Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

by Bart D. Ehrman

For Christian Gnostics, Christ is this divine revealer of the truths of salvation; in many Gnostic systems, the Christ came into the man Jesus at his baptism, empowered him for his ministry, and then at the end left him to die on the cross. That is why Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For these Gnostics, the Christ literally had forsaken Jesus (or “left him behind”). After Jesus’s death, though, he raised him from the dead as a reward for his faithfulness, and continued through him to teach his disciples the secret truths that can lead to salvation. Proto-orthodox Christians found this teaching offensive on just about every level. For them, the material world is not an evil place that resulted from a cosmic disaster, but is the good creation of the one true God. For them, salvation comes by faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, not by learning the secret gnosis that can illuminate the truth of the human condition. And most important for our purposes here, for them, Jesus Christ is not two beings, but one being, both divine and human, at one and the same time.