As someone who loves history, I am quite happy with this introduction to textual criticism of the New Testament. Ehrman doesn't just discuss the textual variants found in the many manuscripts of the New Testament, he provides a historical context for the variants. These are presented in two general classes, unintentional variants and intentional variants. He begins with the types of unintentional variants, i.e. scribal errors, etc., and progresses to intentional variants, i.e. changes made for theological or social reasons. For each type of variant he discusses, he provides a historical context to give a reason for the variant in the New Testament text. He points out several times that textual criticism is not always an exact science, that given the same facts, different scholars can and do come to different conclusions. However, it would also seem that consensus is reached on the best version of many variants.
Ehrman does a good job providing a history of the New Testament, but equally as interesting to me was his introductory history of New Testament textual criticism. He also explains some of the techniques used by scholars engaged in textual criticism. This includes the effort of collecting manuscripts through the last 300 years. It also includes the use of non-manuscript sources such as New Testament quotes by early church fathers. Apparently so much of the New Testament is quoted that it can virtually be reconstructed from such sources. The useful thing about using such sources is it puts a time and place to the New Testament quote.
While many disciples of Jesus Christ feel threatened by textual criticism of the New Testament, Ehrman points out that it was scholars engaging in textual criticism that have given us every version of the New Testament in English we have, including the King James Version.
Some critics of textual criticism attempt to argue that textual variants in the New Testament are all insignificant. However, Ehrman points out that this is far from true. He provides several examples of intentional changes made to promote or diminish certain theological beliefs.
This takes us far afield from the infalliable and inerrant Bible of days gone by. Some traditional christians take offense at the LDS 8th Article of Faith when it states:
"We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God."In light of the textual criticism of the New Testament going on over the last 300 years, it would appear their offense is misguided.
Some critics of the Book of Mormon point to the "many changes" made to the text over the years. If they only knew how much more those arguments apply to the New Testament!
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