Chapter 2 - Here Erhman details the task of the earliest copyists of the NT. On page 46 he asserts what for me is the basic issue - "changes in the text that were made by accident and by design." On p.58 he asserts, "We may as well suspend any discussion of the 'original' text, because it is inaccessible to us." In his attempt to "reconstruct" (there's that word again, on p. 62) these events, he makes the first statement that I cannot accept. On p. 63 he says, "Textual critics have been able to determine with relative certainty a number of places in which manuscripts that survive do not represent the original text of the New Testament." My question is - How do you know? Based on the logic I have seen so far, that would be impossible to determine. How can you appeal to an original text that you have already determined doesn't exist? Otherwise, this chapter presented valuable history for me.
Chapter 3 - Here we encounter the history of the first texts of the NT, such as the Latin Vulgate and Greek editions, with the relevant personalities involved in this history. On p. 97 Ehrman describes "the scribal tendency to 'harmonize' passages, saying, "Whenever the same story is told in different Gospels, one scribe or another is likely to have made sure that accounts are perfectly in harmony, eliminating differences by the stroke of their pens." The problem is, they are not perfectly in harmony, and to me that is the beauty and wonder of the gospels. In some places the gospels are assailed for being artificially harmonized, and in other places the gospels are assailed for having differences. Is it one or the other? Or both?
That's enough for today.
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The writing of Clement (approx. 96AD) shows a remarkable knowledge of what we call "scripture". He used quotes from Paul, John and Peter.
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The same is true of Polycarp (John's student), Cyprian and many others, written in Greek, Latin and Aramaic. These writers, from the mid 1st thru the 4th centuries, show that the textual accuracy was maintained. Their quotes are all but indistinguishable from what we read in our Bible's today. And, we have some of the original documents from these early church fathers.
I think what Ehrman proposes is that their quotes, if he agrees with your observation, are from manuscripts that do not date all the way back to their origins, but are a hundred or hundreds of years removed from them.
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