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 (PBUH) 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 (PBUH).
The Islamic position
Ehrman shows scribes editing in several directions at once, each against a rival ; 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 was closing. Ehrman's technical treatment is in *The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture* (1993); *Misquoting Jesus (PBUH)* is the popular presentation of it.
From the Qur'an
وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًۢا
wamā qatalūhu yaqīnan
…they certainly did not kill him.
From the Bible
Greek: to hyper hymon didomenon
This is my body, which is given for you… (absent from some early witnesses)
Read it in their BibleGreek: en sarki eleluthota
…every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
Read it in their BibleSources
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