Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and why After finishing reading Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman, I want to deliver some comments on the book, as well as the way Ehrman presented his argument. On the overall, this book is easy to read and understand. That is the purpose of Ehrman when he wrote the book on textual criticism for a lay audience “…who know nothing about textual criticism but who might like to learn something about how scribes were changing scripture and about how we can recognize where they did so”. I think this is also the main thesis of Misquoting Jesus. Throughout this book, Ehrman wants to point out that through long period of transmission, “the Bible is not inerrant at all but contains mistakes” . Also, the targeted audiences of Ehrman are not specifically Christians, but whoever has interest in the field of history, religion. In this paper, I will go chapter by chapter and examine Ehrman’s thesis.
In the introduction, Ehrman begins with his personal background and reveals how the New Testament affected his life in general and his spiritual life in particular. He was born and grew up in a “churchgoing but not particularly a religious family”. However everything was changed after he joined Campus Life Youth for Christ club, which later on led him to Moody Bible Institute where he got his diploma. His education continued at Wheaton College and Princeton. During the time in Princeton, Ehrman faced what he called “a turning point.” Ehrman began to think that there were mistakes in Scripture and the floodgate was open: “What we have are copies made many centuries later…And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of place” he stated. The more Ehrman investigated the biblical text, the more uncertainties he found. From an extreme Christian’s stand point, that