Misquoting Jesus

by Bart D. Ehrman

There isn’t much I remember from junior high school, but one lesson has stayed with me.  In a rare moment of inspiration my Social Studies teacher, Mr. Fox, led the class in an experiment.  First, he sat us all in a circle on the floor.  Then he took one student aside, showed her a short message written on a piece of paper, and told her to whisper it into the ear of the student to her left.  The message travelled around the circle until it arrived at our teacher.  What started as “Tell your mother to go to the store and buy apples, potatoes, and bread” ended up as “Go to Giant and get breakfast”.  This exercise taught us about how messages change with repetition and over time.  Misquoting Jesus is an exploration of this phenomenon with profound implications for the most frequently cited book in the world.

The Bible, including the New and Old Testaments, is the sacred book of Christianity.  Many Christians devote countless hours to Bible study, seeking to understand the Word of God, and quote from their personal copy  as if it were the definitive version.   The Bible as we know it today, however, is quite different from the original texts on which it is based.  Approximately 3,500 years ago, according to tradition, Moses climbed to the summit of Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments -- the Word of God -- chiseled into a large stone tablet.  Archaeologists and historians have concluded that an ancient form of Hebrew is the original language used to record the commandments;  but we cannot know this for certain because the stone tablets no longer exist, if in fact they ever did.

We tend to think of The Bible as a single book, and few of us question its authenticity.  In a court of law, we swear on a Bible to tell the truth, even if we are not Christians.  That it is the single most important written document in western world, possibly the whole world, is a fact that few of us challenge.  And yet, most of us have no idea who wrote it down and when.  In his introduction to Misquoting Jesus author Bart D. Ehrman, a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, describes himself as having been a “born again” Christian in his youth who enrolled in Moody Bible Institute after high school in order to give himself over completely to his faith.  At the Moody Bible Institute, Ehrman (like his professors and fellow students) had to sign a contract agreeing that “The Bible is the inerrant word of God.  It contains no mistakes.”  For a long time, Ehrman accepted this as an article of faith until he learned that no original texts for the Old and New Testaments exist and that the oldest known texts were copies (even copies of copies of copies…) made long after the originals were penned onto parchment. 

Dr. Ehrman’s classmates at Moody were not the least bothered by the lack of source documents, but it was a problem he couldn’t rationalize away.  So, Ehrman embarked on a quest to find the sources of the Christian Bible.  Before Moses, people believed in a multitude of gods and performed various rituals and sacrifices in order to win their favor (or avoid disfavor).   Moses and his Ten Commandments changed everything and the first five books of The Bible describe how that came about.   The Hebrew Bible, which was completed hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, includes the “Pentateuch” (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) which describes God’s evolving relationship and covenants with the Hebrew people, histories of Israel and Judah, and scriptures which were poems and writings by David, King Solomon, and others.  In addition, the Jewish Bible and some Christian Bibles often include a set of books not considered the Word of God, but important writings nonetheless, called “The Apocrypha”. 

It is in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah that the idea of redemption appears.  The first 39 chapters of Isaiah promise doom for any nation which opposes God.  The remaining chapters discuss a Messiah, or redeemer, who would unite the tribes of Israel into a glorious new nation of Godly people.  Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism arose when an extraordinary young man began teaching a way of life and spirituality which eschewed wealth and power in favor of humility, charity, and forgiveness.  Jesus of Nazareth apparently was precocious and charismatic and began attracting attention even as a child.  At the time, the Jews had been waiting for hundreds of years for their messiah and when Jesus began his ministry, some believed that he was The One. 

The Christian Bible began with a reinterpretation of the Old Testament in order to herald the coming of Jesus the savior.  Sometime after Jesus’ death, historians and early Christians began writing about the life, teachings, and crucifixion of Jesus.  By 150 AD, the twenty-seven books which include the Gospels, Acts and Letters of the Apostles, and Revelation had been completed, according to historical records.  In the days before the printing press, copies were made by scribes who often worked off copies which were circulated and further copied.  It is in this way that errors began appearing and multiplying.  Over time, the original parchments were lost or destroyed leaving no way to determine the veracity of texts which still exist.  For someone who had signed a statement that The Bible was the Word of God with no mistakes, this knowledge was a serious problem. 

Finding answers required Ehrman to read ancient manuscripts in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew which meant learning those languages first.  He enrolled at Wheaton College, a highly-regarded evangelical college where he majored in English Literature while studying Greek under the mentorship of Dr. Gerald Hawthorne.  Dr. Hawthorne, himself an evangelical Christian, was not afraid to question his faith and helped Ehrman to understand that pursuing the truth ,and being open to revising one’s beliefs based on knowledge attained through this pursuit , was a way of deepening his connection with God. 

The deeper Ehrman went into his study of ancient manuscripts the more he came to sense how much has been lost not only in transcription but also in translation.  Reading the oldest available versions of the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek gave him a completely different understanding of the Word of God.  In his introduction he asks “If the full meaning of the words of scripture can be grasped only by studying them in Greek (and Hebrew), doesn’t this mean that most Christians, who don’t read ancient languages, will never have complete access to what God wants them to know?” 

Misquoting Jesus makes a compelling case that what we take for granted as the Word of God, is far removed from its origins.  The examples Dr. Ehrman uses to make his case help us understand that The Bible as we think of it was never intended to be a single volume.  It contains books of history, literature, philosophy, law, and religion which were written long ago, and compiled, translated, transcribed, edited, and reinterpreted to serve a variety of purposes.  In short, it is a human creation possibly based on divine inspiration.

So where does that leave The Bible as the sacred book of Christianity?  Dr. Ehrman makes the point that to read the Bible is to change it, in that we interpret the words and phrases based on our unique life experiences and spiritual beliefs.  Some scribes changed manuscripts accidentally, and others deliberately.  Some deliberate changes reflected an individual scribe’s interpretation, and others were  revisions demanded by church officials.  Dr. Ehrman, who went on to study at Princeton University where he earned a master’s and doctorate in Divinity, clearly feels more connected to God now, having questioned the authenticity of The Bible and learned its story, than he did when adhering blindly to his faith.

At 180 pages, Misquoting Jesus is neither tedious nor ponderous.  It is a very thoughtful discussion of the history of the Bible and how all too often it is used to promote a political or philosophical agenda.  It would be fascinating to hear Jesus weigh in on this topic, and to find out what he thinks about how we treat each other.  If he were to reappear unannounced, I wonder if anyone would recognize him. 

Copyright 2011, Teresa Friedlander all rights reserved

Two Centuries of American Banking by Elvira and Vladimir Clain-Stefanelli

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander, copyright 2009

It is a fact: the United States is a nation of debtors, both individually and collectively. Recently some of our largest financial institutions have imploded seemingly because of too much debt, but the truth is more complicated. When it appeared our economy was on the verge of collapse, the federal government responded by incurring a staggering amount of debt in order to provide credit (i.e., short-term debt) to businesses, governmental entities, and individuals. Even though progress has been slow, almost to the point of imperceptibility, without that infusion of massive amounts of money, our nation quite likely would have fallen into economic chaos. What that might look like is this: scarcity of food, diapers, gasoline, and electricity leading to rationing and possibly rioting in the streets. So, as unimaginable as the amount of debt we will be leaving to future generations is, at least our country continues to function. Meanwhile we grapple with rising unemployment, falling property values, a failing automobile industry, and reinventing our industrial base.

There is plenty of blame to go around as to why we are in this economic crisis, but probably the most important reason is that banking and investment practices became more about betting that real estate prices would continue to rise than about creating real wealth. At the bottom of the pyramid was the actual real estate, the land and houses. As long as demand for housing continued at a fever pitch, everyone with investments prospered, at least on paper. When suddenly it became hard to sell real estate at hyper-inflated prices, the bottom fell out of the financial house of cards and investments backed by mortgages lost much of their face value. Only a lucky (or shrewd) few cashed out before the fall. The rest of us who were hoping to educate children or retire on our savings are having to rethink those life goals.

Elvira and Vladimir Clain-Stefanelli were curators of numismatics (i.e., currency) at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of History and Technology, and in 1975 published a “pictorial essay” of the history of American Banking. This book Two Centuries of American Banking is rich with engravings, photographs, reproductions stories of the evolution of banking in the United States. It concludes with the advent of electronic banking (a major factor in the current crisis) and covers everything from counterfeiting to bank robbery. While not comprehensive in scope, Two Centuries of American Banking gives a concise tutorial on the fundamentals of the nation’s banking system and provides some cautionary notes which in retrospect we should have heeded.

Economies depend on banks to keep trade going. And because of how interlinked the world’s economies are, the current financial crisis in the United States is global in scope. To understand why the world’s banking systems are in a shambles requires a basic knowledge of banking and how it came to be an abstract form of trade. In ancient societies, people traded what they grew, made, or mined at marketplaces and negotiated each trade based on supply, demand, real value, and relationships. In small agrarian societies, this system worked well because the goods didn’t have to travel far and strangers were few. As trade routes made the world both larger and smaller and transactions became more complicated, banks emerged and became vital to trade.

Banks originated in Mesopotamia sometime between 3000 and 2000 BC as a way of securing things of value. Temples and palaces served as bank buildings and initially were used to store grain, the first form of currency. After a time, these banks became safe houses for cattle, tools, precious metals, and other items. Writing, it is thought, was developed by the Mesopotamians as a way of keeping records of ownership. Precious metals were melted into coins and could be exchanged for the value of items on deposit, simplifying trade. Counterfeiting was a problem until the Babylonians established a formal economic system and standard weights and measures under their Code of the Hammurabi. Banking matured and many currencies came into common use, creating the need for money changers. As centuries passed and the ancient Greek and Roman empires rose and fell, many disputes arose about the relative values of different currencies. The Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar (30 BC – 14 AD) introduced the first integrated system of monetary policy and taxation.

Money lending dates back to around 400 BC in Greece where ten per cent interest was normal for business loans and twenty to thirty per percent for shipping loans. According to the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus cast the money changers and lenders out of the temples because they were making a profit by charging entry fees to those who wished to hear the word of God. It is important to remember that at that time, temples functioned as banks which is why money changers and lenders coexisted with priests and rabbis. While his reasons were philosophical and spiritual, what Jesus did, in effect, was to demand the separation of banking and religion in Palestine, and that marked the beginning of a new church.

Meanwhile, on the Italian peninsula, the Romans became increasingly powerful and expanded their control across Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa. After Jesus’ death, around 30 AD, Christianity gained ground as a religious movement because Christians refused to worship the Roman Emperors as gods. This led to persecution and martyrdom, which in turn inspired more people to become Christians. Despite this resistance, the Roman Empire continued to swell, eventually reaching Britain. Maintaining such a vast empire caused great economic problems. In order to increase the money supply, Rome began circulating coins made of less than pure gold, silver, or bronze, causing runaway inflation. By 270 AD, the silver content in Roman coins was, according to some historians, about four per cent. It wasn’t until the reign of Constantine (306-337 AD) that the Romans developed a standard for coinage which stabilized the world’s economy. Constantine also decided to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, thereby founding the Roman Church. When Rome fell to the Visigoths in 410 AD, banking ceased and did not resume until the Crusades, some 500 years later. Funding an effort as sweeping as the removal of rival religions such as paganism, Judaism, and Islamism, required tremendous amounts of money in liquid form. Resurrected banks provided the means.

Fast forward to the original thirteen colonies of the north American continent. The New World was rich in natural resources and the colonists produced valuable crops such as tobacco, corn, and cotton which they sold at a profit. The King of England, believed in taxing the colonies’ earnings on exports as well as their purchases of imports, such as tea. The Parliament also passed a law, the so-called “Bubble Act” of 1720, which terminated all banking functions in the colonies, severely limiting the colonists’ ability to prosper; without banks it was virtually impossible to borrow money for new business ventures. In 1776, the colonies had had enough of Britain’s strangle hold and declared independence.

By 1780, the Continental Army was in sorry shape: the soldiers were hungry, poorly clothed, and often barefoot. It seemed likely that the war of independence would be lost, according to Thomas Paine, “from the want of money, means, and credit.” A group of Philadelphians met at The Coffee House on June 8, 1780, and pledged their assets as a way of securing loans to keep the army going. This inspired additional citizens to pledge property and that led to the formation of the Pennsylvania Bank which provided the Continental Army with the vital resources for the war effort.

With the British defeated, the new United States of America was deeply in debt and needed a more sophisticated means of managing the economy than the Pennsylvania Bank could provide. Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, proposed to Congress in 1790 the formation of a national bank to centralize the finances of the nation: specifically repaying the debts incurred during the war, keeping tax revenues on deposit, and funding congressionally approved expenditures. Hamilton argued that a central, national bank with no ties to a particular state’s charter was critical for the smooth functioning of a federal government. Despite opposition from Thomas Jefferson and some others, President George Washington signed the law which created the Bank of the United States in 1791. The initial stock offering was immediately over-subscribed and the stock price soared.

The idea of local banking as a way of helping merchants manage their money and providing loans to farmers, artisans, and settlers caught on soon thereafter. Banks earned money by charging interest on loans, depositors earned money from interest the banks paid. The use of bank notes representing the cash on deposit came into fashion, although there were problems with counterfeiting and forgery. A more fundamental problem with the bank notes was that each bank had its own engraver and printer and so there was no uniform currency. Moreover, there was no regulatory function to ensure that a bank only printed notes for the amount of capital it had on deposit. The uncertainty this caused meant that bank notes were often “worth less than the paper they were printed on.”

Of particular interest in the Clain-Stefanellis’ book is the chapter on “Crisis and Recovery, 1920-1935.” In the 1920’s, “city people felt prosperous…and sales of consumer goods increased enormously…the stock market became an interesting game…” and banks lent money to people to buy stocks. Then as now, a frenzy of speculation pushed the limits of the stock market, and when the bubble burst, fortunes disappeared as the value of stocks plummeted. Then as now, the crisis was global and banks failed in great numbers. Then as now a newly elected president took drastic steps to quell the financial panic that gripped the nation in an attempt to restore confidence. The Clain-Stefanellis’ book explains how market speculation with too little regulation and oversight can create phantom wealth, which has a nasty habit of disappearing.

Once upon a time, wealth was measured in gold, land, and other things of real value. In the modern world, very few of us keep bags of gold at home as a way of safeguarding our treasure, rather we opt to deposit our paychecks into bank accounts and calculate our net worth based what we own minus what we owe. Keeping money under the mattress, so to speak, is not and never has been a good investment strategy. Even though investments carry risks, the potential for reward can often be great. Our fatal mistake this time was to assume there would be no end to demand for real estate, we bought more expensive houses than we could afford, purchased investment properties, and took out loans that depended on our ability to make a profit in the future. When the demand for real estate abruptly ended, too many of us lost everything, and as a result our country almost did too. Will we learn from this experience? Only time will tell. Meanwhile, as citizens, we all have a responsibility to become better informed. In the words of George Santayana, “those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it.”