Jesus, Interrupted audiobook

First off, I think it’s important to dismiss any of the common misunderstandings about Bart Ehrman and this book. The book is not a diatribe. It does not set out to debunk Christianity. Ehrman, in my opinion, is not angry, condescending, or uncaring in this book – quite the opposite, actually. Ehrman is not asking that you abandon your faith. I personally feel, having read the book, that Ehrman has served us up a wonderful tool, and has provided us with a great opportunity for discussion that could be very good for society at this point in time. It is also very important to understand that the book does not make any assertions that are new, radical, or unpopular among biblical scholars. And that is exactly what makes the book so incredibly fascinating, and quite honestly, shocking. Ehrman is very clear from the get-go that he is not serving up anything that would be surprising to anyone who went through a non-evangelical seminary schooling. The assertions in Ehrman’s book are something that most ministers and scholars of the New Testament have learned. They are things that have been agreed upon by the vast majority of biblical scholars. The only shocking part is that we, as a nation and a society so greatly influenced by the Bible, know so little about The Bible. We think we know a lot about it, and in many ways we do. We know the parables. We know, and can recite from memory, entire portions of scripture. We know the many characters, their many trials, and we know the great many lessons to be learned from The Bible. But those of us who claim we know our Bible – what do we really know? We tend to believe that it is the inerrant word of God. We view it as a book. We call it “The Good Book”. We treat it as a package, a unit, as we do most other books we own. The problem is that we do not approach the Bible from a historical-critical perspective. We do this with any other manuscripts or literature when we want to better understand it. Why do we not approach our most beloved text in the same way? We read each book in the Bible, but rarely do we compare narratives and note their striking theological and historical differences. We often do not take into account when each book was written, to whom, by whom, and why. Mostly, this is due to the popular notion that it is God’s book, and it is inerrant or divinely inspired and therefore its attributes are divine and universal. If we believe that, then we are not doing a very good job of reading.Ehrman notes the phenomenon of compressing different narratives into one clean narrative – creating a narrative that cannot be found existing on its own in the Bible. He writes of our reluctance to read the books of the Bible horizontally – meaning comparing separate accounts of the same events in different books, rather than compiling aspects of each into one imagining. If we read the books of the Bible, Gospels or otherwise, horizontally, we notice how much of what we know about the Bible is contradictory, irreconcilable, historically incorrect, or theologically incompatible. He urges that in order to fully understand what each author is trying to say, we need to look at the details of each account – each author is using devices to make a theological point, a point that is lost when we create our own narratives from more than one account.Here are some things, from Ehrman’s book, that many of us do not know, or accept. And it is important to note that these are not simply Erhman’s assertions, but are well-documented by Biblical scholars, and Ehrman provides a wealth of footnotes, and supporting information and bibliographies which he urges the reader to explore on their own. And that is one thing Ehrman does do – he urges the reader, on many occasions, to read your own Bibles and do your own research.• “Of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, only eight almost certainly were written by the authors to whom they are traditionally ascribed: the seven undisputed letters of Paul and the Revelation of John” (which may not be the John most people believe it to be.)• The other nineteen books fall into three groups: “Misattributed writings”, “Homonymous writings” (written by someone who has the same name as someone else, i.e. James was most likely written by a James, but not written by Jesus’ brother James – its reason for inclusion as scripture), and “Pseudepigraphic writings” (written in the names of people who did not actually write them – scholars have known this for over a century).• “In Matthew, Jesus refuses to perform miracles in order to prove his identity; in John, that is practically the only reason he does miracles.”• “Jesus’ disciples were “lower-class, illiterate, Aramaic-speaking peasants from Galilee.” “The authors of the Gospels were highly educated, Greek-speaking Christians who probably lived outside Palestine.”• There exists a wealth of early Christian forgeries (Gospels allegedly written by Peter, Philip, Thomas, James the brother of Jesus. There were forged apostolic acts, “such as the Acts of John and of Paul and Thecla; we have epistles, such as the letter to the Laodiceans, 3 Corinthians, letters between Paul and the Roman philosopher Seneca, and letters allegedly written by Peter to James in order to oppose Paul; and we have a number of apocalypses, an Apocalypse of Peter (which nearly made it into the canon, and an Apocalypse of Paul”. It is likely that forgeries could have made it into the canon.• “This view that the New Testament contains books written under false names is taught at virtually all the major institutions of higher learning except strongly evangelical schools”. “It is the view taught in all the major textbooks on the New Testament used in these institutions. It is the view taught in the seminaries and divinity schools. It is what pastors learn when they are preparing for ministry.”• The Gospels were likely written after the year 70. Between the time of Jesus and these writings, Christianity was spreading through major urban areas of the Mediterranean region, solely by word of mouth. The way to convert people away from their (mostly) pagan religions was to tell them stories about Jesus: what he said and did, and how he died and was raised from the dead. Word of mouth, in a world of no mass media. If you look at our own ability to create urban legends, exaggerate, or alter details in the age of information, it would be disingenuous to assume that in the decades of repeated oral histories of Jesus, details did not undergo changes before they were committed to paper.• If Jesus lived and died in the first century, what do the Greek and Roman sources from his own day through the end of the century have to say about him? The answer is breathtaking. They have absolutely nothing to say about him. He is never discussed, challenged, attacked, maligned, or talked about in any way in any surviving pagan source of the period. There are no birth records, accounts of his trial and death, reflections on his significance, or disputes about his teachings…his name is never mentioned once in any pagan source. And we have a lot of Greek and Roman sources from the period: religious scholars, historians, philosophers, poets, natural scientists; we have thousands of private letters; we have inscriptions placed on buildings in public places. In no first-century Greek or Roman (pagan) source is Jesus mentioned.”• CS Lewis put forth the formulation that since Jesus called himself God, there were only three logical possibilities: he was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. Ehrman states that “none of our earliest traditions indicates that Jesus said any such thing about himself. And surely if Jesus had really spent his days in Galilee and then Jerusalem calling himself God, all of our sources would be eager to report it.” “Only in the latest of our Gospels”, John, a Gospel that shows considerably more theological sophistication than the others, does Jesus indicate that he is divine.” Perhaps Lewis’s formula is flawed. Perhaps Jesus was actually “a first-century Palestinian Jew who had a message to proclaim other than his own divinity”. • The idea of the divine being becoming human was not introduced until the Gospel of John, written after the other three Gospels.• There are “flat out discrepancies among the books of the New Testament. Sometimes these discrepancies could be reconciled if one worked hard enough at it with pious imagination; other times the discrepancies could not be reconciled, however fanciful the explanation.” (i.e. Jesus dies on different days in Mark and John).• “A whole range of theological perspectives came into existence, not during the life of Jesus, or even through the teachings of his original apostles, but later, as the Christian church grew and came to be transformed into a new religion rather than a sect of Judaism. These include some of the most important Christian doctrines, such as that of a suffering Messiah, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, and the existence of heaven and hell.”These are only a few examples of items that I personally found fascinating (there scores more tidbits, inaccuracies, contradictions, and theological problems, that Ehrman details), and in some cases shocking. I grew up in the Methodist church. I was exposed to the Bible as much as your average Christian. Obviously I formed my own opinions, as we all do, in regards to the Bible’s inerrancy, historical accuracy, etc. I took a few courses in college in which we studied the Bible from a historical critical perspective. These had a huge influence on my changing views of The Bible and of religion in general. Therefore, many of Erhman’s assertions, opinions, and conclusions, did not come as a surprise. But the experience of reading “Jesus, Interrupted” is certainly eye-opening even for those who have been exposed to reading the Bible from the historical-critical perspective. I understand the reluctance of many to read the book. I understand the knee-jerk reaction to Ehrman. Sure, anytime we are asked to truly examine our own long-held beliefs, we are hesitant. With these understandings, I would urge anyone who has any interest in the Bible to read the book. It is not meant to change your faith. It likely will, however, change aspects of your faith. Ehrman does is not stating there is no God. He is not stating that Jesus did not exist. He is not saying Jesus did not perform miracles or rise from the dead. There are some things we cannot know from historical critical research. That is where faith comes in. All Ehrman is urging is for us to allow ourselves to truly know and understand the human aspects of the New Testament. Why the Bible exists as it is, who wrote it, and why they wrote what they wrote. There are two texts that greatly affect us in our daily lives: The Bible and the Constitution. It is shocking that we know so little about how both came to be. It is up to us to make our own decisions about the things in it which we cannot prove or disprove. But we have no excuse for not exploring and understanding centuries of painstaking research on the most important text ever written. If Ehrman is not your cup of tea, there are numerous other books, and plenty of divinity programs serving it up in another form.It’s a fascinating read. Ehrman is a refreshing voice in non-fiction. He’s incredibly knowledgeable, funny, and likeable, regardless of your religious views. I urge everyone, believers and non-believers, to spend some time with his writings. You will be challenged and you will learn a lot, no matter your background (okay, unless you’ve been through seminary school), and that’s something that’s rare in these days when we tend to live in ideological echo chambers.

My view of the Bible has changed over time. As I grow older physically and intellectually, I trashed some of my previously fundamentalist position about the Bible. The Bible was once for me dropped from heaven: without flaws or inconsistencies. This is evidently indefensible and false. Faith and religion apart, persisting in that fundamentalist inerrancy position would define me intellectually dishonest. The Bible is chock full of discrepancies. Now, these errors and inconsistencies doesn't render the Bible a useless piece of work. The Bible is a serious book, and I continue to study it. Instead, what we can agree is that the Bible was written by human beings and as such, contains the kind of human errors you find in other human works.Furthermore, the authors brought to bear their individual (author's) point of view (POV). John's or Paul's position differs in some areas with Matthew or Mark because they were presenting or presented their individual opinions and idiosyncrasies. Besides, many of the books of the New Testament are pseudonymous—written not by the apostles but by later writers claiming to be apostles. And I don't understand when some Christians say the Bible has no mistakes. Do they mean the authors are beyond reproof or they are completely in agreement with everything written in it? This, of course, put them in a bind. Okay: Where was Jesus the day after he was baptized? In Matthew, Mark, and Luke—the so-called Synoptic Gospels—Jesus, after his baptism, goes off into the wilderness where he will be tempted by the Devil. Mark especially is quite clear about the matter, for he states, after telling of the baptism, that Jesus left “immediately” for the wilderness. What about John? In John there is no account of Jesus being tempted by the Devil in the wilderness. The day after John the Baptist has borne witness to the Spirit descending on Jesus as a dove at baptism (John 1:29–34), he sees Jesus again and declares him to be the Lamb of God (John is explicit, stating that this occurred “the next day”). Jesus then starts gathering his disciples around him (1:35–52) and launches into his public ministry by performing his miracle of turning water into wine (2:1–11). Sadly enough, you can find discrepancies in the account of the birth of Jesus, in the death of Jesus, in the genealogy of Jesus, in the trial narrative, in the death of Judas, in the resurrection narrative, in the cleansing of the temple, about the duration of Jesus ministry, in the life and lessons of Paul, the list is endless. Some of the discrepancies are minor, therefore, can be easily reconciled. Others are significant and irreconcilableAgain, the contradictions are not only between books but even within books. For example, take the last address Jesus delivers to his disciples at his last meal with them. In John 13:36, Peter says to Jesus, “Lord, where are you going?” A few verses later Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going” (John 14:5). And then, a few minutes later, at the same meal, Jesus upbraids his disciples, saying, “Now I am going to the one who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” (John 16:5). Either Jesus had a very short attention span or there is something strange going on with the sources for these chapters, creating an odd kind of disconnect.Many Christians who holds the inerrancy view of the Bible have a clever way of reconciling and interpreting these Biblical contradiction. That is, they end up coming up with their own fancy interpretations and versions of the Bible.For example, the Gospel of Mark indicates that it was in the last week of his life that Jesus “cleansed the Temple” by overturning the tables of the money changers and saying, “This is to be a house of prayer…but you have made it a den of thieves” (Mark 11), whereas according to John this happened at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry (John 2). Some readers have thought that Jesus must have cleansed the Temple twice, once at the beginning of his ministry and once at the end. But that would mean that neither Mark nor John tells the “true” story, since in both accounts he cleanses the temple only once.Some parts of Jesus Interrupted was eye-opener, while others were already familiar. But for most Christians, these discrepancies are hidden, never detected. The reason is simple: they are reading the Bible vertically. According to Ehrman, reading the Bible vertically, that is, reading Mark 14:1-22, then jump to John 13:1-23, as the case may be, makes it difficult for the unsuspecting reader to detect the discrepancies. But if you want to detect the discrepancies, Ehrman suggests reading the Bible horizontally, i.e, reading the books side by side. "Pick a story in the Gospels—for example, Jesus’ birth, the healing of Jairus’s daughter, the crucifixion, the resurrection—most any story will do. Read the account in one Gospel, listing carefully everything that happens in sequence; then read the same story in another Gospel, again taking careful notes. Finally, compare your notes. Sometimes the differences are slight, but sometimes they matter a lot—even if at first glance they seem rather unimportant". Ehrman didn't reveal anything new. For centuries, scholars had established that the authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was and how salvation works; that the New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later; Jesus, Paul, Matthew and John all represented fundamentally different religions; that the established Christian doctrines—such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus & the trinity—were the inventions of still later theologians. Final words: Don't be misled by the title, Ehrman is a professor of the New Testament so the analysis is mainly on the New Testament and not the whole Bible. The book is accessible, and I recommend it for both believer and non-believers.

So when I bought this book on a whim who knows how long ago, I expected it to be a collection of interesting contradictions in Biblical statements. I thought that Ehrman might do something like contrast 1 Corinthians 14:33 ("For God is not a God of disorder but of peace") with Matthew 10:34 ("I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword"). Then we'd all get a good laugh out of the ridiculous of it all.Jesus, Interrupted is not a book about these surface level contradictions. In fact, it was far more compelling than I expected, because Ehrman actually focused on what certain contradictions can teach us about the early Christian church and the historical context. The result was seriously mind-blowing, because the book lead me to doubt whether the bible actually teaches some seemingly foundational ideas, like whether Jesus saw himself as the Messiah or whether the church has any real reason to accept the idea of a holy trinity.This feels like the correct time for an obligatory disclosure: I am an atheist/humanist who was raised Catholic, so I have no strong ties to metaphysical biblical teachings and I've never given serious thought to the idea that the bible could be the inerrant word of God. I sometimes wish that I could be a secular Catholic, because some of the traditions are super fun, but apparently that's not allowed. Whatev. However, considering that I like literature, I have to admit that the bible is a pretty important historical document (I mean, try to read Moby-Dick; or, The Whale without biblical background knowledge. I dare you.). Anyway, I thought that I had a fairly decent understanding of the bible, given that I've read large swaths of it in a few different contexts. But, as it turns out, I really had no idea.The cool thing about Jesus, Interrupted is that it's epistemologically interesting. Ehrman first explains how contradictions in the bible can be found: by reading "horizontally," which pretty much means reading the same stories as they appear in different gospels, back to back. What happens is that you start to see some weird stuff, like Mathew claiming that Jesus cried out on the cross "My god, my god, why you have forsaken me?" while Luke claims he said "Father into your hands I commit my spirit." And, if you think about it, the two different gospels are actually pretty irreconcilable, in terms of the type of Jesus that they depict. So a careful reader might think, yo, what's up with that? If these two gospel writers were both there, and both knew Jesus intimately, then why would they report the event in such completely different ways.Well, that brings us to the fact that the apostles didn't actually write the gospels (something that I knew, but that doesn't seem to be widespread knowledge). And the writers of the bible had different viewpoints. The ways that they switch up the stories can tell us about the viewpoints, but only if we look closely. Through a close reading, with careful attention paid to the contradictions, scholars can get a sense of who the gospel writers were, and why they created the type of christianity that they did. The whole story is completely fascinating.I recommend this book for everyone, both people of faith and nonbelievers. While it's true that Erhman is now an agnostic, the contradictions in the bible didn't cause him to lose his faith, a fact that he repeatedly points out throughout the book (he lost faith because he couldn't reconcile the amount of suffering in the world with the teachings of Christianity, which he details in God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer, which I now want to read). So believers shouldn't be scared to understand what the bible truly says, although I expect that some (particularly evangelicals) may not be comfortable with this information. Strangely, I feel better about the bible after reading this: it's clearly the product of humans, but much of the dogma isn't as clear-cut as I thought it was. I'll definitely be reading more of Erhman's books in the future.

This is the third book I've read by Bart Ehrman, and after each I've thought, "THIS is the book I'd recommend everyone [interested in the Bible] should read." That may be availability bias speaking. The real takeaway is that I should work my way through his extensive ouvre, because I gain important new insights with each book. In Jesus, Interrupted, he tackles some of the most salient contradictions in the New Testament related to internal consistency and authorship. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar who brings the findings of historical-critical scholarship - findings which are uncontroversial at any non-doctrinaire university, yet seem to get lost on the path to the pulpit - clearly and digestibly to the masses.As ever, Ehrman takes time to explain his own background, knowing that many will see a critical reading of the Bible as a challenge to faith. Indeed, he began his scholarly training as a true believer and biblical literalist, only to question and eventually leave the faith. He is quick to point out that it was not scholarship that put the final nail in the coffin (wrist?). That honor goes to the problem of evil, a topic outside the scope of this book. Ehrman acknowledges that examining biblical errancy may be destructive to certain forms of belief, but that one can ultimately, simultaneously maintain belief and scholarship in one brain (as many of his colleagues do).Like Ehrman, I am a former believer who maintains a fervent (fervid? feverish?) interest in the Bible. As he aptly argues: what's not to enjoy? Whatever its truth or falsity may be, the Bible is the most sold, most distributed, most translated, most influential book in history, and many people could stand to understand it better - especially those who most ardently swear by it. To hundreds of millions, it is seen as a single volume handed down by God, with every step of transmission, encoding, alteration, selection, elision, translation and interpretation guided by the Holy Spirit. The book becomes far more interesting and coherent as one begins to see it in human terms, as the very human work of multiple authors, very often not who they claim to be, with distinct viewpoints and goals.That's what Ehrman's doing here. He starts by highlighting some of the inconsistencies in the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), the earliest sources we have for events in Jesus' life. They tell many of the same stories, but in ways that are incompatible. What day of the week did Jesus die on the cross? What were his final words as he died? Who came to his tomb after he was resurrected, and what did they see? What were the events around his birth (a favorite topic of mine)? When did he clear the temple? How did Judas die? And, in case you're thinking none of these are that consequential... Did Jesus even claim to be divine? You'll get different answers to these questions based on which books you read, and these differences fall in line with the particular ideologies of each author.Speaking of authors, Ehrman demonstrates how little we know about who wrote each book in the New Testament, including (and especially) the gospels, which are all technically anonymous, written decades after Jesus' life, and at best second-hand. The writings of Paul are a major focus, with only 7 of the 13 books attributed to him likely to have actually been written by him. Forgeries and pseudonymous writings were common at the time, and Ehrman has examples of many that were rejected from the canon (3 Corinthians, anyone? Apocalypse of Peter? Barnabas? 1 Clement?), but many others that were included which now appear to have been pious pretenders (such as Hebrews, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians). Same for books claiming to have been written by important figures such as James and 1 and 2 Peter. Aside from the verified works of Paul, the only other NT book with a confirmed author is Revelation, written by someone named John, but not the same John who is said to have authored the gospel of the same name.This is all part of a fascinating retelling of how we inherited the Bible we have today, which was never officially adopted by any particular counsel or vote. The 27 books we have in the New Testament were first listed by Athenasius in Alexandria in 367 CE, but only won out over time by slow spread, influence, conformity and attrition. A parallel process saw a conflict between various strains of Christianity, such as the Ebionites, Marcionites, many flavors of Gnostics, and the eventual victors, what Ehrman calls Proto-Orthodox Christianity, championed by early church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.Ehrman also presents broader looks at what we know about the historical Jesus, whether he is historical and what he most likely taught in his lifetime if you peel away the various layers of legend surrounding him. Jesus was most likely an itinerant, apocalyptic preacher who prepared the way for the "Son of Man" (someone different from him and predicted in the Old Testament book of Daniel (which has its own crazy history)) who was to usher in the judgment and Kingdom of God within the lifetime of the his followers. Ehrman also takes a look at where modern Christianity came from, and some of the hands that shaped specific doctrines that are not spelled out in the Bible itself. It's all great and important context for this supremely important book. Or rather, I should say: this supremely important collection of books.

I recommend the review of this book by Trevor at the following link:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...The following is my review written five months ago:There is nothing new or revolutionary in this book for anyone who has studied bible in a mainline seminary or divinity school (or in my case, listened to Ehrman's lectures from the Teaching Company). The problem is that most ministers use the Bible only as a source of devotional material, and refrain from telling their parishioners about what they know about historical critical study of the Bible. The following is a quotation from the first chapter of the book: "... this material is widely taught in seminaries and divinity schools. But most people in the street, and in the pew, have heard none of this before. That is a real shame, and it is time that something is done to correct the problem."If there's something revolutionary about this book, it is the fact that the author, Bart Ehrman, is trying to "correct the problem." Knowledge of the historical-critical approach to Bible scholarship does not take away its use as devotional material. It can enhance the devotional experience by providing a more knowledgeable and mature perspective on the source of Biblical materials. This book provides a readable overview of the subject of critical study of New Testament history. It is information that has been around for a long time and should be common knowledge. The reason it is not widely known has many reasons, one of which is that everybody is happy picking and choosing the parts they choose to believe. Mr. Ehrman says the following about that:"Everyone already picks and chooses what they want to accept in the Bible. The most egregious instances of this can be found among people who claim not to be picking and choosing"I think the historical subjects covered by this book are broader than the subtitle indicates. The subtitle refers to "Hidden Contradictions In The Bible." That subject was covered in Chapter 2 of the book. I think a more descriptive subtitle would have been, "The Diverse and Contentious History of Early Christianity." The following is a list of chapter titles which can give an indication of the wide range of subjects covered: 1. A Historical Assault on Faith 2. A World of Contradictions 3. A Mass of Variant Views 4. Who Wrote the Bible? 5. Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? Finding the Historical Jesus 6. How We Got the bible 7. Who Invented Christianity? 8. Is Faith Possible? NotesIn Chapter 6 he revisited some of the same material covered in his previous book, Misquoting Jesus, and responded to some of the objections made by critics of that book. He goes on to discuss the long, contentious and uncertain history of the formation of the biblical canon. Mr. Ehrman reminds readers that the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed make no mention of the New Testament as being an important part of Christain beliefs. As a matter of fact, the New Testament canon was not fully formed when these creeds were written. That's hard to imagine in today's era of "bible believing Christians" where many understand the New Testament to be the central core of Christianity. In Chapter 7 Ehrman provides an interesting description of the step by step elevation over many years of the concept of Christ's divinity until it finally resulted in the doctrine of the trinity. By the time of Constantine, whether one accepted the doctrine of the trinity became the supreme test of orthodoxy. Ironically, it's a doctrine that was probably not articulated by anybody for the first couple hundered years of church history. And so "Within three hundred years Jesus went from being a Jewish apocalyptic prophet to being God himself, a member of the trinity. Early Christianity is nothing if not remarkable."In the first and last chapters Ehrman talks about his own faith journey and that of others who have been involved with biblical scholarship. He argues that the historical critical method can deepen one's faith, making it more knowledgeable and mature. He says the goal of this book is to make serious biblical scholarship available to all.I puzzled for a long time over the meaning of the word "Interrupted" in the title. In answer to that I found the following quotation of Bart Ehrman in a March 19, 2009 N.Y. Times article:"The book is about how the voice of Jesus gets changed by all these other messages, and how these different voices are impeding the voice of Jesus. But some people have made jokes about coitus interruptus."I guess his joking like that proves that he is a "happy agnostic" which is what he called himself in the same article.

By far his best book.....until the last chapter. Before I explain why, I would like to put forward that I find Bart Ehrman by FAR the best of the newer agnostic authors. Much like myself, he know longer believes in the Christ or the bible, and yet he is not condescending or combative with those who are, unlike a Richard Dawkins who kills his own arguments for me when he attacks religions. However, This line in the last chapter killed it for me..."Even now, as I type these words, I'm on a beach holiday with two of my closest, most intamate friends , two people whom I love dearly and who would do anyting for me, and I for them. As it turns out, they are both smarter than I, better read than I, more sophistacated philosophically than I" BLAH BLAH BLAH.... I really hate these platitudes from any author. Particularily from well researched intellegent people as Ehrman. And it is painfully obvious that he is either referring to his kids or his wife and one of his kids. Now I am not saying his family is dumb, but I sincerely doubt that this 30 year educated multiple PHD holding researcher is dumber than his kids??? If so, why the hell should I read his book? Such an annoying platitude that is simply there to "make women nod". He spends the entire chapter saying how it is OK to be dumb and ignorant in still believing the stories of the bible, when he spent the last 5 books disclaiming everything in them. I just found way too populist for an otherwise amazing, fascinating novel.

I picked up this book because I was participating in a readathon that required Who, What, When, Where, Why and or How in the title. I literally typed in Why books into Goodreads and this one caught my eye from the list. One of my favorite classes in college was my Angels & Demons English class where we studied the sacred and the profane. I also had to watch Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Religion has always interested me in an academic way. I love learning the history about how religions were created and how it has changed over time. This book was very informative and super interesting. I found I agreed with almost all of it. It definitely follows my beliefs that has changed from my childhood, into my teens and then adulthood. "Jesus, Interrupted" is not a debunk or negative look on the Bible, what it is, is a historical look at the stories. How the stories came to be, who wrote them and who decided which stories to add and which to keep out. All students in Seminary school learn the contradictions of the bible. They learn that the New Testament in particular, has stories about the life of Jesus (born, leading the people, death and resurrection) written in a few different ways. The Apostles are not on the same page as one another and so we can't know for certain which stories are more accurate. When the students begin their preaching and teaching to the outside world they keep those historical learnings to themselves instead of teaching that to the masses. It may be because they are afraid of what their leaders or fellow church goers will say. In any case, everything written in this non-fiction isn't new. It is taught to all students in Seminary.If you like theology or are interested in Christianity, I'd definitely give this book a go. I enjoyed listening to it on audio. The narrator had a pleasant voice and it helped me not be overwhelmed with the material.

I generally avoid the religion section of the bookstore, not for lack of interest but because of a general fear of accidentally picking something up that basically wants to preach one way or another. In that sense, it's not a lot different than the political aisle. Some years ago I stumbled into the work of Elaine Pagels and I liked several of her books. But with religion, most books are guilty until proven otherwise.But I took a flyer on this one. I became familiar with Ehrman because he's one of the superstars of the Teaching Company's "Great Courses", the audio/video courses seen advertised in highbrow magazines. So I've heard a few of his lectures, and indeed, he takes what he calls the historical-critical approach to theological research. And he's pretty sharp.And lo and behold, it's a very easy and fun read. Ehrman teaches at the University of North Carolina, and I suspect a lot of this material comes straight out of his undergraduate New Testament course. Which explains why it's such an easy read. (Sorry, I couldn't resist a jab at the Heels.)What this book sets out to do is give a broad overview of the different viewpoints of the different authors of New Testament writings, highlighting the variety of viewpoints and beliefs proposed by each, and even contrasting those views with gospels that never made the canon and beliefs that are held today. All of this is framed as being the result of the broad consensus on scholarship today.And for me, raised in a liberal church and retaining a rather hazy recollection of the general accumulation of the Jesus story, it's really interesting to hear a lot of this spelled out. Sure, I knew the book of Revelation offers a theology vastly different than the book of Psalms. But I didn't realize just how different John and Mark are, and I learned a lot about what scholarship says about the historical Paul. I already knew a lot about the essentially political debate in the early church about how to portray the Jews and Romans in the crucifixion story, but I didn't realize how intense the debate was over whether it was important for followers of Jesus to obey Jewish law. And the book pays off with a lot of these details. Furthermore, it tries to set everything into proper context regarding the historical development of the church and the battle of ideas that was ensuing in the several centuries after the death of Jesus.What I really liked about this book is that while it doesn't explain with volumes of footnotes how scholars and historians have arrived at their conclusions, it doesn't simply parrot their findings either. Ehrman puts some effort into describing the background and logic of their methodology.And ultimately, this is a really quick read. There's a lot of repetition, but I feel like I learned a bunch and it didn't outlast my attention. For someone really into this stuff, a more in-depth volume might be called for, but for the 8th grader, or the Carolina undergrad, or me, this was a real fun book to motor through.

I'm not an expert on the Bible, which is why I read this book, although I'd always been interested in the history of the Bible and early Christianity, which a lot of people also aren't very knowledgeable about. Many seem to think the Bible just dropped down from heaven in the form it is today and that the Christian religions of 2000 years ago were the same as today. Ehrman convinced me that he had quite a lot of expertise on the New Testament. I liked his delivery and was impressed with his research. Even though he is a Biblical scholar, I thought he wrote it in terms the layman can understand. He seemed to deliberately "tone down" his scholarly thoughts. It was also written in a way that is not offensive and is respectful to religion (as opposed to some similar books I've read). That there were 30,000 variants found in studies done in the 1700's of only 100 manuscripts pretty much astonished me. How many would there be if every manuscript still in existence were compared? I also hadn't really given much thought to how much the early manuscripts had been copied, copied, copied, copied ... and the degree of forgery. I enjoyed reading this book, although I can see where people who believe that the Bible is inerrant wouldn't like it. My opinion is that everyone who reads the Bible should study its history. He commented at the end of the book (and I don't recall his exact words), but it says something along the lines of, "Can you be a true Christian, yet not completely believe that every word of the Bible is divinely inspired?" I also found it interesting that, even though the author had become an agnostic, he continued to study and teach about the New Testament because, as he says, "The Bible is the most important book in the history of Western civilization." As you can probably tell, I liked the book and thought it was well worth the time reading it.

Imagine if you tried to remove all of the later history of the bible, the views of inerrancy of scripture, the later theology, later tradition and then started to study the bible for the first time, looking for clues in the text, study the culture it was written in, treat it like any other surviving ancient document not the divine word of God, you'd probably come away with something like what is presented in this book. This book was a very good easy to read introduction to the historical critical method and modern non-evangelical scholarship and out of the handful of Ehrman books I've read, this is easily the best (although Misquoting Jesus is also essential). One thing I should point out is this book focuses almost exclusively on the new testament, for a similar introduction to the old testament, I really enjoyed the slightly dated Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction by Boadt. The most obvious negative with this book (and one that affects all of Ehrman's books), is that he doesn't really present opposing views and if he does its only briefly, but I don't find this to be too much of a problem, there are plenty of books refuting his work and if you want to see the conservative opposition's views just read one of those books after this one. I first encountered the views presented in this book a few years ago while reading the great catholic scholar Raymond Brown's excellent introduction to the new testament. Obviously there's nothing new in this book or things which haven't been said before, but this book does a nice job of presenting a bunch of topics in a relatively short space in an easy to understand manner, something which Ehrman seems to do well. He (Ehrman) points out that he wrote this because while these views are well known in seminary they're rarely known by the public. For the most part I think this is true, I remember the slight shock while reading Brown's introduction and realizing for the first time that perhaps there are contradictions in the bible, that many of the books of the bible likely weren't written by who they claimed to be, perhaps the virgin birth didn't happen and was added to give some background to Jesus and raise his Christology above that of a normal prophet, perhaps Jesus wasn't always viewed as part of the Godhead. There really is a lack of knowledge of bible history and even the bible itself in our current culture, while at the same time everyone thinks himself an expert on what god wants. In a way its kind of nice to approach the bible this way and read the text for what it says. When one encounters something which seems like an obvious contradiction such as the different day which the synoptic says Jesus was crucified compared to John, its nice to admit that perhaps the bible does contain a contradiction rather than try to do some bizarre hermeneutics to work around it. When one reads Paul and his version of the good news seems so much different than the one Matthew presents of Jesus (or James), one can question if perhaps they seem different because they were different. No longer do you have to try to figure out a way to try to tie them together. Its really liberating when you read a seemingly highly offensive passage such as 1 Timothy 2:12 which says that a woman can never teach or have any authority over a man and she must remain quite, to admit that perhaps Paul didn't write this letter and perhaps isn't not a direct commandment from God, but the later view of someone (it sure seems different that Paul's normal message). One thing Ehrman constantly emphasis (almost to a fault) is that looking at the bible this way or accepting this view doesn't mean that you have to lose your faith. Of course to approach the bible this way also means that it loses a bunch of its authority. To admit that its not inerrant and infallable creates a new set of problems for the modern Christian. If one can question the bible, then where do you get any authority? One only has to look at the conflicting ideas presented in the Charismatic movement to realize that when one moves beyond the authority of the bible there are some pretty bizarre ideas that arise. Of course there are many liberal theologians who are doing just this exact thing, and once you're on this path its not as scary as it seemed to be from the outside.

Had I read or been taught the bible from the perspective Bart D. Ehrman gives in Jesus Interrupted, I might still be a practicing Christian. But I was brought up a fundamentalist, a Northern Baptist. In that religion every word of the bible is inspired, the word of God himself, inerrant. So what does a smart kid do when he perceives contradictions and no religious leader can give him a good answer; chuck the religion. What sort of religion perpetrates such absolutism, but then contains such broad errors?So it is a breath of fresh air when Ehrman presents the bible as literature by authors, from a historical time, with their own thoughts and agendas. It makes the religion acceptable when you don't have to explain away its self-contradictions. And it made the creation stories so much more profound to listen to this past week in church when I could look at it as such; stories and myths, not absolute truths.What I found particularly interesting about this book is that Ehrman mostly restricted himself to staying within the bible. He didn't reference external contradictions, as he had in his Misquoting Jesus. It was refreshing to hear what scholars have found about the new testament, things that are largely accepted outside of the evangelical, fundamentalist sects.At times, the writing itself gets boring, repetitive. But it is worth slogging through those passages. Who should read this book? Anyone who is a Christian or is strongly pulled towards religion. It is not Ehrman's goal to destroy faith. Instead, for me, it enabled faith.

Every Christians should read this book. “Have courage to read this book,” as Sartre said about Fanon's The Wretched Of The Earth. As Ehrman says, the book contains information which is nothing new. He only organized very lucidly the updated scholarly findings regarding the New Testament which are widely taught in the top 10 seminaries in the U.S.A. for the last 20 to 50 years. But American layman is completely in the dark due to pastors not teaching them in the Sunday schools about the historical and critical reading of the Bible. The penultimate Chapter contains convincing arguments and evidence--again nothing new--about Paul's relationship to Jesus, how the theological distinction the early Christians made to identify themselves apart from Judaism (from the Johannine community to the third century) lead to the origin of antisemitism, and about how Christology and the doctrine of Trinity evolved. The findings (again nothing new) are indisputable: that Jesus did not intend to create a new religion, that Jesus was a Jewish apocalypsist who (along with Paul and almost all of the contemporaries) believed that the End of the World would come in their life time, that there were many versions of Christianity which were reduced into a single and unified theology centering around Paul's interpretation and application of the Good News that Jesus has risen (the apocalyptic belief on resurrection was common among the Jews, including the Pharisees), that only 8 books out of 27 in the New Testament were written by the authors we know, etc. The development of Christology is worthy of note in particular. Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God. He may have been called the Son of Man, the common but distinguished title for apocalyptic figure after the Book of Daniel, which is written some 200 years prior. Paul makes him Christ, worthy of worship as God, at the moment of and because of his Resurrection. In Matthew, Jesus is presented as the Son of God beginning from his baptism. In John, he is pronounced as being equal to and with God in the beginning of the world. At the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 Christ is defined as having the same substance (homo-ousia) with God, not a similar substance (homoi-ousia). Based on the difference of the "i" how many hours were spent and how many lives lost for years to come! What comes loud and clear in the book is that the Bible is a human book, made up of many manuscripts handed down, edited, and selected by later leaders in the religious establishment to present a unified version; that Jesus was human who preached the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God with particular vigor, piety, and originality and whose death was particularly shocking. Ehrman's own thesis about Paul is convincing: that Paul adopted and developed (not created and dominated) the common view of the earliest followers of Jesus who believed that Jesus was risen from the dead by God as the sign of the end time, that his death and resurrection was to vindicate injustice in the world and to usher in the Kingdom of God, that his death and resurrection was to atone the sins of the world and to bring about the salvation of the world--the belief which became dominant at the time of codifying the written Gospels and canonizing the New Testament and which accounts for many redactions and emendations of the Gospels. Christianity is not an invention of one man, Paul, but a creation of Jewish apocalyptic belief held by the followers of Jesus who were attempting to come to grips with the catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and many other historical disasters and sufferings surrounding them at the time and the prior time. Who would not believe in the resurrection of the righteous who has been unfairly and innocently crucified? 'God must descend to earth to establish his kingdom' was and still is a palpable longing the religious people had then as well as now. The concluding chapter, "Is Faith Possible?," is a disappointment. Ehrman only refers to his personal journey into agnosticism--not due to his knowledge about the Bible but, he says, due to the problem of evil—and how other like-minded scholars and colleagues still fervently believe in Christianity. Ehrman does not push his (scholars') findings about the New Testament into logical conclusion: that the findings would change Christianity as we know it. He does not have to because he is no longer a practicing Christian. But he does emphasize that the finds should not turn Christians into non-believers either. So, the question must be asked: What becomes of Christianity if Jesus is no longer believed to be divine? What happens to Paul's teaching if Jesus had never been raised from the dead? Is Christianity possible without the centrality of death and resurrection of Jesus? If we reject Paul, what do we have left to follow in the New Testament? To be fair to the author, Erhman does not propose rejection of Jesus' resurrection or of Paul's teaching. He sees no problem in accepting them as myths, which help to address life's conundrums for the believers. (He ended up rejecting the myths all together due to the unresolvable problem of evil. The myths no longer make sense, he says, in light of suffering in the world.) But whether to have faith or not is not the question in light of the facts presented in the book that would destroy the foundations of Evangelical Christianity. For the evangelical Christianity is not the ultimate. The question is: whether we should only read the Bible as the ultimate. Why not read the Nag Hammadi Scriptures, the Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, Tripitaka, Tao Te Ching, and many other religious texts as being on equal footing? The informed view of Christ (Jesus retrieved after the historico-critical method) would not exclude but embrace other faiths. Christ is the model of the faithful, humility, and of compassion, and the acme of suffering. Resurrection (or reincarnation as Hindus would say) represents hope beyond all hope, a new beginning despite and in spite of all that is fallible in humanity.