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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Prof. Bart D. Ehrman

Why does Jesus say that Abiathar was high priest in Mark 2:26 when 1 Samuel 21 states that it was Ahimelech?

 

 

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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

 

 

Dr. Ehrman speaks of this in an interview. Listen at 15:46.

This reference to Abiathar exists in all the ancient manuscripts, and so it's not a scribal interpolation. There are many theories concerning this verse as effort to shore-up biblical inerrancy; many which offer, "Well, it could have been due to this-or-that." But these merely reflect a disposition toward "pathological harmonizing", a slippery slope toward dishonest scholarship. The text says what it says with no easy linkage to absolving metaphor but simply a plain statement.

All of which begs the question, if there are small contradictions such as this in the text, the door is now open to the possibility of larger ones.

 

 

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