Misquoting Jesus
For almost 1,500 years, the New Testament manuscripts were copied by hand — — and mistakes and intentional changes abound in the competing manuscript versions. Religious and biblical scholar Bart Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself are the results of both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes. In this compelling and fascinating book, Ehrman shows where and why changes were made in our earliest surviving manuscripts, explaining for the first time how the many variations of our cherished biblical stories came to be, and why only certain versions of the stories qualify for publication in the Bibles we read today. Ehrman frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultra — conservative views of the Bible.
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What Hacker News says
- Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman. It’s a great read about early scribe practices and known problems with different manuscript translations in the New Testament.
- > evidence based approach that uses the Bible to interpret itself as it was designed to do
I don't understand what that means. But I do think Misquoting Jesus is one of the better biblical criticism books I've read, and can recommend it for interested folks. Your recommendation reminded me of that.
- 1. All of Nassim Taleb's Books - They changed the way I thought about tail probabilities and risk taking + bar bell strategies in general
2. Thinking Fast and Slow - made me think about all of the biases that my mind has that I dont even realize
3. The organized mind - This book gave me a lot of ideas about how I can change my life to live with less distractions and maybe do thinks more efficently
4. The Vital Question - Made me realize how lucky we as humans and complex cellular beings are to even exist.
5. Misquoting Jesus (and all of Ehrman's other books) - Gave me talking points I use against any/all overzealous Christians in my life. The stories of the bible are not remotely close to the stories that where handed down by the people that were with Jesus when he died. Over 100s of years and many errors (and a lot of luck), people decided Jesus was the son of God. Unfortunately for them, the chances of that being true are very very close to zero.
- as an aside, for a great book discussing the evolution of the current bible, you should read Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehram
- I've not personally read "Misquoting Jesus", but I've listened to Ehrman on YT a bit. Based on that, and having spoken with a few biblical scholars who have read Ehrman, the general impression I get is that he has a "select is broken"[0] attitude toward the reliability of the Bible.
Much like GCC, and the Linux kernel, and the PostgreSQL query planner, the Bible is a battle-tested historical artifact. There may be a slew of yet-to-be-discovered "edge cases" in its interpretation (and perhaps Ehrman is the man to discover them). But in the main, it's an incredibly reliable witness to history.
So, while I wouldn't want to discourage people from starting their study of Biblical textual criticism with Bart Ehrman, I would definitely discourage them from concluding it with him.
[0]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-first-rule-of-programming-...The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him. Prov. 18:17 - Here they are before I forget:
A Devil's Chaplain
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation
Arguing About Gods
Atheism - The Case Against God
Atheist Manifest - In Defense of Atheism
Atheist Universe
Biblical Cosmology
Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief
Darwin's Dangerous Idea Evolution and the Meanings of Life
Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark
Dossier Of Reason
Evil God Challenge
Forged
God - The Failed Hypothesis
God Is Not Great
Godless
History of God
Jesus Interrupted
Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ
Letter To A Christian Nation
Logic and Theism
Love Thy Neighbour - Evolution of In-group Morality
Lying
Misquoting Jesus
Superstition In All Ages
The Ascension of Yahweh_ The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism
The Christian Delusion
The Dialogues of Plato
The Early History of Heaven
The End of Faith
The Evolution of God
The God Delusion
The God Virus How Religion Infects Our Lives And Culture
The Moral Landscape
Who Wrote the Bible
Why I am not a Christian
These are just some of the books I have read on the subject, but there are others highly rated and recommended that I still want to go through. However, these are really good.
If this list seems daunting I would recommend a shorter list:
"Breaking the spell" by Daniel Dennett "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkings "God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens "End of Faith" by Sam Harris
But books by Steven Hawking "The Grand Design", "Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss and "Your Inner Fish - A Journey into the 3.5 billion year history of the human body" by Neil Shubin, are also great although somewhat more technical. All other books are softer read.
