"Misanalyzing Text Criticism--Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus'" Ben Witherington

You may have noticed a book on the New York Times bestseller list called Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. Ehrman is a guy who grew up as an evangelical but went to Princeton and became an agnostic. Ben Witherington has an excellent analysis of the book at his blog called Misanalyzing Text Criticism--Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus'.

Comments

[Quotidian Grace]

I just finished reading this book and had questions about the second part of it which the review you link here addresses. Thanks so much for this link, it was quite helpful.

I don't have enough background in the subject to be able to critique the book but I was very uneasy with the disconnect between the title which promises controversy and the text which I didn't think delivered on that promise.

[Michael Kruse]

From what I read at Witherington's site and elsewhere it strikes me that something doesn't quite add up. It doesn't take an expert in text criticism to see the blatant fallacies in his reasoning in a couple of the featured texts. I would expect a novice or amateur text critic to make his analytical errors, but not him. There is an enormous disconnect between what you would expect from scholar of Ehrman’s training and the intellectual rigor presented in the arguments. It leads me to suspect that there is an agenda at work here that has little to do with responsible research. I haven’t read the book I and I hope I am wrong but others much more qualified in text criticism than I am are saying the same thing.

[Quotidian Grace]

Yes, that's it exactly. I was very puzzled about why he went into a lot of detail describing a couple of these errors only to reveal that textual scholars had agreed long ago these were errors and they were NOT perpetuated in our modern translations. There must be an agenda, and an awkward one at that.

[Fred Zimmerman]

Readers may want to be aware of MISQUOTES IN MISQUOTING JESUS by Dillon Burroughs (Nimble Books 2006). URL to the book is http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0977742466

With this timely response to Bart Ehrman's best-selling MISQUOTING JESUS, author Dillon Burroughs offers a stirring defense of faith that will be sure to inspire evangelists and doubters alike. In ten chapters and five appendices, Burroughs examines Ehrman's thought-provoking book in detail, identifying its conceptual errors in a loving, respectful manner. WHY YOU CAN STILL BELIEVE is a great start for anyone interested in learning more about the Word, understanding where the New Testament comes from, and knowing how and why we can rely on its truth.