home | what's new | other sites | contact | about

  

 

Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Prof. Bart D. Ehrman

John’s account of the invalid by the pool of Bethzatha was altered by copyists in later manuscripts to speak of an angel disturbing the water. The earlier text does not offer a reason for the troubled waters.

 

 

return to the main-page article on "Bible"

 

 

Editor's prefatory comment:

Dr. Ehrman explains that the 5700 early copies of the New Testament – copies of copies of copies – contain hundreds of thousands of discrepancies.

Many of these are inconsequential but a significant number alter the meaning of the text in important ways. Most of these constituted mere human error in copying but some of them, it appears, were purposefully injected into the text by editorial judgment of scribes.

This entire area of scholarship is far more complex than most realize, leading the objective reviewer to understand that, in many cases, we have no knowledge of the original text of the New Testament.

In addition to Dr. Ehrman’s books, his lectures are available on youtube; for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfheSAcCsrE&t=12s

 

 

Dr. Ehrman speaks of this in his book, "Misquoting Jesus."

 

“… the memorable story in John 5 of Jesus healing an invalid by the pool of Bethzatha… When [Jesus] asks the man if he would like to be healed, the man replies that there is no one who can place him in the pool, so that ‘when the water is troubled’ someone always beats him into it.

“In our oldest and best manuscripts there is no explanation for why this man would want to enter the pool once the waters become disturbed… [however, there is] an addition to verses 3-4 found in many of our later manuscripts.

“There we are told that ‘an angel would at times descend into the pool and disturb the water; and the first to descend after the water was disturbed would be healed.’”

But this is a copyist’s insertion, one of private unwarranted explanation.

 

 

Editor's last word: