My reivew of Chapter 3 of "Misquoting Jesus"
- Suraj Lama
- Nov 13, 2018
- 1 min read

In the 3rd Chapter of this book (misquoting Jesus) page 72 Bart says that "different localities developed different kinds of textual tradition"
Which he further clarifies this statement saying
"That is to say, the manuscripts in Rome had many of the same errors, because they were for the most part “in-house” documents, copied from one another; they were not influenced much by manuscripts being copied in Palestine; and those in Palestine took on their own characteristics, which were not the same as those found in a place like Alexandria, Egypt"
Now by saying this he confirms that the textual variation or the supposed "errors" committed by the folks in Rome are not the same as the variants found in Palestine and the variants in Palestine are not the same as the variants found in the manuscript copied by the folks in Alexandria, Egypt.
So for example:
Rome: I behind the Big Joe on X Street.
Palestine: I live behind the Big toe on X Street.
Alexandria: I live behind the Big tree on Strict.
So our hypothetical original would be:
I live behind the big tree on X street.
These are just three examples so if we have more copies with more variations we can reconstruct the original with more certainty.
That's what exactly is the case with our New Testament Manuscripts.
So the very argument that Bart offers to deny the reliability of the text of the New Testament can be used to establish the reliability of our Scripture.
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