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kahawa's review against another edition
3.0
Lots of good information.... And lots of narrow-minded conclusions. I appreciate his research, but I feel like he so often overstates his case. Is this a debater's flaw? Overall he does a good job of exposing the rampant forgeries going on in the early centuries of the church, and demonstrates fairly conclusively that forgery was as unacceptable then as it is today.
eserafina42's review against another edition
4.0
If I could give this 3-1/2 stars I would, but I'll round up since I've always enjoyed Ehrman's books. This one seemed a bit drier, but was still informative and thought-provoking.
karschmidtholloway's review against another edition
3.0
A lot of material already talked about in Ehrman's other books, not a great deal unique to this book. I skimmed a lot because so much was already familiar to me. Also comes off as pretty snooty sometimes. Interesting, good solid scholarly information, but stylistically off-putting.
leaflibrary's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Really enjoyed this book! Easy to read and approachable without needing too much background.
onceandfuturelaura's review against another edition
3.0
When I was young and still trying to be a Christian, something I read mentioned off handedly that at first, the book of Job ended with him abasing himself before God. No restoration, no great grandchildren, no death at 140 full of days. It was the first time it had hit me that this book I’d read and been taught was central to faith, while perhaps inspired in the writing, was edited by human hands. It preyed on me. On the one hand, it made it seem like a wiser text. Bad things do happen to good people; good things happen to bad people; Job without the last few verses suggests, if not a particularly satisfactory explanation, at least a realistic one. On the other hand, it was a serious shock. I’m supposed to make moral and spiritual choices based on a book that was written by just folks?
Bart Erhman doesn’t talk about that, and I don’t know if it’s true. He’s a New Testament scholar and former evangelical Christian who (like me) left the faith over the problem of evil. He’s got a chair in the religious studies department at UNC Chapel Hill, which is awesome. We heard an NPR Fresh Air interview with him about his book, Misquoting Jesus, as we were leaving Salt Lake some years ago and I was riveted. If I’m remembering him correctly, he said that there were as many differences in the historical fragments of texts as there are words in the New Testament. People sat down and picked a canon. While I have no reason to doubt their earnestness, it was hundreds of years after the events and generations of copies later. Whole passages – “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” the whole of Mark after the women flee the tomb (meaning all the stuff about speaking in tongues, handling serpents, and drinking poison) just showed up at some point, years after the first drafts had nothing like that.
This is the third book of his I’ve read, and in many ways, it’s the least satisfying. The other two, Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted, are charming and engaging, told with great affection for the material but with a clear view towards its historical and textual frailties. I suspect, thought I don’t know, that this book is more of a response to his critics than an attempt to communicate his work to a lay audience. He is taking on the idea that we should not be troubled that many (most?) of the books in the New Testament were, in whole or in part, not written by those we credit. Conventional wisdom is that we should not be troubled because it’s just “pseudepigrapha,” and because those selecting and translating the texts were divinely inspired.
Pseudepigrapha is just fancy way of saying forged. As for the divine inspiration . . . well, that is probably why this book was less satisfying. The church I left was mainline protestant. It didn’t seem too hung up on whether or not there was a divine copyeditor approving every word. I can see intellectually how the frequent fundamentalist insistence that the Bible, even in translation, is the word of god has to get irritating for a guy who’s done the work and shown fairly persuasively that no, there’s all sorts of human decisions and demonstrable inaccuracies in this text, even as to authorship.
He takes on and goes a fair way towards persuading me that the old chestnut that the ancient world had a relaxed attitude about forgery and aggressive editing is just a convenient circumlocution. I’m not enough of a historian to feel settled on the matter, but if he’s right on the textual justification for the idea, it’s eye rollingly slim. (Reminded me of something a law prof said once – “If the judge is citing Am. Jur., you know she’s making it up.”)
I am glad I read it. I know now about Thecla baptizing herself in a barrel of man eating seals, which is awesome, and that Paul probably never did tell women to be silent in church in 1 Corinthians, which given that passage was a large part of why I left Christianity, is bemusing. But I liked Misquoting Jesus better.
Bart Erhman doesn’t talk about that, and I don’t know if it’s true. He’s a New Testament scholar and former evangelical Christian who (like me) left the faith over the problem of evil. He’s got a chair in the religious studies department at UNC Chapel Hill, which is awesome. We heard an NPR Fresh Air interview with him about his book, Misquoting Jesus, as we were leaving Salt Lake some years ago and I was riveted. If I’m remembering him correctly, he said that there were as many differences in the historical fragments of texts as there are words in the New Testament. People sat down and picked a canon. While I have no reason to doubt their earnestness, it was hundreds of years after the events and generations of copies later. Whole passages – “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” the whole of Mark after the women flee the tomb (meaning all the stuff about speaking in tongues, handling serpents, and drinking poison) just showed up at some point, years after the first drafts had nothing like that.
This is the third book of his I’ve read, and in many ways, it’s the least satisfying. The other two, Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted, are charming and engaging, told with great affection for the material but with a clear view towards its historical and textual frailties. I suspect, thought I don’t know, that this book is more of a response to his critics than an attempt to communicate his work to a lay audience. He is taking on the idea that we should not be troubled that many (most?) of the books in the New Testament were, in whole or in part, not written by those we credit. Conventional wisdom is that we should not be troubled because it’s just “pseudepigrapha,” and because those selecting and translating the texts were divinely inspired.
Pseudepigrapha is just fancy way of saying forged. As for the divine inspiration . . . well, that is probably why this book was less satisfying. The church I left was mainline protestant. It didn’t seem too hung up on whether or not there was a divine copyeditor approving every word. I can see intellectually how the frequent fundamentalist insistence that the Bible, even in translation, is the word of god has to get irritating for a guy who’s done the work and shown fairly persuasively that no, there’s all sorts of human decisions and demonstrable inaccuracies in this text, even as to authorship.
He takes on and goes a fair way towards persuading me that the old chestnut that the ancient world had a relaxed attitude about forgery and aggressive editing is just a convenient circumlocution. I’m not enough of a historian to feel settled on the matter, but if he’s right on the textual justification for the idea, it’s eye rollingly slim. (Reminded me of something a law prof said once – “If the judge is citing Am. Jur., you know she’s making it up.”)
I am glad I read it. I know now about Thecla baptizing herself in a barrel of man eating seals, which is awesome, and that Paul probably never did tell women to be silent in church in 1 Corinthians, which given that passage was a large part of why I left Christianity, is bemusing. But I liked Misquoting Jesus better.
rybooks's review against another edition
2.0
Not Ehrman’s best book, but one I was interested in from the beginning of my studies on the subject of inerrancy. He directs you to some of his other, earlier books. You can tell that some of his writing had gotten more polished over the years.
This is a decent overview of some of the critical issues in dating a text and establishing authorship. It is primarily focused on the New Testament.
He spends so much time talking about what must be a pet issue of his — did ancient believers view forgery as something to be unethical? Some scholars say no. Ehrman says yes.
Mostly boring, and I was looking for more information on how the books themselves were forged.
This is a decent overview of some of the critical issues in dating a text and establishing authorship. It is primarily focused on the New Testament.
He spends so much time talking about what must be a pet issue of his — did ancient believers view forgery as something to be unethical? Some scholars say no. Ehrman says yes.
Mostly boring, and I was looking for more information on how the books themselves were forged.