What I Write About

I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Book Review: "Misquoting Truth"

A seminary professor once said that theologically speaking, "a liberal is just a fundamentalist who has gotten an education." That is, fundamentalism makes air-tight assertions about any number of things but especially about Scripture. They then go to great lengths to work around any apparent discrepancies in the text. The liberal has the exact same standards, they've just realized that those standards can't be met and so they abandon orthodox faith all together.

Such is the case with the reigning UNC Biblical studies professor Bart Ehrman. Ehrman grew up with a fundamentalist faith background and attended Moody Bible Institute. His educational pursuits took him to Princeton where some very rudimentary issues of textual variation (for example an NIV footnote that might read: some early manuscripts omit v. 8) radically shook his faith. If the Bible wasn't 100% air-tight exactly lined up at every minor point (as his fundamentalist background had said), how can it be trusted at all?

Ehrman has proceeded to make a small fortune and a small celebrity of himself as he's developed his radically skeptical approach to the Scriptures into a veritable cottage industry. He's taken studies that heretofore were reserved for the academic elite and made them accessible to the masses. He savors the opportunity to deeply rock the faith (or assure those who dismissed it to begin with) of UNC students who take his New Testament class every spring.

And last year his book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why sold over 100,000 copies, surprising just about everyone including Ehrman himself.

Into this millieu comes Timothy Paul Jones' voice of sanity: Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus published by InterVarsity Press. Jones tackles the tough issues that Ehrman rightly raises. But where Ehrman tends to sensationlize and severely over-state the problems, Jones gently and graciously corrects.

Jones presents the reality that thinking Christians have actually considered these problems. It's not a complete shock that there's some variation between ancient manuscripts. And thinking Christians actually have perfectly reasonable reasons for continuing to trust in the cohesion of the Scriptures as we currently have them even in the face of those (mostly infinitely small) variations.

This book is not an academic work, it is written on a more "populist" level. Therefore, it may frustrate some who would prefer more laborious proofs. But for "the common person" who has had doubts about the reliability of the Bible (Christian or not) this book will speak loud and clear.

3 comments:

TimothyPaulJones said...

Thanks for the positive mention of my book, _Misquoting Truth_! I really appreciate it.

TimothyPaulJones said...

If readers of _Misquoting Truth_ are interested, I have uploaded lots of free resources about Bart Ehrman's work, as well as scans of biblical manuscripts, to my website at http://www.timothypauljones.com

Jeff said...

After reading your review here and thinking about the post above, it seems that Mr. Ehrman's attempts to deconstruct the Bible stem not from new information but from the destruction of his rock solid faith.
The problem is that faith in God based on complete absolutes is a little dishonest. There must be some room for mystery and lack of knowledge in our faith, because of the simple truth of an omniscient God and limited and fallible humanity.
I think Mr. Ehrman's experience may echo one of some other fundamentalist's that I've known. Because of their grasp on law and absolutes, they've failed to truly encounter God, rather becoming similar to the Pharisees. They've missed the bigger truth of grace because they were too worried about whether they should dance or not.
Thanks to Mr. Jones for dealing with this false teaching and being graceful in the same regard. It reminds me a little of some Martin Luther teaching in his book "Bondage of the Will" where he encountered similarly false and liberal teaching, and Luther stood up and defended the truth of God's glory and Grace.