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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Prof. Bart D. Ehrman

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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

The last twelve verses of Mark’s gospel were added centuries after the fact. This section is not in the earliest and best manuscripts.

The original text, apparently, has the women followers of Jesus finding the tomb empty but for a strange man. He tells them to speak to others about what happened, but the text declares that the women were afraid and did not want to inform others.

Later scribes, reading this, it would seem, judged this to be wrong: “How can you not tell others about the tomb?” they reasoned. And so they added twelve more verses to Mark in which, now, the women do speak, and Jesus meets his people ordaining them to preach to the nations; further, they are encouraged with the information that drinking poison will not harm them nor will snake bites prove deadly.

But none of this ever happened.