themattscott are you listening yet

**edit** So I completely misspelled misquoting. Wow… that’s just sad, and it took me two days to catch it!

So I finished the book today, it took me three and a half hours at the coffee house to knock out the last half of it (reading intermixed with eavesdropping on other conversations as well as occasionally looking something up online). Anyways, here’s my thoughts.

The book was great, well setup, accessible, and of course very thought provoking. I said thought provoking, which is not necessarily disturbing.

You see, while I have always recited the manta “Inerrant work of God,” I’ve questioned the idea of a perfect error free book. I guess the first contradiction I knew about is the one that made me begin to think about it, How did Judas die? (Hanging or throwing himself off a cliff?) Of course the first time I heard the question, the response was “The rope broke causing him to fall and have his guts gush out.”

Never quite did it for me.

Then of course there was the “apologetics” lesson provided to the college group at my church. That really didn’t solve it either, in fact it made me do a bit more research and question the whole thing even more. (I think it was intended to answer the question for us, and ensure that we wouldn’t have to go through the process of thinking through things on our own.)

Anyways, back onto Ehrman’s book. It’s chock full of information about various reasons the text was changed, various locations where the text was changed, and various ways in which scholars try to ascertain what the original text looks like.

While the information presented could be overwhelming, I’m honestly just not feeling it.

I believe we do have an adequate enough text with which we can understand enough about God and Jesus and essentially the faith. The place where Misquoting Jesus does throw some issues for me is in supplementary issues, like what I should use to teach off of and what I should study off of.

The most interesting part of the book was towards the end, where Ehrman discusses various reasons why scholars are believed to have changed the text due to other forms of Christianity springing up. The changes represented here would, to me, be the most likely to alter many beliefs we hold today.

Forgive me for it must seem like I’m glossing over the book, but I don’t want to get into too much detail because I think that the book should be read by everyone. If you’ve read it and want to talk about it I’m up for it, iChat me, or email me.

And as previously stated, I bought Timothy Paul Jones’ work “Misquoting Truth” today, and I’m looking to start reading it tonight or tomorrow, depending on the distraction level this evening. I’ll post my thoughts on it when I’m done.

As always, let’s hear your questions and thoughts.