Myths and Mistakes Now Available

The New Testament is important, and defending it is important, but what we’ve noticed is that occasionally well-meaning defenders rely on other well-meaning defenders. If left unchecked, this can lead to a chain of citations that go back to resources now-outdated with plenty of opportunity to make mistakes along the way.

One problem is that it’s really hard for any one person to be up-to-date on everything. There’s no way around it—that’s difficult. That’s why this book is a co-edited multi-author volume and not a monograph. We thought that this sort of project is better done by a team of people, each of whom can do one thing well, than by one person trying to do all the things well.

So what is the book? It’s a self-corrective written by people who value the New Testament and think it should be defended, written for people who value the New Testament and want to defend it. We’ve taken some common mistakes about manuscripts and textual criticism that show up in “Why Trust the New Testament” talks, explained why these common mistakes are mistakes or otherwise poor arguments and tried to show what a better way might be.

Over at The Gospel Coalition, Justin Taylor has blogged some of our “Key Takeaways,” which we put at the end of each chapter. Of course, the chapters explain why we assert what we assert here, but Taylor’s post is a great example of what kinds of thingsthe book aims to explain.