Misquoting Jesus

When biblical scholar Bart Ehrman began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes & intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, he tells the story behind the mistakes & changes that ancient scribes made to the New Testament & shows the great impact they had upon the bibles used today. He frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultraconservative views of the Bible. Since the advent of the printing press & the accurate reproduction of texts, most people have assumed that when they read the New Testament they are reading an exact copy of Jesus' words or Paul's writings. Yet, for almost 1500 years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological & political disputes of their day. Both mistakes & intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct. Ehrman reveals where & why these changes were made & how scholars go about reconstructing the original words of the New Testament as closely as possible. Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our cherished biblical stories & widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity & the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional & accidental alterations by scribes-- alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.