Misquoting Jesus

By: Bart D. Ehrman

Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson

When world-class biblical scholar Bart Ehrman first began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman tells the story behind the mistakes and changes that ancient scribes made to the New Testament and shows the great impact they had upon the Bible we use today. He frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultraconservative views of the Bible.

Since the advent of the printing press and the accurate reproduction of texts, most people have assumed that when they read the New Testament they are reading an exact copy of Jesus's words or Saint Paul's writings. And yet, for almost fifteen hundred years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological, and political disputes of their day. Both mistakes and intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct. For the first time, Ehrman reveals where and why these changes were made and how scholars go about reconstructing the original words of the New Testament as closely as possible.

Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our cherished biblical stories and widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes -- alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.Bart D. Ehrman chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a widely regarded authority on the history of the New Testament.

©2005 Bart Ehrman (P)2006 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"Engaging and fascinating." (Publishers Weekly)

Very interesting and well written

After reading some other books that, maybe for the first time, got me to ask "where did we get the bible from anyway?" I came across Misquoting Jesus.

I couldnt recommend the book enough not only because of its comprehensive nature but the ability of the author to keep the book interesting and thought provoking.

I found it easy to understand and unlike a lot of books on the matter this one is not apologetic and skewd towards the beliefs of a practicing Christian who wants you to still believe everything is good even though theres a lot of problems with the text. However its not a Hitchens god basher either. A very well rounded scholarly book for the layman such as myself.

Great book and well worth the time to listen or read.

A must read ... recommend paper version

An interesting and well researched thesis. I am fascinated by how the New Testament was assembled. Ehrman is an expert with impeccable credentials but he is repititive. The narrator does not add anything to the equation. Still, I RECOMMEND IT because it has been carefully researched back to the earliest compilations in about 300 years after Jesus' life. Get it in paper form, so you can flip through the repeats.

Very interesting

While this book is a bit slow moving from time to time, it brings up some really interesting facts, like for instance, there were no copy machines in biblical times. Every copy of the bible was handwritten by a human being, and interpretations varied from one copier to another. On top of that, the stories of the bible were written some 200 years after Jesus died..The authors never actually met Jesus or lived in the time the stories are written. Also, there's reasons to believe that many of the books of the new testament were written by the same author. There's a whole lot more info than these few examples, which I have not explained in depth or with the accuracy of the author.. But if you ever wondered how accurate the bible is, I think you'll find the information in this audio book very interesting.
The author is not trying to convince the reader of anything, but rather, is just sharing the wealth of information he received after years and years of research...

Toooo sloooow

Man, I have heard a couple of interviews with bart, and I loved them. I would suggest listening to his interviews instead. Love the premise hated the delivery.

Most enlightening book that I have ever read.

Good valuable knowledge. This book is one for the truth-seeker's book shelf. This book very well may have changed my views on Christianity more than any book I have previously read.

awesome! riveting

loved this book. for anyone who is interested in the history of the bible in easily understandable language this book is for you!
amazing research this guy did some dont have to!

Decent facts, presented out of proportion.

Ehrman sets things up in the first few chapters in an, "OMG! the New Testament has errors!!!1!!" kind of way. But it is not as big of a deal as he makes it out to be. He uses two major (and well known) changes, as examples of the "thousands of changes" in the manuscripts, as if to say that many of those thousands of changes are of the same major significance, even though they are not.

He does get into a more reasoned study after that though, and this book could serve as a decent introduction to textual criticism. Although like he himself said, some matters of textual criticism are not straight forward, and many scholars disagree on the original readings--so too here, the reader should not take Ehrman's opinions as the final word on any of the specific passages he examines. Some of the manuscript changes he mentions are not even in modern translations, but he includes them in a way that suggests they are still significant errors in our Bibles (maybe they are for those who still hold to the KJV).

A very good resource is the NET Bible which includes a wealth of text critical notes where the translators clearly explain why they chose the readings they did (they do deal with many of the passages Ehrman mentions, except for Hebrews 2:9).

Ehrman concludes that the NT is "not well preserved", but fails to mention that compared to other ancient writings (Homer, Plato, et cetera), the books of the NT are incredibly well preserved.

Mr. Ehrman is masterful when explaining how the Bible came to us.

Bart Ehrman again explains how the Bible may have changed down through the years. His explanation leaves no doubt as to the processes at work throughout history on the Bible.

Glad I read this book

At first i thought this was going to be a bashing of Christianity and the Bible. I decided to read it to see what critics of the bible had to say.
I was glad to see that this WAS NOT a bible bashing book! This book gave me a nice understanding of how the bible has been translated over time. Every time i see a little subscript explaining the different translations of a particular passage while reading the bible i immediately think of this book and have a better understanding of why/how these different translations could occur. I came away with the understanding that yes there are many different mistakes and version of the bible manuscripts, but it is amazing how many similarities there are too. Learning how they try to find the Original text from the various discovered translations was very interesting too.

Great Information for anyone interested in history

Would you consider the audio edition of Misquoting Jesus to be better than the print version?

Not familiar with the print version

Who was your favorite character and why?

This was written by the author - not really a character book. It was more like a lecture.

What about Richard M. Davidson’s performance did you like?

Good speed. Great clarity of voice.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No extreme reactions. Great information on how the manuscripts were created and how they were copied. A bit of information about the scribes. How the documents were scrutinized by the early churches.

Any additional comments?

I think it is very helpful to anyone trying to understand the history of the Old and New Testaments and how the current versions of the Bible came into being.