Did Jesus Exist? audiobook

Not too long ago, I was asked in a religious forum whether I believe Jesus really existed. I said yes, I'm 99% sure. I meant precisely that: I'm a numbers guy, and I estimate the odds that Jesus never existed to be somewhere around one chance in a hundred. After presenting a parallel (a Bible historian who is forced to make sense of his research in light of a nonexistent Jesus would be a bit like a research biologist who shows up to work one day and is told that evolution is a lie) I gave an example of the type of argument that I find most convincing. If Jesus were a made-up figure, wouldn't the made-up stories be a bit more self-serving? Instead, for example, the Gospels tell about Jesus submitting to baptism for his sins by a competitor, a man we know from historical reports DID exist: John the Baptist. How did this whole embarrassing episode get written into the story, if it weren't literally true?The truth is, I didn't know what to say in the forum. I would have to write a book to detail all the reasons Bible scholars believe Jesus existed.Thankfully, the book has been written, and by precisely the right person: Bart Ehrman, the controversial Bible-belt professor who has no qualms about speaking his mind regarding the myths which DO exist in the Bible.It's not that Ehrman has no vested interest in the topic. He does. He's been teaching about the Historical Jesus for a couple decades, and he'd have to eat some serious crow if it turns out no such person existed. It's that Ehrman doesn't find it necessary to play by the rules of an apologist, defending conservative Christianity. He can play dirty. For example, in arguing that the Jesus story is more than a myth similar to other legends of a dying and rising god, Ehrman is free to point out the obvious: The guys who first wrote about Jesus never in their wildest dreams thought Jesus was God. That theology came later.I do feel Ehrman overstates his case a bit. Well, he under appreciates the opposing case, I should say, and cops a bit of an attitude as he does. When the mythicists point out that something smells fishy with all the midrash in the New Testament, I found Ehrman's that-don't-prove-nuthin stance a little lame. But when he gets around to presenting the arguments for Jesus' existence, the book is superb. Four stars for an important counter-balance in a debate that has become more heated than I would have thought. And I'm still right where I was before: 99% sure.

Spoiler alert: all the evidence clearly points to Jesus actually having existed. Not that he was anything like we imagine, since he’s been reinvented for the 21st century, but nonetheless, there was a man Jesus crucified two millennia ago.

The question has always facinated me not only about Jesus but also Moses and Mohammed. Bart Ehrman is a great 🏫scholar and I love his story telling style.

Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: HarperOne, 2012). $26.99, 361 pages.A small but prolific group of agnostics and atheists argues that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist. Many of them are cranks and conspiracy theorists. A few of them are scholars, though generally not with expertise in the relevant fields of New Testament studies. They refer to themselves as “mythicists,” i.e. people who believe that Jesus was a myth.In Did Jesus Exist?, Bart D. Ehrman refutes the core thesis of mythicism by providing a careful historical argument for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Like the mythicists, Ehrman is not a Christian. He describes himself as “an agnostic with atheist leanings.” Unlike the vast majority of mythicists, however, Ehrman has relevant expertise in New Testament studies and the history of early Christianity.Ehrman divides his argument into three parts: First, he outlines the evidence for the existence of Jesus from a variety of sources, both outside and within the New Testament (chapters 2–5). Second, he responds to specific mythicist claims, showing that they are “weak and irrelevant” (chapter 6), or, if relevant, nevertheless “not persuasive” (chapter 7). Third, he identifies criteria for establishing “historically accurate” traditions about Jesus (chapter 8): “contextual credibility,” “multiple attestation,” and “dissimilarity.” On the basis of those criteria, he concludes that the historical Jesus was an “apocalyptic prophet” (chapter 9).As an evangelical Christian, my response to Did Jesus Exist? is ambivalent. On the one hand, I agree with Ehrman’s argument that Jesus of Nazareth existed, and I find his refutation of mythicism persuasive. On the other hand, I disagree with his conclusions about what we can reasonably infer about the historical Jesus based on available evidence. Or rather, I believe that we can reasonably infer more about the historical Jesus than he does. But that is an argument for another day. For today, it is sufficient to thank Ehrman for his yeoman work in refuting “the Jesus myth.”P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

Remarkably easy-to-read and interesting account of the accumulated (by Ehrman and many others, but mostly by Ehrman, who self-refers almost to the point of annoyance) evidence of the actual, historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth. This stuff is usually very dense, very academic, and a real snooze if written badly. But Ehrman--an intelligent person, versified in ancient Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and an acknowledged (and, truth be told, self-acknowledged) expert in ancient Christianity and Judaism, and a distinguished, award-winning professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Religious Studies--is also a gifted writer. He has written over twenty-five books, including five NYT bestsellers. His gift is that his prose sounds like he's talking right to you, or leaning on a lectern, facing his students. He's right there in front of you, talking with you, not to you, and not down to you. His writing is conversational, not pompous.And it's thorough. Exhaustively so. Unlike a lot of writers of this stuff, he backs up every single assertion, all the time. And he has the obvious knowledge to back it all up, too. I've read a lot of this kind of thing--lots of Ehrman, but also Vermes, Eisenman, Theiring (who can get a bit hysterical and unsubstantiated), many of the Dead Sea Scrolls guys, etc.--but Ehrman is by far the most lucid, the most investigative, the most historical, the most thorough--and the easiest to read. No small feat, that.And he says things you can (usually) look up on your own. Some of the things he points out have been rocking around my noggin for some time, and yet other things--sometimes head-slappingly simple--were brought to my attention here, and I feel the fool for not thinking of them myself.Like what? Well, among the many things:--Did Mark, Luke, John and Matthew really write the Gospels with their names on them? I've thought "No," for a very long time, and I've had good reasons, all of them via literary analysis (all backed up by Ehrman). But he also throws in a little common sense, such as:* The four Gospels were written by different people who were not followers of Jesus, scattered throughout the lands, forty to sixty years after Jesus died.* According to the Gospels themselves, Mark was the secretary of Peter, and Luke, a physician, travelled with Paul. So what they give us is second-hand information, at best. They were written independently, though the later ones definitely had the earlier ones (including a few--Q, L and M--that have not survived) around, and borrowed heavily from them, sometimes verbatim.* Most Gospel manuscripts that have survived were copied about one thousand years after the original copies. And they are written in highly-educated, upper-class Greek. Jesus and his disciples did not speak Greek. His disciples certainly could not write in Greek.* In fact, they may not have been able to read and write at all. As Ehrman points out, many studies have shown that literacy in the ancient Middle East was about 10%, max. And in Palestine it may have been as low as 3%. And who would that 3% be? The nobility. The rich. The people who had the money and the time to be educated. And who were the disciples? Fisherman. Jesus himself was a laborer, a tekton--one who works with his hands. (This could also mean a blacksmith or a stonemason, but the general consensus is that he was a carpenter.) As such a person, he would've not built wooden cabinets or buildings, but simpler things for a poverty-stricken town like Nazareth--yokes for oxen, or gates. At any rate, there would not have been much time or money for any of the disciples to read or write. Jesus may--and only may--have been able to read a bit because he clearly knew his Old Testament, since he often quoted it verbatim.* The Gospels are often contradictory of each other, and are often historically inaccurate. For example, was Jesus born in Bethlehem, or Nazareth? Constantly Jesus is referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth," or, more simply, "the Nazarene." But according to Luke--and only Luke--Caesar Augustus imposed a tax on "all the world", and so everyone in the Roman Empire had to take part in a census so they'd be registered to pay this tax. And so Joseph, a direct descendant of the ancient King David, and Mary had to trek to Bethlehem, and that's where Jesus was born. In a manger, visited by the three Magi. You know the story. But, turns out, there is no record (and the ancient Romans kept lots of records) of Augustus imposing a tax. Luke claims the census happened "when Quirinius was the governor of Syria," and while, of course, Herod was king. But, turns out, Quirinius did not become governor until ten years after Herod died. And, for all that, how logical is it that everybody in the Roman Empire had to stop what they were doing, and trek perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles to go to a place where their ancient ancestors were born over a thousand years ago? That doesn't make any sense at all, does it? But Luke, and only Luke, says it did. Why? Micah, an Old Testament prophet, said the messiah would be born in Bethlehem, and Jesus wasn't. This bothered Luke, and so he fixed it. There's a lot of that kind of thing here.* The Gospels have obviously been altered by the many hundreds of scribes who have copied them. One clear example is the story of the woman being stoned to death by the crowd. Jesus tells them to knock it off, "lest he who is without sin cast the first stone." This is one of my favorite Gospel stories, but there's a problem. Out of all the thousands of Gospel manuscripts and fragments throughout history, it is only found in John--and only from about the Middle Ages to today. Older manuscripts of John's Gospel do not have the story.And there's hundreds of more examples. But does any of that prove that Jesus didn't really exist? Nope. Of course not. If I mess up a fact about JFK's life, does that mean JFK didn't exist? The point is, though, that Ehrman argues for the historical existence of Jesus, since there's apparently a growing legion of people who do not believe Jesus ever existed--the so-called "Mythicists." (That Jesus was just a myth, get it?) I also believe that Jesus existed, just not in the incantation presently popular in America, especially in the South. What I call "Joel Osteen's Jesus." (You can look that reference up. When you do, ask yourself, Could that be what Jesus really wanted?)Ehrman is an agnostic, as am I, sometimes. I think. I sort of vary back and forth between believing and being an agnostic. I'm never an atheist. Anyway, this is fascinating reading. It's set up as an argument against the Mythicists, but the real meat of the book is in his evidence of Jesus's existence, and the vast, incredible number of ways--99 % of it via literary analysis and his knowledge of ancient manuscripts and ancient Judaism and Christianity, and 1% sheer common sense--in which he proves it.Considering our current political / educational / religious American society (and how did it get to be that our laws and our education are tied into an uneasy, un-Constitutional hybrid of these three?), this is a work that deserves--and desperately needs--to be read.

4.5 stars. If you want to know what the historical evidence is for Jesus, what is commonly mistaken as historical evidence but in fact is not, or what is occasionally put forward as evidence against a historical Jesus and why it's lacking, then this is the book to read. NT scholar Bart Ehrman writes very accessible books and is one of the world's leading experts. I've read multiple books by him and this one is just as good as the others. He walks you through the criteria used by historians to validate historical events. Events 2,000 years ago are not perfectly known, but a spectrum of likelihood can be generated. Ehrman looks at all of the writings we have from the first hundred years following Jesus' death. Presumably, the further from the actual life of Jesus the less reliable the source. Unfortunately, there is no source of any kind that mentions Jesus during his lifetime. We have nothing from Jesus himself, so all of the evidence comes secondhand from decades after his death (and all we have are copies of those documents, no originals). Another way of getting at the historical fact is seeing which sources were telling the same story independently (meaning they didn't rely on or copy each other). Spoiler, Jesus most likely existed and was born in Nazareth (not Bethlehem). He most likely was an apocalyptic preacher (god was coming to save his people soon), and he probably was crucified by the Romans for sedition. There is substantial historical evidence supporting all of these major events.Ehrman does dive deeper into other events from the life of Jesus and discusses how they pass or fail the various criteria for validating something as historical. It is interesting to read and understand these things, and to separate them from what is theological--meaning, they have value from a religious standpoint but are not likely historical or at least cannot be validated as such. As always, Ehrman discusses all of these things in a very respectful way, never disparaging religious believers or non-believers.

Awkward timing to read this so close to Easter...One star docked off because I think too much time was spent on mythicist theories.Bravo, Mr. Ehrman, as always.

Did Jesus exist? As noted New Testament scholar and admitted agnostic with atheist leanings, Bart D. Ehrman writes in his excitingly readable book, Did Jesus Exist? – The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, the answer is a strong yes. Ehrman is quick to point out that despite what debunkers of the historical Jesus would have you believe, the overwhelming majority of scholars believe such a person did in fact exist. And these scholars include a fair number of agnostics, atheists and skeptics. The author is not just presenting the case of a myopic fundamentalist theological position. This is the work of a noted historian respected in his field.Bart D. Ehrman’s book is not apologetics. He takes the reader with great lucidity through the methodologies used by New Testament scholars and historians (sometimes dubbed the historical method) that allow them to reach the conclusion that Jesus existed. Whether or not the miracles or resurrection took place is another matter, and as Ehrman points out, before you can discuss these things you need to establish that such a person did exist in the first place. Again this work is not theology and it’s not apologetics. It’s a discussion of the historical method applied to the question of Jesus of Nazareth I’m an atheist and something of a mythicist when it comes to Christianity and the story of Jesus the Christ. However, unlike many debunkers of Christianity, I find it completely reasonable and plausible that there was an historical person on whose shoulders the traditions of the majority of the extant Christianities is based on, however loosely that may actually be. It’s the mythical claim that said historical person rose from the dead after being dead for 3 days and the attendant theology that has emerged from that highly implausible assertion is where I part company with Jesus and his followers.Ehrman is honest about the limits of the historical evidence. He understands that we are missing the clichéd smoking gun that archeology and other disciplines have not been able to provide. He also understands the problems and limitations of what we do have. This discussion is no “ignore the man behind the curtain” chicanery of much of what passes for scholarship in conservative circles. I’ve always found the allegation that the early church fabricated the historical Jesus to be rather strange. Given what we know of the economic, political and religious realities of First Century Palestine simply dismissing Jesus as a fictional character takes the special brand of temerity usually exhibited by the conspiracy theorist and paranoiac. Most of the mythicist's work available to the general reader is written by non-professionals in the fields of scholarship necessary to weigh in on the subject. In fact many of the authors are not scholars at all and the wild conclusions they often draw make this apparent.These are points that Ehrman employs to his advantage. However, he is a little too quick to dismiss the mythicist’s viewpoint even though he does offer begrudging respect for Robert Price ( the one scholar he allows that actually possesses the credentials required to make his opinions worth considering) and Richard Carrier ( a personal favorite of mine), who is credentialed at least in parallel disciplines. Nonetheless, not all mythicist material is pure conspiracy nincompoopery. However, what Ehrman does do is offer some cogent counterarguments to a few of the more common arguments presented against the historicity of Jesus.Finally, even though scholars have not conclusively proven that Jesus of Nazareth is a man of history, Did Jesus Exist?, demonstrates that it is not only reasonable to believe he was real, history is not nearly as silent on the matter as is often supposed. This is a great book for the skeptic and the atheist. Most Christians should be able to read it as well. It’s the fundamentalist and the mythicists who will have the most trouble putting their biases aside to consider the contributions this book makes to the general public on the subject of Jesus’ existence.

A very eye opening book that addresses whether there was a historical Jesus, stating that of the scholarly consensus vs. an emerging mythicist camp. I see Bart Ehrman as a bit inconvenient for both atheists and Christians because he does not have nearly the agenda seen in many writings. I felt the closing ten pages was an excellent summary of what I have always felt with regards to his meeting with other humanists at a convention and comparing it with modern day mythicists. He explains the independent sources, canonical and non-canonical, to argue for what passes the criteria of the historical Jesus, what may have been made up later, the evolution of Jesus from a few years to decades to hundreds and now thousands of years. I tend to like an author and scholar that is not side-serving unless that side is the truth, and I feel Ehrman tries to do the historical Jesus justice. The debunking of mythicist books over the past couple hundred years is very strong, and it looks as if Ehrman tries to give credit to those with relevant degrees, but he like any historian is looking for some facts and sources, not just made up opinions of what would be convenient to make Jesus disappear.

Very cool book. An avowed agnostic, the author makes a strictly historical case for Jesus existing. It’s seems like one of those books that would piss everyone off, and that is my kind of book

A thorough destruction of the claims of the Mythicists from someone who has studied the Jesus question for most of his adult life. Caveat: The Jesus of history that Ehrman claims existed is the same one that Albert Schweitzer described a hundred years earlier: Jesus was a self-appointed apocalyptic preacher. Ehrman dodges the resurrection question - dodges is perhaps a little strong, as it is not the subject of this book. But it is a question that demands an explanation - hopefully in an upcoming book. We shall see.

An excellent excellent book. Just about everything Ehrman says makes perfect sense. The only problems are minor typos and editorial errors of that type, and they are all very minor.Spoiler: Yes Jesus did exist. No, the Modern Christian Version(s) of Jesus did not exist.

Molto interessante.Ben argomentato, anche se, a volte, lascia perplesso.Nel complesso mi ha convinto.Di quelli letti sull'argomento è il migliore.

Ehrman argues with lots of convincing arguments that Jesus did exist with the main evidence being from the New Testament but also from other sources, e.g. Josephus, Tacitus.

I’m going to talk a bit about some murderers in Detroit, Jesus, and a couple of books I recently read that I think are just awesome.MURDERSo, the murderers.Let me start by asking this question: can you establish the truth in a court of law?Is that what the judge and jury are deciding? The Truth, with a capital T?Think about Tommy and Ray Highers, brothers from Detroit. They were convicted of murder. Open and shut case. No parole. They were two nasty buggers that shot a man down over some dope.But then twenty-five years later (last year, in fact) they were back in court because new evidence had come to light that undermined the original conviction. For the curious, this awesome Dateline episode reveals the amazing way the evidence came to light and what happened because of it: http://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/full-.... Watch it. You’ll be happy you did.So the Truth. Capital T. Can you establish that in a court of law?No.What the justice system does is try to determine which story about the evidence available is the most convincing.It’s about telling and judging stories.There are many types of evidence folks use when telling their stories. Some of it is very strong. Some is so unreliable, like hunches and hearsay, that the court won’t even allow it to be presented.Whatever the evidence, the fundamental nature of this is that you can often tell a number of different stories using the same set of data, the same evidence. Sometimes the stories are variations with minor differences. Sometimes the stories are radically different.It’s like having only some of the pieces of a 100 piece puzzle. You look at the four, twenty, or thirty pieces you have and imagine what the rest of the puzzle looks like. And then you invent something that seems reasonable.You invent it.And if that story meets certain standards of proof, then our system allows the authorities to take certain actions. If the standard of a “reasonable suspicion” is met, it allows a police officer to stop someone. If the standard of “probable cause” is met, a higher standard than reasonable suspicion, an officer can arrest you. If a jury in a criminal case decides the defendant is guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” an even higher standard of proof, then the justice system authorizes the authorities to sentence the defendant.But at no time does the system seek to establish the absolute truth, the truth with a capital T. It only seeks to establish some level of probability that the story being told about the evidence is true.All of this is made more complex because what’s “reasonable” is based on other people’s opinion. We have guidelines and rules to help folks be “reasonable.” But reasonableness is still affected by culture, background, history, etc.It’s still opinion.OTHER PUZZLESWhat other realm of knowledge works like the justice system and consists of inventing stories about missing parts of the puzzle?Well, history does.In fact, if you think about it, history is what courts do. The processes and principles guide everyone involved in how they go about telling the stories that make up that specific type of history.Non-court historians are limited just like lawyers, judges, and juries: they have no means of establishing the absolute truth.They can’t use science. Science requires you conduct experiments and reproduce results. But how is a historian going to reproduce the same events? What, they’re going to get Lincoln shot all over again and let the rest of us watch it? Dang, John Wilkes Booth did shoot the man. We all saw it happen down in the lab.Sure, they can use science to date a manuscript, or determine what something is made of, or establish some other fact. But all science is doing is providing facts about the pieces of the puzzle you have. About the claims the evidence makes.But science can’t fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. It can’t tell the story. The historian has to invent the story that makes the pieces all make sense.And then the rest of us determine if that story, that sketch of the full puzzle, is reasonable.But that isn’t all there is to it.STANDARDS OF PROOFThink about conspiracy theories like the ones that claim that the US government perpetrated the 9/11 bombings. Conspiracy theorists are practicing history. They are inventing a story that seems to fit the evidence available to them.But what happens when you have only five or ten pieces of a 1,000 piece puzzle? What happens when you don’t thoroughly vet the evidence? What happens when someone screws around with the evidence? And I’m not just talking about tampering or invalidating it by thoughtless handling (contaminating DNA, for example). Folks with the best intentions have biases. In fact, we all have biases that lead us to include and exclude various pieces of evidence based on whether they support or oppose the ideas we want to believe.Jonathan Haidt explains these biases in his excellent book The Righteous Mind. He explains that with things we want to believe, we often use the standard of “Can I Believe It”? We look for anything at all that would allow us to believe our position. If we find it, even if it’s flimsy, we discount all the other evidence that may point another way and conclude we have met the burden of proof for our view.For things that we don’t want to believe, we often use the standard of “Must I Believe It”? When falling prey to this bias, we look for anything at all that would undermine the thing we don’t want to believe, even if that evidence is flimsy. If we find it, we ignore all the other evidence, even if there’s a mountain of it pointing another way, and claim we have met the necessary burden of proof.In court there are all sorts of procedures and standards that need to be followed to help us avoid invalidating evidence or falling prey to our biases. Those procedures and standards don’t remove all risk. But they do remove a lot.Which court system would you want to be processed through? The current American justice system or the medieval witch trials?Oh, for sure I’d want to be someone accused of witchcraft back when a claim of “I saw her as a witch in my dream” was admissible, as was the test of poking a mole on the accused’s body with a needle to see if said witch flinched enough. I’d be so happy to go back to the days when a confession obtained by torture was incontrovertible evidence.So when practicing history, it’s important to have some guidelines, some rules to establish which bits of evidence are more likely (not guaranteed, but more likely) to be reliable. And it’s important that when folks tell their story, they not only share the evidence, but also all the assumptions they’re making.JESUSWhere does Jesus of Nazareth come into all of this?Well, Jesus has affected the world more than any other person who has lived on it. The stories we tell about him (the history we have practiced about him for the last 2,000+ years) have changed the world. And those stories will continue to affect us, especially folks in Western cultures, on everything from foreign policy to which clothes think are fit to be worn in public.Who was Jesus? Did he really exist? Was he a god? What did he really teach? Have his teachings been changed?These are all fundamental questions. And for the last two-hundred years historians have been re-examining the pieces of the puzzle, finding new pieces, and telling new stories to explain it all.Some of these historians believe in Jesus as a god. Some don’t. Either way, the conversation is fascinating.I just read three historical books about Jesus that were awesome. AWESOME. Not because I agreed with all of the author’s conclusions, i.e. his stories. I don’t. But because of the way he practiced his history. The way he told his stories. And because what he shared gave me new insights to my stories about Jesus.The three books, all by Bart D. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, are:1. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why2. Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)3. Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of NazarethI’ve read the Bible many times, and I’m a believer. Of course, the question is a believer in which story?What Ehrman so engagingly makes clear is that there have indeed been many stories about Jesus. In fact, the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and the writings of Paul (most of the rest of the New Testament) seem to all portray a different man and message. Not only do they say things that flat out contradict each other on some details, but if you look at each book separately, each author seems to have a slightly different take on Jesus.Furthermore, it appears that what we now have has changed over time. For example, it seems the last twelve verses of Mark were not in the oldest manuscripts. There have been other changes. One of the more notable ones occurs in John 5:7-8.Our earliest texts say:“For there are three that bear record, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”But later texts say:“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”Nowhere else in the New Testament do we have anything that states that creedal doctrine so explicitly. Did John write that? Or was the extra material added to make the idea of the trinity scriptural?And what do we make of the fact that we have no manuscript that dates to anywhere close to when Jesus lived? We have some small fragments of manuscripts with a few verses of John, Revelation, and Matthew dated around 150 AD. But the oldest manuscripts we have that contain the majority of any of the gospels are for the gospels of Luke and John, and these are dated around 200 AD. The oldest manuscripts with the full New Testament are dated around 350 AD.That’s more than 300 years after Jesus died!Have you played the game of telephone? Are we sure that the oral traditions that were written down weren’t changed? What happened to the books mentioned in the Bible that we don’t have now? For example, Jude mentions a prophecy of Enoch that we don’t have in our current Bible. Are we sure that the copyists didn’t add to the text like it seems some did to John?And what about the term “Christ”? It’s actually the Greek word for “messiah” which just means one anointed with oil to perform a special service for god. Christ wasn’t Jesus’s last name. It was a title: Jesus the anointed one.The anointed ones in those days were kings and prophets and priests. It appears most of the historical sources suggest that a “messiah” to the Jews of that time was someone who would throw off foreign rule and establish the kingdom of Israel as David had. In fact, there were a whole bunch of people who claimed to be messiahs. Here’s a nice list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_M....Judas Maccabeus was considered a messiah because he threw off Greek rule in 164 BC. But then around 63 BC Israel was taken over by Rome. And Rome wasn’t too keen on revolts, so around 4 BC they crucified Judas the Galilean for claiming to be the messiah, the king of the Jews. Crucifixion, it seems, was the punishment reserved for seditionists. They crucified Jesus and a whole bunch of other guys claiming to be the king of the Jews. And their crimes were written on a board above them, which is why they hung the words “King of the Jews” over Jesus’s head on the cross. Here’s the criminal, and here’s his crime. These other messiahs were not claiming to be a god that came to earth to atone for sins, but anointed by God to throw off foreign rule and establish his earthly kingdom again.Jesus talks a lot about the kingdom of God. Was Jesus just another one of the seditionists?Ehrman examines these and many other questions as a historian, providing all sorts of insights.But the fabulous thing is that he doesn’t just tell his story. He gives his evidence. Exposes his assumptions. And in all three books he explains the guidelines or “rules” historians use to when trying to determine which stories are more likely and which evidence is more reliable.I was enlightened, challenged, and delighted. I learned things about Jesus’s life and times that have helped me understand what I read in the Bible better.LIMITSOf course, the historical method has its limits.Historians, because they are looking for explanations (stories) that are more probable, automatically select against things that are improbable. They exclude miracles. They exclude any story that says Christ was actually resurrected. They may establish that a lot of folks thought he was resurrected, but they don’t have any methods to establish something like a resurrection actually occurred. And so they ignore it. Historians exclude modern revelation. If someone today were to have a visitation from Jesus as Paul did, the historians would exclude that.But we all know that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. We all know that sometimes the less likely thing is exactly what occurred.Historians are looking for what is most probable. Not what actually happened. Because they can’t go back and time and verify their story.Excluding “improbable” things changes the types of stories the pieces of the puzzle support. For many of us, me included, we do accept evidences many historians don’t as pieces of the puzzle. And because we have these pieces, we’re able to tell different types of stories.The cool thing about Ehrman is that he explains this. He’s not trying to hide anything. Instead, he’s explaining how to approach the Bible from a historical point of view, and where the principles of the historical method lead him.And I have found that those methods in his hands have a lot to offer.If you’re someone who is interested in religion–as a believer, agonistic, or atheist–you will love these books. Ehrman himself was once an ardent believer, but is now agnostic. However, his respect for believers, including other scholars in his field who believe in the divine Jesus, comes through loud and clear. Ehrman has no axe to grind. He is simply sharing the stories of Jesus that make sense to him and many other historians. And he does it in a very interesting and easy-to-read style.If these books sound like something you want to try, I’d start with Misquoting Jesus, move to Jesus Interrupted, and then finish with Did Jesus Exist? And if you enjoy those, let me recommend two more of Ehrman’s books. The first is The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed, which looks at the discovery and content of a very ancient manuscript that calls itself The Gospel of Judas. The second is Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which explores the variety of Christian faiths that existed in the few hundred years after Jesus’s death.Happy reading!

I will cheerfully admit that I adored this book. After reading some of the books written by atheists about Jesus, even I get grumpy - and I don't think there was anything unique about him except that his fan club got the upper hand. (Not unlike Star Wars vs. Babylon 5, there.) Atheists who subscribe to the mythicist school - the one that argues there was no historical Jesus - tend to be the smuggest and most annoying of all in tone, but until recently I didn't have any tools to refute them.Now I do. Ehrman, who is himself agnostic, takes on the mythicist school of thought directly in this volume and mounts multiple convincing arguments against the mythicists. He divides the book into sections: first addressing the evidence that there was a historical Jesus, second debunking the arguments against it, and then going on into whether it matters. If you've read others of Ehrman's books, a lot of his citations will be familiar. Again, this is because there is a limited amount of early days' data available on the topic. There are only so many early manuscripts, although they are still eagerly sought. There are only so many people who were even capable of producing these documents, and honestly the amount of information we have is fairly important in and of itself - we don't have much more for many important figures. Don't let the familiarity of the documentation and arguments bore you. Ehrman is making a case that is being presented by mythicists as impossible to make, and showing where they are missing information, arguing from special cases, or even just ignorant - he does point out a few incredibly specious arguments. I am convinced that Jesus was a historical figure by his points. It's worth reading to discover if you are, too. Four of five stars.

This is a convincing and mostly successful argument that Jesus did, in fact, exist. The idea of the mythical Jesus is alive, well, and actually growing among many secular humanists. The “mythicist” point of view is that there was never such a person as Jesus. Jesus is a legendary figure. Ehrman is himself an agnostic, and therefore in principle quite open to secular humanism, but does not agree. The question of whether God (a supernatural being) exists is one thing; but the question of whether Jesus (a historical figure) exists is something quite different. So he goes through all the arguments showing that yes, indeed, there was such a person as the historical Jesus.It is very useful to see all the evidence that there was a historical Jesus dissected bit by bit by a real scholar such as Ehrman. Most of us just assume that Jesus existed and go on to ask what he taught or what his life was like. So it’s good to back up and look at all the reasons why we believe that Jesus existed.The question of whether Jesus existed is entirely a modern concern. Everyone in the ancient world, whether for or against Jesus, just took it for granted that of course there was a person named Jesus. In fact, if you go back in time even to the first century, you can see the church split into factions that are scarcely even speaking to each other, but take it for granted that Jesus existed. You can then go back into the various gospels, both heretical and orthodox, that spoke about Jesus, and the letters of Paul, which speaks of Jesus’ brother, and various non-Christian sources, and so forth and so on. Ehrman then goes into all of the mythicist claims about Jesus, and dismantles their theories one by one. This was highly useful for me as my previous knowledge of most the mythicists was quite limited. I had read Robert Price’s stuff, though, and been rather impressed, and I will still check out his book on The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems. Just when I was almost totally convinced that Jesus existed, Ehrman concludes with three chapters discussing who the historical Jesus really was. This, unfortunately, serves only to create doubts about Jesus where none had previously existed. He should have quit while he was ahead! He could have just said something like, “well, we all have different ideas about who Jesus was, but we all agree that he existed,” and let it go at that. Ehrman doesn’t realize the problems he is creating for himself with this final section. It’s not that what he says is that unconvincing. Much of it is just conventional Jesus scholarship. I absolutely agree with what he says about Jesus in opposition to the temple. He goes over the various theories about Jesus, discussing the criteria of dissimilarity, multiple attestation, and contextual credibility — all pretty much standard stuff.But all of this just highlights that there is no agreement among Jesus scholars on absolutely critical issues. Ehrman, like Albert Schweitzer before him, holds to the idea of the apocalyptic Jesus. But other scholars disagree — in fact, the consensus among the Jesus Seminar scholars was that Jesus was not apocalyptic. The whole apocalyptic thing arose (they argue) because of later post-Jesus conflicts between the Jews and the Romans, and the destruction of Jerusalem, which led the gospel writers to hypothesize that the end of the world was near. The earliest strata of the gospels and the Q tradition were actually non-apocalyptic.So which is it, guys? You’ve had over a century since Schweitzer published his book, and you scholars are still arguing among yourselves over a basic, BASIC point like whether Jesus expected an imminent end to the world? If scholarship can’t resolve this, then how can we believe scholarship on anything else about Jesus either? And don’t get me started about the Essenes! (Oops — too late.) Ehrman seems to unquestioningly accept the idea that the Dead Sea Scrolls are Essene documents, despite the fact that the descriptions of the Essenes by their contemporaries (Josephus and Philo) was absolutely NOTHING like the Dead Sea Scroll documents. One group is a retiring, meditative, pacifist sect which refused to make oaths and refused slavery. The other group is a militant, apocalyptic sect looking for 33 years of carnage and warfare, making oaths, and owning slaves. EXCUSE ME? These are obviously totally different groups.All right. Ehrman is a smart guy, and he is entitled to his opinions. All of his opinions are defensible and in fact I agree with many of them. But the point is, the contrary opinions are also defensible, and in some cases probable. This creates doubt in the reader’s mind as to whether we should doubt the first two-thirds of his book as well. If scholars can’t agree on WHO Jesus was, how can we depend on these same scholars to tell us THAT Jesus existed at all? Perhaps the very existence of Jesus has now become a point about which reasonable people can disagree. A key argument in favor of Jesus’ existence is simply that “virtually all scholars, of whatever ideological stripe, agree that Jesus existed” (this is not an exact quote but I believe it to be a fair representation of Ehrman's view). To me, the final section suggests that these same scholars are a fairly unreliable guide because of the total lack of consensus among them, and because of occasional outright errors. This doesn’t destroy his previous argument, and in fact this summary of the “consensus” of Jesus scholars is rather illuminating for those of us approaching the subject outside the “inner circle” of scholars.But this discussion does significantly weaken it. Yes, I know, the question of “who was Jesus” and “did Jesus exist” are two different questions. We can all agree that Lenin existed without agreeing on whether Lenin was a tyrant in the making, or a true democrat seeking to free the people. But by highlighting what are bound to be seen by many readers as differences of opinion about Jesus, he has succeeding in creating doubt about Jesus’ historical existence in an area where previously none had existed.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bart Ehrman's book on the question of Jesus's existence. It's very readable and provides some excellent arguments for believing that Jesus existed as a human (Ehrman doesn't argue for the typical Christian supernatural wonder working Jesus). He also discusses what we can, historically, know about the human Jesus. Of course, as Ehrman points out, history is primarily about assessing the probability of something based on the evidence we have. And, for Ehrman, the probability is in favour of Jesus' existence.DID JESUS EXIST? is written in a polemic style because it grew out of Ehrman's frustration with Mythicists who have become increasingly vocal in defending the view that Jesus never existed. His polemical approach could have been toned down a bit but does make for interesting reading. But it is when Ehrman provides his arguments and evidence that the book is most interesting.I have previously found some of the Mythicist writings somewhat persuasive, but Ehrman's book has given me pause, showing how the Mythicist perspective doesn't fit the evidence of Jesus' existence we have available, and which is the basis for an almost universal scholarly consensus that he did.For anyone interested in whether Jesus did exist -- that is, the human Jesus -- then Ehrman's book is a must read.