Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · 6. Theological Alterations
Anti-docetic and anti-separationist changes
In short
- 1.**Docetists** held Christ only seemed to be human; scribes added material stressing real flesh, blood and suffering.
- 2.**Separationists** (some Gnostics) held the divine Christ departed from the man Jesus before the cross.
- 3.Luke 22:19-20 exists in a longer and a shorter form, with the longer stressing the body given and blood poured out.
- 4.Some witnesses to Mark 15:34 read 'why have you *reviled* me' — reflecting a separationist reading being fought over.
The claim being examined
Textual changes are assumed to run in one direction — later scribes exalting Jesus.
The Islamic position
Ehrman shows scribes editing in several directions at once, each against a rival Christology; the text was a battlefield.
Analysis
The cumulative argument of chapter 6 is not that any one variant is decisive but that scribes with theological convictions were demonstrably adjusting the wording, in opposite directions, over the same centuries in which the canon was closing. Ehrman's technical treatment is in *The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture* (1993); *Misquoting Jesus* is the popular presentation of it.
From the Qur'an
Q 4:157
وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًۢا
…they certainly did not kill him.
From the Bible
Luke 22:19-20
Greek: to hyper hymon didomenon
This is my body, which is given for you… (absent from some early witnesses)
Read it in their Bible1 John 4:2
Greek: en sarki eleluthota
…every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
Read it in their BibleSources
Bart D. Ehrman · Bart D. Ehrman, *Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why* (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), ch. 6, pp. 162-175
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