The Evangelical Textual Criticism blog has an interview with Bart Ehrman in which he briefly addresses the fact that some of his readers might have been mislead by his book, Misquoting Jesus. Here are a couple of interesting quotes and my thoughts:

I had a beef with his unqualified statements in interviews that there are “hundreds of thousands of variants” in New Testament manuscripts. I felt that his statements were misleading because the overwhelming majority of these differences are due to spelling conventions and other theologically meaningless reasons. Here is Ehrman:

There are over 5000 Greek mss of the NT. These all differ from one another. The differences number in the hundreds of thousands. The vast majority of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant and don’t matter for much of anything. But some of the differences are very significant and can change the meaning of a passage or even of an entire book. Is there any textual critic who can say that these are not facts?

Here is Ehrman’s response concerning the fact that some people may have been mislead by his book:

Yes I think this is a real danger, and it is the aspect of the book that has apparently upset our modern day apologists who are concerned to make sure that no one thinks anything negative about the holy Bible. On the other hand, if people misread my book – I can’t really control that very well. Maybe ironically, this could show the fallacy of the view also held widely among evangelicals (at least the ones I know), that the intention of an author dictates the meaning of a text (since my intentions seem to have had little affect on how some people read my text).

It is so good to see that after attending a Pentacostal worship service in which Ehrman was “slain in the spirit” that he has returned to his evangelical roots and has rededicated his life. Furthermore, he wholeheartedly believes that the King James Bible is the only complete, inspired word of God. In fact, he states, “If it’s good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me!”

Of course my statements above are completely ridiculous. However, Ehrman’s critique of the notion that the author imparts meaning is not much more sane. In fact, his critique is self-defeating and leads to a nihilistic view of communication. Of course readers have a role in interpreting meaning–readers can and often do misinterpret what people say and some interpreters are lazy and therefore make egregious interpretive mistakes, no evangelical I know disputes this, however, authors impart meaning that readers seek to discern. If authors do not impart meaning and do not have the final say in adjudicating readers’ interpretations, then my interpretation of his words stands.

Ehrman’s statements do not say that he converted (back?) to Evangelicalism because the meaning of his statement rests with his intentions–not my interpretation. If authorial intent is divorced from meaning then communication is hopeless. Everyone intutively searches for authorial intent when engaged in a conversation. Imagine never considering authorial intent in a marriage: “Hey Honey, I would really like to buy a Prius for our next vehicle so we can help reduce our CO2 emissions.” “No problem Dear, I’ll go to the Hummer dealer and pick one up and then we can rip out that meaningless catalytic converter.” “Wait, I said maybe we could by a Prius.” “Oh, you want a car that only runs on lead based fuel, no problem, I’ll buy an old truck with broken cylinder heads that will constantly burn oil also.” This is a conversation that disregards authorial intent and it is also a recipe for a divorce.

Of course Ehrman cannot sit beside every reader and control how they interpret his book. Some will misinterpet it and that is beyond his control (that is assuming that 1) he is a competent writer who is able to encode his intent clearly and ably and 2) that he doesn’t decieve readers by consciously obscuring his intention–for the record–I believe that Ehrman is fully capable of assumption 1 and that he has not done assumption 2). But, Ehrman can in an interview correct his readers’ misunderstandings and guide them back to his original intent of the book–which he has just done. His clarification shows that he operates under the methodology that authorial intent is real.

Everyone that keeps a stable relationship at the least operates as if authorial intent is the key to meaning. Ehrman is a very intelligent scholar, but he needs to carefully reconsider both his manner of presentation of scholarly facts to the public and his self-defeating views of authorial intent.

What do you think?

Did Bart Ehrman’s publisher, HarperSanFrancisco, misquote him? That would be ironic, but apparently it might be true. Robert Gundry reports¹ that Ehrman publicly reproached HarperSanFrancisco at the 2005 SBL meeting for giving his book a misleading title. Here are Gundry’s words:

During a session at the 2005 meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature, Ehrman publicly reproached his publisher for giving the book this title. But the average reader has no way of knowing that, nor did I when writing this review.

The reason why Ehrman apparently reproached his publisher is because his book, Misquoting Jesus, has precious little to do with Jesus actually being misquoted. Ehrman’s main examples of supposed scribal changes to fit their own theological agendal do not concern Jesus’ words (the three main examples are Jesus “becoming angry” to “feeling compassion” in Mark 1:41, a later insertion of Jesus sweating blood in Luke 22:43-44, and changing “apart from God” to “by the grace of God” in Hebrews 2:8-9; none of these examples include Jesus’ speech). Of Ehrman’s 36 secondary examples, 22 have nothing to do with Jesus’ speech. Furthermore, here is Gundry’s assessment of the passages that do deal with Jesus’ speech:

Four of the lesser examples represent omissions rather than misquotations of Jesus’ words, and ten–only ten–represent textual changes in which Jesus is misquoted. Of these ten, moreover, only one (in Luke 22:17-19) poses a serious question as to what the evangelist originally reported Jesus said…Along with other textual critics, Ehrman seems certain of what the evangelists originally reported Jesus as saying in the nine remaining examples.²

This brings us to the question of why Ehrman’s publisher would title a book that would recieve criticism even from its author. A glance at the New York Times bestseller list might give us an indication. Salacious titles seem to fly off the shelves and even though Ehrman reproached his publisher at SBL (a setting in which he was speaking to the choir since everyone there would know that the title was misleading) I would imagine that Ehrman has no problem accepting his royalty checks, speaking engagement invitations, and television interviews. But should academics make money off of misleading the public? I think not. We are in the truth business and if we lose credibility in this area what do we have left?

1. Books & Culture, Sept/Oct 2006, 8 [back]
2. Ibid. [back]

Why is it that so often as I hear interviews with biblical scholars I find that they present a very skewed and one-sided presentation of the facts–I find this tendency with all flavors of scholars not just so-called liberals or conservatives. I realize that the sound bite reigns supreme and that you can’t fit very much nuance into a 30 second answer, but one can still mention in passing areas that are still in very much dispute.

For example, Bart Ehrman states that New Testament manuscripts have “hundreds of thousands” of variants. Sure. What does that matter? He throws out a bombastic statement that a general audience will assume means that there are hundreds of thousands of interpretively significant variations when this is flatly not the case and Ehrman knows it. But, he purposely presents vague and unnuanced facts that will be misinterpreted by a non-sophisticated audience in order to bolster his point of view. (For a more detailed discussion of Ehrman’s claim on manuscript variation, see Ben Witherington’s post).

I don’t mean to single out Bart Ehrman because I have heard similar argumentation from those who take the opposite side of the debate. What I do mean to say is that as scholars we need to be transparent in our conversations with general audiences. This doesn’t mean we have to provide every viewpoint no matter how silly or untenable, but it does mean that we should be honest and at least indicate areas that are still hotly debated.

What do you think?

Stephen Colbert has a humorous interview with Bart Ehrman, the author of the book Misquoting Jesus. Here is the link on Comedy Central’s site (you can get a bootleg version off YouTube but I thought linking to Comedy Central’s site was a bit more ethical and also the video quality is much better) it should be on the bottom left of the page, but it might move around so just peruse the page until you find it–it’s worth it.

For the sake of truthiness (if you think I misspelled that word, you must not watch the Colbert Report), with respect to Ehrman’s claims about the New Testament textual record–in short he is making Mount Everest out of a tiny little baby mole hill. The overwhelming majority of textual variants are due to spelling conventions and various trivial matters such as adding an “and.” There are very few variants that are hermeneutically significant and those that are do not substantially alter major interpretive issues. I will have another post about academic overstatement and acting as if debated points are decided matters when academics present ideas to general audiences–quite a frustrating thing if you ask me. But for now, enjoy Colbert and Ehrman.