BOOK CLUB MAY: “Misquoting Jesus”

[CrispyQ]

“Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why” by Bart Ehrman
Nominated by catbert836

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060738170/qid=1142975428/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-5792740-7358366?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Anyone who's read this book, please feel free to start the discussion.


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[Gregorian]

1. Hey, interesting. I'm reading "What Jesus Meant".

By Garry Wills.

I'm only into the first few pages, and already I see where the manipulations make Jesus look like a nice and friendly guy. Even Thomas Jefferson gets to pick and choose who he turns Jesus into in his books.

Jesus was an outlaw. A rebel. He hung with the prostitutes, and hated the rich and powerful. So you can guess who's misquoting him. "Fox news" has been in business for thousands of years.

I like this subject, because as a Christian, I find that at least 95% of those who call themselves Christians are so far off track. Christianity is virtually unknown in our world today. Misrepresented, misunderstood. I have been amazed that Christianity isn't far more accepted amongst liberal groups. And I think the conservatives have done a great job of tainting the truth. Jesus was common man with a rough language.


Bla bla bla. Sorry. Didn't mean to jack your post. I'll post something when I'm done with this book. This is a subject I would love to sort out.

[Festivito]

3. Easier to survive with a Jesus who appeals to the rich.

Donations roll in faster. The church feels more secure. Scares that the message might be lost without a little more money, right now, today, dissipate. Thinking they might fix the problem they might create later.

But, the ends do not justify the means. The real message gets lost, even hidden.

You tell them that money will drive some people, that some people will use religion to get more money, and do they listen? NO, as usual. :eyeroll:

[Gregorian]

6. To gain the world, and lose one's soul. It's a paradox.

The harder we grab onto this world, the further we get from it. After all, we're leaving. And we aren't taking it with us. I find it no different than the argument for a military. We're protecting ourselves from what? We are afraid of death.

Oh dear. I'm off on a tangent. I had better do something productive today. I just wish people would practice something other than hate and greed. Just a little bit. Dick Cheney. Wow.

[Festivito]

7. It's also a trade. Be in the world, not of it.

Give into the world more than yourself, you lose yourself to being of the world, money, power.

Be yourself.

Which will probably lead you to getting your work done, self identities being what they are these days.

No conundrum, no paradox. Be well.

[fightingdem]

2. I'm reading it right now.

I'm about half way through it right now. One pertinent fact I probably knew but was reminded of was the level of illiteracy in the Roman Empire around the events discussed in the book. How dependent most people were for having the "gospels" read to them by the more educated members in their communities and how these documents were progagated throughout the Empire and through time by amateur "copyists".

Also recommended is the "Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?" by Robert M. Price. A very good companion book if you want to research the origins of the New Testament.

[CrispyQ]

10. And thanks to our current educational standards & funding,

we are creating new generations of illiterate masses who will again have to have 'holy' text read to them.


Welcome to DU, fightingdem!

:hi:

[papau]

4. Interesting choice if you compare/contrast using NET Bible

The NET Bible has over 60,000 footnotes, including footnotes that cover the most significant textual issues. Daniel Wallace, a well respected Greek scholar, was involved in producing the NET Bible.

It is available free on the web and can be ordered in an edition with the Net Bible on one page and Nestle-Aland on the facing page.

Textual comparisons are fun, but for the most part the changes between versions are due to the lack of spell checkers in the first 1000 years post Jesus, and similiar "errors" that do not affect the thrust of the literature or its validity.

[bluerum]

8. Not true.

The lack of spell checkers is NOT the primary root of variations in biblical text. I would argue that the more important variations are much more significant than mere spelling errors. Spelling errors are in fact some of the easiest to identify and compensate for.

The more difficult things to track down are the textual variations that impact meaning and content. There are whole sections of textual modifications that change meanings and interpretation. These changes were made either out of ignorance of the original meaning or intent - or with the clear intention to change the message of a particular passage.

Erhman discusses the roots of many theological, philosophical and academic variations of biblical texts in detail. This is one of the most studied, copied, printed and interpreted books in history. To presume that scribes always copied the text with the intention of preserving some spiritual truth is unrealistic. There were many early sects and localized christian groups with interpretations and beliefs that were not completely adopted by nearby groups or the community as a whole. Many versions of text were created. Today we piece it all together with the extant scraps.

Spelling errors, while acknowledged, are relatively minor in the scheme of the book.

on edit: grammar and SPELLING..

[zbdent]

5. Probably the worst thing that could happen to organized religion was

"public education" (with an assist from child-labor laws) . . . once you taught the masses how to read (and not make them first commit to life in the service of the Church), then people started finding out what was really said in the bible . . .

[bluerum]

9. The problem is that there are many versions of the bible. Looking

back at the earliest versions reveals a collection of frequently contradictory text.

Looking at some of the later versions reveals that patrons who paid to have editions printed had to chose from among the various existing texts. They did this according to their preferences and spiritual inclinations. Often they did it with the altruistic goal of presenting the true word of god, sometimes looking to produce a definitive text, but ultimately these printed versions represented the beliefs of the patrons and the editors.

on edit: sp.

[zbdent]

11. I agree . . . is it

"Thou shalt not kill"?

Or

"Thou shalt not commit murder"?

Or

"Thou shalt not commit non-church sanctioned murder"?

[bluerum]

12. All of the above, depending on who you talk to. That's exactly

the point.

Whoever has the podium at the time gets to write the book.

The people - desperate for fundamental truths look to their spiritual and political leaders who, under the guise of religious belief and enlightened divination from above, feed them a line of crap that is odious and foul and downright evil.

The devil works in mysterious ways.

[zbdent]

13. Isn't it comical? It's the "Truth" (God's Word), and yet

it's an "allegory" . . .

[bluerum]

14. It would be comical except for the fact that army after army has

been marched into war because someone believed their allegories were better someone else's. The only truth there is that there has been untold suffering, hate and killing done in gods name because of allegories. I find little comical about that.

[catbert836]

15. Sorry I haven't posted anything.

This week's been absolutely CRAZY... I'll get to it this weekend.
Sorry!

[WCGreen]

16. Just finished reading the book....

Very scholary...

Very minute in it's examples...

But the ending pulls it all together very well....

Funny, I went to a fundamentalist church the other day for some research about the connection between politics and religion...

Pastor was quoting the bible but had the same passage with different words flashing on the screen....

The quotes were almost the same, but key emotive words were changed....

The part about translations and changes used to cement a subjection of women and an anti jewish message are startling....

[Jim__]

17. Greek and Aramaic.

I just read the introduction, and the problems from copying and re-copying that he talks about seem huge; to say nothing of the translation problem. The Old testamnet having been written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, most current Christians can't read either language. Add to that the fact that the (New Testament) original texts don't exist any more and that the texts closest to the originals are copies of copies of copies and it's hard to believe that anyone accepts that it's the words that are key to the Bible.

But, one thing that makes me curious is that Jesus lived in an area where they didn't speak Greek; they spoke Aramaic. Didn't Jesus speak Aramaic? If so, doesn't that imply that Jesus' actual words would be lost even if the original Greek texts could be found? Ehrman says that reading the Bible in Greek gave him new insights. Wouldn't there be more insights if people could read the original Aramaic? Do people who interpret the Bible literally believe that the words of the transcribers and translaters are more important than the actual words spoken by Jesus?

[Lost-in-FL]

19. The first Bible was written in ENGLISH you FOOL!!!

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :+

[hippywife]

20. I'm reviving this thread because

I just heard of Ehrman listening to a reairing of his interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air on Friday. I have two of his books on hold at the library. Jesus Interrupted and God's problem : how the Bible fails to answer our most important question--why we suffer.

I've journeyed through several iterations of Christianity until, like the author, I find myself agnostic but in my case bordering on athiest. His interview really struck a chord with me so I'm looking forward to reading more of what he has to say.

It's always been my understanding that Greek and Aramaic were spoken simultaneously in the time of Christ. Greek being the language that was essential if one were to conduct business. Not saying this is true, but it was what I have been lead to believe.

[Jim__]

21. I found a blog that indicates Jesus did speak Greek; but that Aramaic was "probably" ...

... his primary language. An excerpt:

Jesus' spoke Aramaic, the common language of Galilee during his lifetime. Aramaic was an ancient Semitic language related to Hebrew much as French is related to Spanish or as Cantonese is related to Mandarin. (Thanks to Prof. Zev bar-Lev for help with these analogies.) Though Jews had once spoken Hebrew as their primary language, this changed when Israel was overthrown, first by the Assyrians in the eight-century B.C. and then by the Babylonians in the sixth-century B.C. By the time of Jesus Aramaic was so common among Jews that the reading of the Hebrew Scripture in the synagogue was accompanied by translation into Aramaic. (For a helpful overview of Aramaic, see the "Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon" website of Hebrew Union College.)

In addition to the strong circumstantial evidence that Jesus spoke Aramaic as his primary language, we find direct evidence for this theory from the New Testament gospels. Though these gospels were written originally in Greek, at several points Jesus' words are given in Aramaic, for example: "Talitha cum" (Mark 5:41, "Little girl, get up!"); "Abba" (Mark 14:36. "Father"); "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?" (Mark 15:34, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"). In these cases the actual Aramaic words of Jesus were remembered and passed on even by Greek-speaking Christians.

These passages and others from the gospels, combined with the predominance of Aramaic in Palestine in the first century A.D., make it virtually certain that Aramaic was Jesus' primary language. (There are a few scholars who believe that Hebrew was the primary language of Jesus, but they are quite in the minority. See, for an example, the Jerusalem School of Synopitc Research.)

But at this point you might be wondering: "So what? This is useful if you're a biblical scholar, or if you're Mel Gibson and want to use authentic ancient languages in your movie, but does the fact that Jesus spoke Aramaic make any difference to the rest of us?" Yes, I believe it does. It helps us understand something essential about Jesus, his culture, and his mission.

[Lost-in-FL]

18. Shame on me... bought it a month ago and still in my shelf

I am still reading "The End of Faith" and won't read Misquoting Jesus until I am done with the other book