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"Misquoting" Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman
“The Bible has been changed and translated so many times over the last 2000 years, it’s impossible to know what it originally said. Everyone knows that.”
This invocation of common knowledge is enough to satisfy the ordinary, man-on-the-street critic of the New Testament, and the challenge has stopped countless Christians in their tracks. The complaint is understandable. Whisper a message from person to person, then compare the message’s final form with the original. The radical transformation in so short a period of time is enough to convince the casual skeptic that the New Testament documents are equally unreliable.
How can we know the documents we have in our possession correctly reflect originals destroyed two millennia ago? Communication is never perfect. People make mistakes. Errors are compounded with each generation. After 2000 years of copying, recopying, translating, and copying some more, it’s anyone’s guess what the original said.
The response to books like Barth Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus – The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (it’s a New York Times bestseller) shows the public has an appetite for such topics. It’s a challenge we need to be able to respond to.
I give that response in this month’s Solid Ground. The claim that there are hundreds of thousands of differences between New Testament manuscripts is true, but grossly misleading. It shouldn’t raise any doubt at all in the accuracy of the New Testament.
The question of New Testament reliability is not a religious question; it’s an academic one. It can be answered without any reference to personal “faith.” Instead, all that’s needed is a simple appeal to facts. And that’s what I give you in this month’s Solid Ground.
This invocation of common knowledge is enough to satisfy the ordinary, man-on-the-street critic of the New Testament, and the challenge has stopped countless Christians in their tracks. The complaint is understandable. Whisper a message from person to person, then compare the message’s final form with the original. The radical transformation in so short a period of time is enough to convince the casual skeptic that the New Testament documents are equally unreliable.
How can we know the documents we have in our possession correctly reflect originals destroyed two millennia ago? Communication is never perfect. People make mistakes. Errors are compounded with each generation. After 2000 years of copying, recopying, translating, and copying some more, it’s anyone’s guess what the original said.
The response to books like Barth Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus – The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (it’s a New York Times bestseller) shows the public has an appetite for such topics. It’s a challenge we need to be able to respond to.
I give that response in this month’s Solid Ground. The claim that there are hundreds of thousands of differences between New Testament manuscripts is true, but grossly misleading. It shouldn’t raise any doubt at all in the accuracy of the New Testament.
The question of New Testament reliability is not a religious question; it’s an academic one. It can be answered without any reference to personal “faith.” Instead, all that’s needed is a simple appeal to facts. And that’s what I give you in this month’s Solid Ground.
14 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 23, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 9, 2025
I found this book highly engaging and informative. This should be required reading for any Christian to counteract the detractors.
April 27, 2015
I've spent more than a few hours over the last decade attempting to better understand the history, archaeology and theologies for the pre-Christain period (c. 1000 BCE or later), through the 1st century CE. I was recommended to this book by a friend studying Raymond Brown, S.S.
I thought it was an interesting book, if repetitive. Ehrman has a number of valid points which likely escape the notice of many "Bible Thumpers" towit: Jesus may not have actually performed that miracle or phrased that parable. In fact, the NT might not have any basic authority in witness testimony at all. Scribes made mistakes and also modified text to fit social, political and ecclesiastic objectives.
I've often wondered in my reading, whether Christianity is a religion developed by Paul from whole cloth. I would have to say that this book does nothing to disabuse me of that notion. In any event, it's unlikely that we will ever know for sure what the original documents said. Whether there is any "truth" to said documents is another matter.
A worthwhile read for the layperson.
I thought it was an interesting book, if repetitive. Ehrman has a number of valid points which likely escape the notice of many "Bible Thumpers" towit: Jesus may not have actually performed that miracle or phrased that parable. In fact, the NT might not have any basic authority in witness testimony at all. Scribes made mistakes and also modified text to fit social, political and ecclesiastic objectives.
I've often wondered in my reading, whether Christianity is a religion developed by Paul from whole cloth. I would have to say that this book does nothing to disabuse me of that notion. In any event, it's unlikely that we will ever know for sure what the original documents said. Whether there is any "truth" to said documents is another matter.
A worthwhile read for the layperson.
September 24, 2017
This eBook accurately criticizes the errant views of bible scholar Bart Ehrman. However, the book is only 13 pages long. Probably better is William Lane Craig's critical YouTube video.
September 27, 2017
In his paper/pamphlet ... article entitled, “Misquoting Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman (Solid Ground). Written by Gregory Koukl, the author gets right into the business of refuting Ehrman’s great quote designed to manipulate readers without knowledge of the scriptures and their origins, Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus, states:
“What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e. the originals) were inspired? We don’t have the originals! We have only error ridden copies, the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways….There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.” Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus.
Oh my, my, my how are we going to overcome the centuries and the thousands upon thousands of errors? Quoting Gregory Koukl who admits Ehrman is right on these facts: “There are 130,000 words in the New Testament, yet the surviving manuscripts (the handwritten copies) reveal something like 400,000 individual times the wording disagrees between them.”
Koukl goes on the reveal “Ehrman’s impeccable scholarly credentials as one who co-wrote ‘The Text of The New Testament (4th Edition)’ with Bruce Metzger” calling “Metzger arguably the greatest New Testament manuscript scholar alive at the time.”
Metzger, passed away in 2007, as revealed in the article by Koukl, Bruce Metzger, as opposed to Ehrman did believe in the reliability of the New Testament Writings as the majority of professional textual manuscript Bible Scholars also. Ehrman is accepted, as truthful, by millions who are without any Bible knowledge but he is not in agreement with most in his field?
Koukl does an excellent job laying out practical realities behind the actual spread of the gospel writings using examples vital to the questions of accuracy of the extant manuscripts. The spread as he explains and most scholars agree, of the gospels and the epistles (letters) were not orally transmitted to the growing church. Instead they were written and geometrically where by 10 copies gave birth to a hundred and so on in the spread, meaning many copies were made and distributed to growing churches throughout the world of the apostles. This reality which makes the wording easy to check against numerous copies one against the other and filtered through textual critical method ensuring accuracy.
Textual critical methods per Koukl's paper ...article, quoting: “[T]extual criticism, an academic enterprise used to reconstitute all documents of antiquity, not just religious texts. It is not a haphazard effort based on guesses and religious faith. It is a careful analytical process allowing an alert critic to determine the extent of possible corruption of any work and, given certain conditions, reconstruct the original with a high degree of certainty.”
Koukl goes on: “The last point raises the key question of this entire discussion: ‘Regardless of the raw number of variants, can we recover the original reading with confidence?’ The answer to that pivotal question depends on three factors. First how many copies exist? Second, how old are the manuscripts? Third, what is the exact nature of the differences (the variants)?”
Koukl goes on to explain there are far and away more manuscripts of the bible texts that “Josephus, The Jewish War” (9 manuscripts dating from four centuries after it was written), “Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome” ( two manuscripts “dating from the middle ages”), “Thucydides’ History” (“survives in only eight copies”). “There are eight copies of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.” Listing others he points out scholars are confident to a high degree that they have reconstructed these documents accurately and ancient history is accepted as accurate from documents such as these dating from 800-1500 after the originals.
The manuscript evidence of the Bible includes at last count “5500 manuscripts in Greek represented by fragments, uncial codices (manuscripts in capital Greek letters bound together in book form) and other forms … Koukl goes on with his listing from the 15th down to the 4th century and speaks of the Chester Beatty Papyri mid third century containing most of the New Testament and “ Bodmer Papyri Collection the discovery announced in 1956” containing most of the first fourteen chapters of John and much of the last seven chapters, which dates from before 200 A.D. or earlier. The John Rylands Papyri dates from 117-138 A.D. showing the gospel of John was distributed as far away as Alexandria by 40 years or so after its composition. Ehrman does mention the written translations in Latin and other languages early in church history and that the new Testament could be nearly reconstructed from these (10,000 early manuscripts in Latin exist).
Clearly we are not recipients of manuscripts from counterfeit writers that suddenly appeared as out of nowhere 200 years after the life of Jesus, as Ehrman implies. This writer in his own book "Misquoting Logic" makes plain many of those in the early 2nd Century knew the apostles personally and heard them preach and into 2nd century's second half many knew those who'd met the apostles. Those in the 3rd Century knowing some who'd heard Paul and John themselves. This writer liked Koukl’s observation Ehrman’s book and approach: “Misquoting is the kind of what-they-don’t-want-you-to-know expose’ that has become popular in recent years.” Kouikl, then thoroughly eviscerates Ehrman, on his claims by examining what these variants amount too. Easily they have been laid to rest in the textual critical methods, what with the vast library of manuscripts available, as Ehrman's own mentor Bruce Metzger also believed. A great follow up for anyone for Ehrman’s book to enlighten minds and encourage the faith of those deceived. Highly recommend this article written very to the point. Five Stars Mr. Gregory Koukl.
“What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e. the originals) were inspired? We don’t have the originals! We have only error ridden copies, the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways….There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.” Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus.
Oh my, my, my how are we going to overcome the centuries and the thousands upon thousands of errors? Quoting Gregory Koukl who admits Ehrman is right on these facts: “There are 130,000 words in the New Testament, yet the surviving manuscripts (the handwritten copies) reveal something like 400,000 individual times the wording disagrees between them.”
Koukl goes on the reveal “Ehrman’s impeccable scholarly credentials as one who co-wrote ‘The Text of The New Testament (4th Edition)’ with Bruce Metzger” calling “Metzger arguably the greatest New Testament manuscript scholar alive at the time.”
Metzger, passed away in 2007, as revealed in the article by Koukl, Bruce Metzger, as opposed to Ehrman did believe in the reliability of the New Testament Writings as the majority of professional textual manuscript Bible Scholars also. Ehrman is accepted, as truthful, by millions who are without any Bible knowledge but he is not in agreement with most in his field?
Koukl does an excellent job laying out practical realities behind the actual spread of the gospel writings using examples vital to the questions of accuracy of the extant manuscripts. The spread as he explains and most scholars agree, of the gospels and the epistles (letters) were not orally transmitted to the growing church. Instead they were written and geometrically where by 10 copies gave birth to a hundred and so on in the spread, meaning many copies were made and distributed to growing churches throughout the world of the apostles. This reality which makes the wording easy to check against numerous copies one against the other and filtered through textual critical method ensuring accuracy.
Textual critical methods per Koukl's paper ...article, quoting: “[T]extual criticism, an academic enterprise used to reconstitute all documents of antiquity, not just religious texts. It is not a haphazard effort based on guesses and religious faith. It is a careful analytical process allowing an alert critic to determine the extent of possible corruption of any work and, given certain conditions, reconstruct the original with a high degree of certainty.”
Koukl goes on: “The last point raises the key question of this entire discussion: ‘Regardless of the raw number of variants, can we recover the original reading with confidence?’ The answer to that pivotal question depends on three factors. First how many copies exist? Second, how old are the manuscripts? Third, what is the exact nature of the differences (the variants)?”
Koukl goes on to explain there are far and away more manuscripts of the bible texts that “Josephus, The Jewish War” (9 manuscripts dating from four centuries after it was written), “Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome” ( two manuscripts “dating from the middle ages”), “Thucydides’ History” (“survives in only eight copies”). “There are eight copies of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.” Listing others he points out scholars are confident to a high degree that they have reconstructed these documents accurately and ancient history is accepted as accurate from documents such as these dating from 800-1500 after the originals.
The manuscript evidence of the Bible includes at last count “5500 manuscripts in Greek represented by fragments, uncial codices (manuscripts in capital Greek letters bound together in book form) and other forms … Koukl goes on with his listing from the 15th down to the 4th century and speaks of the Chester Beatty Papyri mid third century containing most of the New Testament and “ Bodmer Papyri Collection the discovery announced in 1956” containing most of the first fourteen chapters of John and much of the last seven chapters, which dates from before 200 A.D. or earlier. The John Rylands Papyri dates from 117-138 A.D. showing the gospel of John was distributed as far away as Alexandria by 40 years or so after its composition. Ehrman does mention the written translations in Latin and other languages early in church history and that the new Testament could be nearly reconstructed from these (10,000 early manuscripts in Latin exist).
Clearly we are not recipients of manuscripts from counterfeit writers that suddenly appeared as out of nowhere 200 years after the life of Jesus, as Ehrman implies. This writer in his own book "Misquoting Logic" makes plain many of those in the early 2nd Century knew the apostles personally and heard them preach and into 2nd century's second half many knew those who'd met the apostles. Those in the 3rd Century knowing some who'd heard Paul and John themselves. This writer liked Koukl’s observation Ehrman’s book and approach: “Misquoting is the kind of what-they-don’t-want-you-to-know expose’ that has become popular in recent years.” Kouikl, then thoroughly eviscerates Ehrman, on his claims by examining what these variants amount too. Easily they have been laid to rest in the textual critical methods, what with the vast library of manuscripts available, as Ehrman's own mentor Bruce Metzger also believed. A great follow up for anyone for Ehrman’s book to enlighten minds and encourage the faith of those deceived. Highly recommend this article written very to the point. Five Stars Mr. Gregory Koukl.
August 29, 2017
Quoting Jesus Accurately
In this booklet, which is better described as a long article, Gregory Koukl gives a rebuttal of the major points from Bart Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus. Though the work is concise, it is a sound argument against Ehrman's mistrust of the scriptures.
In this booklet, which is better described as a long article, Gregory Koukl gives a rebuttal of the major points from Bart Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus. Though the work is concise, it is a sound argument against Ehrman's mistrust of the scriptures.
February 3, 2014
A very helpful booklet confronting some of the misconceptions about biblical "errors." I highly recommend it.
November 7, 2014
Entertaining. Good read.
February 28, 2026
Ehrman assertion in his book, “Misquoting Jesus,” is that there are so many errors in the tens of thousands of copied Biblical texts that we could never reconstruct the originals and, therefore, can’t trust that the Bible is reliable and faithful to the original texts. Greg Koukl sums up Ehrman’s erroneous assertions by saying, “What can we conclude from the evidence? Virtually all of the 400,000 differences in the New Testament documents—spelling errors, inverted words, non-viable variants and the like—are completely inconsequential to the task of reconstructing the original. Of the remaining differences, virtually all yield to a vigorous application of the accepted canons of textual criticism. This means that our New Testament is over 99% pure. In the entire text of 20,000 lines, only 40 lines are in doubt (about 400 words), and none affects any significant doctrine.”
With such a robust library of copies of the original texts, the question should be, “How could we not be able to reconstruct the original?” The evidence Bart Ehrman cites in his book defeats his own argument.
With such a robust library of copies of the original texts, the question should be, “How could we not be able to reconstruct the original?” The evidence Bart Ehrman cites in his book defeats his own argument.
November 4, 2020
Simple & to the point
I would call this a “Cut Throat Text” in that it identifies the fallacies of Ehrman’s text and also shows Erhman’s conflict with his own schalorly work published the same year. It’s also a quick read. Love it.
I would call this a “Cut Throat Text” in that it identifies the fallacies of Ehrman’s text and also shows Erhman’s conflict with his own schalorly work published the same year. It’s also a quick read. Love it.
May 10, 2021
Succinctly counters Ehrman conclusions
Brief and to the point. Deals with the facts and has ample references. Applies Ehrman’s own logic in rebuttal. Worth reading and recommending to those considering or I nfluenced by Mr. Ehrman’s claims.
Brief and to the point. Deals with the facts and has ample references. Applies Ehrman’s own logic in rebuttal. Worth reading and recommending to those considering or I nfluenced by Mr. Ehrman’s claims.
November 10, 2023
Uses Ehrman to Defeat Ehrman!
Really powerful analysis of Ehrman's book denigrating the Bible. It's interesting that Greg can use Ehrman's own points to show Ehrman is wrong!
Great Read, highly recommend this book!
Really powerful analysis of Ehrman's book denigrating the Bible. It's interesting that Greg can use Ehrman's own points to show Ehrman is wrong!
Great Read, highly recommend this book!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews