Review on Revelation "Misquoting Jesus"

In the 3rd chapter of this book (misquoting Jesus)under the heading "The first Published Edition of the Greek New Testament" Bart says that when Erasmus began writing (AD 1515) for his first edition of the Greek new testament.

Erasmus heavily relied on the 12th century manuscripts for the Gospels, Book of acts and Epistles. For the book of Revelation he had to borrow a manuscript from his friend the German humanist Johannes Reuchlin; unfortunately, this manuscript was almost impossible to read in places, and it had lost its last page, which contained the final six verses of the book, in those places Erasmus simply took the Latin Vulgate and translated its text back into Greek, thereby creating some textual readings found today in no surviving Greek manuscript.

So basically what Bart is saying is that the last six verses of the book of revelation is not found in any of the surviving Greek manuscripts. But that's not the whole story.

Earlier in this same chapter under the heading Latin Vulgate Bart explains how the Latin Vulgate came into being.

He tells us 8 things:

1. People in the non Greek speaking world wanted the scripture in their own languages. 

2. We know that the originals and the first copies and their copies and their copies and so on were written in Greek. (Mentioned in the earlier chapter of this same book)

3. So people in Syria began translating the scriptures from Greek into Syriac and people in Egypt began translating from Greek to Coptic.

4. And rest of the western Roman world spoke Latin so they began translating from Greek to Latin.

5. And this all began sometime around mid to late second century.

6. As a result of which there were so many manuscripts with a lot of variations in them which was quite confusing.

7. So near the end 4th century Pope Damasus commissioned the greatest scholar of his day, Jerome, to produce an “official” Latin translation that could be accepted by all Latin speaking Christians.

8. And this official version produced by Jerome is called Latin Vulgate (Vulgate=Common).

Now remember few things:

A. Combine point 4 & 5 and it says by the end of the second century people started translating the scripture from Greek into Latin.

B. Combine points 6 & 7 and it says there were so many Latin manuscripts available and out these Latin manuscripts Jerome produced his Latin Vulgate.

C. In his objection to the last six verses of the book of revelation Bart says these verses were translated from Latin (Latin Vulgate) to Greek.

D. He also says the surviving greek manuscripts doesn't have these 6 verses.

Now the point is: 

• Bart in his debate with Professor Dan Wallace said that the earliest surviving manuscript that we have is from the 3rd and the 4th century.

• The earliest manuscripts were written on papyrus which do not last long since those manuscripts were continuously being used to copy, teach and preach.

• And this why most the earliest Greek manuscripts have pages missing or contents become illegible.

However Bart himself says that Latin translations were made in the mid to late 2nd century which means the last page of the book of revelation with last six verses were still available when people copied it from Greek into Latin.

And we can assume that most of the Latin manuscripts contained these 6 verses because of which Jerome had no problem including it in his Latin Vulgate.

Had it been in only a handful of translated latin manuscripts Jerome would have questioned it but we don't find any reluctance on Jerome's part regarding these verses.

Now let's see this:

These six verses when they were copied from earliest Greek manuscripts into Latin and other languages Bart has no problem.

Later when these 6 verses are translated from this same source (Latin) back into its original language (Greek) Bart has a problem.

Transmission History:

Late 2nd century: Greek to Latin ( no problem)

Late 4th Century: Local Latin into Latin Vulgate (no problem)

Early 16th Century: from Latin Vulgate back to Greek. ( Big objection) which really is baseless.

I have the highest regard for Professor Bart Ehrman as a scholar, I personally have no reluctance accepting the facts cited by professor Bart. However I strongly disagree with his interpretation of those facts.

I want to encourage you with this "when you read or watch stuffs from such scholars beware of their interpretation even when you read book on atheism by renowned atheist scientists or any other field.