fraught with copying errors, that is to be expected in any document, especially among those which were copied by hand, and often by less educated scribes, it is that NEW stories covering NEW "heresies" suddenly appear in the NT where they were not present before. Add to that in the original NT's, much of the strife between Jesus and the Herodian priests were not about his struggles with the priests, but about the struggles of the church with them long after his death.

At times words are placed on the lips of Jesus and others which were not there in earlier copies and which are relevant and significant in the time frame in which those copies were redacted and re-edited, and they appeared because, in the eyes of those who reacted much like those who persecuted Jesus, a new "heresy has" appeared and they, (They rejected that a new intellect or prophet may have come upon a more truthful interpretation or understanding and instead, perhaps out of envy, or spite, or misplaced zeal to protect the status quo, or their own careers) in trying to put the "heresy" down, placed on the lips of Jesus a ban on any newer interpretation.
These kinds of things have even occurred in some of the
oldest documents, where redactors had Jesus arguing things, which had occurred later after his death to the later church.
Oddly, enough, Jesus had more beliefs in common with the Pharisees than with the Sadducees, Sanhedrin and the other priestly sects. For instance, Jesus and the Pharisees held a joint belief in the existence of immortality, of angels and much more.
The four men, who wrote the gospels did so probably between about 37-88 years after the death of Jesus, were not the apostles whose names they or the church "borrowed" to give the writings plausibility. Try that today and you wind up in jail or in a lawsuit. The first gospel was written between 64-72 AD, the last between 92-110 AD. Since Jesus, if he was born during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC, would have to have been at least a few years old before Herod's death and the trip to Egypt and back, if that even ever happened, and I say that because I believe it to be contrived to fit the "prophecy" that the Messiah came out of Egypt and was a way of getting him from Bethlehem to Galilee to fulfill another prophecy. If Jesus died in his early 30's and was born before Herod's death between 8 & 4 BC, that mean that Jesus probably died between 25 AD-29 AD, not 33 AD. We know from a variety of Jewish, Roman and other state documents, that place Herod death before the end of 4 BC.

Also, since we have heard from historical sources outside of the New Testament that John the Baptist died in 37 AD, 4-12 years after Jesus, regardless of which date one accepts for Jesus' death, and that Quirynius was not governor until Jesus was a teenager, and thus could not have ordered a census in Bethlehem, 13 years before he was stationed in Jerusalem, during Jesus' infancy, one wonders at the credibility and the veracity of those who did write the NT. When one also considers that there are, even among the older versions of the NT myriad inconsistencies, one begins to question the veracity of any of the NT.

More than that, placing the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke,
Synoptically, one sees a host of conflicting information in each story and even more interesting, why is John's, (the last Gospel written, completed 70+ to 80+ years after Jesus' death and 30-40 years after Luke's), the only Gospel with several stories, including the raising from the dead of Lazarus, that appear in no other gospels?

Was John's Gospel, actually the first written but lost all those years only to resurface for "John" to rewrite in the second century? Or does it make sense that a story was unknown to Mark, Matthew and Luke, was known to "John" 60+ years after the last of them wrote their versions? In addition, why are there so many discrepancies between even the 3 synoptic gospels? If they were, inspired writings wouldn't they be identical and wouldn't they have gotten the facts correct? Instead one finds all sorts of errors and mistakes; cultural inaccuracies including the contradictory manufactured story of Jesus' "trial and death". The NT writer says Herod Antipas had not the power to take Jesus' life only Rome had such power. Because of this "fact" after his arrest, they pack Jesus off to Pilate. However, in the case of John The Baptist, there was no such question about Herod's right to lop off his head and Herod did not defer to Pilate, nor was there even a trial. Where was the power lost to Rome for execution in John's case, which the gospels say occurred before Jesus, but which records say occurred after Jesus' death? Why does Mary, who was given the prophecy of her virgin birth by an angel, later with her other children go to seek and bring Jesus home because they thought that he had lost his mind? Did she forget all that came before including the prophecies of the angel, her cousin, the old prophet Simeon at Jesus' Circumcision, and why did John The Baptist, if he was Jesus' cousin as in the birth story, not know him at the baptism? They never visited, although being within walking distance of each other most of their young lives?

In both Testaments, there are doctored "prophecies"; misinterpretations, mistranslations and more-the books appear cooked. Polite theologians call them, "pious errors." In other words, changes made out of the best of reasons, sorry but to me there are no reasons to change the words written closer to the time of Jesus life, ever. Certainly there can and should be newer interpretations and if new gospels, such as the discoveries at Nag Hammadi of the Lost Gospels, are found their input should be added to the mix, but not to change the older versions.

Unfortunately in doing many of the things they did, the writers and scribes have cast doubt upon the entirety of the NT. Perhaps cynically they, as some do today, thought they could legislate truth out of existence, but what were they trying to hide? Their truth is not my truth, my truth is whatever is reality, not the wishful thinking of men either culpably corrupt, stupid or both.

Even the writings of historians like Tacitus, Eusebius and others are biased one way or the other and none too accurate, in either direction, pro or con. The "evidence" cited in the NT is not evidence at all, it is a collection of biased writings by biased men who were not witnesses to the events about which they wrote. Most of the writers of the New Testament were not even born before Jesus died. They did not even write under their own names, and we know now that they were not the apostles, although Organized Religions tried hard to keep even that truth from us nd some still do. The NT writers got much of their information from the works of Paul, and some from Peter, but one wonders, where is Peter's influence in the NT? Why are the dominating stories about Jesus' life written by those who never knew Jesus? Paul certainly never knew the living Jesus, as Peter points out and Paul attests. In addition, if Peter was the first pope, as the church claims why did both he and Paul defer to James, The Brother of Th Lord in Paul's Ministry directives? James's Church of The Nazarene, primarily a parish of Jews, was a Messianic Jewish Congregation, believing his brother to be prophet, messiah, not only Begotten Son of God. James Church had by some estimates some 6,000-8,000 members, a large parish even by today's standards.

Ehrman does a TERRIFIC job of writing in layman's terms, the truth as he sees it, even if his private feelings may be, perhaps a bit more passionate, as are mine. I advise my students to read the NT with the same critical eye they would read a contract or an article by anyone they do not know personally and make notes as they go. Consult a variety translations or make their own.

As to my own credentials and standing-Am I a Christian? Yes. Do I believe that God exists? Yes. Do I belief that the NT was the inspired word of God? Inspired does not indicate that it was dictated by God. If it were it would be error free.
Do I believe that there is historical accuracy to the NT-some but not as much as one might hope. Is there a legitimate, argument supported by several independent and unbiased pieces of written evidence, the minimal requirement for a graduate thesis, as required by intelligent, well educated people, as to the "facts" as the gospels relate them, no! Am I angry that some men long ago doctored early writings, and am I disappointed that the church even today does not officially own up to the gospels deficiencies? I certainly am, but I will leave organized religions to continue to corrupt what they teach, and to misinterpret, intentionally or otherwise, and lately for political reasons, the words and works of a man who was inspired by God, was a prophet, at least, maybe was the messiah, and even perhaps the adopted Son of the Most High.

Please recall that both Jesus and the Father said to search, and not to stop searching for truth, do your own research, even do one's own translations if need be, nor should anyone take any other man's, nor organization's word for truth and that is what I am doing, are you?

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