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

by Bart D. Ehrman

Evidence for this view comes from several sources. One of the most interesting is a pagan opponent of Christianity named Celsus who lived in the late second century. Celsus wrote a book called The True Word, in which he attacked Christianity on a number of grounds, arguing that it was a foolish, dangerous religion that should be wiped off the face of the earth. Unfortunately, we do not have The True Word itself; all we have are quotations from it in the writings of the famous Christian church father Origen, who lived about seventy years after Celsus and was asked to produce a reply to his charges. Origen’s book Against Celsus survives and is our chief source of information about what the learned critic Celsus said in his book directed against the Christians.16 One of the great features of Origen’s book is that he quotes Celsus’s earlier work at length, line by line, before offering his refutation of it. This allows us to reconstruct with fair accuracy Celsus’s claims. One of these claims is that the Christians are ignorant lower-class people. What is striking is that in his reply, Origen does not deny it. Consider the following charges made by Celsus.

Seriously? This is an acceptable second hand source for which there are ZERO manuscripts of and this is a valid citations?!

Just because he doesn’t outwardly deny it doesn’t mean he agrees with Ehrman

Poor example...this is in English

Doesn’t he sort of contradict himself?

If they are merely copying letters and words did they necessarily need to be literate? In fact if they were illiterate wouldn’t that support the accuracy of what they were copying? They wouldn’t be reading what they were writing just copying it. Further if they were illiterate or half-literate how could they add anything of coherence?

Is it really that different? Also in this example the senior scribe corrected the error TO REFLECT the authors original words

This is contradicting the previous paragraph wherein you state that the errors were commonly corrected?!

So what? This doesn’t mean it’s inaccurate or is Ehrman assuming paul didn’t review the writings before signing his name to it?!

This is a wild assumption...Ehrman merely trying to create connection and causation without proof...he’s trying to create doubt

appears to be a later add-on. The Gospel certainly seems to come to an end in 20:30–31; and the events of chapter 21 seem to be a kind of afterthought, possibly

while its central themes are repeated

So the central theme IS present and consistent but some of the vocabulary is different? That seems like weak argument and highly insignificant. Even if the entire gospel wasn’t pen to paper on John’s hand, does that negate the message? If John wrote some of it and dictated some of it p, is that not ok?