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The book "Misquoting Jesus"

TJHairball

TJHairball

I love this place
So the other week I was listening to NPR, and what do I hear but one of my state's leading experts on religion being interviewed about his new book.

So I'm wondering if I should buy a copy just to display actual scholarly historical analysis of the matter to the next person who comes by to tell me all about the absolute infallible unaltered Word of God direct from the Savior's lips himself. I get a little tired of such.

Or is it going to be even worth buying it, and then going through a couple editions of the Bible with it?

It looks like a very well done book, averaging 4.5/5 stars on Amazon reader reviews in spite of a couple reviewers who seem to think it's a heretical work, and the author a heretic for not having the faith that God would guide the assorted scribes over the years into maintaining His word perfectly.
 
Everyone knows not to take the Bible literally.

However, the spirit of the words are still pertinent to this day.

Don't use semantics as a tool to try and disprove Christianity.

P.S. It's going to be nice to have a discussion, for once, without our resident number telling me to stop feeling... ;)
 
Friday said:
Everyone knows not to take the Bible literally.
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Unfortunately, everybody does not know this. I encounter people who say the Bible must be taken literally quite frequently.

By the way, I meant to also bring up in this context one of the more dramatic editions of the Bible, the Jefferson Bible. I was wondering how his editing job of trying to "restore" the Bible bears up under modern scholarly analysis.
 
If I remember correctly, you are from NC. I can believe your assertion that you frequently encounter bible literalists. They crawl out of the woodwork there, it seems.

The Jefferson Bible? I've never heard of it. What is it?
 
Friday said:
If I remember correctly, you are from NC. I can believe your assertion that you frequently encounter bible literalists. They crawl out of the woodwork there, it seems.
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Correct. Same state the fellow who wrote the book I linked to lives in.
Friday said:
The Jefferson Bible? I've never heard of it. What is it?
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Well, you may remember the "fire breathing salamander" of early US politics, Thomas Jefferson.

Quite a religious man, and exactly the sort that would drive the modern "religious right" of today's politics up the wall. Also something of a scholar - renaissance man, you understand. Anyway, he took what he could find, did some substantial editorial work, and bound up what survived inspection in what is now known as the Jefferson Bible.

Something of the sort of "intentional" editing that the author of "Misquoting Jesus" has been saying has gone on all along - he definitely had his own agenda in mind with his revisions (the Jefferson bible is a very humanistic edition). So I'd wonder how it measures up in the long run of it next to other editions, and how well what he kept in it (most of his editing was, IIRC, subtractive) adds up historically.
 
When I put it that way, it no longer really looks like an interesting discussion point to cross into the matter. Hm.
 
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