"MisQuoting Jesus"
Summer 2006 Bible Study
Introduction and Chapter 1
"MisQuoting Jesus"
Summer 2006 Bible Study
Introduction and Chapter 1
| "St. Joan of Arc Bible Study is an open and growing group that meets for fellowship and to discuss the Bible and other faith-centered literature. Our informal study group draws from biblical scholarship, historical perspectives, current events and personal reflections. We welcome honor and respect the personal ideas and spiritual journeys of all who join us." |
Greetings
A good sized group appeared tonight in the basement of the old country
church to start in on Bart Erhman's "Misquoting Jesus: the story behind who
changed the Bible and why"
Of course, a break for refreshments was called at the appropriate time, and
we adjourned to the treats counter. There we were met with a double
barreled choice: homemade rhubarb cake with whipped cream, or fresh orange
slices sprinkled with cinnamon. The decision making effort was so great
that many of us did the tie-breaker and tried both. We easily met our
quota of five healthy servings of fruit per day.
Bob was kind enough to get us started and did a bang up job of facilitating
and keeping the rabble to a low rumble! Here follows Bob's overview...
Introduction and Chapter 1
The author tells us that this book is about the ancient
manuscripts of the New Testament, but that he needed to give us some
personal background on how studying these manuscripts made a real difference
to himself emotionally and intellectually. When he was a sophomore in high
school, he became a "born again" Christian. The Bible as the inerrant word
of God was the center of this faith. He was so serious about this faith
that he studied at the Moody Bible Institute, a premier institution among
Bible based denominations. He continued his education at Wheaton College,
despite the warnings from Moody that Wheaton was not Christian enough (alums
Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan notwithstanding). There he learned Greek
and heard from teachers who were bold enough to ask questions and not just
spout authoritative answers about the Bible.
The questions the author faced were how a Christian can feel confident in
the inerrancy of the Bible if she or he could read only a translation of the
original Bible and how could anyone feel confidence if we didn't have the
original manuscripts but only copies of copies.
He went on to study at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he struggled to
"keep the faith" in the inerrancy of the Bible. He wrote a lengthy paper
working around an apparent discrepancy in the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus
defended his hungry disciples picking grain on the Sabbath, akin to King
David's hungry warriors eating the sacred bread "when Abiathar was the high
priest". In fact it was when Ahimelech was the high priest. The
professor's comment was "Maybe Mark just made a mistake".
This discovery and admission that the Bible did contain mistakes and
variations led to a radical rethinking of his understanding of what the
Bible is - a very human book. Read page 11 last paragraph.
Since God did not see fit to preserve the original manuscripts, as an
all-powerful God presumably can do, that is a pretty good sign that the
Bible is not inerrant, much less a foolproof guide to the questions of the
present age, such as abortion, women's rights, gay rights, religious
supremacy, Western-style democracy, etc. We can't set up the Bible as a
false idol.
Having explained his own faith journey, directly inspired by the Bible as a
set of cobbled together books and not as the inerrant word of God, the
author describes what textual criticism is and why everyone who has an
interest in the Bible, "whether a literalist, a recovering literalist, a
never-in-your-life-would-I-ever-be-a-literalist, or even just anyone with a
remote interest on the Bible as a historical and cultural phenomenon" should
be aware of the science and art of textual criticism. The experts have
been studying it for almost 300 hundred years, but there has been little
available for the lay audience. Read page 15 last paragraph. "In many
ways, then, this is a very personal book for me, the end result of a long
journey. Maybe, for others, it can be part of a journey of their own".
Discussion questions:
Judaism as a Religion of the Book
Christianity as a Religion of the Book
"My point is that the letters were important to the lives of the early
Christian communities. These were written documents that were to guide
them in their faith and practice. They bound the churches together." Page
23
Early Gospels were the stories of Jesus, and besides Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, we have the gospels of Philip, Judas Thomas, and Mary
Magdalene. We also know of lost gospels, such as Q, which with Mark was a
source to both Matthew and Luke.
Early Acts of the Apostles, were the stories of the adventures
and exploits of the apostles after the death and resurrection of Jesus, such
as Luke's Acts of the Apostles in the Bible and others such as the Acts of
Paul, the Acts of Peter, and the Acts of Thomas.
Christian Apocalypses were about what the early Christians believed to be
the imminent return of Jesus: the Apocalypse of John in the Bible, the
Apocalypse of Peter, and the Shepherd by Hermas.
Church Orders were directions on practice and doctrine, such as the Didache
of the Twelve Apostles written about 100 C.E.
Christian Apologies were arguments in debate style defending the new
Christian faith.
Christian Martyrologies were the stories of persecutions and executions of
people like Polycarp.
Antiheretical Tractates were writings against the ideas propounded by "false
teachers" (who in turn wrote tracts denouncing what is seen now as the
orthodox position to be itself heretical.
Early Christian Commentaries were written to explain scripture, such as
Heracleon's commentary on the Gospel of John.
Read page 29 first full paragraph.
The Formation of the Christian Canon
How the books of the Bible became official (the canon) is a lengthy,
complex, and incomplete story. Why some writings are considered sacred and
others are deemed merely interesting is confusing. It is clear from early
writings that Christian worship services included reading of the memoirs of
the apostles (the gospels) or the prophets, bestowing on them a sacred aura.
The heretic Marcion is the first person known to have edited a collection of
sacred books and declared them to be holy scripture, about 150 C.E.. He
had a form of the Gospel of Luke and ten letters of Paul. However, to
support his argument that the God of Christianity was a different God of the
Jews, he "corrected" the texts to delete any reference to them as the same
God. We shall see in later chapters how other such "corrections" were
made.
Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, wrote Against Heretics about 180 C.E. He
decreed that the groups which insisted on only one or the other of the
Gospels to be "The Gospel" to be heretics. Four Gospels were to be
included. [This is interesting because of the discrepancies between the
four; wouldn't church authorities concerned with "The Truth" have logically
picked one of the four? Maybe it's a sign of their faith that they could
live with these differences.]
Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria set out the list of 27 familiar books
now in the Christian Testament as official in the year 367 C.E. [He also
condemned all the others, demanding their destruction. This led to the
concealment of the Nag Hamadi manuscripts in clay jars buried in the Nile
River bank, which when discovered in 1946 revealed to us the Gnostic gospels
of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Thomas, and others]
Literacy
Because books were so rare in the times of the early church, only a small
percentage of the people could read. In the church, it became their
ministry or charism to read the sacred books out loud to the assemblies of
worshippers. Origen in his work Against Celsus appears to agree with the
accusation that most of the early Christians were uneducated, but he says
they are wise with respect to God, if not to the things of the world. Many
people knew scripture even if they could not read it.
Questions for Discussion
You don't want to miss next week when Betty will take us thru chapter II of
Misquoting Jesus - the Copyists
June 6, 2006
Misquoting Jesus,
the story behind who changed the Bible and why
by Bart D. Ehrman
Chapter 1 The Beginnings of Christian Scripture
U B Peace
Rik Murray
(612) 872-8694