Another late summer/early fall book review

During the summer months (Cochabamba) while in the USA I brought home a respectable stack of books from the USA.  As I've said, the List of Ten Things I Miss from the USA includes "Bookstores / Libraries".  Gotta get a Barnes & Noble with WiFi and a coffee shop in Cochabamba......

This review is on Bart Ehrman's  Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. HarperCollins, 2005.  Ehrman is a colleague of the late Bruce Metzger, a famous Biblical scholar. Metzger's work focused on the many thousands of manuscripts of the early New Testament that didn't quite jive with each other. To make a long story short, the New Testament that we have in hand today is the result of a long sifting out process that did not necessarily result in the use of the oldest manuscripts. This drives the very conservative nuts to think that the New Testament that we have is not necessarily what it "was" in its earliest forms.  I say "was" as no one has ever found any complete book that dates from early after Jesus' death and resurrection.

Erhman is a prolific author on the same general topic. The basic problem that we face is that the very earliest manuscripts of what would later become the New Testament via the canonization process are nowhere to be found. The oldest manuscripts date from roughly 100 years after Christ, and they are very fragmentary. More interesting is that when one collects these fragments and compares them, they are not completely consistent. So what Ehrman does is to weave a very readable text trying to figure out "who done it?" and "why?"

The book was written for everyday folks, not just Bible scholars. It was on the NYTimes best seller list for a pretty good time and so got a lot of coverage (and readers). I've got several books by Ehrman & Metzger and so none of what is in this book is particularly revealing to me. That said, there was some "news" that I was not aware of. Bart Ehrman started out quite evangelical. As he understood more and more of the Bible's origins he became less and less strident. With time he finally became agnostic (and as he says "maybe even atheist.")  His faith broke upon the rocks of "how an omnipotent God can allow such suffering in the world?" This commentary on his faith journey ("faith shipwreck" anyone?) contains a "PLUS" chapter with his comments on his spiritual status.  That is a topic for another post someday.....

I highly recommend the book. It should now be in every public library in the English speaking world. I don't know that it is yet translated into Spanish or Portuguese, but due to its popularity I would suggest that it will be. When it is, I'll buy a copy and put it in the local public library.  Might be awhile as public libraries such as we know them in the USA simply don't exist.