The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament

by Ehrman, Bart D.

• ISBN13: 9780199739783
• ISBN10: 0199739781
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-07-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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, whoclaimed 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 ourunderstanding 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.

Author Biography

Bart D. Ehrman is James A. Gray Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of two dozen books in the fields of New Testament and Early Christianity.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. xi
The Text of Scripture in an Age of Dissent: Early Christian Struggles for Orthodoxy	p. 3
Anti-Adoptionistic Corruptions of Scripture	p. 55
Anti-Separationist Corruptions of Scripture	p. 140
Anti-Docetic Corruptions of Scripture	p. 212
Anti-Patripassianist Corruptions of Scripture	p. 307
Conclusion: The Orthodox Corruptors of Scripture	p. 320
Afterword: Recent "Work on Scribal Corruptions	p. 331
Bibliography of Secondary Works Cited	p. 365
Index of Scripture	p. 387
Index of Modern Authors	p. 391
Index of Subjects and Ancient Sources	p. 397
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