Bible Problems

     At the beginning of the year I had set out to find out for myself what the Bible—Old Testament (a.k.a. the Jewish Bible) and New Testament—had to say.  I stopped after about two months because I got too frustrated.

     The God of the Old Testament is a god of war.  He's a jealous god in the very literal sense of the word (and there are many instances of other gods being mentioned); he's demanding of the Israelites' loyalty, having claimed them as his own so they can worship him, and in exchange for their unwavering faith and devotion he promises to protect them and fight for them.  But the things he had to say, the laws he gave to the Israelites through Moses, were harsh and often times didn't make much sense.

     So I had gotten to Deuteronomy and stopped there; I really didn't like their god and I didn't want to read any more about him and what he commanded the Israelites to do.  But one thing was certain: the god of the Israelites is only their god.  People can take stories of inspiration from the Old Testament and apply them to their own life if they want to, but the Israelite god's commandments to them were not intended for everyone in our day—they were specific to those people at that time.

     Earlier this year one of my uncles recommended a book to me called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman.  It sounded very interesting and I bought it right away, but it had been sitting on my bookshelf for a while because there were other books I wanted to get to first.  But then my parents came to visit for a few days, and my father saw the book and borrowed it.  He read it from cover to cover, which surprised me, and so I wanted to read it right afterward so I could talk to him about it.  I finished it a couple of weeks ago, and it's an excellent book; I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Bible study and the history of the manuscripts (and who changed them and why).

     The main, overarching messages of this book are 1) the Bible is not the fully inspired, inerrant word of God that the author used to believe it was—it is a very human book; and 2) the Bible we have now is NOT translated from the original manuscripts.  No original manuscripts exist; the earliest ones we've found come from, I believe Ehrman said the second century CE (Common Era).

     A couple of things in the book made me think of the Mormon church in particular.  The first thing is that the LDS church uses the King James version of the Bible from the early 1600s, and in August of 1992 the First Presidency had this to say about that version, "While other Bible versions may be easier to read than the King James Version, in doctrinal matters latter-day revelation supports the King James Version in preference to other English translations. All of the Presidents of the Church, beginning with the Prophet Joseph Smith, have supported the King James Version by encouraging its continued use in the Church."  https://www.lds.org/ensign/1992/08/news-of-the-church/first-presidency-statement-on-the-king-james-version-of-the-bible.p1?lang=eng
 
     The problem with this version, as I found out in Misquoting Jesus, is that "The King James Version is filled with places in which the translators rendered a Greek text derived ultimately from Erasmus's edition, which was based on a single twelfth-century manuscript that is one of the worst of the manuscripts that we now have available to us!" (p. 209).  There are better manuscripts out there, but the Church maintains its stance that the King James Bible is the one that is the most correct.

     The second thing that reminded me of the LDS church in particular was that Ehrman went into great detail about the scribes who made changes to the manuscripts on purpose to settle some political, social, and theological debates going on around them.  The LDS church's edition of the KJV of the Bible has footnotes where Joseph Smith made changes (if you want to read about the history of that edition, here you go: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/10/church-publishes-first-lds-edition-of-the-bible?lang=eng ).  When I was a young adult I got sick with the flu for a few days, and to pass the time while I got well again, I took out my Bible and circled all the places where there was a Joseph Smith Translation of a passage of scripture, for future reference in my studies.  And of course, looking through them again, I see now more than ever that all the JST footnotes make the scripture fall in line more with LDS doctrine.  Joseph Smith claims that these changes are the "plain and precious parts" that were either taken away from the Bible or changed within it, and that he's getting revelation from the Lord on what the passages should really say ( https://history.lds.org/article/revelations-in-context-doctrine-and-covenants-joseph-smith-translation-bible?lang=eng ).  But that's what scribes did in the first few centuries CE: they changed the wording of the manuscripts they were copying to settle theological, political, and social issues surrounding them.  Joseph Smith is no better than any of those ancient people who changed the wording to fit their agenda.

     For regular Christians, Misquoting Jesus will be hard to handle because it leaves the reader with no doubt that what we know of the New Testament and what we know of Jesus isn't 100% reliable.  Mormons who read Misquoting Jesus, like my father, still have the Book of Mormon to fall back on and hold onto as something to uphold their faith; Bible-only Christians don't have that safety net.  But really, the Book of Mormon was written by a guy who knew the King James version of the Bible (which is why the Book of Mormon was written in 1600's English instead of 1820's English, to make it sound more authentic), and we know now that the KJV isn't a very good version, so how much can the Church members really rely on the Book of Mormon as an authentic book of God-inspired scripture, either?

     So after reading Misquoting Jesus, I've decided to officially end my previous Bible projects.  The Old Testament is the Israelites' scripture, and its words and commandments have no bearing on anyone not of that lineage.  And as far as the New Testament is concerned, I simply do not have enough knowledge about what the oldest and best manuscripts say when translated into English, and so in my mind nothing in the New Testament as far as Jesus is concerned can be counted on as fact.  And as far as the LDS doctrine that says the Old Testament god is Jesus Christ himself: I say no.  Ehrman discusses the nature of Jesus since that was one of the hot topics in the early days of Christianity, and there are interesting points of view that different people back in the day preached.  I suggest you read Misquoting Jesus and decide for yourself what you want to believe regarding Jesus.  But as far as reading the New Testament, I see it as a waste of time for me since there's a very good chance that the words attributed to Jesus hadn't actually been said by him.

     I admire Erhman's knowledge and his hunger and passion for truth, and I'll likely read some of his other books as well to see what else he's found in his studies.  That, for me, would be a much better use of my time.