Misquoting Jesus
Page 23
But change it they did, sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally. In numerous places, the scribes altered the tradition they inherited; and on occasion they did this in order to make the text say what it was already supposed to mean.
As the years went by and I continued to study the text of the New Testament, I gradually became less judgmental toward the scribes who changed the scriptures they copied. Early on, I suppose I was a bit surprised, maybe even scandalized, by the number of changes these anonymous copyists of the text had made in the process of transcription, as they altered the words of the texts, putting the text in their own words rather than the words of the original authors. But I softened my view of these transcribers of the text as I (slowly) came to realize that what they were doing with the text was not all that different from what each of us does every time we read a text.
For the more I studied, the more I saw that reading a text necessarily involves interpreting a text. I suppose when I started my studies I had a rather unsophisticated view of reading: that the point of reading a text is simply to let the text “speak for itself,” to uncover the meaning inherent in its words. The reality, I came to see, is that meaning is not inherent and texts do not speak for themselves. If texts could speak for themselves, then everyone honestly and openly reading a text would agree on what the text says. But interpretations of texts abound, and people in fact do not agree on what the texts mean. This is obviously true of the texts of scripture: simply look at the hundreds, or even thousands, of ways people interpret the book of Revelation, or consider all the different Christian denominations, filled with intelligent and well-meaning people who base their views of how the church should be organized and function on the Bible, yet all of them coming to radically different conclusions (Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Appalachian snake-handlers, Greek Orthodox, and on and on).
Or think back on the last time you were involved in a heated debate in which the Bible was invoked, and someone volunteered an interpretation of a scripture verse that left you wondering, How did he (or she) come up with that? We hear this all around us in discussions of homosexuality, women in the church, abortion, divorce, and even American foreign policy, with both sides quoting the same Bible—and sometimes even the same verses—to make their case. Is this because some people are simply more willful or less intelligent than others and can’t understand what the text plainly says? Surely not—surely the texts of the New Testament are not simply collections of words whose meaning is obvious to any reader. Surely the texts have to be interpreted to make sense, rather than simply read as if they can divulge their meanings without the process of interpretation. And this, of course, applies not just to the New Testament documents, but to texts of every kind. Why else would there be such radically different understandings of the U.S. Constitution, or Das Kapital, or Middlemarch? Texts do not simply reveal their own meanings to honest inquirers. Texts are interpreted, and they are interpreted (just as they were written) by living, breathing human beings, who can make sense of the texts only by explaining them in light of their other knowledge, explicating their meaning, putting the words of the texts “in other words.”
Once readers put a text in other words, however, they have changed the words. This is not optional when reading; it is not something you can choose not to do when you peruse a text. The only way to make sense of a text is to read it, and the only way to read it is by putting it in other words, and the only way to put it in other words is by having other words to put it into, and the only way you have other words to put it into is that you have a life, and the only way to have a life is by being filled with desires, longings, needs, wants, beliefs, perspectives, worldviews, opinions, likes, dislikes—and all the other things that make human beings human. And so to read a text is, necessarily, to change a text.
That’s what the scribes of the New Testament did. They read the texts available to them and they put them in other words. Sometimes, however, they literally put them in other words. On the one hand, when they did this, they did what all of us do every time we read a text, but on the other, they did something very different from the rest of us. For when we put a text in other words in our minds, we don’t actually change the physical words on the page, whereas the scribes sometimes did precisely that, changing the words so that the words later readers would have before them were different words, which then had to be put into yet other words to be understood.
In that respect, the scribes changed scripture in ways that we do not. In a more basic sense, though, they changed scripture the way we all change scripture, every time we read it. For they, like we, were trying to understand what the authors wrote while also trying to see how the words of the authors’ texts might have significance for them, and how they might help them make sense of their own situations and their own lives.
Searchable Terms
Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.
Citations of Biblical and ancient texts appear in bold print.
Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament, An (Tregelles), 222n. 7
Acts of the Apostles, 24–25; account of Paul after conversion, 10; alterations in the text involving women, 185–86, 226n. 6; apologies in, 27; copyist error and doctrine of Christ’s divinity, 114; illiteracy of apostles, 39–40; martyrologies in, 27; 1:1–11, 169; 2:38, 160; 3:17, 192; 4, 185–86; 4:13, 39; 7, 27; 7:60, 191; 9:26, 10; 17:27, 192; 20:28, 114
Acts of Paul, 25
Acts of Peter, 25
Acts of Thomas, 25
adoptionists, 155–57, 158, 164, 226n. 4
After the New Testament (Ehrman), 225n. 1, 227n. 9
Against Celsus (Origen), 221nn. 10, 16, 227n. 11; 2.27, 52, 199; 2.74, 199;3.44, 40; 3.50, 40–41; 3.56, 41; 4.22, 193; 6.34, 202; 6.36, 203; 10:37–38, 160
Against the Christians (Porphry), 2.12–15, 199, 227n. 16
Against Heresies (Irenaeus), 35; 1.27.2, 53; 3.11.7, 35, 226n. 12
Against Marcion (Tertullian), 163; 3.8, 169; 4.40, 167
Alcalá, Spain, 76, 77
Alexander II, Czar of Russia, 119, 120
Alexandria, Egypt, 72
Alexandrian texts, 124, 125, 131, 139–40, 162, 173
Ambrose, Saint, 145
Amos, 20
Ancient Literacy (Harris), 220n. 13
antiadoptionist changes to scripture, 157–62
antidocetic changes to scripture, 164–70
“Anti-Feminist Tendencies of the ‘Western Texts’ of Acts, The” (Witherington), 226n. 6
antiseparationist changes to scripture, 171–75
Antitheses, 30
apocalypse: Christians who believe in imminent, 13, 110; fig tree parable and timing of, 12–13; Hal Lindsay and, 12–13, 110; Johann Bengel and, 110–11; literature of, 25; timing of, 12–13, 21
Apocalypse of John (in New Testament, as Revelations), 25
Apocalypse of Peter, 25, 220n. 8
Apologetic Discourse on Scribal Tradition (Kannaday), 227nn. 15, 17
Apologia 67 (Justin Martyr), 32, 42
apologies (defenses), 26–27, 200–205, 227n. 15
Apostolic Fathers, The (Ehrman), 220n. 11, 227n. 8
Aristides, 200
Athanasius, 36, 89
Athenagoras, 200
Augustine, Saint, 89
Bammel, Ernst, 227n. 12
Barnabas of Alexandria, 14
Basel, Switzerland, 78, 114
Basore, John W., 221n. 2
Bengel, Johann Albrecht, 109–12, 115, 131, 224nn. 14, 15
Bentley, Richard, 86, 105–9, 111, 115, 117, 222n. 10, 223nn. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 224n. 13; refutation of Collins [using pseudonym Phileleutherus Lipsiensis], 86–87, 105, 222n. 12
Beza, Theodore, 79, 82
Bible:
commentaries, early, 28–29; Christian interpretations of, 216; Complutensian Polygot, 76–77, 78, 81; composed of copies of writings, 4–5, 10, 71–74; Constantine and advances in copying, 73; Greek texts of New Testament, 6, 10, 11 (see also specific editions); as human book, 11–12, 14, 211–12; as inerrant word of God, 4–5, 6, 11, 12, 13–14, 110; Jewish Bible, 6, 11, 19–20, 24, 28, 189, 219n. 2; King James Bible, 76, 79, 82, 83, 209, 227n. 1; Latin Vulgate Bible, 74–75, 76, 79, 89, 106–7, 116, 174, 222nn. 5, 6; Middle Ages, treatment of, 101, 223n. 1; New Revised Standard Version, 203, 209; notes documenting differences among sources (Stephanus’s editions), 80, 83; originals unavailable, 4–5, 10, 59; polygot editions, 76–77, 222n. 6; text divided into verses (Stephanus’s edition), 80; Textus Receptus (T.R.) and Erasmus translation, 78–83; translations and current editions, 209. See also Jewish Bible; New Testament
books in the ancient world, 221n. 1; copies, professional, 73–74; copies, variations in, 46; copyist errors, 46, 47, 90–94, 223n. 16; copyists’ intentional changes, 46, 51–55; copyright protection absent, 53–54; distribution, 46; early vs. later Christian texts, variations in, 71–72; printing press, invention of, 73, 75–76; production of, 46; publication, 46
Books and Readers in the Ancient World (Gamble), 221nn. 1, 12
Burk, John C. F., 224nn. 14–15
Byzantine manuscripts, 73, 75, 124, 131, 157, 224n. 2
“Cambridge Pericope, The” (Bammel), 227n. 12
Campus Life Youth for Christ club, 3
“Canon, Hebrew Bible” (Sanders), 219n. 2
Canon of the New Testament, The (Metzger), 220n. 10
Celsus, 40–41, 52, 101, 179, 199
Chadwick, Henry, 221n. 16, 225n. 11, 227n. 11
chiasmus, 140–41
Christianity: acts of the apostles, early accounts, 24–25; adoptionists, 155–57, 158, 226n. 4; alteration in scripture, involving Jews, 190–95, 227n. 7; alteration in scripture, involving women, 183–86, 226nn. 4–6; antiheretical treatises, 27; apocalypse, 12–13, 25; apologetic alterations to scripture, 200–205, 227n. 15; apologies (defenses) of, 26–27, 200–205, 227n. 15; bookish character of, 17, 20–29, 36–37, 41–43, 69; canon, disputes over, 153; church orders, 25–26; Constantine and, 72–73, 152; copyists, amateur, 34, 47–56, 71–72, 124, 221n. 4, 221n. 7; copyists, professional, 72–74, 221n. 8, 221n. 13, 222n. 1; docetists, 162–64, 170, 226n. 5; early Christian letters, 21–23, 31–32; early commentaries, 28–29; early communities, 22–23, 179–81; early lesser-known writings, 14; effects of Christ’s death, issues involving, 153, 154; evangelical, contemporary, Bible as inerrant word of God, 4–5, 6, 11, 12, 13–14; formation of Christian canon, 29–36; founded by Jews who located sacred authority in books, 20; God, identity of, issues, 152, 153, 154; intellectual converts, 26; Jewish Bible used by, 24, 28, 189; Jewish conflicts with, 187–90, 227n. 8; Jewish converts, 35; Jewish Law and, 35; Jewish scriptures, status of, 154; leaders of early church, 51; literacy of early Christians, 21, 38–41, 51, 72–73, 220n. 13; liturgy, 32; martyrologies, 27; meeting in homes, 51; nature of Christ (fully human, fully divine, both) issues, 153, 154, 155–75, 227n. 19; orthodoxy and proto-orthodoxy, 28, 154, 164, 165, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174; pagan converts, 21; pagan opponents, 40–41, 52, 179, 196–200; persecutions of Christians, 26, 196–98, 227n. 13; problems with copying early Christian texts, 51–55; public reading of texts, 22, 23, 32, 41–43, 49, 51; readers of Christian writings, 36–41; sacred rites of, 26; salvation, doctrine of, 166–67, 171, 189; Scripture as authority for faith and, 85–88, 102–5, 112, 114; separationists, 170–71; theological diversity in first centuries of, 152–55, 225n. 1, 225n. 2; Trinity, doctrine of and Johannine Comma, 81–82, 102, 113; women, role of in early church, 178–82, 226n. 1
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The (Wilken), 227n. 13
Clement of Alexandria, Saint, 89, 174
Clement of Rome, 14, 49–50
2 Clement 19:1, 42
Codex Alexandrinus, 106, 113
Codex Bezae, 134, 194–95, 227n. 12
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, 118
Codex Sinaiticus, 47, 88, 119–20, 124, 169, 191, 224nn. 23, 24
Codex Vaticanus, 56, 92, 124
Colbatch, John, 108
Collins, Anthony, 86, 87
Colossians, 23; 4:16, 23, 42
common era (C.E.), 19, 22, 219nn. 1, 4
Complutensian Polygot, 76–77, 78, 81
Constantine the Great, 72–73, 152
copyists: addition to Gospel of John, story of woman taken in adultery, 62–65, 80, 82, 97–98, 102; addition to Gospel of Mark, last twelve verses, 65–68, 80, 82, 97–98, 102; alteration in texts, involving Jews, 190–95, 227n. 7; alteration in texts, involving women, 183–86, 226nn. 4, 5, 6; ancient authors, complaints by, 46–47, 221n. 4; antiadoptionist changes to the text, 157–62; antidocetic changes to the text, 164–70; antiseparationist changes to the text, 171–75; apologetic changes to scripture, 200–205, 227n. 15; authors’ threats against, 54–55; changed texts, accidental, 46, 55, 59, 71, 90–94, 177, 223n. 16; changed texts, intentional, 34, 46, 52–56, 59, 94–98, 133–49, 151–75, 183–86, 190–95, 200–205, 226nn. 4, 5, 6, 227nn. 7, 15; Christian, early amateur and local, 34, 47–56, 71–72, 124, 131, 221n. 7; Christian, professional, 72–74, 221nn. 8, 13, 222n. 1; conserving textual tradition and, 177; corrections and erroneous corrections, 56, 57–58, 177–78; dictations and mistakes, 58–59, 92–93; Egyptian scribes, 38–39, 131; errors in scripture, 4–5, 10–11, 52; in Greco-Roman world, 45–47; Hebrews, “by the grace of God” or “apart from God,” 144–48, 225n. 12; Hebrews, intentional change, 56; heretics and alteration of texts, 52–53; Hermas as, 48–51; humanness of, 211–12; literate slaves as, 46, 50; liturgical changes by, 97; local textual traditions, 72, 130; Luke and copyist changes in scripture, 139–44, 157–71; Marcion and, 34, 52–53; Mark, Gospel of, and copyist changes in scripture, 133–39, 173; monks, as, 55, 221nn. 8, 13; Origen’s complaint, 52; orthodox scribes, changes by, 53; periblepsis occasioned by homoeoteleuton (kind of mistake), 91–92; professional scribes, 46, 50, 51, 72–74, 131; problems copying early Christian texts, 51–55; problems interpreting ancient Greek texts, 48, 90, 221n. 5; scholars, notable, uncovering variants, 101–25; scribal class, 71–72; scriptoria established, 73, 222n. 2; shortcomings of, 39; skills of, variations in, 55, 220n. 15; textual variations, early vs. later copies, 71–74; theologically motivated alterations of the text, 151–75, 178; Timothy and copyist error, 113–15, 157–58
Corinthians, First Letter of Paul to: alterations to text involving women, 183–86, 226n. 4; church orders in, 26; copyist mistakes in, 90, 91; illiteracy of converts at, 40; women’s role in Christian community, 180; 1:27, 40; 5:8, 90; 5:9, 22–23; 7:1, 23; 11, 26, 181; 11:2–16, 184; 11:3–16, 181; 11:17–24, 181; 11:23–25, 166; 11:25, 196; 12:13, 91; 14:33–36, 183–84, 226n. 4; 15:3–4, 21; 15:27, 146
Corinthians, Second Letter of Paul to, 3:1, 23
Critical History of the Text of the New Testament, A (Simon), 102, 223nn. 2–5
Cyprian, 116
Damasus, Pope, 74, 101
D’Angelo, Mary Rose, 226n. 1
Daniel, 25
Daube, David, 227n. 10
deism, 86
Denkendorf, Germany, 109
Deuteronomy, 19; 24:1, 30–31; 35:4, 31
Dialogue with Trypho (Justin Martyr), 226n. 8, 227n. 21
Didache of the Twelve Apostles, The, 26
Dionysius, 53
Discourse on Free Thinking (Locke), 86
Divine Man or Magician (Gallagher),
227n. 19
docetists, 162–64, 170, 226n. 5
doctrine of inspiration, 7, 11, 110
Early Church, The (Chadwick), 225n. 1
Eastern Christianity, 74, 76
Ebionites, 155–57, 164
Egypt: Alexandrian texts, 124, 125, 131, 139–40, 162, 173; Athanasius, 36; Coptic language, 74; scribes in, 38–39
Ehrman, Bart D.: books and articles, cited,
219n. 3, 220nn. 7, 10, 11, 12, 221nn. 5, 6, 11, 14, 222nn, 4, 6, 9, 17, 223nn. 16, 18, 224nn. 1, 20, 225nn. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10–12, 226nn. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 227nn. 8, 9; “bornagain” experience, 2, 3, 11, 211; Campus Life Youth for Christ club and, 3; career aspirations following Moody, 5–6; childhood in Episcopal church, Lawrence, KS, 1–2; Cullen Story and, 8–9; Gerald Hawthorne and, 6, 7; Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and other language studies, 5, 6; interest in textual criticism, 5, 14–15, 207, 210–12; at Moody Bible Institute, 4, 5, 11, 12; at Princeton Theological Seminary, 7–9; questioning assumption that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, 7, 8, 9–10, 11; radical rethinking of what the Bible is, 11, 14; study of Gospel of Mark at Princeton, 8–9; at Wheaton College, 6–7, 8
Ellerton, John, 122
Elzevir, Abraham and Bonaventure, 79, 82
1 Enoch, 25
Ephesians, Letter of Paul to the, 32
Epp, Eldon Jay, 226n. 5
Erasmus, Desiderius, 78–82; Johannine Comma and, 81–82, 102
Eusebius, 73, 222n. 3
Exodus, 19; 23:20, 94
“Explicit References in the Works of Origen to Variant Readings in New Testament Manuscripts” (Metzger), 221n. 9
Fee, Gordon D., 226n. 4
Fell, John, 83