Bart D. Ehrman grew up in a Christian household and became a born-again Christian in high school, inspired by his youth leader Bruce. He attended Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College with the goal of becoming an evangelical scholar. However, during his studies he began questioning the reliability of scripture translations. After graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary, he realized that many small variations in early Christian manuscripts were introduced either accidentally or intentionally by scribes, challenging the inerrancy of the biblical texts over time.

1. Misquoting JesusBy Bart D. Erhman

2. Born in the mid 1950'sHis mother occasionally read from the bible and made them understand the stories and ethical teachingsTypical teenager. Door-to-door salesman while in high schoolWas a born-again ChristianAttended a club called Campus Life Youth for ChristLeader of CLYFC, Bruce was an inspiration to BartEhrman attended Moody Bible Institute after high schoolAbout Bart D. Ehrman

3. He wanted to be an evangelical “voice” in secular circlesHe completed his three year degree and went to Wheaton CollegeHe started questioning his understanding of scripture: “What good does it do to say that the words are inspired by God if most people have absolutely no access to these words, but only to more or less clumsy renderings of these words into a language, such as English, that has nothing to do with the original words?”After graduating there in two years, he went to Princeton Theological Seminary

4. Judaism was an unusual religion in the Roman world, but it wasn’t unique. worship of a deity(YHWH) Had a special holy place(the Temple in Jerusalem)Worship only one Godthey gathered together in synagogues to worship God, pray, and discuss traditions of their religionThe Jewish BibleThe beginning of Christian writings were of letters written from Christian leaders.The Beginnings of Christian Scripture

5. Many of the first letters of Christian writings were from Apostle PaulMany letters and books have been either lost or destroyed over the centuries.Letters weren’t the only books Christians found imported.Early GospelsEarly acts of ApostlesChristian ApocalypsesChurch OrdersChristian ApologiesChristian MartyrologiesAntiheretical TractatesEarly Christian Commentaries

6. The Copyists of the Early Christian WritingsUnlike today, the only way to copy a book in those times was by handSome copies vary in words either by accident or on purposeSome believe that the scribes changed things to make it seem more like the thing they believed in.The type of writing done back then was called scriptuo continua, which was a kind of continuous writing.A popular example nowadays is the “godisnowhere”. Which could mean “God is now here” to theist, or “God is nowhere” to atheist.4th Century CE Greek

7. How do we have access to the bible?The text of the Christian bible had translated from one language, to another, to another, and sometimes to another oneOne example of a translating mistake is the King James Bible, which will differ from other bibles of today’s time besides the vocabulary.Scribes, Authors, and Readers

8. It was translated in the seventeenth century based on a faulty Greek text.Later translators based translations on better Greek texts.Ehrman even uses the four gospels as an example of scribes changing something for what they believed in.