Book Review of Bart Ehrman’s Mis­quot­ing Jesus : The Sto­ry Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why”

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

The book Mis­quot­ing Jesus : The Sto­ry Behind Who Changed The Bible and Why” from Prof. Bart Ehrman can be described as an intro­duc­tion to New Tes­ta­ment tex­tu­al crit­i­cism for begin­ners, in which he explains the sub­ject in the con­text of his own back­ground, relat­ing his jour­ney from being an Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian to becom­ing a world renowned New Tes­ta­ment schol­ar. Besides D. C. Park­er’s Liv­ing Text of the Gospels”, Ehrman’s Mis­quot­ing Jesus” seems to be the only book on tex­tu­al crit­i­cism designed specif­i­cal­ly for the non-expert readers.

In short, Ehrman explains the copy­ing prac­tis­es of the ear­li­est peri­od and how the texts of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings were cor­rupt­ed as they were copied and recopied. He begins by intro­duc­ing the diverse writ­ings pro­duced by the ear­ly Chris­tians, such as gospels, Acts, apoc­a­lypses, Church orders, apolo­gies etc. Briefly, the for­ma­tion of the canon is also dis­cussed and we are informed about the lit­er­a­cy lev­el among the ear­ly Chris­tians. There­after we are intro­duced to the world of the copy­ists and Ehrman explains how the ear­ly scribes copied texts, the dif­fer­ent types of errors that were made (inten­tion­al and unin­ten­tion­al) and the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with the copy­ing of texts.

It is quite inter­est­ing to learn that even pagan crit­ics of Chris­tian­i­ty, such as Cel­sus, were quite aware at an ear­ly date that the Chris­t­ian writ­ings were being cor­rupt­ed by the scribes and even Ori­gen had to com­plain about the numer­ous dif­fer­ences between the gospel man­u­scripts. Mar­cion, an ear­ly Chris­t­ian, cor­rupt­ed the text of cer­tain New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings avail­able to him and Diony­sius is quot­ed who com­plains that his own writ­ings have been mod­i­fied just as the word of the Lord” had been tam­pered. Mar­cion, of course, accused oth­er Chris­tians of cor­rupt­ing the texts. In an ear­li­er writ­ing, The Ortho­dox Cor­rup­tion of Scrip­tures”, Ehrman demon­strat­ed in detail how pro­to-ortho­dox Chris­tians cor­rupt­ed the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings on occa­sions. It seems that the ear­ly Chris­tians were quite aware that the writ­ings in their pos­ses­sion had under­gone cor­rup­tion and were still being cor­rupt­ed and they fre­quent­ly accused each oth­er of tam­per­ing with the texts.

I was amazed to learn how sta­tis­ti­cal­ly small addi­tions or dele­tions with­in texts could change the entire mean­ing of pas­sages and even books. Ehrman dis­cuss­es at length cer­tain exam­ples in this regard and shows that even unin­ten­tion­al changes can result in changes that alter the mean­ing of texts. To quote Ehrman (pp. 207 – 208):

It would be wrong, how­ev­er, to say — as peo­ple some­times do — that the changes in our text have no real bear­ing on what the texts mean or on the the­o­log­i­cal con­clu­sions that one draws from them. We have seen, in fact, that just the oppo­site is the case. In some instances, the very mean­ing is at stake depend­ing on how one resolves a tex­tu­al prob­lem : Was Jesus an angry man ? Was he com­plete­ly dis­traught in the face of death ? Did he tell his dis­ci­ples that they could drink poi­son with­out being harmed ? Did he let an adul­ter­ess off the hook with noth­ing but a mild warn­ing ? Is the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty explic­it­ly taught in the New Tes­ta­ment ? Is Jesus actu­al­ly called the unique God” there ? Does the New Tes­ta­ment indi­cate that even the Son of God does not know when the end will come ? The ques­tions go on and on, and all of them are relat­ed to how one resolves dif­fi­cul­ties in the man­u­script tra­di­tion as it has come down to us.” 

The above are just a few prob­lems. Anoth­er inter­est­ing prob­lem is whether the doc­trine of the atone­ment is taught in the gospel accord­ing to Luke ? Fur­ther, there are immense tex­tu­al prob­lems with­in pas­sages such as the say­ings on divorce and remar­riage in the gospelsThis was not dis­cussed by Ehrman but addressed in detail in D. C. Park­er’s The Liv­ing Text of the Gospels” and the Lord’s Prayer among others.

It is impor­tant to real­ize that Ehrman is not the first per­son to have dis­cov­ered these tex­tu­al prob­lems. Instead, tex­tu­al crit­ics are quite famil­iar with them but sel­dom are these tex­tu­al dif­fi­cul­ties dis­cussed in books aimed at the lay read­ers so that many peo­ple con­tin­ue to adhere to the mis­tak­en belief that there exist no sig­nif­i­cant tex­tu­al prob­lems with­in the New Tes­ta­ment effect­ing impor­tant the­o­log­i­cal mat­ters. Clear­ly, shod­dy apol­o­gists such as Giesler and Josh McDow­ell have done a lot to prop­a­gate a false image of the tex­tu­al preser­va­tion of the gospel text — mis­lead­ing count­less around the globe. Ehrman sets the record straight. In anoth­er recent book, co-authored with Bruce Met­zger, we read :

Nor are these vari­ant read­ings, tak­en as a whole, of lit­tle con­se­quence. On the con­trary, many prove to be crit­i­cal for ques­tions relat­ing to the New Tes­ta­ment exe­ge­sis and the­ol­o­gy.“Bruce M. Met­zger & Bart D. Ehrman, The Text Of The New Tes­ta­ment : Its Trans­mis­sion, Cor­rup­tion, and Restora­tion, 2005, Fourth Edi­tion, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, p. 284

Thus it would appear that schol­ars are now begin­ning to dis­cuss the dif­fi­cult issues more openly.

It seems clear that the Gospels are not so well tex­tu­al­ly pre­served as some peo­ple would have us imag­ine and that there exist many vari­a­tions which have pro­found effects and bear­ings upon the mean­ing of texts and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Some may refer to the the old­est Chris­t­ian man­u­scripts” and how these are most reli­able”, not real­iz­ing that Ehrman, and oth­ers, have point­ed out numer­ous times that the ear­li­est man­u­scripts are pre­cise­ly the most prob­lem­at­ic — reveal­ing the most vari­a­tions, which indi­cates that the texts of the gospels were in a state of flux in the ear­li­est peri­od of their transmission.

A detailed dis­cus­sion of the man­u­scripts of the New Tes­ta­ment, based on writ­ings of schol­ars such as Prof. Ehrman and oth­ers, is to be found here.

More­over, the prob­lem of the orig­i­nal text” is also dis­cussed by Ehrman and he states that many tex­tu­al crit­ics are now begin­ning to doubt even if there is such a thing as an orig­i­nal” to be restored. He explains the prob­lem­at­ic nature of the issue and why we can­not get back to the orig­i­nal” text itself in light of the copy­ing prac­tis­es of the first three cen­turies. There­fore, we can only hope to recov­er ear­ly forms of the text, not the orig­i­nals,” and hope that these ear­ly forms are rel­a­tive­ly close to the lost orig­i­nals”.

Besides the above issues, Ehrman pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of how the var­i­ous New Tes­ta­ment edi­tions were pro­duced, par­tic­u­lar­ly the one by Eras­mus based on a hand­ful of late man­u­scripts, and how Chris­tians react­ed when cer­tain indi­vid­u­als here and there stum­bled across vari­ant read­ings. The sto­ry of the inter­po­la­tion of 1 John 5:7 (the only clear for­mu­la­tion of the Trin­i­ty) is amaz­ing ? the way it was insert­ed into the text and the reac­tion of some when it was removed. More­over, Ehrman goes on to explain how he even­tu­al­ly came to the con­clu­sion that the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings were not inspired based on his eval­u­a­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment text and its transmission.

We would rec­om­mend this book to any­one who wish­es to learn about the tex­tu­al crit­i­cism and trans­mis­sion of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings. If the read­er does not know any­thing about this com­plex sub­ject, then this is where the read­er should start. After going through Mis­quot­ing Jesus,” it should be much eas­i­er for the read­er to read books aimed at those who already know some­thing about the subject. Book Review of Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" 1Endmark


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12 responses to “Book Review of Bart Ehrman’s Mis­quot­ing Jesus : The Sto­ry Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why””

  1. Junaid Avatar
    Junaid

    RS, your log­ic does not quite flow. Why is it incor­rect” to say that even when many West­ern schol­ars dis­play no doubts” towards the Quran BECAUSE a New Tes­ta­ment schol­ar, Ehrman, has not stud­ied the Quran ? This makes no sense. But sure, let me rephrase my orig­i­nal state­ment and make it more guard­ed : many West­ern schol­ars of Islam tend to be rather mod­est in their assess­ment of the authen­tic­i­ty of the Quran, accept­ing the basic/​main out­lines adopt­ed by Mus­lim schol­ars. This would include schol­ars such as Motz­ki, Watt, Bur­ton, Waines, Whe­lan, Neuwrith, among oth­ers. Their main con­clu­sions and gen­er­al argu­ments do not diverge much from the gen­er­al Mus­lim posi­tion and are large­ly in har­mo­ny with it. As far as Uth­man is con­cerned, how­ev­er, then his hon­esty is accept­ed as such by West­ern schol­ars in gen­er­al. The unwar­rant­ed skep­ti­cism dis­played by Nabiyl and Mar­cus is known as hyper-skep­ti­cism and based heav­i­ly on cir­cu­lar and a pri­ori considerations.

    Yes, I agree there are also West­ern schol­ars who doubt the integri­ty of the Quran. I did not deny this and point­ed towards this real­i­ty in my pre­vi­ous com­ments with my use of the word gen­er­al” and most”, thus sug­gest­ing the pres­ence of con­trary view­points. I did not claim that ALL West­ern schol­ars accept­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of the Quran in its entire­ty. So you need to read very very care­ful­ly the next time you decide to respond” to my com­ments. You mis­tak­en­ly took my ref­er­ence to Why I am not a Chris­t­ian” as a counter argu­ment” to Watt/​Bell’s intro­duc­tion to the Quran ! However,I had only men­tioned it in response to the parad­ing of Ibn War­raq’s Why I am not a Mus­lim” by your friends, as if it was an author­i­ta­tive and bal­anced account on Islam.

    Your state­ment that had Ehrman etc. writ­ten a sim­i­lar book on Muhammed, then they would meet the same response to the Car­toons in Jyl­land Posten” is noth­ing more than your wish, desire, and pure spec­u­la­tion. In fact far worse books have come out in the past, present, and con­tin­ue to roll out on Islam by West­ern writ­ers which have not attract­ed the car­toon reac­tion.” The vast major­i­ty of anti-Islam­ic books do not gen­er­ate such reac­tion from Mus­lims. So the car­toon issue was a some­what unique event. But your hid­den assump­tion needs to be exposed in this exer­cise of spec­u­la­tion : that Mis­quot­ing Jesus” was a low­ly polemic and a mere attack” on Chris­tian­i­ty. This is false. Mis­quot­ing Jesus” is a schol­ar­ly and sober account of tex­tu­al crit­i­cism for the lay read­ers by a promi­nent schol­ar on the sub­ject, and a very good one at that. The hoopla is mere­ly sur­round­ing Ehrman’s com­ing out” sto­ry, in which he explains why he no longer deems him­self to be a Christian.

    Final­ly, absolute­ly, one should read counter respons­es to Ehrman as well and not just accept any­one’s view­point mere­ly because it sup­ports our view­points. All view­points need to be con­sid­ered and only then one should attempt to arrive at a con­clu­sion. I would sug­gest the fol­low­ing title as a good start­ing point for counter argu­ments : Craig A. Evans : Fab­ri­cat­ing Jesus : How Mod­ern Schol­ars Dis­tort the Gospels.

    While your call for bal­ance is com­mend­able, I very much doubt that you would be will­ing to extend the same cour­tesy to of bal­ance to Islam. Do you agree that when it comes to Islam we should also avoid act­ing out of typ­i­cal bias­es and avoid accept­ing some­thing mere­ly because it suits our prejudices ?

  2. RS Avatar
    RS

    The basic fact is west­ern Schol­ars like Ehrman have not stud­ied the Koran the same way they have stud­ied the Bible. So mr. Junaid, it is incor­rect to assert that ” even when many West­ern schol­ars dis­play no doubts” abt the Koran. Had they stud­ied and came out with a sim­i­lar book abt Muham­mad, they would meet the same response to the Car­toons in Jyl­land Posten. there are many west­er­ern shol­ars who doubt the Koran the same way they doubt the Bible.I tis a mat­ter of cul­ture in the west to doubt things. There will also be some ppl who will doubt his argu­ments and will con­test his claims, the same way the book ““Why I am not a Chris­t­ian” is some sort of counter argu­ment to Intro­duc­tion to the Qur’an” by Bell and Watt, and Why I am not a Mus­lim” by Ibn War­raq. The only con­cern now is whether Mus­lims will read the views of oth­er schol­ars abt Ehrman’s work or will they act out of typ­i­cal bias they have against Christians,tht is only to lis­ten to Ehram­n’s view sim­ply because it suits they prej­u­diced views against Christianity.

  3. Junaid Avatar
    Junaid

    I am glad I suc­ceed­ed in remov­ing your sus­pi­cions david. Let me also remove a dis­in­for­ma­tion : the Bible” is not God’s unchange­able” word accord­ing to the Quran.” The pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the Quran is towards the guid­ance for mankind and to bring peo­ple close to God.

    Thank you also for a typ­i­cal­ly irrel­e­vant response.”

  4. Junaid Avatar
    Junaid

    What Nabiyl and Mar­cus have done is intro­duced irrel­e­vant issues into the dis­cus­sion to draw atten­tion away from the orig­i­nal top­ic : the tex­tu­al integri­ty of the NT. This method is used com­mon­ly by peo­ple when they do not wish to dis­cuss a top­ic and have the urge to deflect atten­tion to some oth­er issue. The prob­lem with this approach is that even if we sup­pose that Nabiyl and Mar­cus are right in their claims about the Quran, that does noth­ing to dis­prove what has been said about the NT. Mar­cus said in his first post, God has said that HE will pre­serve his word and not leave it up to man!” Where is this said”?? And since we know for sure that the words have not been entire­ly pre­served, what do we make of this sup­posed state­ment ? The rest of his com­ments were a per­son­al attack upon Ehrman (a rec­og­nized author­i­ty on tex­tu­al crit­i­cism) and an irrel­e­vant polemic on the Quran to draw atten­tion away from the NT. Then jumped in Nabiyl who did pret­ty much the same…

    Nabiyl cor­rect­ly point­ed out that Uth­man ordered the offi­cial col­lec­tion of the Quran and but he then end­ed with an unre­lat­ed and unsub­stan­ti­at­ed asser­tion, that This leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Qur’an today is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the same Qur’an that Muham­mad sup­pos­ed­ly got from God.” But the same his­tor­i­cal reports which relate the sto­ry of the com­pi­la­tion of the Quran also men­tion that this was done on the basis of the ear­li­er doc­u­ments and, sub­se­quent­ly, the com­piled copies were com­pared with the exist­ing mate­r­i­al and recit­ed pub­licly and only then dis­trib­uted to the provinces. This has been omit­ted by Nabiyl. He also remained quite with regard to the fact that it was Muhammed’s com­pan­ions who were involved in the com­pi­la­tion process, and Uth­man enjoyed wide­spread pub­lic sup­port, notwith­stand­ing the occa­sion­al oppo­si­tion from Ibn Masud. If there were copies of the gospels which were known to have been composed/​compiled by the very fol­low­ers of Jesus, his dis­ci­ples, would Nabiyl be doubt­ing their integri­ty and remain skep­ti­cal ? I doubt that.

    Nabiyl wants read­ers to read Why I am not a Mus­lim” by Ibn War­raq, but I am sure he would not want them to read Why I am not a Chris­t­ian” as an intro­duc­tion to Chris­tian­i­ty and the Bible. He refers to the schol­ar­ly study by Bell, which was sub­se­quent­ly updat­ed by Watt. But I doubt he would endorse Wat­t’s mod­est con­clu­sions, among them his con­clu­sion that Uth­man act­ed hon­est­ly and that there is no rea­son to doubt the gen­er­al integri­ty of the Quran­ic text — Watts con­clu­sion. Of course, I do not agree with all of Wat­t’s argu­ments, but his con­clu­sions are far dif­fer­ent from Nabiyl’s.

    It is inter­est­ing that Chris­tians such as Nabiyl become skep­tics on mat­ters relat­ing to the Quran even when their unrea­son­able skep­ti­cism is not shared by many West­ern schol­ars, but in the case of the NT they will become unrea­son­able and naïve apol­o­gists, who will defend fan­tas­tic claims even when the evi­dence is entire­ly lack­ing. I am sure that Nabiyl and Mar­cus will enter­tain no doubts about the integri­ty of the NT writ­ings despite the numer­ous tex­tu­al prob­lems we encounter there­in, despite the increased vari­a­tions in the ear­li­est sources (patris­tic and man­u­scripts alike). They will enter­tain no doubts what­so­ev­er about the integri­ty of the Jew­ish Bible despite the doc­u­men­tary hypoth­e­sis per­tain­ing to the com­pos­ite nature of the Torah, and its very late mss tra­di­tion — the ear­li­est being the dead sea scrolls, removed from the orig­i­nals by cen­turies and cen­turies, and show­ing increased vari­a­tions as com­pared to the lat­er man­u­scripts. But, in the case of the Quran, even when many West­ern schol­ars dis­play no doubts, Nabiyl and Mar­cus will remain rad­i­cal skeptics.

  5. Nabiyl Avatar
    Nabiyl

    Khaibar War­rior.

    Sor­ry to dis­ap­point you but Mar­cus is right. Dur­ing his rule Caliph Uth­man com­mis­sioned a stan­dard ver­sion of the Qur’an. Copies were made of it and were dis­trib­uted to the var­i­ous provinces. All oth­er ver­sions were then destroyed, though I can’t nec­es­sar­i­ly say burnt. This leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Qur’an today is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the same Qur’an that Muham­mad sup­pos­ed­ly got from God.

    Check out, Intro­duc­tion to the Qur’an” by Bell and Watt, and Why I am not a Mus­lim” by Ibn Warraq.

  6. Nabiyl Avatar
    Nabiyl

    Kaibar War­rior,

    I hate to dis­ap­point you but Mar­cus is right. It seems that the first offi­cial col­lec­tion of the Qur’an was ordered by Caliph Uth­man as var­i­ous read­ings of the Qur’an were caus­ing dis­putes amongst the troops in the var­i­ous provinces. Zayd ibn-Thabit was com­mis­sioned by Uth­man to come up with an offi­cial ver­sion. Copies were made of it and then dis­trib­uted to the var­i­ous provinces. All oth­er non-offi­cial ver­sions of the Qur’an were destroyed (though I can’t say nec­es­sar­i­ly burned). Make of this what you will but it does leave open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the present ver­sion of the Qur’an is not the one that Muham­mad claimed he got from God.

    Also your under­stand­ing of Chris­tian­i­ty is incor­rect. There is absolute­ly no evi­dence that Saul of Tar­sus had a Satan­ic vision of Jesus, or hat­ed Jesus’ dis­ci­ples. After his vision of Jesus on the road to Dam­as­cus Saul lat­er vis­it­ed Jesus’ dis­ci­ples. He was accept­ed by them and giv­en the com­mis­sion to spread the Gospel to the gen­tiles. This he did. It is all record­ed in the Acts of the Apos­tles. I think you should read it. [And Chris­tians do fol­low the teach­ings of James the Just. If you had both­ered to check, his let­ter is to be found in the New Testament.]

    And there are oth­er mis­takes you make. True Chris­tians do not com­mit for­ni­ca­tion, nei­ther do they engage in blind faith’. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is referred to as the Logos which in Greek phi­los­o­phy meant Ratio” or Rea­son”. Chris­tians there­fore should be ratio­nal. Their faith is a ratio­nal response to the sal­va­tion offered by Jesus Christ. But cer­tain­ly Chris­tians do eat swine­flesh. This is allowed to them as they are under the New Covenant of God’s Love rather than the Old Cov­er­nant of the Jews. To this day Jews still avoid swine­flesh but for no good reason.

    I hope that this has been of some help to you.

  7. Khaibar warrior Avatar
    Khaibar warrior

    Marcus…Marcus…

    Uth­man burn­ing the Quarn ? Com­mon, get a life Marcus.….
    In the 7th cen­tu­ry, Uth­man burned the false HADITH, not the Quran.Don’t be such an idiot.The Quran and the hadith is two dif­fer­ent things . The hadith is a bit like the bible,it con­tains the sayings,the teach­ings , the sto­ries and the actions of prophet muham​mad​.It is some­thing like the bible where it has nar­ra­tion and writ­ers point of view. Some of them is true and some of them are frogery.Uthman burned the hadith whcih are frogery and lies told by the ex-ene­mies of Muhammad.

    The Quran is a total­ly pre­served recita​tion​.It is a total word of god. The Quran could­n’t be writ­ten by Muham­mad because there is one verse in the Quran where God told Muham­mad not to dis­crim­i­nate in preach­ing about Islam only to the aris­to­crate of the Quraisyh,but also to the blind and weak people.Muslim might reme­ber the part when Muham­mad preach to a a Quraisyh aris­tor­crate and sud­den­ly a blind man came to him,want to hear what he preches.Suddenly his face turn red and that’s the time where God send a rev­e­la­tion telling him to not only preach to the very impor­tant peo­ple, but also to oth­er peo­ple who wants to learn and understand.

    The Quran isn’t sup­pose to be a book, it should be mem­o­rised accord­ing like an oral tra­di­tion and passed on to the next gen­er­a­tion. That’s how it was like dur­ing those days Mar­cus. The Quran is like a divine poem that is to be mem­o­rised. If you alter the word in the Quran, the recita­tion of the poem is unco­her­ent with the ara­bic text and it sounds awful..Remember the ara­bic text are con­nect­ed and link to each alpha​bets​.It is not like hebrew which is seper­at­ed and­more flexible…

    Mar­cus, If you read the book of Jere­mi­ah, you will find that Jere­mi­ah con­demned the scribes who wrote the scrip­ture make turn into into a lying pen”. to the Mus­lims out there, I real­ly encour­age you to read the book called THE JESUS DYNASTY” writ­ten by Dr James Tabor. Even­though the book have somes cep­tism about the vir­gin birth of Jesus, still this Pro­fes­sor who done a lot of archae­o­log­i­cal research have found out that the in the new tes­ta­ment there is a jig­saw puz­zle which we can extract and use to con­struct an orig­i­nal gospel which is known as the Queleche” or the Q‑Source”.
    By the way,Christians today did­n’t­know that they actu­al­ly fol­low Saul of Tarsus,the man who is actu­al­ly arro­gant and hat­ed all the dis­ci­ple of Jesus. He actu­al­ly received a satan­ic vision” of Jesus, The vision of the pagan Christ”,the SUN OF GOD”. The true suc­ces­sor that all the chris­tians need to fol­low­to­day if they want to be safe is Jesus’s own broth­er JAMES THE JUST”.

    Chris­tians should aban­doned their idol­a­try of eat­ing swineflesh,fornification and not to for­get blind faith”.

  8. marcus Avatar
    marcus

    God has said that HE will pre­serve his word and not leave it up to man ! I don’t under­stand why cer­tain groups always try to dicred­it Jesus’ deity. A stronger argu­ment could be made with the Quran and how Uth­man burned almost all the Qurans in the 7th cen­tu­ry. Do you think that the mus­lims have a Quran that is with­out error ? Do they have all the orig­i­nal auto­graphs ? I don’t think so. B. Erhman is going to have a lot of answer­ing to do when his time is up.…as well as every­one else who believes this nonsense/​blaspheme

  9. Rezart Avatar
    Rezart

    Assala­maua­likum
    I read the book, and I think that is a very good book. Very use­ful to the mus­lim, and to all the peo­ple who seek for the truth.
    For this rea­son, I trans­lat­ed this book in Alban­ian language,to make this book avail­able to all Alban­ian people.

    God will­ing the book will be pub­lish very soon.

    Pray for us.

  10. Imran Avatar
    Imran

    Assala­maua­likum

    broth­er Menj, this authour has writ­ten anoth­er book that will be released in May i think.

    The Trans­for­ma­tion of Jesus : How a Jew­ish Prophet Became God (Hard­cov­er)

    http://​www​.ama​zon​.com/​g​p​/​p​r​o​d​u​c​t​/​0195179269​/​104 – 3790355-6136749?n=283155

  11. danny Avatar
    danny

    Hel­lo Kyw

    Just a short com­ment, it’s not a mat­ter of trans­la­tions”, the prob­lem lies in the orig­i­nals — the Greek man­u­scripts of the New Tes­ta­ment. The New Tes­ta­ment, as you would know, was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in the Greek language.

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    kyw

    When Christ spoke he did so in the con­text of his times, using the sybolism and vocab­u­lary that made sense to a par­tic­u­lar peo­ple in a par­tic­u­lar peri­od of history.

    He began with their beliefs and using their ref­er­ences tried to lead them into freer realms of understanding.

    With each trans­la­tion, the Bible has changed its meaning.

    Our par­tic­u­lar soci­ety has set up such an arti­fi­cial divi­sion between intu­ition­al and intel­lec­tu­al knowl­edge that only the intel­lec­tu­al­ly appar­ent is giv­en credence.

    With all of their dire faults and dis­tor­tions, reli­gions have at least kept alive the idea of unseen, valid worlds, and giv­en some affir­ma­tion to con­cepts that are lit­er­al­ly known by the cells.

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