Allow me to begin by making some observations and comments:

The Bible teaches many things which are contrary to our natural inclinations, so much so that apart from the ministry of the Holy Spirit we would never grasp or accept them (1 Corinthians 2:6-16). We would never come to God’s teachings on our own, but only through His Word, illuminated by His Spirit.

Our culture despises and reacts to anything which deals with men and women differently. Thus we now have women in the military, and even in combat (whether or not we admit it). That isn’t the end of it. There are already reports of a movement toward removing the distinction between men and women in public rest rooms. Being in agreement with our culture doesn’t prove some teaching is wrong, but it should raise some questions, especially since the consistent warning of Scripture is that we don’t let the world press us into its mold (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:17-24).

There are those who would abuse and misuse the teachings of Scripture regarding the submission of wives in marriage and the silence of women in the church to justify their sinful attitudes and actions. But this does not make the Scriptures wrong; it only proves that men can twist the Scriptures. Some did the same thing with the grace of God, as we see in Romans 5:20-6:13.

Even those who agree that women must not assume a leadership role over men in the church do not all agree as to how this teaching of Scripture is to be applied. Some may carry this to an extreme (e.g. Women cannot open their mouths during church, even to sing congregational hymns.), and such extremes may make the teaching of Scripture look foolish. Don’t judge biblical teaching by the extremes people take, but by the words of Scripture.

Having said this, let me deal very briefly with your first question regarding the priesthood of all believers: “Why can’t believing women, who are all priests, speak and lead just like men, with Christ as their covering?”

There are several issues here. First of all I think we need to distinguish between the popular view that “every believer (individually) is a priest” and the more biblical declaration that all believers (corporately or collectively) are a kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:16; 1 Peter 2:9-10; Revelation 1:6; 5:10).

But let’s assume for the moment that all believers are individually priests. Does the priesthood of a woman need to look and function exactly like that of a man? I think not. Only the tribe of Levi was made the priestly tribe in Israel. And within the tribe of Levi different tasks were assigned to different descendants (see Numbers chapter 4). Let us also keep in mind that Miriam and Aaron (Moses’ sister and brother) protested against Moses’ leadership, claiming that they were equal to him in authority. God’s response to this was very strong (Numbers 12), and should serve as a warning to us today.

But your question assumes that a woman can do what any man can do in the church because Christ would be her covering? Nowhere in the Scriptures is it ever said that Christ is the woman’s covering in this sense. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11 Paul tells us that the chain of command is (1) God the Father, (2) Jesus Christ, (3) the man, and (4) the woman. A woman’s head covering is a symbol of the her submission to her husband’s authority and leadership. The woman’s silence (so as to allow her husband to lead) is the evidence of that submission. (It is difficult to say symbolically, “My husband is the leader God has appointed over me,” while leading him and other men in the church.

Now, concerning your main question. Your position (that women should be able to do what men do in the church) seems to be based largely upon one text – Galatians 3:28. You also indicate that the position you reject is that which “some churches say,” but you don’t acknowledge that the teaching and practice you question is exactly what a number of biblical texts written by the same author (Paul) say – clearly:

33 . . . As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. Rather, let them be in submission, as in fact the law says. 35 If they want to find out about something, they should ask their husbands at home, because it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church (1 Corinthians 14:33-35).

8 So I want the men to pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute. 9 Likewise the women are to dress in suitable apparel, with modesty and self-control. Their adornment must not be with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive clothing, 10 but with good deeds, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. 11 A woman must learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. She must remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first and then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was fully deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But she will be delivered through childbearing, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control (1 Timothy 2:8-15).

Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 14 – specifically his teaching about the public ministry of women in the church – is the command of Christ (1 Corinthians 14:37). Acknowledgement of this and adherence to this instruction is the test of whether one is to be recognized as being spiritual and obedient to Christ (1 Corinthians 14:37-38). These are strong words, but they are not mine; these are the words of Scripture.

The things Paul commands are not just for a particular church in a particular place or culture (Corinth); these are commands for the churches everywhere to follow:

16 I encourage you, then, be imitators of me. 17 For this reason, I have sent Timothy to you, who is my dear and faithful son in the Lord. He will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church (1 Corinthians 4:16-17, emphasis mine).

If anyone intends to quarrel about this, we have no other practice, nor do the churches of God (1 Corinthians 11:16, emphasis mine).

33 for God is not characterized by disorder but by peace. As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. Rather, let them be in submission, as in fact the law says (1 Corinthians 14:33-34, emphasis mine).

Thus, the teaching on the silence of women in the church gathering is not found only in 1 Corinthians, but also in 1 Timothy, a book which instructs Timothy as to how the church at Ephesus should conduct itself (1 Timothy 1:3; 2:8-15).

The ministry of both men and women in the church is determined by God, on the basis of what happened at creation and at the fall of man in Genesis 1-3:

3 But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. 4 Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered disgraces his head. 5 But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered disgraces her head, for it is one and the same thing as having a shaved head. 6 For if a woman will not cover her head, she should cut off her hair. But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, she should cover her head. 7 For a man should not have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of the man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for man (1 Corinthians 11:3-9, emphasis mine).

12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. She must remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first and then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was fully deceived, fell into transgression (1 Timothy 2:12-14, emphasis mine).

In 1 Corinthians 14:33-38 Paul calls his teaching on the ministry of women a “command of Christ,” and makes accepting it a test of one’s spirituality. He also claims that his teaching is consistent with the teaching of the Old Testament:

33 . . . As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. Rather, let them be in submission, as in fact the law says. 35 If they want to find out about something, they should ask their husbands at home, because it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church. 36 Did the word of God begin with you, or did it come to you alone? 37 If anyone considers himself a prophet or spiritual person, he should acknowledge that what I write to you is the Lord’s command. 38 If someone does not recognize this, he is not recognized (1 Corinthians 14:34-38, emphasis mine).

Jesus Himself distinguished the ministry of women from the ministry of men on the basis of gender. No women were appointed as apostles. No women went out healing or preaching the gospel, as did the male disciples (see Luke 8:1-3). This was no reflection on the spiritual condition of the women because it is obvious that they were more spiritually perceptive than the male disciples. They believed in the resurrection before the male disciples did, for example (Luke 24:1-11). If it was wrong to distinguish the kind of ministry one could have on the basis of gender then Jesus must have been wrong as well.

Finally, you have assumed a certain interpretation and application of Galatians 3:28, but the meaning and application of this text must be determined by careful study within the context of the argument of the Book of Galatians, and particularly of chapter 3. So, let’s focus for a moment on what Paul is teaching in Galatians, and particularly in chapter 3.

What is the problem with the Galatians, and how does Paul seek to correct it? The error initially occurred at Antioch, leading to the Jerusalem Council, as we see it recorded in Acts chapter 15. The error was the teaching of some Jews that Gentiles had to be circumcised in order to be saved:

1 Now some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1).

In other words some Jews were insisting that in order to be a Christian one must also be Jewish. The decision reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem is summed up by these words of Peter:

7 After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that some time ago God chose me to preach to the Gentiles so they would hear the message of the gospel and believe. 8 And God, who knows the heart, has testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, 9 and he made no distinction between them and us, cleansing their hearts by faith. 10 So now why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? 11 On the contrary, we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they are” (Acts 15:7-11).

No Jew (or anyone else), Peter declared, was ever saved by law-keeping. The law condemns all men – Jews and Gentiles alike – but it cannot save them. It merely points them to their need of the Lord Jesus and His saving work at Calvary:

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For no one is declared righteous before him by the works of the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. 21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God (which is attested by the law and the prophets) has been disclosed – 22 namely, the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 24 But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. 25 God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed. 26 This was also to demonstrate his righteousness in the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who lives because of Jesus’ faithfulness (Romans 3:19-26).

By the time we come to the Book of Galatians it would seem that the error may have been modified to appear to comply with the decision of the Jerusalem Council. It is as though the Judaisers (those who sought to impose the Old Testament Law on Gentile converts to Christ) were willing to admit that one is not saved by law-keeping, but only by faith in Jesus. But then they go on to insist that in order to be sanctified and live godly lives the Gentiles must keep the law. That is why Paul writes:

1 You foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell on you? Before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified! 2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort? 4 Have you suffered so many things for nothing? – if indeed it was for nothing. 5 Does God then give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard? (Galatians 3:1-5)

As Paul wrote in Colossians chapter 2 we are sanctified on the same basis that we are saved – not by our works (such as law-keeping), but on the basis of faith in the saving work of Jesus in our behalf:

6 Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and firm in your faith just as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness (Colossians 2:6-7).

Galatians is thus written to correct the false gospel which requires law-keeping, whether for salvation or for sanctification. And since circumcision is the symbol by which one commits to law-keeping, Paul instructs that Gentiles must not be compelled to be circumcised (Galatians 6:11-16).

Now, with that very brief overview of the false teaching which had impacted the Galatians, and Paul’s response to it, let us seek to trace the argument of Galatians a little more in detail, with special attention to Galatians 3:28.

O.K., having set the stage for Paul’s argument in Galatians, let me try to walk through Paul’s argument, from chapters 1-3, and then on quickly to his conclusion.

TRACKING THE ARGUMENT OF GALATIANS

Chapter 1: There’s a new gospel in town, but it is not really the gospel. Any “gospel” other than that which Paul preached to the Galatians is not the true gospel, and anyone preaching such a gospel is accursed. The gospel Paul received did not come through men, but was communicated to Paul directly from God.

Chapter 2: After 14 years, Paul received a revelation to go up to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus, where he met with some of the church leaders/apostles. Though they were not the source of the gospel Paul received they did accept his message as the same gospel which they preached. And thus they extended to Paul the “right hand of fellowship,” signifying their unity with him and his ministry. They recognized that as Peter was called as an apostle to the Jews, Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles. While he was there some false brethren demanded that Titus be circumcised, but Paul refused to do so because it would rob Paul and those with him of their liberty in Christ, thus putting them under bondage, which was contrary to the gospel Paul preached.

Back in Antioch Paul did find it necessary to rebuke Peter in front of the others because of his hypocrisy. Certain Jews came down from James in Jerusalem. While Peter previously had eaten with the Gentiles (eating like a Gentile – that is, eating food devout Jews would not eat because of the Old Testament food laws), he ceased to do so when these Jews came down from Jerusalem. These men were seeking to compel the Gentiles to live like Jews, even though the apostles had ruled that Judaism (law-keeping) could not save the Jews who became believers. They so intimidated Peter that he stopped eating with the Gentiles, and began to eat separately with the Jews. Peter’s actions inferred that Gentile Christians must act like Jews (living under the Old Testament Law of Moses) in order to be treated as equal participants in the saving work of Christ. This was something Paul had to rebuke publicly because it was contrary to the gospel, the gospel Paul preached, and the gospel which Peter and the apostles also embraced and proclaimed. So, the error Paul corrected was teaching (or implying by one’s actions) that in order to hold the same status as Jewish believers Gentile converts must live according to the Old Testament law (symbolized by the initiatory rite of circumcision).

Chapter 3: Those in Galatia who had fallen for this “false gospel” had amazingly been convinced that while they were saved by the blood of Jesus (and not law-keeping), they were now to be sanctified by law-keeping. Paul reminded them that they did not receive the Holy Spirit by law-keeping, but by faith in Jesus. Likewise they were being perfected by the Spirit, not by the flesh. In verse 6 Paul turns to Abraham and the Abrahamic Covenant to show how God saved (and will sanctify) both Jews and Gentiles in fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Abraham was saved by his faith in God; so, too, all those who (like Abraham) believe in God are saved, and thus become “sons of Abraham.” True Jews, then, are people who trust in Jesus, as Abraham did (before the law was given, and before he was circumcised – while a Gentile, as Paul says in Romans 4). By inference we can see that there are false Jews who are biological descendants of Abraham, but do not share his faith in God. Their trust is in their ability to keep the law. Those who choose to be “under the law” (rather than a true child of Abraham by faith) are actually under a curse, for that is what the law prescribes for those who fail to keep it all.

It is Christ who saves us, not law-keeping. He (although He was without sin) took on our sin and bore the curse of the law on our behalf. In this way the blessing of the Gentiles which God promised through Abraham came about in Christ, for Abraham’s “seed” to whom God referred in Genesis 22:18 is Jesus, a descendant of Abraham (Gal. 3:16).

The Law of Moses which came much later – 400 and 30 years later – did not nullify God’s earlier covenant with Abraham. The Law was not given to fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant; it was given as a temporary stop-gap measure, until the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant in Christ.

Does this mean that the Law was in opposition to this Covenant promise to Abraham? No! The Law was never intended to make men righteous, only to keep men in custody, so to speak, until God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled (3:21-23). The Law was our tutor, pointing us to Christ until He came and completed His saving work at Calvary. But now that Christ has come, faith has come, and we no longer need the Law as a stop-gap.

Through faith every believer is a son of God in Christ (3:26). All who have trusted in Jesus have been baptized into Christ, and have been clothed with Christ (3:27). As a result of faith in Jesus we are all “sons of Abraham,” all “true Jews.” Being in Christ makes all true believers one in Him. Thus, the earthly distinctions (Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female) do not nullify or even hinder the fundamental unity of all believers in Jesus. (As Paul says in Ephesians 2:15-16, even though we were distant from each other and opposed to each other, God has made all believers in Jesus into “one new man” – one body in Christ.)

Now watch where Paul takes this truth of the unity of all believers in verse 29 (and beyond): If you (Gentile or Jew, slave or free, male or female) have placed your faith in Christ, so as to belong to Him, then you are Abraham’s offspring. You are, so to speak “true Jews.” The Judaisers are seeking to make you Jews by putting you under the Law, a commitment that is commenced by the rite of circumcision. Since true believers are true Jews and thus one with all other believers there is no necessity of imposing the Old Testament Law of Moses on Gentiles to give the external appearance of unity. Indeed, because all believers are one in Christ, one body, one new man, they are free to express their diversity. Unity is, in fact, the basis for diversity, not an excuse for imposing uniformity through conformity to the Law.

Skipping to the final chapter of Galatians we see that Paul’s application is to emphasize that all believers (Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female) are “the Israel of God” (6:16), and thus Gentiles who are believers in Christ ought not succumb to the false teaching of those who would impose circumcision and law keeping on them so as to appear to give them equal standing with Jews who keep the law.

To say it in a nutshell, the premise of the Judaisers is this: You are equal with Jewish believers if you do the same things Jews do – get circumcised and keep the Law. Paul’s premise is this: You are equal and truly Jewish if you do what Abraham did – believe God by trusting in the promised “seed,” Jesus Christ. Since you have believed in Christ you are all one in Him, and thus you do not have to conform to Jewish practices and to put yourselves under the law that could not save and which cannot save because it relies on the power of the flesh, rather than the power of the Holy Spirit.

Do you see how Galatians 3:28 proves the exact opposite of what so many claim. It does not teach that there are no longer any differences between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves or free, or between males and females. It teaches that the deep spiritual unity that God has brought about through Jesus is so great and so strong that we are free to be different from one another. The Jews said that everyone should be alike – like Jews. Paul taught that everyone who is in Christ is one in Him. That unity is precisely what allows for the function of different spiritual gifts and different ministries – a point that Paul makes in both 1 Corinthians and in Ephesians chapter 4:

4 Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 And there are different ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are different results, but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. 7 To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the benefit of all. 8 For one person is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, and another the message of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another performance of miracles, to another prophecy, and to another discernment of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 It is one and the same Spirit, distributing as he decides to each person, who produces all these things (1 Corinthians 12:4-11).

1 I, therefore, the prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live worthily of the calling with which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you too were called to the one hope of your calling, 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 7 But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. 8 Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he captured captives; he gave gifts to men.” 9 Now what is the meaning of “he ascended,” except that he also descended to the lower regions, namely, the earth? 10 He, the very one who descended, is also the one who ascended above all the heavens, in order to fill all things. 11 It was he who gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, that is, to build up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:1-12).

There is such oneness in Christ, such equality in our standing before God, that women don’t need to function just like men to be equal with them in Christ. Slaves don’t need to have the same role in life to be equal with their masters in Christ. And Gentiles don’t need to do what Jews do (keep the law) in order to have equal standing with Jewish saints in Christ. Unity is the reason why we can be different and not agonize about those differences.

When understood in this way (the way I believe Paul meant us to understand him) Galatians 3:28 is perfectly consistent with all those texts – written by Paul through the inspiration of the Spirit – that assign men and women different roles in the church.

In the City Libraries in Auckland, New Zealand, are two Greek New Testament manuscripts, one minuscule and one lectionary. Both are from the twelfth century and both are housed in the special collections on the second floor of the main library on 44 Lorne Street.

A couple of noteworthy items can be found in the minuscule, which we will get to shortly. For now, some minor corrections of the data on this manuscript as found in the Kurzgefasste Liste (2nd edition, 1994): (1) the name of the library has changed from “Public Library” to “City Libraries”; (2) the shelf number has changed from Ms. 29 to Med Ms G124 (which stands for medieval manuscript from the Grey collection, number 124); (3) the foliation is off by one (there are 200 leaves rather than 199, though one is only a sliver, an extra wide flap from the gathering, on which a child’s hand has scribbled the Greek alphabet); and (4) the lines per page are 26 to 28 rather than 24 to 27 (though the lower number may be found on some leaves, our hurried examination prior to photography did not reveal such; the photographs will no doubt be able to determine this).

The interesting material comes in the Fourth Gospel. John 5:4, found on leaf 168 verso (which is numbered on the recto side as 167; after leaf 22 the foliation penciled on the manuscript is short by one), has apparently been athetized in the margin. The hand looks to be the same as that of the original scribe’s, though it could easily be a different, even later scribe’s. The scribe has marked an ‘X’ in the margin running vertically down the length of the verse. This is not altogether common in the manuscripts, so to have another example of such, especially one from the 12th century, is at least interesting if not significant. If the writing was that of the original scribe, it may be that he (or she), after writing the verse, realized that it did not belong in John, so he then athetized the verse in the margin. This sort of thing occurs in the text of Sinaiticus in 1 Thess 2 where the scribe wrote the same verse twice (perhaps having taken a break before coming back to the manuscript), due to a similar-ending line a few lines up. He then athetized the second writing of the verse. Curiously, he had made two or three changes to the text the second time around, raising questions as to whether the scribe used a different exemplar at that stage, was inattentive, or perhaps even a bit sloppy in his task.

The other interesting place in GA 1273 is at the pericope adulterae. The leaf on which it should have appeared (according to its traditional location) lacked it. Unfortunately, this was the verso side of the leaf (leaf 175 verso, or the verso of “174” as it was penciled in). Rather than tear out the whole leaf—or worse, replace the whole quire—the later scribe scraped clean the text on the verso and rewrote the whole page, including several previous verses. He or she used a much smaller hand, crowding the letters so that more could get on there, but also adding several more lines of text (175v has 31 lines of text, while the average leaf has 26 to 28 lines, with 27 apparently being the mean). But that was still not enough room for the PA. Four more lines were required at the top of 176 recto to complete the task. For this page, the scribe chose not to scrape off the former letters but simply allow the conclusion of the PA to stand above the text that the original scribe had penned.

What we see in this particular manuscript are two opposing forces at work. First is the attempt to excise text that was considered spurious. Second is the attempt to add text that was considered authentic. The Greek manuscripts that lack John 5:4 include P66, P75, א, B C*, D, T, Ws, 33, and a few others. There are also more than twenty manuscripts in which asterisks or obeli mark the words as spurious, even as 1273 has done (e.g., S Λ Π 047 1079 2174). But when it comes to the pericope adulterae, a much larger portion of manuscripts either lack the pericope or mark it out in some way to indicate its spuriousness (or, if Maurice Robinson is correct, its dislocation in this place, at least as far as lectionary readings were concerned). As many as 20% of the Greek manuscripts lack the PA. It seems safe to say that the scribe who added the PA to codex 1273 was certainly not the same as the original scribe of the manuscript. The handwriting is distinctively different, smaller, and with a different ink. But the scribe who athetized John 5:4 may well have been the same as the original scribe. The ink looks to be the same, and the scribe would have been, in keeping with his later proclivity not to have the PA, in a long, though small, stream of scribes who thought that the verse was spurious. I do not know what other work has been done on GA 1273, but it seems that this manuscript is worthy of some examination.

Visit the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscript’s website (www.csntm.org) to see images of this manuscript.

For most students of the NT, a book on textual criticism is a real yawn. The tedious details are not the stuff of a bestseller. But since its publication on November 1, 2005, Misquoting Jesus² has been circling higher and higher toward the Amazon peak. And since Bart Ehrman, one of North America’s leading textual critics, appeared on two of NPR’s programs (the Diane Rehm Show and Fresh Air with Terry Gross)—both within the space of one week—it has been in the top fifty sellers at Amazon. Within three months, more than 100,000 copies were sold. When Neely Tucker’s interview of Ehrman in The Washington Post appeared on March 5 of this year the sales of Ehrman’s book shot up still higher. Mr. Tucker spoke of Ehrman as a “fundamentalist scholar who peered so hard into the origins of Christianity that he lost his faith altogether.”³ Nine days later, Ehrman was the guest celebrity on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. Stewart said that seeing the Bible as something that was deliberately corrupted by orthodox scribes made the Bible “more interesting…almost more godly in some respects.” Stewart concluded the interview by stating, “I really congratulate you. It’s a helluva book!” Within 48 hours, Misquoting Jesus was perched on top of Amazon, if only for a moment. Two months later and it’s still flying high, staying in the 25 or so books. It “has become one of the unlikeliest bestsellers of the year.”⁴ Not bad for an academic tome on a “boring” topic!

Why all the hoopla? Well, for one thing, Jesus sells. But not the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus that sells is the one that is palatable to postmodern man. And with a book entitled Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, a ready audience was created via the hope that there would be fresh evidence that the biblical Jesus is a figment. Ironically, almost none of the variants that Ehrman discusses involve sayings of Jesus. The book simply doesn’t deliver what the title promises. Ehrman preferred Lost in Transmission, but the publisher thought such a book might be perceived by the Barnes and Noble crowd as dealing with stock car racing! Even though Ehrman did not choose his resultant title, it has been a publishing coup.

More importantly, this book sells because it appeals to the skeptic who wants reasons not to believe, who considers the Bible a book of myths. It’s one thing to say that the stories in the Bible are legend; it’s quite another to say that many of them were added centuries later. Although Ehrman does not quite say this, he leaves the impression that the original form of the NT was rather different from what the manuscripts now read.

According to Ehrman, this is the first book written on NT textual criticism—a discipline that has been around for nearly 300 years—for a lay audience.⁵ Apparently he does not count the several books written by KJV Only advocates, or the books that interact with them. It seems that Ehrman means that his is the first book on the general discipline of NT textual criticism written by a bona fide textual critic for a lay readership. This is most likely true.

Textual Criticism 101

Misquoting Jesus for the most part is simply NT textual criticism 101. There are seven chapters with an introduction and conclusion. Most of the book (chs. 1–4) is basically a popular introduction to the field, and a very good one at that. It introduces readers to the fascinating world of scribal activity, the process of canonization, and printed texts of the Greek NT. It discusses the basic method of reasoned eclecticism. All through these four chapters, various snippets—variant readings, quotations from Fathers, debates between Protestants and Catholics—are discussed, acquainting the reader with some of the challenges of the arcane field of textual criticism.

Chapter 1 (“The Beginnings of Christian Scripture”) addresses why the NT books were written, how they were received, and when they were accepted as scripture.

Chapter 2 (“The Copyists of the Early Christian Writings”) deals with scribal changes to the text, both intentional and unintentional. Here Ehrman mixes standard text-critical information with his own interpretation, an interpretation that is by no means shared by all textual critics, nor even most of them. In essence, he paints a very bleak picture of scribal activity⁶, leaving the unwary reader to assume that we have no chance of recovering the original wording of the NT.

Chapter 3 (“Texts of the New Testament”) and chapter 4 (“The Quest for Origins”) take us from Erasmus and the first published Greek NT to the text of Westcott and Hort. Discussed are the major scholars from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. This is the most objective material in the book and makes for fascinating reading. But even here, Ehrman injects his own viewpoint by his selection of material. For example, in discussing the role that Bengel played in the history of textual criticism (109-112), Ehrman gives this pious German conservative high praise as a scholar: he was an “extremely careful interpreter of the biblical text” (109); “Bengel studied everything intensely” (111). Ehrman speaks about Bengel’s breakthroughs in textual criticism (111-12), but does not mention that he was the first important scholar to articulate the doctrine of the orthodoxy of the variants. This is a curious omission because, on the one hand, Ehrman is well aware of this fact, for in the fourth edition of The Text of the New Testament, now by Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman,⁷ which appeared just months before Misquoting Jesus, the authors note, “With characteristic energy and perseverance, [Bengel] procured all the editions, manuscripts, and early translations available to him. After extended study, he came to the conclusions that the variant readings were fewer in number than might have been expected and that they did not shake any article of evangelic doctrine.”⁸ On the other hand, Ehrman instead mentions J. J. Wettstein, a contemporary of Bengel, who, at the tender age of twenty assumed that these variants “can have no weakening effect on the trustworthiness or integrity of the Scriptures,”⁹ but that years later, after careful study of the text, Wettstein changed his views after he “began thinking seriously about his own theological convictions.”¹⁰ One is tempted to think that Ehrman may see a parallel between himself and Wettstein: like Wettstein, Ehrman started out as an evangelical when in college, but changed his views on the text and theology in his more mature years.¹¹ But the model that Bengel supplies—a sober scholar who arrives at quite different conclusions—is quietly passed over.

What is also curiously left out was Tischendorf’s motivation for his indefatigable work of discovering manuscripts and of publishing a critical edition of the Greek text with a full apparatus. Tischendorf is widely acknowledged as the most industrious NT textual critic of all time. And what motivated him was a desire to recover the earliest form of the text—a text which he believed would vindicate orthodox Christianity against the Hegelian skepticism of F. C. Baur and his followers. None of this is mentioned in Misquoting Jesus.

Besides the selectivity regarding scholars and their opinions, these four chapters involve two curious omissions. First, there is next to no discussion about the various manuscripts. It’s almost as if external evidence is a nonstarter for Ehrman. Further, as much as he enlightens his lay readers about the discipline, the fact that he doesn’t give them the details about which manuscripts are more trustworthy, older, etc., allows him to control the information flow. Repeatedly, I was frustrated in my perusal of the book because it spoke of various readings without giving much, if any, of the data that supported them. Even in his third chapter—“Texts of the New Testament: Editions, Manuscripts, and Differences”—there is minimal discussion of the manuscripts, and none of individual codices. In the two pages that deal specifically with the manuscripts, Ehrman speaks only about their number, nature, and variants.¹²

Second, Ehrman overplays the quality of the variants while underscoring their quantity. He says, “There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”¹³ Elsewhere he states that the number of variants is as high as 400,000.¹⁴ That is true enough, but by itself is misleading. Anyone who teaches NT textual criticism knows that this fact is only part of the picture and that, if left dangling in front of the reader without explanation, is a distorted view. Once it is revealed that the great majority of these variants are inconsequential—involving spelling differences that cannot even be translated, articles with proper nouns, word order changes, and the like—and that only a very small minority of the variants alter the meaning of the text, the whole picture begins to come into focus. Indeed, only about 1% of the textual variants are both meaningful and viable.¹⁵ The impression Ehrman sometimes gives throughout the book—and repeats in interviews¹⁶—is that of wholesale uncertainty about the original wording,¹⁷ a view that is far more radical than he actually embraces.¹⁸

We can illustrate things this way. There are approximately 138,000 words in the Greek NT. The variants in the manuscripts, versions, and Fathers constitute almost three times this number. At first blush, that is a striking amount. But in light of the possibilities, it actually is rather trivial. For example, consider the ways in which Greek can say “Jesus loves Paul”:

1. ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ Παῦλον
2. ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Παῦλον
3. ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ Παῦλον
4. ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Παῦλον
5. Παῦλον ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ
6. τὸν Παῦλον ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ
7. Παῦλον ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ
8. τὸν Παῦλον ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ
9. ἀγαπᾷ ᾿Ιησοῦς Παῦλον
10. ἀγαπᾷ ᾿Ιησοῦς τὸν Παῦλον
11. ἀγαπᾷ ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς Παῦλον
12. ἀγαπᾷ ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς τὸν Παῦλον
13. ἀγαπᾷ Παῦλον ᾿Ιησοῦς
14. ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Παῦλον ᾿Ιησοῦς
15. ἀγαπᾷ Παῦλον ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς
16. ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Παῦλον ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς

These variations only represent a small fraction of the possibilities. If the sentence used φιλεῖ instead of ἀγαπᾷ, for example, or if it began with a conjunction such as δεv, καιv, or μέν, the potential variations would grow exponentially. Factor in synonyms (such as κύριος for ᾿Ιησοῦς), spelling differences, and additional words (such as Χριστός, or ἅγιος with Παῦλος) and the list of potential variants that do not affect the essence of the statement increases to the hundreds. If such a simple sentence as “Jesus loves Paul” could have so many insignificant variations, a mere 400,000 variants among the NT manuscripts seems like an almost negligible amount.¹⁹

But these criticisms are minor quibbles. There is nothing really earth-shaking in the first four chapters of the book. Rather, it is in the introduction that we see Ehrman’s motive, and the last three chapters reveal his agenda. In these places he is especially provocative and given to overstatement and non sequitur. The remainder of our review will focus on this material.

Ehrman’s Evangelical Background

In the introduction, Ehrman speaks of his evangelical background (three years at Moody Bible Institute, two years at Wheaton College where he first learned Greek), followed by an M.Div. and Ph.D. at Princeton Seminary. It was at Princeton that Ehrman began to reject some of his evangelical upbringing, especially as he wrestled with the details of the text of the NT. He notes that the study of the NT manuscripts increasingly created doubts in his mind: “I kept reverting to my basic question: how does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don’t have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes—sometimes correctly and sometimes (many times!) incorrectly?”²⁰ This is an excellent question. And it is featured prominently in Misquoting Jesus, being repeated throughout the book. Unfortunately, Ehrman does not really spend much time wrestling with it directly.

While he was in the master’s program, he took a course on Mark’s Gospel from Professor Cullen Story. For his term paper, he wrote on the problem of Jesus speaking of David’s entry into the temple “when Abiathar was the high priest” (Mark 2.26). The well-known crux is problematic for inerrancy because, according to 1 Sam 21, the time when David entered the temple was actually when Abiathar’s father, Ahimelech, was priest. But Ehrman was determined to work around what looked to be the plain meaning of the text, in order to salvage inerrancy. Ehrman tells his readers, Professor Story’s comment on the paper “went straight through me. He wrote, ‘Maybe Mark just made a mistake.’”²¹ This was a decisive moment in Ehrman’s spiritual journey. When he concluded that Mark may have erred, “the floodgates opened.”²² He began to question the historical reliability of many other biblical texts, resulting in “a seismic change” in his understanding of the Bible. “The Bible,” Ehrman notes, “began to appear to me as a very human book… This was a human book from beginning to end.”²³

What strikes me as most remarkable in all this is how much Ehrman tied inerrancy to the general historical reliability of the Bible. It was an all-or-nothing proposition for him. He still seems to see things in black and white terms, for he concludes his testimony with these words: “It is a radical shift from reading the Bible as an inerrant blueprint for our faith, life, and future to seeing it as a very human book… This is the shift in my own thinking that I ended up making, and to which I am now fully committed.”²⁴ There thus seems to be no middle ground in his view of the text. In short, Ehrman seems to have held to what I would call a ‘domino view of doctrine.’ When one falls down, they all fall down. We’ll return to this issue in our conclusion.

The Orthodox Corruption Of Scripture

The heart of the book is chapters 5, 6, and 7. Here Ehrman especially discusses the results of the findings in his major work, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.²⁵ His concluding chapter closes in on the point that he is driving at in this section: “It would be wrong…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.”²⁶

We pause to observe two fundamental theological points being stressed in Misquoting Jesus: first, as we mentioned previously, it is irrelevant to speak of the Bible’s inerrancy because we no longer have the original documents; second, the variants in the manuscripts change the basic theology of the NT.

The Logical Fallacy in Denying an Inerrant Autograph

Although Ehrman does not really develop this first argument, it does deserve a response. We need to begin by making a careful distinction between verbal inspiration and inerrancy. Inspiration relates to the wording of the Bible, while inerrancy relates to the truth of a statement. American evangelicals generally believe that only the original text is inspired. This is not to say, however, that copies can’t be inerrant. Indeed, statements that bear no relation to scripture can be inerrant. If I say, “I am married and have four sons, two dogs, and a cat,” that’s an inerrant statement. It’s not inspired, nor at all related to scripture, but it is true. Similarly, whether Paul says “we have peace” or “let us have peace” in Rom 5.1, both statements are true (though each in a different sense), though only one is inspired. Keeping this distinction in mind as we consider the textual variants of the NT should clarify matters.

Regardless of what one thinks about the doctrine of inerrancy, the argument against it on the basis of the unknown autographs is logically fallacious. This is so for two reasons. First, we have the text of the NT somewhere in the manuscripts. There is no need for conjecture, except perhaps in one or two places.²⁷ Second, the text we have in any viable variants is no more a problem for inerrancy than other problems where the text is secure. Now, to be sure, there are some challenges in the textual variants to inerrancy. This is not denied. But there are simply bigger fish to fry when it comes to issues that inerrancy faces. Thus, if conjectural emendation is unnecessary, and if no viable variant registers much of a blip on the radar called ‘problems for inerrancy,’ then not having the originals is a moot point for this doctrine. It’s not a moot point for verbal inspiration, of course, but it is for inerrancy.²⁸

Cardinal Doctrines Affected by Textual Variants?

Ehrman’s second theological point occupies center stage in his book. It will accordingly occupy the rest of this review.

In chapters five and six, Ehrman discusses several passages that involve variants that allegedly affect core theological beliefs. He summarizes his findings in his concluding chapter as follows:

In some instances, the very meaning of the text is at stake, depending on how one resolves a textual problem: Was Jesus an angry man [Mark 1.41]? Was he completely distraught in the face of death [Heb 2.8–9]? Did he tell his disciples that they could drink poison without being harmed [Mark 16.9–20]? Did he let an adulteress off the hook with nothing but a mild warning [John 7.53–8.11]? Is the doctrine of the Trinity explicitly taught in the New Testament [1 John 5.7–8]? Is Jesus actually called “the unique God” there [John 1.18]? Does the New Testament indicate that even the Son of God himself does not know when the end will come [Matt 24.36]? 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.²⁹

It is apparent that such a summary is intended to focus on the major problem passages that Ehrman has uncovered. Thus, following the well-worn rabbinic principle of a maiore ad minus³⁰, or arguing from the greater to the lesser, we will address just these seven texts.

The Problem With Problem Passages

Three of these passages have been considered inauthentic by most NT scholars—including most evangelical NT scholars—for well over a century (Mark 16.9–20; John 7.53–8.11; and 1 John 5.7–8).³¹ Yet Ehrman writes as though the excision of such texts could shake up our theological convictions. Such is hardly the case. (We will suspend discussion of one of these passages, 1 John 5.7–8, until the end.)

The Last Twelve Verses of Mark and the Pericope Adulterae

At the same time, Ehrman implicitly raises a valid issue. A glance at virtually any English Bible today reveals that the longer ending of Mark and the pericope adulterae are to be found in their usual places. Thus, not only do the KJV and NKJV have these passages (as would be expected), but so do the ASV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, TNIV, NASB, ESV, TEV, NAB, NJB, and NET. Yet the scholars who produced these translations, by and large, do not subscribe to the authenticity of such texts. The reasons are simple enough: they don’t show up in the oldest and best manuscripts and their internal evidence is decidedly against authenticity. Why then are they still in these Bibles?

The answer to this question varies. For some, they seem to be in the Bibles because of a tradition of timidity. There are seemingly good reasons for this. The rationale is typically that no one will buy a particular version if it lacks these famous passages. And if they don’t buy the version, it can’t influence Christians. Some translations have included the pericope adulterae because of mandate from the papal authorities declaring the passage to be scripture. The NEB/REB include it at the end of the Gospels, rather than in its traditional location. The TNIV and NET have both passages in smaller font with brackets around them. Smaller type of course makes it harder to read from the pulpit. The NET adds a lengthy discussion about the inauthenticity of the verses. Most translations mention that these pericopae are not found in the oldest manuscripts, but such a comment is rarely noticed by readers today. How do we know this? From the shock waves produced by Ehrman’s book. In radio, TV, and newspaper interviews with Ehrman, the story of the woman caught in adultery is almost always the first text brought up as inauthentic, and the mention is calculated to alarm the audience.

Letting the public in on scholarly secrets about the text of the Bible is not new. Edward Gibbon, in his six-volume bestseller, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, noted that the Comma Johanneum, or Trinitarian formula of 1 John 5.7–8, was not authentic.³² This scandalized the British public of the eighteenth century, for their only Bible was the Authorized Version, which contained the formula. “Others had done [this] before him, but only in academic and learned circles. Gibbon did so before the general public, in language designed to offend.”³³ Yet by the time the Revised Version appeared in 1885, no trace of the Comma was to be found in it. Today the text is not printed in modern translations, and it hardly raises an eyebrow.

Ehrman has followed in Gibbon’s train by exposing the public to the inauthenticity of Mark 16.9-20 and John 7.53-8.11. The problem here, though, is a bit different. Strong emotional baggage is especially attached to the latter text. For years, it was my favorite passage that was not in the Bible. I would even preach on it as true historical narrative, even after I rejected its literary/canonical authenticity. And we all know of preachers who can’t quite give it up, even though they, too, have doubts about it. But there are two problems with this approach. First, in terms of popularity between these two texts, John 8 is the overwhelming favorite, yet its external credentials are significantly worse than Mark 16’s. The same preacher who declares the Markan passage to be inauthentic extols the virtues of John 8. This inconsistency is appalling. Something is amiss in our theological seminaries when one’s feelings are allowed to be the arbiter of textual problems. Second, the pericope adulterae is most likely not even historically true. It was probably a story conflated from two different accounts.³⁴ Thus, the excuse that one can proclaim it because the story really happened is apparently not valid.

In retrospect, keeping these two pericopae in our Bibles rather than relegating them to the footnotes seems to have been a bomb just waiting to explode. All Ehrman did was to light the fuse. One lesson we must learn from Misquoting Jesus is that those in ministry need to close the gap between the church and the academy. We have to educate believers. Instead of trying to isolate laypeople from critical scholarship, we need to insulate them. They need to be ready for the barrage, because it is coming.³⁵ The intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ. Ehrman is to be thanked for giving us a wake-up call.

This is not to say that everything Ehrman has written in this book is of that ilk. But these three passages are. Again, we need to stress: these texts change no fundamental doctrine, no core belief. Evangelical scholars have athetized them for over a century without disturbing one iota of orthodoxy.

The remaining four textual problems, however, tell a different story. Ehrman appeals either to an interpretation or to evidence that most scholars consider, at best, doubtful.

Hebrews 2.8–9

Translations are roughly united in how they treat Heb 2.9b. The NET is representative: “by God’s grace he would experience death on behalf of everyone.” Ehrman suggests that “by God’s grace”—χάριτι θεου'—is a secondary reading. Instead, he argues that “apart from God,” or χωρὶς θεοῦ, is what the author originally wrote. There are but three Greek manuscripts that have this reading, all from the tenth century or later. Codex 1739, however, is one of them, and it is a copy of an early and decent manuscript. χωρὶς θεοῦ is also discussed in several fathers, one Vulgate manuscript, and some copies of the Peshitta.³⁶ Many scholars would dismiss such paltry evidence without further ado. If they bother to treat the internal evidence at all, it is because even though it has a poor pedigree, χωρὶς θεοῦ is the harder reading and thus may require some explanation, since scribes tended to smooth out the wording of the text. As well, something needs to explain the several patristic citations. But if a reading is an unintentional change, the canon of the harder reading is invalid. The hardest reading will be a nonsense reading, something that cannot be created on purpose. Although χωρίς is apparently the harder reading,³⁷ it can be explained as an accidental alteration. It is most likely due either to a ‘scribal lapse’³⁸ in which an inattentive copyist confused χωρίς for χάριτι, or ‘a marginal gloss’ in which a scribe was thinking of 1 Cor 15.27 which, like Heb 2.8, quotes Ps 8.6 in reference to God’s subjection of all things to Christ.³⁹

Without going into the details of Ehrman’s defense of χωρίς, we simply wish to note four things. First, he overstates his case by assuming that his view is certainly correct. After three pages of discussion of this text in his Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, he pronounces the verdict: “The external evidence notwithstanding, Hebrews 2:9 must have originally said that Jesus died ‘apart from God.’”⁴⁰ He’s still seeing things in black and white terms. Second, Ehrman’s text-critical views are getting dangerously close to rigorous eclecticism.⁴¹ The external data seem to mean less and less to him as he seems to want to see theological corruption in the text. Third, even though he is certain about his verdict, his mentor, Bruce Metzger, is not. A year after Orthodox Corruption was published, Metzger’s second edition of his Textual Commentary appeared. The UBS committee still gave the χάριτι θεοῦ reading the palm, but this time upgrading their conviction to an ‘A’ rating.⁴² Finally, even assuming that χωρὶς θεοῦ is the correct reading here, Ehrman has not made out a case that this is a variant that “affect[s] the interpretation of an entire book of the New Testament.”⁴³ He argues that “[t]he less attested reading is also more consistent with the theology of Hebrews.”⁴⁴ He adds that the author “repeatedly emphasizes that Jesus died a fully human, shameful death, totally removed from the realm whence he came, the realm of God. His sacrifice, as a result, was accepted as the perfect expiation for sin. Moreover, God did not intervene in his passion and did nothing to minimize his pain. Jesus died ‘apart from God.’”⁴⁵ If this is the view of Jesus throughout Hebrews, how does the variant that Ehrman adopts in 2.9 change that portrait? In his Orthodox Corruption, Ehrman says that “Hebrews 5:7 speaks of Jesus, in the face of death, beseeching God with loud cries and tears.”⁴⁶ But that this text is speaking of Jesus ‘in the face of death’ is not at all clear (nor does Ehrman defend this view). Further, he builds on this in his concluding chapter of Misquoting Jesus—even though he has never established the point—when he asks, “Was [Jesus] completely distraught in the face of death?”⁴⁷ He goes even further in Orthodox Corruption. I am at a loss to understand how Ehrman can claim that the author of Hebrews seems to know “of passion traditions in which Jesus was terrified in the face of death”⁴⁸ unless it is by connecting three dots, all of which are dubious—viz., reading χωρὶς θεοῦ in Heb 2.9, seeing 5.7 as referring principally to the death of Christ and that his prayers were principally for himself,⁴⁹ and then regarding the loud cries there to reflect his terrified state. Ehrman seems to be building his case on linked hypotheses, which is a poor foundation at best.

Mark 1.41

In the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, a leper approaches Jesus and asks him to heal him: “If you are willing, you can make me clean” (Mark 1.40). Jesus’ response is recorded in the Nestle-Aland text as follows: καὶ… σπλαγχνισθει…Vς ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ ἥψατο καὶ… λέγει αὐτῳÇ· θέλω, καθαρίσθητι (“and moved with compassion, he stretched out [his] hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed”). Instead of σπλαγχνισθει…vς (‘moved with compassion’) a few Western witnesses⁵⁰ read ὀργισθείς (‘becoming angry’). Jesus’ motivation for this healing apparently hangs in the balance. Even though the UBS4 gives σπλαγχνισθει…vς a B rating, an increasing number of exegetes are starting to argue for the authenticity of ὀργισθείς. In a Festschrift for Gerald Hawthorne in 2003, Ehrman made an impressive argument for its authenticity.⁵¹ Four years earlier, a doctoral dissertation by Mark Proctor was written in defense of ojrgisqeivV.⁵² The reading has also made its way into the TNIV, and is seriously entertained in the NET. We won’t take the time to consider the arguments here. At this stage I am inclined to think it is most likely original. Either way, for the sake of argument, assuming that the ‘angry’ reading is authentic, what does this tell us about Jesus that we didn’t know before?

Ehrman suggests that if Mark originally wrote about Jesus’ anger in this passage, it changes our picture of Jesus in Mark significantly. In fact, this textual problem is his lead example in chapter 5 (“Originals That Matter”), a chapter whose central thesis is that some variants “affect the interpretation of an entire book of the New Testament.”⁵³ This thesis is overstated in general, and particularly for Mark’s Gospel. In Mark 3.5 Jesus is said to be angry—wording that is indisputably in the original text of Mark. And in Mark 10.14 he is indignant at his disciples.

Ehrman, of course, knows this. In fact, he argues implicitly in the Hawthorne Festschrift that Jesus’ anger in Mark 1.41 perfectly fits into the picture that Mark elsewhere paints of Jesus. He says, for example, “Mark described Jesus as angry, and, at least in this instance, scribes took offense. This comes as no surprise; apart from a fuller understanding of Mark’s portrayal, Jesus’ anger is difficult to understand.”⁵⁴ Ehrman even lays out the fundamental principle that he sees running through Mark: “Jesus is angered when anyone questions his authority or ability to heal—or his desire to heal.”⁵⁵ Now, for sake of argument, let’s assume that not only is Ehrman’s textual reconstruction correct, but his interpretation of ὀργισθείς in Mark 1.41 is correct—not only in that passage but in the totality of Mark’s presentation of Jesus.⁵⁶ If so, how then does an angry Jesus in 1.41 “affect the interpretation of an entire book of the New Testament”? According to Ehrman’s own interpretation, ὀργισθείς only strengthens the image we see of Jesus in this Gospel by making it wholly consistent with the other texts that speak of his anger. If this reading is Exhibit A in Ehrman’s fifth chapter, it seriously backfires, for it does little or nothing to alter the overall portrait of Jesus that Mark paints. Here is another instance, then, in which Ehrman’s theological conclusion is more provocative than the evidence suggests.

Matthew 24.36

In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus speaks about the time of his own return. Remarkably, he confesses that he does not know exactly when that will be. In most modern translations of Matt 24.36, the text basically says, “But as for that day and hour no one knows it—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son—except the Father alone.” However, many manuscripts, including some early and important ones, lack οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός. Whether “nor the Son” is authentic or not is disputed.⁵⁷ Nevertheless, Ehrman again speaks confidently on the issue.⁵⁸ The importance of this textual variant for the thesis of Misquoting Jesus is difficult to assess, however. Ehrman alludes to Matt 24.36 in his conclusion, apparently to underscore his argument that textual variants alter basic doctrines.⁵⁹ His initial discussion of this passage certainly leaves this impression as well.⁶⁰ But if he does not mean this, then he is writing more provocatively than is necessary, misleading his readers. And if he does mean it, he has overstated his case.

What is not disputed is the wording in the parallel in Mark 13.32—“But as for that day or hour no one knows it—neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son—except the Father.”⁶¹ Thus, there can be no doubt that Jesus spoke of his own prophetic ignorance in the Olivet Discourse. Consequently, what doctrinal issues are really at stake here? One simply cannot maintain that the wording in Matt 24.36 changes one’s basic theological convictions about Jesus since the same sentiment is found in Mark. Not once in Misquoting Jesus does Ehrman mention Mark 13.32, even though he explicitly discusses Matt 24.36 at least six times, seemingly to the effect that this reading impacts our fundamental understanding of Jesus.⁶² But does the wording change our basic understanding of Matthew’s view of Jesus? Even that is not the case. Even if Matt 24.36 originally lacked “nor the Son,” the fact that the Father alone (εἰ μὴ ὁ πατὴρ μόνος) has this knowledge certainly implies the Son’s ignorance (and the “alone” is only found in Matt 24.36, not in Mark 13.32). Again, this important detail is not mentioned in Misquoting Jesus, nor even in Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.

John 1.18

In John 1.18b, Ehrman argues that “Son” instead of “God” is the authentic reading. But he goes beyond the evidence by stating that if “God” were original the verse would be calling Jesus “the unique God.” The problem with such a translation, in Ehrman’s words, is that “[t]he term unique God must refer to God the Father himself—otherwise he is not unique. But if the term refers to the Father, how can it be used of the Son?”⁶³ Ehrman’s sophisticated grammatical argument for this is not found in Misquoting Jesus, but is detailed in his Orthodox Corruption of Scripture:

The more common expedient for those who opt for [ὁ] μονογενὴς θεός, but who recognize that its rendering as “the unique God” is virtually impossible in a Johannine context, is to understand the adjective substantivally, and to construe the entire second half of John 1:18 as a series of appositions, so that rather than reading “the unique God who is in the bosom of the Father,” the text should be rendered “the unique one, who is also God, who is in the bosom of the Father.” There is something attractive about the proposal. It explains what the text might have meant to a Johannine reader and thereby allows for the text of the generally superior textual witnesses. Nonetheless, the solution is entirely implausible.

…. It is true that μονογενής can elsewhere be used as a substantive (= the unique one, as in v. 14); all adjectives can. But the proponents of this view have failed to consider that it is never used in this way when it is immediately followed by a noun that agrees with it in gender, number, and case. Indeed one must here press the syntactical point: To the best of my knowledge,

The result is that taking the term μονογενὴς θεός as two substantives standing in apposition makes for a nearly impossible syntax, whereas construing their relationship as adjective-noun creates an impossible sense.⁶⁴

Ehrman’s argument assumes that μονογενής cannot normally be substantival, even though it is so used in v 14—as he admits. There are many critiques that could be made of his argument, but chief among them is this: his absolutizing of the grammatical situation is incorrect. His challenge (“no one has cited anything analogous outside of this passage”) is here taken up. There are, indeed, examples in which an adjective that is juxtaposed to a noun of the same grammatical concord is not functioning adjectivally but substantivally.⁶⁵

John 6:70: καὶ ἐξ ὑμῶν εἷς διάβολός ἐστιν. Here διάβολος is functioning as a noun, even though it is an adjective. And εἷς, the pronominal adjective, is the subject related to διάβολος, the predicate nominative.

Rom 1.30: καταλάλους θεοστυγεῖς ὑβριστὰς ὑπερηφάνους ἀλαζόνας, ἐφευρετὰς κακῶν, γονεῦσιν ἀπειθεῖς (“slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents”—true adjectives in italics)

Gal 3:9: τῷ πιστῷ ᾿Αβραάμ (“with Abraham, the believer” as the NASB has it; NRSV has “Abraham who believed”; NIV has “Abraham, the man of faith”). Regardless of how it is translated, here is an adjective wedged between an article and a noun that is functioning substantivally, in apposition to the noun.

Eph 2:20: ὄντος ἀκρογωνιαίου αὐτοῦ Χριστοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ (“Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone”): although ἀκρογωνιαῖος is an adjective, it seems to be functioning substantivally here (though it could possibly be a predicate adjective, I suppose, as a predicate genitive). LSJ lists this as an adjective; LN lists it as a noun. It may thus be similar to μονογενής in its development.

1 Tim 1:9: δικαίῳ νόμος οὐ κεῖται, ἀνόμοις δὲ καὶ ἀνυποτάκτοις, ἀσεβέσι καὶ ἁμαρτωλοῖς, ἀνοσίοις καὶ βεβήλοις, πατρολῴαις καὶ μητρολῴαις, ἀνδροφόνοις (law is not made for a righteous man, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers [adjectives in italics]): this text clearly shows that Ehrman has overstated his case, for βεβήλοις does not modify πατρολῴαις but instead is substantival, as are the five previous descriptive terms.

1 Pet 1:1: ἐκλεκτοῖς παρεπιδήμοις (“the elect, sojourners”): This text is variously interpreted, but our point is simply that it could fit either scheme for John 1.18. It thus qualifies for texts of which Ehrman says “no one has cited anything analogous outside of this passage.”

2 Pet 2:5: ἐφείσατο ἀλλὰ ὄγδοον Νῶε δικαιοσύνης κήρυκα (“did not spare [the world], but [preserved] an eighth, Noah, a preacher of righteousness”). The adjective ‘eighth’ stands in apposition to Noah; otherwise, if it modified Noah, the force would be ‘an eighth Noah’ as though there were seven other Noahs!⁶⁶

In light of these examples (which are but a few of those found in the NT), we can thus respond directly the question that Ehrman poses: “when is an adjective ever used substantivally when it immediately precedes a noun of the same inflection?” His remark that “No Greek reader would construe such a construction as a string of substantives, and no Greek writer would create such an inconcinnity” is simply not borne out by the evidence. And we have only looked at a sampling of the NT. If NT authors can create such expressions, this internal argument against the reading μονογενὴς θεός loses considerable weight.

It now becomes a matter of asking whether there are sufficient contextual clues that μονογενής is in fact functioning substantivally. Ehrman has already provided both of them: (1) in John, it is unthinkable that the Word could become the unique God in 1.18 (in which he alone, and not the Father, is claimed to have divine status) only to have that status removed repeatedly throughout the rest of the Gospel. Thus, assuming that μονογενὴς θεός is authentic, we are in fact almost driven to the sense that Ehrman regards as grammatically implausible but contextually necessary: “the unique one, himself God…” (2) that μονογενής is already used in v 14 as a substantive⁶⁷ becomes the strongest contextual argument for seeing its substantival function repeated four verses later. Immediately after Ehrman admits that this adjective can be used substantivally and is so used in v 14, he makes his grammatical argument which is intended to lay the gauntlet down or to shut the coffin lid (choose your cliché) on the force of the connection with v 14. But if the grammatical argument won’t cut it, then the substantival use of μονογενής in v 14 should stand as an important contextual clue. Indeed, in light of the well-worn usage in biblical Greek, we would almost expect μονογενής to be used substantivally and with the implication of sonship in 1.18.

Now, as our only concern here is to wrestle with what μονογενὴς θεός would mean if it were original, rather than argue for its authenticity, there seems to be sufficient evidence to demonstrate a force such as “the unique one, himself God” as a suitable gloss for this reading. Both the internal and external evidence are on its side; the only thing holding back such a variant is the interpretation that it was a modalistic reading.⁶⁸ But the basis for that is a grammatical assumption that we have demonstrated not to have weight. In conclusion, both μονογενὴς υἱός and μονογενὴς θεός fit comfortably within orthodoxy; no seismic theological shift occurs if one were to pick one reading over the other. Although some modern translations have been persuaded by Ehrman’s argument here (such as the HCSB), the argument is hardly airtight. When either variant is examined carefully, both are seen to be within the realm of orthodox teaching.

Suffice it to say that if “God” is authentic here, it is hardly necessary to translate the phrase as “the unique God,” as though that might imply that Jesus alone is God. Rather, as the NET renders it (see also the NIV and NRSV), John 1.18 says, “No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.”

In other words, the idea that the variants in the NT manuscripts alter the theology of the NT is overstated at best.⁶⁹ Unfortunately, as careful a scholar as Ehrman is, his treatment of major theological changes in the text of the NT tends to fall under one of two criticisms: Either his textual decisions are wrong, or his interpretation is wrong. These criticisms were made of his earlier work, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, which Misquoting Jesus has drawn from extensively. For example, Gordon Fee said of this work that “[u]nfortunately, Ehrman too often turns mere possibility into probability, and probability into certainty, where other equally viable reasons for corruption exist.”⁷⁰ Yet, the conclusions that Ehrman put forth in Orthodox Corruption of Scripture are still offered in Misquoting Jesus without recognition of some of the severe criticisms of his work the first go-around.⁷¹ For a book geared toward a lay audience, one would think that he would want to have his discussion nuanced a bit more, especially with all the theological weight that he says is on the line. One almost gets the impression that he is encouraging the Chicken Littles in the Christian community to panic at data that they are simply not prepared to wrestle with. Time and time again in the book, highly charged statements are put forth that the untrained person simply cannot sift through. And that approach resembles more an alarmist mentality than what a mature, master teacher is able to offer. Regarding the evidence, suffice it to say that significant textual variants that alter core doctrines of the NT have not yet been produced.

Yet Ehrman apparently thinks they have. When discussing Wettstein’s views of the NT text, Ehrman notes that “Wettstein began thinking seriously about his own theological convictions, and became attuned to the problem that the New Testament rarely, if ever, actually calls Jesus God.”⁷² Remarkably, Ehrman seems to represent this conclusion as not only Wettstein’s, but his own, too. To the extent that Wettstein was moving toward the modern critical text and away from the TR, his arguments against the deity of Christ were unfounded because Christ’s deity is actually more clearly seen in the critical Greek text than in the TR.⁷³ Although Ehrman does not discuss most of the passages that he thinks are spurious, he does do so in Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (especially 264-73). But the discussion is not really fleshed out and involves internal contradictions. In short, he doesn’t make out his case. The deity of Christ is undisturbed by any viable variants.

First John 5.7–8

Finally, regarding 1 John 5.7–8, virtually no modern translation of the Bible includes the “Trinitarian formula,” since scholars for centuries have recognized it as added later. Only a few very late manuscripts have the verses. One wonders why this passage is even discussed in Ehrman’s book. The only reason seems to be to fuel doubts. The passage made its way into our Bibles through political pressure, appearing for the first time in 1522, even though scholars then and now knew that it was not authentic. The early church did not know of this text, yet the Council of Constantinople in AD 381 explicitly affirmed the Trinity! How could they do this without the benefit of a text that didn’t get into the Greek NT for another millennium? Constantinople’s statement was not written in a vacuum: the early church put into a theological formulation what they got out of the NT.

A distinction needs to be made here: just because a particular verse does not affirm a cherished doctrine does not mean that that doctrine cannot be found in the NT. In this case, anyone with an understanding of the healthy patristic debates over the Godhead knows that the early church arrived at their understanding from an examination of the data in the NT. The Trinitarian formula found in late manuscripts of 1 John 5.7 only summarized what they found; it did not inform their declarations.

Conclusion

In sum, Ehrman’s latest book does not disappoint on the provocative scale. But it comes up short on genuine substance about his primary contention. I beg your indulgence as I reflect on two pastoral points here.

First is my plea to all biblical scholars to take seriously their responsibility in caring for God’s people. Scholars bear a sacred duty not to alarm lay readers on issues that they have little understanding of. Indeed, even agnostic teachers bear this responsibility. Unfortunately, the average layperson will leave Misquoting Jesus with far greater doubts about the wording and teachings of the NT than any textual critic would ever entertain. A good teacher doesn’t hold back on telling his students what’s what, but he also knows how to package the material so they don’t let emotion get in the way of reason. The irony is that Misquoting Jesus is supposed to be all about reason and evidence, but it has been creating as much panic and alarm as The Da Vinci Code. Is that really the pedagogical effect Ehrman was seeking? I have to assume that he knew what kind of a reaction he would get from this book, for he does not change the impression at all in his interviews. Being provocative, even at the risk of being misunderstood, seems to be more important to him than being honest even at the risk of being boring. But a good teacher does not create Chicken Littles.⁷⁴

Second, what I tell my students every year is that it is imperative that they pursue truth rather than protect their presuppositions. And they need to have a doctrinal taxonomy that distinguishes core beliefs from peripheral beliefs. When they place more peripheral doctrines such as inerrancy and verbal inspiration at the core, then when belief in these doctrines starts to erode, it creates a domino effect: One falls down, they all fall down. It strikes me that something like this may be what happened to Bart Ehrman. His testimony in Misquoting Jesus discussed inerrancy as the prime mover in his studies. But when a glib comment from one of his conservative professors at Princeton was scribbled on a term paper, to the effect that perhaps the Bible is not inerrant, Ehrman’s faith began to crumble. One domino crashed into another until eventually he became ‘a fairly happy agnostic.’ I may be wrong about Ehrman’s own spiritual journey, but I have known too many students who have gone in that direction. The irony is that those who frontload their critical investigation of the text of the Bible with bibliological presuppositions often speak of a ‘slippery slope’ on which all theological convictions are tied to inerrancy. Their view is that if inerrancy goes, everything else begins to erode. I would say rather that if inerrancy is elevated to the status of a prime doctrine, that’s when one gets on a slippery slope. But if a student views doctrines as concentric circles, with the cardinal doctrines occupying the center, then if the more peripheral doctrines are challenged, this does not have a significant impact on the core. In other words, the evangelical community will continue to produce liberal scholars until we learn to nuance our faith commitments a bit more, until we learn to see Christ as the center of our lives and scripture as that which points to him. If our starting point is embracing propositional truths about the nature of scripture rather than personally embracing Jesus Christ as our Lord and King, we’ll be on that slippery slope, and we’ll take a lot of folks down with us.

I grieve for what has happened to an acquaintance of mine, a man I have known and admired—and continue to admire—for over a quarter of a century. It gives me no joy to put forth this review. But from where I sit, it seems that Bart’s black and white mentality as a fundamentalist has hardly been affected as he slogged through the years and trials of life and learning, even when he came out on the other side of the theological spectrum. He still sees things without sufficient nuancing, he overstates his case, and he is entrenched in the security that his own views are right. Bart Ehrman is one of the most brilliant and creative textual critics I’ve ever known, and yet his biases are so strong that, at times, he cannot even acknowledge them.⁷⁵ Just months before Misquoting Jesus appeared, the fourth edition of Metzger’s Text of the New Testament was published. The first three editions were written solely by Metzger and bore the title The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. The fourth edition, now co-authored with Ehrman, makes such a title seem almost disingenuous. The reader of Misquoting Jesus might be tempted to think that the subtitle of Metzger’s fourth edition should have been called simply Its Transmission and Corruption.⁷⁶

¹ Thanks are due to Darrell L. Bock, Buist M. Fanning, Michael W. Holmes, W. Hall Harris, and William F. Warren for looking at a preliminary draft of this article and offering their input.

² San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.

³ Neely Tucker, “The Book of Bart: In the Bestseller ‘Misquoting Jesus,’ Agnostic Author Bart Ehrman Picks Apart the Gospels That Made a Disbeliever Out of Him,” Washington Post, March 5, 2006. Accessed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030401369.html.

⁴ Tucker, “The Book of Bart.”

⁵ Misquoting, 15.

⁶ See especially 59-60.

⁷ Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (Oxford: OUP, 2005).

⁸ Metzger-Ehrman, Text, 158 (italics added). This stands in direct contradiction to Ehrman’s assessment in his conclusion (207), quoted above.

⁹ Quotation from Ehrman, Misquoting, 112.

¹⁰ Ibid., 114.

¹¹ See Misquoting, 1-15, where Ehrman chronicles his own spiritual journey.

¹² In chapter 5, “Originals that Matter,” Ehrman discusses the method of textual criticism. Here he devotes about three pages to external evidence (128-31), but does not mention any individual manuscripts.

¹³ Misquoting, 90. This is a favorite statement of his, for it shows up in his interviews, both in print and on the radio.

¹⁴ Misquoting, 89.

¹⁵ For a discussion of the nature of the textual variants, see J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: What The Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You (Grand Rapids: Kregel, May 2006). The book is due out in June 2006. The section that addresses textual criticism, comprising five chapters, is called “Politically Corrupt? The Tainting of Ancient New Testament Texts.”

¹⁶ “When I talk about the hundreds and thousands of differences, it’s true that a lot are insignificant. But it’s also true that a lot are highly significant for interpreting the Bible” (Ehrman in an interview with Jeri Krentz, Charlotte Observer, December 17, 2005 [accessed at http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/living/religion/13428511.htm]). In the same interview, when asked, “If we don’t have the original texts of the New Testament—or even copies of the copies of the copies of the originals—what do we have?” Ehrman responded, “We have copies that were made hundreds of years later—in most cases, many hundreds of years later. And these copies are all different from one another.” On The Diane Rehm Show (National Public Radio), December 8, 2005, Ehrman said, “There are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the NT.”

¹⁷ Note the following: “our manuscripts are…full of mistakes” (57); “Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later…And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places… these copies differ from one another in so many places that we don’t even known how many differences there are” (10); “Mistakes multiply and get repeated; sometimes they get corrected and sometimes they get compounded. And so it goes. For centuries” (57); “We could go on nearly forever talking about specific places in which the texts of the New Testament came to be changed, either accidentally or intentionally. As I have indicated, the examples are not just in the hundreds but in the thousands” (98); in discussing John Mill’s textual apparatus of 1707, Ehrman declares, “To the shock and dismay of many of his readers, Mill’s apparatus isolated some thirty thousand places of variation among the surviving witnesses… Mill was not exhaustive in his presentation of the data he had collected. He had, in fact, found far more than thirty thousands places of variation” (84); “Scholars differ significantly in their estimates—some say there are 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more! We do not know for sure because, despite impressive developments in computer technology, no one has yet been able to count them all” (89); he concludes his discussion of Mark 16.9-20 and John 7.53-8.11, the two longest textual problems of the NT by far, by saying that these two texts “represent just two out of thousands of places in which the manuscripts of the New Testament came to be changed by scribes” (68). To say that these two textual problems are representative of other textual problems is a gross overstatement: the next largest viable omission/addition problem involves just two verses. Ehrman does add that “Although most of the changes are not of this magnitude, there are lots of significant changes (and lots more insignificant ones)…” (69). Yet even that is a bit misleading. By “most of the changes” Ehrman means all other changes.

¹⁸ E.g., he opens chapter 7 with these words: “It is probably safe to say that the copying of early Christians texts was by and large a ‘conservative’ process. The scribes…were intent on ‘conserving’ the textual tradition they were passing on. Their ultimate concern was not to modify the tradition, but to preserve it for themselves and for those who would follow them. Most scribes, no doubt, tried to do a faithful job in making sure that the text they reproduced was the same text they inherited” (177). “It would be a mistake…to assume that the only changes being made were by copyists with a personal stake in the wording of the text. In fact, most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and and away the [sic] most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple—slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another” (55). “To be sure, of all the hundreds of thousands of changes found among the manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant…” (207). Such concessions seem to be wrung out of him, for these facts are contrary to his agenda. In this instance, he immediately adds that “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” (207-8). And he prefaces his concession by the bold statement that “The more I studied the manuscript tradition of the New Testament, the more I realized just how radically the text had been altered over the years at the hands of scribes…” (207). But this is another claim without sufficient nuancing. Yes, scribes have changed the text, but the vast majority of changes are insignificant. And the vast majority of the rest are easily detectable. One almost gets the sense that it is the honest scholar in Ehrman who is adding these concessions, and the theological liberal in Ehrman who keeps the concessions at a minimum.

¹⁹ This illustration is taken from Daniel B. Wallace, “Laying a Foundation: New Testament Textual Criticism,” in Interpreting the New Testament Text: Introduction to the Art and Science of Exegesis (a Festschrift for Harold W. Hoehner), ed. Darrell L. Bock and Buist M. Fanning (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, [forthcoming: 2006]).

One more item could be mentioned about Ehrman’s lacunae on the manuscripts. Ehrman seems to be gradually moving toward an internal priority view. He argues for several readings that are hanging onto external evidence by a bare thread. This seems strange because just months before Misquoting Jesus appeared, the fourth edition of Bruce Metzger’s Text of the New Testament was published, co-authored this time by Bart Ehrman. Yet in that book, both authors speak more highly of the external evidence than Ehrman does in Misquoting Jesus.

²⁰ Misquoting, 7.

²¹ Ibid., 9. For a treatment of the problem in Mark 2.26, see Daniel B. Wallace, “Mark 2.26 and the Problem of Abiathar,” ETS SW regional meeting, March 13, 2004, available at http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=3839.

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid., 11.

²⁴ Ibid., 13 (italics added).

²⁵ The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford: OUP, 1993).

²⁶ Ibid., 208.

²⁷ 281, n. 5 (to ch. 8), “Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?” in Reinventing Jesus is here duplicated: “There are two places in the New Testament where conjecture has perhaps been needed. In Acts 16.12 the standard critical Greek text gives a reading that is not found in any Greek manuscripts. But even here, some members of the UBS committee rejected the conjecture, arguing that certain manuscripts had the original reading. The difference between the two readings is only one letter. (See discussion in Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2d ed. [Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994], 393–95; NET Bible “tc” note on Acts 16.12.) Also, in Revelation 21.17 the standard Greek text follows a conjecture that Westcott and Hort originally put forth, though the textual problem is not listed in either the UBS text or the Nestle-Aland text. This conjecture is a mere spelling variant that changes no meaning in the text.”

²⁸ For a discussion of this issue, see Daniel B. Wallace, “Inerrancy and the Text of the New Testament: Assessing the Logic of the Agnostic View,” posted in January 2006 on http://www.4truth.net/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=hiKXLbPNLrF&b=784441&ct=1799301.

²⁹ Misquoting, 208.

³⁰ See Hermann L. Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Atheneum, NY: Temple, 1978) 94, 96 for this hermeneutical principle known as Kal Wa-homer.

³¹ An accessible discussion of the textual problem in these three passages can be found in the footnotes of the NET Bible on these texts.

³² Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edition DeLuxe, six volumes (Philadelphia: John D. Morris, [1900]) 3.703–5.

³³ James Bentley, Secrets of Mount Sinai: The Story of the Codex Sinaiticus (London: Orbis, 1985) 29.

³⁴ See Bart D. Ehrman, “Jesus and the Adulteress,” NTS 34 (1988) 24-44.

³⁵ Because of this need, Reinventing Jesus was written. Although written on a popular level, it is backed with serious scholarship.

³⁶ Ehrman says the reading “occurs in only two documents of the tenth century” (Misquoting Jesus, 145), by which he means only two Greek documents, 0243 (0121b) and 1739txt. These manuscripts are closely related and probably represent a common archetype. It is also found in 424cvid (thus, apparently a later correction in an eleventh century minuscule) as well as vgms syrpmss Origengr (vr), lat MSSaccording to Origen Theodore Nestorians according to Ps-Oecumenius Theodoret 1/2; lem Ambrose MSSaccording to Jerome Vigilius Fulgentius. Ehrman does note some of the patristic evidence, underscoring an important argument, viz., “Origen tells us that this was the reading of the majority of manuscripts in his own day” (ibid.).

³⁷ This, however, is not necessarily the case. An argument could be made that χάριτι θεοῦ is the harder reading, since the cry of dereliction from the cross, in which Jesus quoted Ps 22.1, may be reflected in the χωρὶς θεοῦ reading, while dying “by the grace of God” is not as clear.

³⁸ So Metzger, Textual Commentary2, 595. In uncial script: caritiqu vs. cwrisqu.

³⁹ Ibid. For similar arguments, see F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, rev ed, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990) 70–71, n. 15. The point of the marginal gloss is that in Heb 2.8 the author quotes Ps 8.6, adding that “in the subjecting of all things to him, he left nothing outside of his control.” In 1 Cor 15.27, which also quotes Ps 8.6, Paul adds the qualifier that God was excluded from the ‘all things’ that were subjected to Christ. Metzger argues that the gloss was most likely added by a scribe “to explain that ‘everything in ver. 8 does not include God; this gloss, being erroneously regarded by a later transcriber as a correction of χάριτι θεοῦ, was introduced into the text of ver. 9” (Textual Commentary, 595). For the better treatments of this problem in the exegetical literature, see Hans-Friedrich Weiss, Der Brief an die Hebräer in MeyerK (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1991) 200–2; Bruce, Hebrews, 70–71.

Ehrman says that such is quite unlikely because of the location of the χωρίς reading in v 9 rather than as an additional note in v 8 where it belongs. But the fact that such an explanation presupposes a single errant ancestor for the few witnesses that have it is hardly a stretch. Stranger things have happened among the manuscripts. Ehrman adds that χωρίς is the less usual term in the NT, and thus scribes would tend toward the more usual, χάριτι. But in Hebrews χωρίς is almost twice as frequent as χάρις, as Ehrman notes (Orthodox Corruption), 148. Further, although it is certainly true that scribes “typically confuse unusual words for common ones” (ibid., 147), there is absolutely nothing unusual about χωρίς. It occurs 41 times in the NT, thirteen of which are in Hebrews. This brings us back to the canon of the harder reading. Ehrman argues that χωρίς is indeed the harder reading here, but in Metzger-Ehrman, Text, he (and Metzger) says, “Obviously, the category ‘more difficult reading’ is relative, and a point is sometimes reached when a reading must be judged to be so difficult that it can have arisen only by accident in transcription” (303). Many scholars, including Metzger, would say that that point was reached in Heb 2.9.

⁴⁰ Orthodox Corruption, 149 (italics added).

⁴¹ By this, I do not mean merely his adoption of χωρὶς θεοῦ here. (After all, Günther Zuntz, highly regarded as a brilliant and sober-minded reasoned eclectic, also considered χωρὶς θεοῦ as authentic [The Text of the Epistles: A Disquisition upon the Corpus Paulinum [Schweich Lectures, 1946; London: OUP, 1953) 34–35].) Rather, I am referring to Ehrman’s overall agenda of exploiting the apparatus for orthodox corruptions, regardless of the evidence for alternative readings. With this agenda, Ehrman seems driven to argue for certain readings that have little external support.

⁴² The preface to this edition was written on September 30, 1993. Metzger is acknowledged in Orthodox Corruption as having ‘read parts of the manuscript’ (vii), a book completed in February 1993 (ibid., viii). If Metzger read the section on Heb 2.9, he still disagreed strongly with Ehrman. Alternatively he was not shown this portion of the manuscript. If the latter, one has to wonder why Ehrman would not want to get Metzger’s input since he already knew, from the first edition of Textual Commentary, that Metzger did not see the cwrivV reading as likely (there it is given a ‘B’ rating).

⁴³ Misquoting, 132 (italics added).

⁴⁴ Orthodox Corruption, 148.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 149.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Misquoting Jesus, 208.

⁴⁸ Orthodox Corruption, 144 (italics added).

⁴⁹ The context of Heb 5, however, speaks of Christ as high priest; v 6 sets the stage by linking Christ’s priesthood to that of Melchizedek; v 7 connects his prayers with “the days of his flesh,” not just with his passion. It is thus not unreasonable to see his prayers as prayers for his people. All this suggests that more than the passion is in view in Heb 5.7. The one datum in this text that may connect the prayers with the passion is that the one to whom Christ prayed was “able to save him from death.” But if the prayers are restricted to Christ’s ordeal on the cross, then the χωρίς reading in Heb 2.9 seems to be refuted, for in 5.7 the Lord “was heard [εἰσακουσθει…vς] because of his devotion.” How could he be heard if he died apart from God? The interpretive issues in Heb 5.7 are somewhat complex, yielding no facile answers. See William L. Lane, Hebrews 1–8, WBC (Dallas: Word, 1991) 119–20.

⁵⁰ D ita d ff2 r1 Diatessaron.

⁵¹ Bart D. Ehrman, “A Leper in the Hands of an Angry Jesus,” in New Testament Greek and Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Gerald F. Hawthorne (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) 77–98.

⁵² Mark A. Proctor, “The ‘Western’ Text of Mark 1:41: A Case for the Angry Jesus” (Ph.D. diss., Baylor University, 1999). Even though Ehrman’s article appeared four years after Proctor’s dissertation, Ehrman did not mention Proctor’s work.

⁵³ Misquoting, 132 (italics added).

⁵⁴ Ehrman, “A Leper in the Hands of an Angry Jesus,” 95.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 94. See also 87: “Jesus gets angry on several occasions in Mark’s Gospel; what is most interesting to note is that each account involves Jesus’ ability to perform miraculous deeds of healing.”

⁵⁶ There are a few weak links in his overall argument, however. First, he does not make out the best case that every instance in which Jesus is angry is in a healing account. Is the pericope about Jesus laying hands on children really a healing story (10.13-16)? It is unclear what disease these children are being ‘healed’ of. His suggestion that the laying on of hands indicates healing or at least the transmission of divine power here is lame (“A Leper in the Hands of an Angry Jesus,” 88). Further, it proves too much, for 10.16 says that Jesus “took the children in his arms and placed his hands on them and blessed them.” To not see a compassionate and gentle Jesus in such a text is almost incomprehensible. So, if this is a healing narrative, it also implies Jesus’ compassion in the very act of healing—a motive that Ehrman says never occurs in healing narratives in Mark.

Second, he claims that Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law in Mark 1.30-31 is not a compassionate act: “More than one wry observer has noted…that after he does so she gets up to feed them supper” (ibid., 91, n. 16). But surely Ehrman’s statement—repeated in Misquoting Jesus (138)—is simply a politically correct comment that is meant to suggest that for Jesus to restore the woman to a subservient role cannot be due to his compassion. Is not the point rather that the woman was fully healed, her strength completely recovered, even to the point that she could return to her normal duties and Jesus and his disciples? As such, it seems to function similarly to the raising of the synagogue ruler’s daughter, for as soon as her life was restored Mark tells us that “the girl got up at once and began to walk around” (Mark 5.42).

Third, in more than one healing narrative in the synoptic Gospels—including the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law—we see strong hints of compassion on Jesus’ part when he grabs the person’s hand. In Matt 9.25; Mark 1.31; 5.41; 9.27; and Luke 8.54 the expression each time is κρατήσας/ἐκράτησεν τῆς χειρός. kratevw with a genitive direct object, rather than an accusative direct object, is used in these texts. In the Gospels when this verb takes an accusative direct object, it has the force of seizing, clinging to, holding firmly (cf. Matt 14.3; 21.46; 22.6; 26.57; 28.9; Mark 6.17; 7.3, 4, 8; but when it takes a genitive direct object, it implies a gentle touch more than a firm grip, and is used only in healing contexts (note the translation in the NET of κρατήσας/ἐκράτησεν τῆς χειρός in Matt 9.25; Mark 1.31; 5.41; 9.27; and Luke 8.54). What is to be noted in these texts is not only that there is no difference between Mark on the one hand and Matthew and Luke on the other, but that Mark actually has more instances of this idiom than Matthew and Luke combined. How does this ‘gently taking her/him by the hand’ not speak of compassion?

Fourth, to not see Jesus’ compassion in texts that don’t use σπλαγχνίζομαι or the like, as Ehrman is wont to do, borders on the lexical-conceptual equation fallacy in which a concept cannot be seen in a given text unless the word for such a concept is there. To take a simple example, consider the word for ‘fellowship’ in the Greek NT, κοινωνία. The word occurs less than twenty times, but no one would claim that the concept of fellowship occurs so infrequently. Ehrman, of course, knows this and tries to argue that both the words for compassion and the concept are not to be seen in Mark’s healing stories. But he leaves the impression that since he has established this point lexically by athetizing σπλαγχνισθείς in Mark 1.41, the concept is easy to dispense with.

Fifth, Ehrman’s dismissal of all alternative interpretations to his understanding of why and at whom Jesus was angry in Mark 1.41 is too cavalier. His certitude that “even the commentators who realize that the text originally indicated that Jesus became angry are embarrassed by the idea and try to explain it away, so that the text no longer means what it says” (“A Leper in the Hands of an Angry Jesus,” 86) implies that his interpretation surely must be right. (Although Ehrman makes quick work of various views, he does not interact at all with Proctor’s view, apparently because he was unaware of Proctor’s dissertation when he wrote his piece for the Hawthorne Festschrift. Proctor essentially argues that the healing of the leper is a double healing, which also implicitly involves an exorcism [“A Case for the Angry Jesus,” 312-16]. Proctor summarizes his argument as follows: “Given (1) popular first-century views regarding the link between demons and disease, (2) the exorcistic language of v 43, (3) the behavior of demoniacs and those associated with them elsewhere in the Gospel, and (4) Luke’s treatment of Mark 1:29-31, this seems to be a relatively safe assumption even though Mark makes [sic] does not explicitly describe the man as a demoniac” [325-26, n. 6].) Not only does Ehrman charge exegetes with misunderstanding Mark’s ὀργισθείς, he also says that Matthew and Luke don’t understand: “[A]nyone not intimately familiar with Mark’s Gospel on its own terms… may not have understand why Jesus became angry. Matthew certainly did not; neither did Luke” (ibid., 98). Is it not perhaps a bit too brash to claim that the reason Matthew and Luke dropped ojrgisqeivV was because they were ignorant of Mark’s purposes? After all, were they not also ‘intimately familiar with Mark’s Gospel’? Are there not any other plausible reasons for their omission?

Along these lines, it should be noted that not all interpretations are created equal, but the irony here is that Ehrman seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. In the concluding chapter of Misquoting Jesus he says “meaning is not inherent and texts do not speak for themselves. If texts could speak for themselves, then everyone honestly and openly reading a text would agree on what the text says” (216). He adds, “The only way to make sense of a text is to read it, and the only way to read it is by putting it in other words, and the only way to put it in other words is by having other words to put it into, and the only way you have other words to put it into is that you have a life, and the only way to have a life is by being filled with desires, longings, needs, wants, beliefs, perspectives, worldviews, opinions, likes, dislikes—and all the other things that make human beings human. And so to read a text, necessarily, is to change a text” (217). I may be misunderstanding him here, but this sounds as though Ehrman cannot claim his own interpretation as superior to others since all interpretation changes a text, and if each interpretation changes the text then how is interpretation of a text more valid than other interpretations? If I have misunderstood his meaning, my basic point still stands: his dismissal of other interpretations is too cavalier.

⁵⁷ See the discussion in the NET Bible’s note on this verse.

⁵⁸ Orthodox Corruption, 92: “not only is the phrase οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός found in our earliest and best manuscripts of Matthew, it is also necessary on internal grounds.”

⁵⁹ Misquoting Jesus, 208 (quoted earlier).

⁶⁰ Ibid., 95: “Scribes found this passage difficult: the Son of God, Jesus himself, does not know when the end will come? How could that be? Isn’t he all-knowing? To resolve the problem, some scribes simply modified the text by taking out the words ‘nor even the Son.’ Now the angels may be ignorant, but the Son of God isn’t.”

⁶¹ Codex X, one Vulgate manuscript, and a few other unnamed witnesses (according to the apparatus of Nestle-Aland27) drop the phrase here.

⁶² Misquoting Jesus, 95, 110, 204, 209, 223 n. 19, 224 n. 16.

⁶³ Misquoting, 162.

⁶⁴ Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption, 81.

⁶⁵ Another criticism is that Ehrman has too hastily asserted that μονογενής cannot have the implied force of “unique son” as in “the unique Son, who is God” (ibid., 80-81):

The difficulty with this view is that there is nothing about the word μονογενής itself that suggests it. Outside of the New Testament the term simply means “one of a kind” or “unique,” and does so with reference any range of animate or inanimate objects. Therefore, recourse must be made to its usage within the New Testament. Here proponents of the view argue that in situ the word implies “sonship,” for it always occurs (in the New Testament) either in explicit conjunction with υἱός or in a context where a υἱός is named and then described as μονογενής (Luke 9:38, John 1:14, Heb 11:17). Nonetheless, as suggestive as the argument may appear, it contains the seeds of its own refutation: if the word μονογενής is understood to mean “a unique son,” one wonders why it is typically put in attribution to υἱός, an attribution that then creates an unusual kind of redundancy (“the unique-son son”). Given the fact that neither the etymology of the word nor its general usage suggests any such meaning, this solution seems to involve a case of special pleading.

The problem with this assertion is threefold: (1) If in the three texts listed above μονογενής does, in fact, have both a substantival force and involves the implication of sonship, then to argue that this could be the case in John 1.18 is not an instance of special pleading because there is already clear testimony within the NT of this force. (2) Ehrman’s argument rests on going outside of biblical Greek for the normative meaning of a term that seemed to have special nuances within the Bible. But since in the NT (Heb 11.17)—as well as patristic Greek (see n. 62) and the LXX (cf. Judg 11.34 where the adjective is used prior to the noun that speaks of Jephthah’s daughter; Tobit 3.15 is similar; cf. also Tobit 8.17)—μονογενής often both bears the connotation of ‘son’ (or child) and is used absolutely (i.e., substantivally), to argue for a secular force within the Bible looks like special pleading. (3) To argue that an implied lexical force becomes “an unusual kind of redundancy” when the implication is brought out explicitly in the text requires much more nuancing before it can be applied as any kind of normative principle: on its face, and in application to the case in hand, it strikes me as almost wildly untrue. In grammar and lexeme, the NT is filled with examples in which the ebb and flow of implicit and explicit meaning intertwine with one another. To take but one example from the grammatical side: εἰσέρχομαι εἰς is a generally hellenistic expression in which the increased redundancy (by the doubling of the preposition) gets the point across. It is found over 80 times in the NT, yet it does not mean “come-into into”! Yet, it means the same thing as ἔρχομαι εἰς, a phrase that occurs over 70 times in the NT. English examples readily come to mind as well: In colloquial speech, we often hear “foot pedal” (is there any other kind of pedal besides one for the feet?).

⁶⁶ Added to my examples are those that a doctoral student at Dallas Seminary, Stratton Ladewig, has culled from elsewhere in the NT: . As well, he has found several inexact parallels. See his Th.M. thesis, “An Examination of the Orthodoxy of the Variants in Light of Bart Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture,” Dallas Seminary, 2000.

⁶⁷ A quick look at Lampe’s Patristic Greek Lexicon also reveals that the substantival function of this adjective was commonplace: 881, def. 7, the term is used absolutely in a host of patristic writers.

⁶⁸ Ehrman is not altogether clear in his argument that monogenh;V qeov" was an anti-adoptionistic reading. If his construal of the meaning of the text is correct, it looks more modalistic than orthodox. Yet, since its pedigree is solidly Alexandrian, it would seem to go back to an archetype that antedated the roots of the Sabellian heresy. In other words, the motivations for the reading, assuming Ehrman’s interpretation, are muddied at best.

⁶⁹ For the case that the NT speaks clearly of Christ’s deity, see Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus.

⁷⁰ Gordon D. Fee, review of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture in Critical Review of Books in Religion 8 (1995) 204.

⁷¹ See J. K. Elliott, review of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman, in NovT 36.4 (1994): 405–06; Michael W. Holmes, review of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman, in RelSRev 20.3 (1994): 237; Gordon D. Fee, review of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman, in CRBR 8 (1995): 203–06; Bruce M. Metzger, review of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman, in PSB 15.2 (1994): 210–12; David C. Parker, review of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman, in JTS 45.2 (1994): 704–08; J. N. Birdsall, Review of The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman, in Theology 97.780 (1994): 460-62; Ivo Tamm, Theologisch-christologische Varianten  in der frühen Überlieferung des Neuen Testaments? (Magisterschrift, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, n.d.); Stratton Ladewig, “An Examination of the Orthodoxy of the Variants in Light of Bart Ehrman’s The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture” (Th.M. thesis, Dallas Seminary, 2000).

⁷² Misquoting Jesus, 114 (italics added).

⁷³ See, e.g., D. A. Carson, King James Version Debate [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979], 64).

⁷⁴ Although Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus may well be the first lay introduction to New Testament textual criticism, in the spring of 2006 a second book that deals with these issues (and some others) is to be released. See Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, for a more balanced treatment of the data.

⁷⁵ I am reminded of Martin Hengel’s insight about the parallel dangers from “an uncritical, sterile apologetic fundamentalism” and “from no less sterile ‘critical ignorance’” of radical liberalism. At bottom, the approaches are the same; the only differences are the presuppositions (Martin Hengel, Studies in Early Christology [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995], 57–58). I am not saying that Ehrman is there, but he no longer seems to be the true liberal that he once aspired to be.

⁷⁶ It should be noted that Misquoting Jesus is dedicated to Bruce Metzger, whom Ehrman describes as “the world’s leading expert in the field [of NT textual criticism]” (Misquoting, 7). Yet Metzger would fundamentally disagree with Ehrman’s thesis in this book.

August 10, 2006

A popular blogsite recently reviewed Reinventing Jesus (a book I coauthored with Ed Komoszewski and Jim Sawyer [see www.reinventingjesus.info for reviews and contents about the book]). The review was quite positive, and as is typical on blogsites, there were a lot of comments to follow. One comment took a detour from discussion about the book and challenged what he thought were my bibliological views. From this, a snowball effect occurred. Essentially, snippets from some of my published and posted essays were used to put me on trial. What started the whole heresy trial (perhaps that is too strong a word, but the tenor of much of the discussion certainly seemed to go in that direction), however, were some acontextual quotations from a lecture I gave at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Danvers, MA seven years ago—a paper that was not intended for a general audience. I have refrained from posting that paper online because of the pre-understanding of several issues needed to grasp the full argument. In other words, my pastoral concerns have kept me from posting an essay for general consumption that requires a bit of theological training to comprehend.

Back to the blogsite. Remarkably, not one person interacting with this minimal material contacted me directly for clarification, in spite of the pleas of Ed Komoszewski, who asked that people read a little bit more of what I have written before passing judgment. Ed also asked them more than once to write to me if they had problems with my views. Judgment was passed even though Ed mentioned that some of the quotations were taken out of context and others were not quoted accurately. Such is the age of the Internet: A man’s reputation can be dashed in minutes by those who only have hearsay to go on. I am consequently taking the opportunity to post a response to my critics and inquirers here.

But I must begin by saying that although I am strongly Reformed in many of my views (including my soteriology and epistemology), I felt ashamed of such a heritage when reading many of the bloggers’ comments. Now, please understand: I have a fairly thick skin, and I’m not particularly concerned about what people think of me. After all, King James Only advocates have condemned me to hell more times than I can count! But when people with whom I have a much greater theological kinship do the same, I feel as though they are taking a step backwards on their evangelical commitment. After all, one of the things that makes an evangelical different from a fundamentalist is that an evangelical is supposed to be willing to wrestle with the evidence. One of the hallmark differences between a fundamentalist and an evangelical is willingness to dialog over the issues. A fundamentalist condemns; an evangelical thinks. A college professor of mine used to say, “The Christian army is the only army in the world that shoots its wounded.” And, as a colleague of mine at Dallas Seminary says, “Some evangelicals in the rear guard are more comfortable taking pot shots at their own front line troops than they are engaging with the enemy.” It is a sad state of affairs for the evangelical church, especially the Reformed branch, when some act more like fundamentalists than evangelicals.

Christology and Bibliology

Before I discuss the particular accusations against me regarding inerrancy, I would like to preface my remarks with notes about my methodological approach to this issue. This preface is actually the heart of this paper because it is where the confusion has come. Here goes: The center of all theology, of the entirety of the Christian faith, is Christ himself. The cross is the center of time: all before leads up to it; all after it is shaped by it. If Christ were not God in the flesh, he would not have been raised from the dead. And if he were not raised from the dead, none of us would have any hope. My theology grows out from Christ, is based on Christ, and focuses on Christ.

Years ago, I would have naively believed that all Christians could give their hearty amens to the previous paragraph. Sadly, this is not the case. There are many whose starting point and foundation is bibliology. They begin with the assumption that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, and that the way one must define inerrancy is in twentieth-century philosophical terms. I won’t get into the details of how inerrancy (in America at least) has been filtered through the grid of Scottish Common Sense Realism, as that would take us far afield from the main objective here. Suffice it to say that many evangelicals believe that without an inerrant Bible we can’t know anything about Jesus Christ. They often ask the question, “How can we be sure that anything in the Bible is true? How can we be sure that Jesus Christ is who he said he was, or even that he existed, if the Bible is not inerrant?”

Inductive vs. Deductive Approaches to Inerrancy

My response to the above question is twofold. First, before the New Testament was written, how did people come to faith in Christ? To assume that having a complete Bible is necessary before we can know anything about Christ is both anachronistic and counterproductive. Our epistemology has to wrestle with the spread of the gospel before the Gospels were penned. The very fact that it spread so fast—even though the apostles were not always regarded highly—is strong testimony both to the work of the Spirit and to the historical evidence that the eyewitnesses affirmed. Second, we can know about Christ because the Bible is a historical document. If we demand inerrancy of the Bible before we can believe that any of it is true, what are we to say about other ancient historical documents? We don’t demand that they be inerrant, yet no evangelical would be totally skeptical about all of ancient history. Why put the Bible in a different category before we can believe it at all? We are not asked to take a leap of faith in believing the Bible to be the Word of God, or even to believe that it is historically reliable; we have evidence that this is the case. I enlist on my behalf that radical Arminian of yesteryear, Benjamin B. Warfield¹ (after whom we named our second son). In his Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, Warfield lays out an argument for inerrancy that has been virtually ignored by today’s evangelicals. Essentially, he makes a case for inerrancy on the basis of inductive evidence, rather than deductive reasoning. Most evangelicals today follow E. J. Young’s deductive approach toward bibliology, forgetting the great articulator of inerrancy. But Warfield starts with the evidence that the Bible is a historical document, rather than with the presupposition that it is inspired. This may seem shocking to some in the Reformed camp, but one can hardly claim that Warfield was soft on bibliological convictions! Let me prove my point with a lengthy quotation from his Inspiration and Authority of the Bible:

Now if this doctrine is to be assailed on critical grounds, it is very clear that, first of all, criticism must be required to proceed against the evidence on which it is based. This evidence, it is obvious, is twofold. First, there is the exegetical evidence that the doctrine held and taught by the Church is the doctrine held and taught by the Biblical writers themselves. And secondly, there is the whole mass of evidence—internal and external, objective and subjective, historical and philosophical, human and divine—which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as doctrinal guides. If they are trustworthy teachers of doctrine and if they held and taught this doctrine, then this doctrine is true, and is to be accepted and acted upon as true by us all. In that case, any objections brought against the doctrine from other spheres of inquiry are inoperative; it being a settled logical principle that so long as the proper evidence by which a proposition is established remains unrefuted, all so-called objections brought against it pass out of the category of objections to its truth into the category of difficulties to be adjusted to it. If criticism is to assail this doctrine, therefore, it must proceed against and fairly overcome one or the other element of its proper proof. It must either show that this doctrine is not the doctrine of the Biblical writers, or else it must show that the Biblical writers are not trustworthy as doctrinal guides.²

Notice how often Warfield speaks of evidence here as the grounds for believing in inerrancy. The evidence is historical, exegetical, and doctrinal. Two statements stand out as crucial to his argument: “If they [the biblical writers] are trustworthy teachers of doctrine and if they held and taught this doctrine, then this doctrine is true…” and “If criticism is to assail this doctrine… It must either show that this doctrine is not the doctrine of the Biblical writers, or else it must show that the Biblical writers are not trustworthy as doctrinal guides.” I think Warfield’s argument is one of the most profound paragraphs ever written in defense of inerrancy. If you’re reading this quickly, go back and let it sink in for awhile.

In 1992, when Bruce Metzger was on campus at Dallas Seminary for a week, delivering the Griffith Thomas lectures, students would often ask him whether he embraced inerrancy. Frankly, I thought their question was a bit uncharitable since they already knew the answer (he does not). But as one who, like Warfield before him, taught at Princeton Seminary, and as a generally Reformed scholar, Metzger certainly had earned the right to be heard on this issue. His response was simply that he did not believe in inerrancy because he felt it unwise to hold to any doctrines that are not affirmed in the Bible, and he didn’t see inerrancy being affirmed in the Bible. In other words, he denied Warfield’s first argument (viz., that inerrancy was held by the biblical writers). It should be pointed out that Metzger would not disagree with Warfield’s second argument. In other words, he has a high view of the Bible, but not as high as most American evangelicals precisely because he does not think that the biblical writers held to the doctrine of inerrancy.

As an aside, I think it is important for us to note degrees of theological differences within Christendom. It is one thing to believe that inerrancy is not true because this doctrine is not found in the Bible, and quite another to believe that it is not true even though it is found in the Bible! The first view is consistent with what is called infallibility (viz., the Bible is true in what it teaches), while the second view takes a lower view of scripture.

I felt the import of Metzger’s argument even before I had heard it, because I had long ago memorized the passage from Warfield quoted above. When I was working on my master’s degree in the 1970s, I was convinced that Warfield’s twofold argument needed to be examined and either affirmed or rejected. So I wrote my master’s thesis on an arcane point of Greek grammar. It was entitled, “The Relation of Adjective to Noun in Anarthrous Constructions.” It could cure the most hopeless insomniac. But I chose that particular topic because it directly affected how we should translate 2 Timothy 3.16. Should we translate this verse “every inspired scripture is also profitable” with the possible implication that some scripture is not inspired, or should we translate it “every scripture is inspired and profitable,” in which case the inspiration of scripture is directly asserted? I spent over 1200 hours on that thesis, working without the benefit of computers—in the Greek New Testament, in the Septuagint, in classical Greek, in the papyri—to determine whether adjectives in anarthrous constructions (constructions in which no definite article was present) could be predicate or whether they had to be attributive. All of this related to 2 Timothy 3.16 because the adjective “inspired” was related to the noun “scripture” in an anarthrous construction. Further, of the dozens of New Testament grammars I checked, not one gave any actual evidence that adjectives in such constructions could be predicate. A predicate adjective would be translated as an assertion (“every scripture is inspired”) while an attributive adjective would be translated as a qualification or assumption (“every inspired scripture”). I felt an obligation to the evangelical community to wrestle with this issue and see if there was indeed genuine evidence on behalf of a predicate “inspired.” I charted out over 2200 Greek constructions in the New Testament, as well as countless others in other corpora—all by hand—then checked the primary sources a second time to make sure I got the statistics right. At one point, when an ice storm hit Dallas in the winter of 78-79, cutting down power lines in our neighborhood, I had to work by lamplight for a week to get the first draft of the thesis in on time. My conclusion was that “inspired” in 2 Timothy 3.16 was indeed a predicate adjective. And I supplied over 400 similar examples in the appendix to back it up! These 400 examples had never been discussed in any New Testament grammar before, as far as I could tell. I believed then, and I believe now, that supplying this kind of evidence is a worthy use of one’s time. The main part of the thesis ended up being the first piece of mine accepted for publication. It appeared in Novum Testamentum in 1984 as a lengthy article. And the editors kept my opening comment that my motivation for the article was to help resolve some disputes about bibliology raging at the time in American evangelical circles.

I mention the above autobiographical note for two reasons. First, the question of the nature of the Bible has been, and still is, a very precious issue to me. Obviously, to spend a thousand hours on a verse of scripture shows that such a text is important. And that such a passage is a major verse on verbal inspiration should show that this doctrine is important to me. Second, the conclusion I came to is equally important: I can affirm, with Warfield, that the biblical writers do indeed embrace a high view of the text of Holy Writ. To be sure, there is a lot more evidence for verbal inspiration and inerrancy than 2 Timothy 3.16. But this is a crux interpretum, deserving our utmost attention. I must therefore respectfully disagree with Professor Metzger about Warfield’s first argument. But I also recognize, as Dallas Seminary did in 1992, that Bruce Metzger is an evangelical scholar whose contributions to biblical scholarship and the cause of Christ deserve a hearing. Someone said, on the blogsite that prompted the need for this essay, that Dallas Seminary has surely changed in the last fifteen years to allow a heterodox person like me on the faculty! I must respectfully disagree with that assessment, and as an illustration of where Dallas Seminary was sixteen years ago, in 1990—when the faculty unanimously voted to ask Dr. Metzger to be the Griffith Thomas lecturer for 1992—we were not so paranoid about those who had a different take on things that we thought that a non-inerrantist would be the destroyer of our school. Now, I must quickly add: I am an inerrantist. But I may construct my approach to inerrancy differently than some others would. Dallas Seminary is not so paranoid that it would lynch me (or many others on the faculty with a similar approach) for arriving at inerrancy inductively rather than deductively. I am grateful to be at such a school, for its faculty are truly interested in engaging in dialog and wrestling seriously with the text of scripture.

Many today are uncomfortable with an inductive approach to bibliology. I have to wonder if perhaps one of the reasons they are is that it is simply easier to hold to a naïve fideism than it is to examine the data. I have to wonder if perhaps the presuppositionalism of Reformed epistemology has run amok in some circles. Yes, I am a presuppositionalist in my core beliefs, but I believe that there is a place for evidence. When I was a full-blown presuppositionalist years ago, I slipped into a kind of doctrinal arrogance. I didn’t distinguish which truths were grounds for others. This caused a certain smugness on my part, and allowed me the luxury of viewing all doctrines as created equal. But I learned a rather valuable lesson while in the master’s program. I came home to California for a Christmas vacation early on in the program. And I had lunch with my uncle, David Wallace. He was the first graduate from Fuller Seminary to earn a Ph.D. He earned it at Edinburgh University, under Matthew Black. But he also logged some time in various places in Europe—studying with Baumgartner, Barth, and others. He was not pleased with my choice to attend Dallas Seminary; I was clueless about what he really believed. During the lunch, I asked him what he thought about inerrancy. His response startled me, and changed my perspective for all time. He essentially said that he didn’t hold to the doctrine (though he said so much more colorfully than that!). I thought to myself, “Oh no! My uncle is going to hell!” I felt compelled to ask him what he thought about the bodily resurrection of Christ, fearing what I would hear next. After all, without inerrancy, we really can’t know anything about Christ, right? To my surprise, David said, “If Christ is not raised from the dead, then we’re all dead in our sins.” He was certain about the resurrection of Christ. But how could he be without a bibliological presupposition to back it up? I cannot tell you how great the existential crisis was for me at that moment. Up until this time, I had believed that inerrancy was an essential belief of the Christian faith, one that was indispensable to salvation. When David affirmed the central credo of salvation, I could not deny his spiritual status.³ I came to the sudden realization that one could be saved without embracing inerrancy.

Some today might think me rather naïve. I admit: I was. This lunch meeting was thirty years ago, however, and I hope that I have grown in wisdom just a bit over the last three decades. One thing I have learned is that we must develop a doctrinal taxonomy: certain doctrines are core beliefs, while others are more peripheral. By core or central beliefs, I mean beliefs that are essential for salvation. By more peripheral doctrines, I mean those that are not essential for salvation. I have been developing a more nuanced taxonomy than that of course. Here I want to raise three or four questions that should help the reader as I proceed through this labyrinthian bibliological trail:

1. What doctrines are essential for the life of the church?
2. What doctrines are important for the health of the church?
3. What doctrines are distinctives that are necessary for the practice of the local church?
4. What doctrines belong to the speculative realm or should never divide the church?

Many Christians have never thought about these issues in such terms. As a case in point, look at any doctrinal statement—whether it is your church’s, a Bible college’s, a seminary’s, or a Christian organization’s. How many of them prioritize their doctrines? Some churches do to some degree: leaders have to hold to a certain list, while regular parishioners can hold to a modified list. But even here, what doctrines belong to category one, two, or three, are not explicitly articulated.

Let me articulate a bit more about this approach to theological issues. Consider the role of women in church leadership, for example. Is a particular view essential for the life of the church? That is, does one have to hold to a particular view in order to be saved? Of course not. But some Christians may regard a particular view of the role of women as belonging to category two (important for the health of the church), while others may treat them as category three (necessary for the practice of the local church). Thus, if a church decides that a woman will not occupy the pulpit, it could be because of one of two reasons. It could be because the church believes that preaching to a mixed audience is inappropriate for women and that to allow such would be harmful to the health of the church (category two); or it could be because the church believes that some sort of consistency and harmony needs to occur within the local body, and allowing women to preach might lead to chaos in the church or at least confusion (category three). In this second option, it may well be that some of the church leaders view women preachers as a category two violation, while other church leaders do not. But for the sake of peace and harmony, the latter go along with the former. One can easily see how this approach to one’s credo can be helpful when it comes to baptism, spiritual gifts, communion, gray areas in the Christian life, eschatological positions, etc. The list is endless. But at bottom, we should recognize that doctrines need to be differentiated. If one is so inclined to break fellowship with others, valid reasons need to be given. For my take on things, fellowship cannot occur unless the core doctrines are affirmed by both parties. For my money, I cannot have genuine fellowship with someone who denies the deity of Christ or his bodily resurrection, because I do not believe that such a person is a Christian. These are not the only issues, but they are absolutely category one beliefs.

Christological Grounds for a High Bibliology

Where does this leave us with reference to inerrancy? I arrive at inerrancy through an inductive process, rather than by starting with it deductively. My epistemological method may therefore be different from others, but the resultant doctrine is not necessarily so. At bottom, the reason I hold to a high bibliology is grounded in my Christology. Jesus often spoke of the Bible in terms that went beyond the reverence that the Pharisees and Sadducees had for the text. They added traditions to the Bible, or truncated the canon, or otherwise failed to handle scripture appropriately. Jesus had a high view of the text, and it strikes me that I would be unwise to have a view different from his. Indeed, I believe I would be on dangerous ground if I were to take a different view of the text than Jesus did. Thus, my starting point for a high bibliology is Christ himself. Some may argue that we can’t even know what Jesus said unless we start with a high bibliology. Frankly, that approach is a bit circular. Making a pronouncement that scripture is inerrant does not guarantee the truth of such an utterance. If I said the moon is made of green cheese, that doesn’t make it so. At most, what such pronouncements can do is give one assurance. But this is not the same as knowledge. And if the method for arriving at such assurance is wrongheaded, then even the assurance needs to be called into question. A web of issues brings about the deepest kinds of theological assurance: evidence (historical, exegetical, hermeneutical, etc.), affirmations, the role of the Spirit, etc. One does not have the deepest assurance about inerrancy simply by convincing himself that it must be true. Indeed, I would argue that such a presuppositional approach often caves in on itself. Exhibit A is the countless theologians who defected to liberalism after starting with such a perspective. Because they did not have sufficient evidence for their position, because they suffocated the voice of the Spirit, because they held to a domino view of doctrine (one falls down, they all fall down), or because their evangelical professors viewed any questions about inerrancy as disrespectful or due to sin, they abandoned a high view of the text—and with it, a high view of Christ. And the real tragedy is that many evangelical leaders don’t believe what I’m saying and continue to produce the next generation of liberal theologians. But if inerrancy is true, what harm is there in examining the data of the text? What are you afraid of?

Now, someone may say, “But how do you know that Jesus actually held to a high bibliology unless you start with that presupposition? How do you know that the Gospel writers got the words of Jesus right in the first place?” I think that’s an excellent question. I would use the criteria of authenticity to argue that he indeed held to a high view of the text. The criteria of authenticity, when used properly, are criteria that Gospels scholars use to affirm whether Jesus said or did something. Notice that I did not say, “Gospels scholars use to deny whether Jesus said or did something.” The criteria of authenticity should normally be used only for positive results. To take one illustration: The criterion of dissimilarity is the criterion that says if Jesus said something that was unlike what any rabbi before him said and unlike what the church later said, then surely such a saying is authentic. I think this is good as far as it goes. It certainly works for “the Son of Man” sayings in the Gospels. The problem is that the Jesus Seminar used this criterion to make negative assessments of Jesus’ sayings.⁴ Thus, if Jesus said something that was said in Judaism before him, its authenticity is discounted. But surely that would create an eccentric Jesus if it were applied across the board!⁵ Indeed, Jesus said things that were already said in the Judaism of his day, and surely the early church learned from him and repeated him.

How does this apply to Jesus’ bibliology? Since his statements about scripture are decidedly more reverential than those of the Pharisees or Sadducees, the criterion of dissimilarity requires us to see that Jesus did, indeed, hold to a high bibliology. Of course, I am not arguing that the average Christian for the past two thousand years needed to think about whether Jesus said something. But I am arguing that even the evidence from a historical-critical perspective points in the same direction. And I am arguing that in the modern world, and even postmodern world, for evangelicals to ignore evidence is tantamount to a leap of faith. I must confess that I did not at first embrace a high bibliology because of applying the criteria of authenticity to the sayings of Jesus. No, I initially embraced a high bibliology because I believed that the Bible’s testimony about itself was sufficiently clear. But when I came to grips with Warfield’s inductive approach and Metzger’s denial of Warfield’s first argument, I realized that, for those engaged in serious biblical studies, historical evidence needed to be assessed before dialogue with those of a different perspective could begin. The fact that many evangelical students abandon inerrancy, as I mentioned above, may in part be due to them not wrestling with more than a fideistic claim. In other words, if evangelical leaders are not prepared to give substance to their credo, then some evangelical students will continue to defect. I don’t lay all the blame on the professors of course. But some of it belongs there—and some of it needs to be laid at my feet, too! I have learned some hard lessons over the years of teaching in graduate schools. And one of them is that no question in the classroom is taboo. My point here is this: What harm is there in adding historical evidence to one’s arguments for a doctrinal position? Why are so many afraid, or unprepared, to do so? The impression this gives to many students is that such views are defenseless.

Permit me to address one other issue—one that is very dear to my heart. If Christ is at the core of our beliefs, then the incarnation has to loom large in our thinking about the faith. When God became man and invaded time-space history, this served notice that we dare not treat the Bible with kid gloves. The incarnation not only invites us to examine the evidence, it requires us to do so. The fact that our religion is the only religion in the world that is subject to historical verification is no accident: it’s part of God’s design. Jesus performed miracles and healings in specific towns, at specific times, in relation to specific people. The Gospels don’t often speak in generalities. And Paul mentioned that 500 brothers and sisters saw the risen Christ at one time, then adds that most of these folks were still alive. These kinds of statements are the stuff of history: they beg the reader to investigate. Too often modern evangelicals take a hands-off attitude toward the Bible because of a prior commitment to inerrancy. But it is precisely because the incarnation of Christ is more important to me than the inerrancy of the Bible that I cannot do that. I believe it is disrespectful to my Lord to not ask the Bible the tough questions that every thinking non-Christian is already asking it. The result of this approach is that I am no longer afraid to wrestle hard with the text, and to go where the evidence leads. It may lead me to conclusions that I did not want to arrive at, but at least I arrive at those conclusions with full integrity. And I arrive at them with a Christological center that is always intact.

One thing that I have learned in thinking about inerrancy is that I must define it by the data supplied by the text of scripture. I cannot import my twentieth-century presuppositions to the text and call it the inner witness of the Spirit. These two things are not the same thing. The Spirit bears witness to what the text says; I cannot base a doctrine on what goes beyond the text. If I do, I fail to recognize that it is in fact my own cultural values that have influenced me more than the Spirit of God. This means that we must define inerrancy on the basis of scripture’s testimony itself, and subject all theological formulations about inerrancy to scripture. Otherwise, we succumb to the very thing that the Reformers were adamantly opposed to: tradition—a tradition that supersedes the authority of the Word of God. Ironically, those who are questioning whether I am orthodox have not examined what I’ve written against the evidence of scripture itself. Instead, they have appealed to their own understanding of inerrancy, and simply declared that I am found wanting. I do not think, however, that it is wrong to build a doctrine of inerrancy from the Bible’s testimony.

Specific Charges

Now, for the accusations against me. Three specific charges come to mind:

1. I argued in one ETS paper that the words of Jesus may need to be colored pink instead of red at times;
2. I stated that Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone might not have been shared by James, Peter, or Jude;
3. I said that inerrancy and verbal inspiration are peripheral doctrines.

In response to the first charge, I wish to mention four points. First, the charge is true as far as it goes. That is, the Gospel writers may have written the gist of what Jesus said instead of his very words. Second, the vast majority of evangelical New Testament scholars would say the same thing. Every member of the New Testament department at Dallas Seminary would say so. And several of these folks have been in the department for twenty or more years. On this particular charge, then, it would be unfair (as one person insinuated) to declare that Dallas Seminary has gone through some bibliological shifts in the past fifteen years. So if I am to be branded as heretical, I’m in a large boat, filled with orthodox professors. And we all have our life preservers on! That of course doesn’t mean that I’m right, but it does mean that the viewpoint shouldn’t just be summarily dismissed without a careful reading—and a careful weighing of the evidence. Third, this particular paper was controversial for other reasons that I won’t go into here. The paper has never been posted on the Internet because it was never meant for a general readership. Consequently, I won’t get into the details of what it is all about here. Fourth, remarkably those who convicted me of bibliological heresy did so on the word of one blogger who did not quote exactly, or who quoted the paper out of context. For them to make this sort of judgment without having seen the paper itself seems to unmask an attitude that disregards evidence and context. I submit that that is presuppositionalism run amok.

With regard to the second charge, only a small snippet of my essay entitled, “Wittenberg 2002” was quoted before the roasting began. This is the quotation that was blogged:

Indeed, when we go back to the scriptures, it does indeed seem clear that Paul has a doctrine of justification by faith alone. But that doctrine is not as easy to find in James, Peter, or Jude. Yet Paul seemed to accept these other apostles, along with their theological commitments, as genuine and true. But if they did not see things quite the same way as Paul did, who are we to insist on beliefs and formulations that just might exclude even some of the apostles?

Such as it is, this could indeed sound alarming. But my full statement on that issue is here quoted:

I’ve had a good amount of time to reflect on the significance of a single act that started the Protestant Reformation. Today’s world is quite different from Luther’s in many ways, and yet there remain the epistemological and practical questions regarding authority and truth. Nearly 500 years after Luther took his stand, Protestants and Catholics are beginning to wrestle with reconciliation. Gestures have been made on both sides. Language is toned down, and there is an increasing recognition that each branch of Christendom (including Orthodoxy) has a contribution to make—and even that no single branch has a corner on the whole truth. On the one hand, evangelical Christians have to ask themselves what ‘faith alone’—that great clarion call of the Reformation—really means. Is the doctrine of justification by faith alone a necessary doctrine for salvation, so that all those who do not embrace it explicitly are damned to hell? Or is it an important clarification of the gospel which is nevertheless not the core of the gospel? Our attitude toward one another within Christendom depends on how we answer this question. One of the interesting facets of this question has to do with the methodological battle cry of the Reformation, ad fontes. Indeed, when we go back to the scriptures, it does indeed seem clear that Paul has a doctrine of justification by faith alone. But that doctrine is not as easy to find in James, Peter, or Jude. Yet Paul seemed to accept these other apostles, along with their theological commitments, as genuine and true. But if they did not see things quite the same way as Paul did, who are we to insist on beliefs and formulations that just might exclude even some of the apostles?

In truth, Luther was a Paulinist. He held to a canon within the canon. Paul’s letters, especially Romans and Galatians, were the crown jewel of Luther’s theology. Is that altogether a bad approach? Is it possible to hold to a canon within the canon and yet to embrace a high view of scripture? And should Paul be considered the capstone of theological articulation? These are important questions that we must wrestle with. Further, by replacing tradition with revelation as the ultimate authority, Luther opened a Pandora’s Box whose implications he could hardly have anticipated. If revelation is the ultimate authority, then how should we interpret it? If we are to use reason—as Luther even hinted at at the Diet of Worms in 1521—then does this not make reason a higher authority than revelation? And if reason has this kind of power, what does this say about total depravity and the noetic effects of sin? How can a Christian reconcile the use of reason to grasp the meaning of scripture with a mind that has been tainted by sin? Although the Catholicism of Luther’s day was terribly corrupt, the value it placed on tradition was not altogether a bad thing. Protestantism gave rise to liberalism when reason usurped the throne of revelation. During this time, Catholicism remained far more conservative. And today, evangelicals and Catholics generally have much more in common than either of them has with liberal Christianity. In the least, this complex tapestry of western Christianity is not yet finished. The Weaver has more to do. And we all must humbly bow before him as he does his work in our lives both individually and corporately.

This is the broader context for the statement, and I will flesh it out even more. Some have charged me with holding to a particular view when I ask a question. For example, when I ask, “And should Paul be considered the capstone of theological articulation?” the assumption is that I would answer no. Or “If revelation is the ultimate authority, then how should we interpret it?” may imply that I do not believe that biblical revelation is the final authority. All I can say that my questions are meant to be questions, not answers (cf. John 21.21-23!). But now it is time for answers, or at least a bit more clarification. Anyone who knows me knows how unswervingly I am committed to justification by faith alone. I have often said that Romans is the most important non-narrative document ever written. Of the 50,000 letters from the ancient Greco-Roman world that we have today, none shines as brightly as Paul’s epistle to the Romans. When I teach Romans, I spend three class periods on 3.21-26. Yes, it’s that important to me. But the question I was raising in the “Wittenberg 2002” essay was just this: Is Justification by faith alone something that one must explicitly embrace to be saved? Or is it the great clarification of what Christ has done for us? Allow me to use an imperfect analogy. You’ll pardon me if this sounds sexist. When my wife drives her Toyota minivan, she does not have to understand the intricacies of the internal combustion engine before she can believe that the engine will start or that the car will get her from point A to point B. But she does have to have sufficient faith that the car will indeed get her where she wants to go. I have to question whether those who are not Protestants cannot be saved because they don’t explicitly embrace justification by faith alone. But this is a far cry from saying that this truth is not essential to salvation! The question I am raising is whether such a formulation must be a conscious credo for one to be saved. That most of the folks in the history of Christendom who have embraced the deity of Christ, the bodily resurrection of the Lord, and many other important doctrines, have not explicitly affirmed the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith does not, it seems, necessarily condemn them to eternal flames. (To be sure, many such folks are indeed forever lost, just as many Protestants are. After all, it is not just right doctrine that saves us, but a personal relationship with the risen Lord.) And when I ask that question, I notice in the New Testament that Paul seems to be virtually alone in affirming it. Does this mean that other writers would disagree with Paul’s view? No, it does not, nor did I say this. That some have wanted to add more kindling to my stake because I asked this question seems to me to be a bit hasty. It seems to me that they may be a bit too uncharitable by putting words in my mouth. Thus, when I look at church history I see some beliefs that are mirrored in the New Testament (or, more accurately, vice versa). And I have to ask myself, if justification by faith alone must be embraced explicitly if one is to be saved, then why wouldn’t it come up in James, Jude, or 1-2 Peter? After all, all of these authors explicitly speak about salvation.

Finally, for the third charge: I said that inerrancy and verbal inspiration are peripheral doctrines. That’s the charge anyway. Actually, in my review of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus (posted on bible.org), I never said this. I said that inerrancy and verbal inspiration are more peripheral than core doctrines. But I was only discussing two categories of doctrines there: core doctrines, and those that did not belong to the core. I admit that I should have explained what I meant by core in that paper. I meant essential for salvation, as I tried to explain in great detail above. I would call inerrancy and verbal inspiration category two doctrines. They are important for the health of the church, but not essential for salvation.

The article has now been published in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49.2 (June 2006): 327-49. I am grateful that the editor, Andreas Köstenberger, insisted that the statement about inerrancy being a more peripheral doctrine be dropped. He said that it might not be understood correctly, and I now see his point. Frankly, I was a bit naïve about where evangelicals are in their thinking on these issues. The blogsite that has prompted this response has served as a wake-up call. I must insist however that the major reason that people have seen me as saying certain things is that they are putting words in my mouth. When I ask a question, I mean it as a question. When I say more peripheral I don’t mean peripheral. One blogger inferred that I shouldn’t be teaching at Dallas Seminary because the Seminary calls inerrancy an essential belief. But the Seminary never defines essential (does it mean essential for graduation from Dallas Seminary? Essential for the evangelical faith? Essential for salvation?). Someone even went so far as to say that because I called inerrancy peripheral (which I did not), I must not believe it! That’s like saying that since I do not regard the pretribulational rapture as an essential doctrine I must not believe it. I certainly regard it as less important than a high bibliology, but I also am persuaded that the rapture will take place prior to the tribulation.

My mistake was that I did not define what I meant by essential in the Ehrman piece, and I have asked that the bible.org webmaster link that paragraph in my review of Misquoting Jesus to this essay. That should clear up any misunderstanding. Nevertheless, it grieves me that some are so quick to condemn without understanding, that not one person reading (or writing) on the blogsite contacted me directly for clarification, and that most formed their judgments without reading what I had written in context. Further, even when my words were clear (and I believe they were most of the time), I was only rarely given the benefit of the doubt. This kind of attitude does not bode well for where Reformed evangelicals are heading.

In conclusion, people obviously have the right to disagree with me. I’m glad that they do! But it strikes me as a gross caricature to insinuate that I am a heretic, a wolf in evangelical clothing, because the way I construct my theological convictions is different from theirs. At bottom, our resultant views are much closer to each other than they would admit. But our views still differ. I am convinced that my explanations in this lengthy paper will not persuade all that I’m squeaky clean in my theology. A major part of the reason, I think, is that I am trying to take my cues about bibliology from the text itself rather than from modern assumptions that are superimposed on scripture. And precisely because my starting point for inerrancy is Christ himself—indeed, my starting point for almost all of my theology is Christ—we will simply not see eye to eye on doctrinal priorities, the importance of historical inquiry, or the nature of the text. I pray that we can nevertheless be charitable and recognize that each other is a true believer in the same risen Lord.

Postscript

One other comment was repeated throughout the blogsite: Although I have some good things to say, people should read my writings with caution. I can give a hearty amen to that! But I would add that people should read everyone’s writings with caution. No one is categorically exempt from critical examination.

¹ For those who are familiar with Warfield, he was actually a staunch Calvinist. The ‘radical Arminian’ was my sorry attempt at sarcasm.

² Benjamin B. Warfield, Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948) 174.

³ Obviously, there are more beliefs that one must embrace to be saved, but without a bodily resurrection we are all dead in our sins. David’s career was mostly in the realm of Christology, and he has strongly affirmed the deity of Christ.

⁴ The Jesus Seminar did not apply this particular negative argument to “the Son of Man” sayings because the evidence is unequivocal. However, when it came to prophecies in which Jesus spoke of the Son of Man they summarily discounted such sayings because they had previously rejected the possibility of predictive prophecy!

⁵ For a discussion on the criteria of authenticity, see J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006) 39-50.