LONGECITY

While I was watching motherload a colbert report popped up , it was about a book called misquoting Jesus. The guy is awesome. He says that the story of the woman to be stoned and the whole he who is with out sin thing was added almost a 1000 YEARS LATER . and that every manuscript ever found has discrepencies with later manauscripts. pretty awesome book, I may buy it.

I'm about to run out the door, but wanted to quickly offer up a plug for a book which I found to be quite an enjoyable read. I think one of the most enjoyable aspects to it is the least apparent at first. It gives an excellent view of the humanity of the early Christians who worked to circulate what they believed to be the words of God. It's really surprising how clearly one can shift his perception of a mass of nameless primitive faces into individuals with their own hopes, fears, and frustrations, based only on seeing a couple scribbled notes in the margin of a 2nd century manuscript. It paints a great picture of a world so like, and at the same time so different, than the one we now inhabit.

yea, theres alot of difference from now to then.

i certainly hope this isnt some weak attack on god or jesus.

i certainly hope this isnt  some weak attack on god or jesus.

It all depends on how one views the Christian bible. If someone views it as the pure word of God, unsullied by human hand or mind, and pristine as a fly in amber after two thousand years.....then I wouldn't call it a weak attack on their religion. I'd actually call it a pretty well put together attack.

But it's not the way the author wants the book used. He actually spends a good amount of space defending religion, and the entire book is a celebration of early Christian faith. There's nothing in there that any Christian should be afraid of or offended by. It's a bit like looking back through the family history, and seeing that there are some skeletons in the closet. But that should be obvious from the fact that humans are involved in it. No matter if you want to ascribe the matter to a fall from grace, or a genetic code not too dissimilar to any of the great apes, I think people on both side of the religion argument would agree that humans tend to flub things a bit.

Parts of the bible were altered, and parts appear in our current versions that were almost certainly never within the original text. Does that really reduce the meaning of it for a Christian? Shouldn't he instead consider it part of his duty to understand the methods used to determine this, figure out whether he agrees or disagrees, and in the end take it in faith that if the book reached us in this state than that's what God intended from the start? And what does it really matter in the long run if, say, parts of 2nd timothy had been altered. How many Christians today could put together a thematic summery of 2nd timothy, let alone know the actual blocks of text.

In any case, I know that even as a non-christian, I found the book tremendously moving. The amount of effort that went into spreading the bible, and the books which constitute it, is almost unimaginably huge. I may not agree with much of what they believe, but I feel a tremendous amount of respect for the people who maticiously copied, distributed, and taught the material within the bible. And that seems to be the message the author hoped to convey with his own text.

What is the name of the book? Author pls?

Unlike most greek classics, early extant manuscripts of NT now go back all the way to early 2nd century CE - it is therefore not very difficult to see what's been added/modded. Many of the mscpts were found in modern times and thus traditionally entrenched translation of the NT that that were translated in 1550 - 1611 didn't have these documents for source material. Many of the errors in these traditional translations have been removed from modern translations. King James version is like an abacus in a world of supermicrocomputers...superb in its day - now an anachronism.

What is the name of the book? Author pls?

Misquoting Jesus, by Bart D. Ehrman.

I saw that interview as well. The book looks interesting, and I may check it out.

I really have no problem with Christians who take the Bible figuratively, and are accepting of other people, viewpoints, religions, etc. The ones, however, that take the book to be literal truth, passed on straight from God, are dillusional, and are usually the ones that are very unaccepting of other people, religions, sexual orientations, etc. and seem to be the ones that most people would consider "Bible-thumpers". The Bible is (IMO) a pretty stellar literary work, and has some good lessons, but it is far from perfect when it comes to historical facts, being the same as the originals, scientifically accurate, etc. It is a great text, but does not have any more divine inspiration than the Koran, Greek mythology, the teachings of Buddhism or Confucius, or any other religious text.