Misquoting Jesus Introduction

In the next few posts, I have decided to do a book review of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus. We'll work through the book, chapter by chapter, or combining chapters where possible. So without further ado, here's the review for the introduction:

Ehrman begins by giving testimony to his Christian experience. He mentions that he had a "born-again" experience his sophomore year in high school.

Later, Ehrman attended Moody, which advocates "verbal inspiration". The idea is that every word in the original manuscripts of the Bible was inspired. Ehrman eventually came to see a problem with this idea, though--we no longer have the original manuscripts. Ehrman continued to Wheaton, where he learned Greek and majored in English literature.

These two ideas are the building blocks for the basis of Misquoting Jesus--that the Bible was verbally inspired in its original manuscripts and that we don't have the original manuscripts. Ehrman wrestles with this question time and time again throughout the whole book, and specifically here in the introduction.

Put these two facts together, Ehrman says, and the idea of inspiration is a moot point (p. 10) . If the original manuscripts are inspired but we don't have them, then it doesn't matter that they are inspired, Ehrman says. If the original words were inspired, but we don't have the original words, then what we have is not inspired.

There's one major problem with Ehrman's view--what if it wasn't the original words that were inspired, but the original thoughts? Ehrman seems to be setting up a false dichotomy here, as if to say the only two options are verbal inspiration or no inspiration at all. But this simply isn't the case. There is another option. What if the Bible was inspired not word by word but concept by concept or thought by thought?

If the Bible is inspired by thought instead of by word, what does this do for Ehrman's argument? Well, in short, Ehrman's "critiques" have little or no force anymore. Ehrman's argument has essentially been that if we don't have the original words, we don't have inspiration. Now, I'm not necessarily convinced that Ehrman's assumption that we don't have at least most of the original words is true. Ehrman himself admits that "most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant." (p.10)

But let's give Ehrman the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that there are cases where we don't have the original words. If the Bible was inspired thought by thought, does it matter if we don't have all of the exact original words? I would argue that we can know an author's general intent without knowing the exact words he used. We can know the whole thrust of the story of God's interaction with humanity without knowing exactly what words each author used--indeed, if this weren't true, we couldn' t translate Scripture at all!

So, in the introduction, we have learned that Ehrman sets up this problem of the words of Scripture being inspired, but us not having the original words. Therefore this inspiration seems like a moot point. Ehrman builds on this problem through the rest of the book. As we continue through the book, we will see what the idea of inspiration of thought (as opposed to inspiration by word) has to say to Ehrman's critiques.

Until next time...