Synopses & Reviews
The victors not only write the history, they also reproduce the texts. In a study that explores the close relationship between the social history of early Christianity and the textual tradition of the emerging New Testament, Ehrman examines how early struggles between Christian "heresy" and "orthodoxy" affected the transmission of the documents over which, in part, the debates were waged. His thesis is that proto-orthodox scribes of the second and third centuries occasionally altered their sacred texts for polemical reasons--for example, to oppose adoptionists like the Ebionites, who claimed that Christ was a man but not God, or docetists like Marcion, who claimed that he was God but not a man, or Gnostics like the Ptolemaeans, who claimed that he was two beings, one divine and one human. Ehrman's thorough and incisive analysis makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the social and intellectual history of early Christianity and raises intriguing questions about the relationship of readers to their texts, especially in an age when scribes could transform the documents they reproduced to make them say what they were already thought to mean, effecting thereby the orthodox corruption of Scripture.
Review
"This detailed, carefully argued, and thoroughly documented study should be purchased for collections serving faculty and graduate students in New Testament studies and church history."--Choice
"Written in a clear and interesting style."--The Princeton Seminary Bulletin
"Ehrman's study is well written....This book will be useful for senior seminars and beginning graduate students."--The Journal of Religion
"Ehrman's is a good book, and one which deserves the attention of scholars"--Reviews in Religion and Theology
"[Ehrman's] arguments throughout deserve our attention; they are frequently compelling....Clearly set out and persuasively presented....Variants that treat of Christ's person and function must from now on always be considered with reference to Ehrman's thesis."--Novum Testamentum
"This book is highly recommended as an excellent work of scholarship that is of great importance in the development of New Testament studies. Here is a new voice that addresses some of the central theological and historical issues."--Journal of Theological Studies
"Bart D. Ehrman has written a book which will stimulate the casual reader and intrigue the academic or professional reader of the New Testament....An excellent work and definitely invaluable for lay or scholars."--Anglican Theological Review
"This is a fascinating book, which deserves a wide readership....I thoroughly recommend this book for its textual and theological interest and for its readability."--Irish Theological Quarterly
"[A] detailed and carefully documented study."--Religious Studies Review
"This is a book well worth reading. The New Testament scholar will find in it an excellent study of textual criticism, systematically organized under the rubric of scribal Tendenzen. The systematic theologian as well as the student of early Christian thought will find in it an excellent expose of the fashion in which conviction colors the way in which one reads the tradition."--Journal of Early Christian Studies
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-301) and indexes.