Resumo de Misquoting Jesus. The Story Behind Who Changed The Bible And Why.

MISQUOTING JESUS
The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible
and Why
By Bart D. Ehrman

Abstract by Marlene
Cruz Lozano

Misquoting Jesus is an interesting work,
in which Bart D. Ehrman explains in an understandable way
the development of the history of what we know today as the
Bible. In this revealing book, Ehrman describes the ancient
process of copying old manuscripts by hand and how human
errors and decisions made by some scribes, based mostly on
tradition and style, or influenced by cultural, theological
and political believes, altered the worlds of the original
texts. The author guides us thru a historical effort to
restore ?the Original? texts by reviewing the differences
between the oldest manuscripts available and later ones. It
explains how some of the best known passages for us today
have been found to not belong to the original manuscripts,
but were rather incorporated by later scribes based on oral
tradition. Some of this copyist influenced the texts by
arranging them in such a way that either matched their own
understanding of the Gospel, or diminished the differences
between the Four Gospel writers.

Another remarkable
detail that Ehrman explains is the textual
misinterpretation, occurred due to the fact that ancient
writing was done without any spaces within words and
phrases, and punctuation marks were not used. This
situation made it very easy to misinterpret the meaning
phrases. In a very clever way, he provides some examples
with English sentences that make it very clear to the
reader on how easy it is to change the meaning of a text
written in this style. This is really worth looking at!

As a result of this work, an important question
arises: How can we base a faith in God?s Word if we do not
know what His original Words are? The book does not
question the divine origin of the Bible, but rather
analyzes how it has been modified over time while being
transmitted generation to generation. This book is the
result of Ehrman 30 years of interest and constant effort
in the topic. It describes the works of other authors as
well, and how these investigations have discovered numerous
intentional and accidental alterations that affected the
versions of the Bible we have today. This is a well
documented, reliable and open book worth reading for anyone
interested in the topic.

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