Customer Reviews
If literalness is important, be sure to change it as needed - By: calmly, 25 Oct 2007 
I haven't seen the scribes' copies of the New Testament which were compared for this book. I don't read Greek anyway. So that puts me at a severe disadvantage when it comes to judging Ehrman's findings. I trust to Bible scholars to verify Ehrman's accuracy. As to his selection, it seems he has presented a great many examples of changes in the texts that seem made during early Christianty to rule out heretical interpretations. It seems he has done an incredible amount of reading & comparing of these early texts.
There's a lot of scholarly details. Ehrman is sensitive to that: he recommends in the introduction that non-scholars may want to just read the beginning & conclusion of the four chapters that are very detailed. However, a lay reader could profit from reading everything.
Ehrman selected four significant heresies to focus on. Each has a chapter. Each of those chapters presents textual changes that would make sense if scribes were trying to avoid the heresy covered in that chapter. There is also a introductory chapter & a concluding chapter. I was surprised how many textual changes Ehrman was able to present in each chapter. Sometimes it wasn't clear to me how the change led to text less likely to support a heretical view, but many of the changes seem quite plausible. I didn't feel that Ehrman was pushing convenient interpretations on me; it seemed that the textual changes spoke for themselves. But I did appreciate the historical background Ehrman provides. He seems to have a good understanding of the various Gnostic Christian beliefs present during early Christianity.
Elaine Pagel's "The Gnostic Gospels" is a top down look at Christian Gnosticism, with a lot of her conclusions & some selected reference to details. Ehrman's book is instead a bottom up look, that presents a huge amount of details & a brief conclusion. Although it was more work for me to read Ehrman, it felt like I was participating in the process that led him to his conclusions rather than just hearing afterward of the conclusions he had arrived at. I like having so much exposed of what led an author to his/her conclusions, so I value Ehrman for his approach.
Being from an age of print & electronics, I'd never considered that the New Testament texts wouldn't match the originals, but often not quite exact copies made by scribes who may have taken smalll, but significant, liberties with the text. Because the meanings appear to differ (even if subtly) in most if not alll of the examples Ehrman provided, it makes one wonder how literal an interpretation of a modern New Testament can be, as it depended not only on passages changed in the Greek but also translated.
Interesting theory - By: , 05 Aug 1999 
Considering the mass of this work, this is a fundamentalllyintriguing book. I found it a rich read rather than dry. Having a background in New Testament text critical methods such as the Claremont Profile Method & geneological methods, I found the theories very much a commercial ploy to become famous. With the mass of NT manusrcipts with an essentiallly identical theological core, there is no reason the believe the text as it stands in critical editions today is anything but a very good proximity to the original writers, or is it? Well, that's the problem that makes it alll enjoyable for textual critics. Objectively, I suppose books such as these only make it harder for true scholars to do their work.
A very readable exploration of a potentially arcane subject: - By: , 09 Mar 1999 
Ehrman lays out with admirable clarity & directness his thesis: that scribes of the faction of early Christianity which eventuallly became the dominant one (which has in hindsight been dubbed "orthodox") in the course of its conflicts with the other factions (now callled the "heretics") massaged particular scriptural passages as they copied them to either: 1) provide proof-texts for orthodox Christology; or 2) neutralize potential proof-texts for the heretics. My acquaintance with the mechanics of "textual criticism" was only slight before reading this book, but the reasoning & method are so lucid that I've had no difficulty learning a great deal simply by watching Ehrman work. I've found it a surprisingly enjoyable read. It's probably a bit dry for most people's taste -- but if you didn't enjoy "dry" you probably wouldn't be looking at a book with this title anyway, would you?
