Product Description

Picking up where Bible expert Bart Ehrman's New York Times bestseller Misquoting Jesus left off, Jesus, Interrupted addresses the larger issue of what the New Testament actually teaches—and it's not what most people think. Here Ehrman reveals what scholars have unearthed:

• The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was and how salvation works
• 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
• Established Christian doctrines—such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus, and the trinity—were the inventions of still later theologians

These are not idiosyncratic perspectives of just one modern scholar. As Ehrman skillfully demonstrates, they have been the standard and widespread views of critical scholars across a full spectrum of denominations and traditions. Why is it most people have never heard such things? This is the book that pastors, educators, and anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for—a clear and compelling account of the central challenges we face when attempting to reconstruct the life and message of Jesus.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1155 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-01
• Released on: 2009-03-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061173936
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
"Ehrman's ability to translate scholarship for a popular audience has made the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a superstar in the publishing world" (IndyWeek )

"For both scholars and the masses who read about religion, Bart D. Ehrman needs no introduction . . . He adds the personal to the scholarly for some of his works, detailing how he went from a Moody Bible Institute-educated fundamentalist evangelical to an agnostic . (Durham Herald-Sun )

"There's something delicious (for nonbelievers, anyway) about the implacable, dispassionate way that Ehrman reveals how the supposedly "divine truth" of Christianity was historically constructed." (Salon.com )

About the Author

Bart D. Ehrman is the author of more than twenty books, including the New York Times bestselling Misquoting Jesus and God's Problem. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the Bible and the life of Jesus. He has been featured in Time magazine and has appeared on NBC's Dateline, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, The History Channel, major NPR shows, and other top media outlets. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Finally, a Book that Educates the Masses About Biblical Scholarship
If you are a fan of Bart D. Ehrman like I am, there are four books essential to understanding his work. The first is Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium; the second, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (popularized in his book Misquoting Jesus); the third is God's Problem where he argues that the problem of evil is what caused him to lose his faith; and this one, "Jesus Interrupted."

In a way I like "Jesus Interrupted" the best, probably because its aim is to reach the masses with solid Biblical scholarship. I've long thought that scholars mostly talk to themselves in hopes for a nice pat on the back from other scholars. Don't get me wrong here. We need scholars, and Ehrman is one who writes good scholarly material too. It's just that Ehrman also wants to inform the masses about what Biblical scholars have known a long time, but which pastors and ministers aren't telling their parishioners for fear that they might be troubled to learn about it. And Ehrman is a master communicator of it when it concerns the New Testament, which is his specialty.

According to Ehrman this book is about how "certain kinds of faith--particularly the faith in the Bible as the historical inerrant and inspired word of God--cannot be sustained in light of what we as historians know about the Bible." (p. 18). He begins by describing the difference between a vertical reading of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) with a horizontal reading of them. A vertical reading is simply taking one Gospel at a time and reading through it. A horizontal reading, however, is where we place the gospels side by side and read them together to see the differences in the accounts. When we read the Gospels horizontally we find discrepancies, irresolvable differences, and even contradictions, not only in the small details, but also when it comes to major ideas presented by the authors.

Some of the minor discrepancies are as follows: Mark differs with John on which day Jesus died (of this Ehrman writes, "I do not think this is a difference that can be reconciled." p. 27); there are significant differences between Matthew and Luke concerning various aspects of the birth of Jesus, as well as the irreconcilable genealogies found in their stories. Other discrepancies concern things like what the voice from heaven said at Jesus's baptism, what Jesus did the day after his baptism, whether or not Jarius's daughter was already dead when her father approached Jesus; who is for and against Jesus; how long Jesus's ministry lasted; why Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus along with how he died, and the irreconcilable differences in the resurrection accounts of Jesus.

Ehrman also asks us to read Paul's writings horizontally with the book of Acts to compare them. When we do there are even more problems: after Paul's conversion did Paul go directly to Jerusalem?; Did the churches in Judea know Paul?; Did Paul go to Athens alone?; How many trips did Paul make to Jerusalem?; Were the congregations Paul established made up of both Jews and gentiles?

There are major discrepancies as well, like the depictions of Jesus's death in Mark, where Jesus dies in agony and despair, from Luke where Jesus seems oddly in control of the situation. There are differences in the Gospel of John from the other Gospels with regard to Jesus's teaching content (long discourses versus proverbs and parables), emphasis, eschatology (which is emphasized in Mark but deemphasized in John) and the purpose of miracles (which in contrast to the other Gospels in John they're meant to convince people who don't believe).

Ehrman informs us there are also key differences between the apostle Paul and the Gospel writers: concerning the purpose of the Law; why Jesus died; when Jesus became the Son of God; whether God overlooked the ignorance of idolaters; and whether the Roman state is a force of good or evil.

To keep this review of mine short let me briefly summarize the rest of the chapters. In chapter four Ehrman tells us scholars really do not know who wrote the New Testament, except a few letters from Paul for the most part. In chapter five Ehrman discusses what we can actually know about the real Jesus and what he may have said, which isn't much given the criteria historians use to figure out such things. At best Ehrman argues that Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet. And he thinks that as a historian he cannot conclude Jesus arose from the dead because such a conclusion is beyond what tools the historian has at his disposal. Chapter six discusses how we got the Bible. It was a lengthy process from oral tradition to translations, to texts, to canonization among wildly divergent early Christianities all vying to be considered the inheritors of the original Jesus movement. Who invented Christianity then, which is the subject of chapter seven? Christians did, based upon misinterpretations of such texts as the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. Christianity subsequently moved in the direction of a distinct anti-Jewish movement in the hands of Gentile Christians.

In the final chapter Ehrman disarms the believer, which I think is a very helpful thing to do. He thinks it's still possible to believe despite the problems in the New Testament. And he's right. Although he says that what he's learned about the Bible makes it look like nothing more than a human, not a divine book, and that Christianity is a human, not a divine religion.

Ehrman concludes his book with these words: "It would be impossible...to argue that the Bible is a unified whole, inerrant in all its parts, inspired by God in every way. It can't be that. There are too many divergences, discrepancies, contradictions; too many alternative ways of looking at the same issue, alternatives that often are at odds with one another. The Bible is not a unity, it is a massive plurality. God did not write the Bible, people did." (p. 279).

While this conclusion of his will be disputed, what Ehrman has written must be taken seriously by all Christian believers. The arguments are now out in an easily accessible book. As such, the people in the pew can now understand what Biblical scholars in most seminaries already know but are too timid to teach it in the churches or preach it from the pulpits.

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I'm the author of "Why I Became an Atheist," and the forthcoming edited book, "The Christian Delusion."

Clarity, Integrity, Xenotheology
Full disclosure: the author of this review is a former Catholic altar boy (unmolested), was briefly enrolled in a Franciscan seminary, had eight years of Jesuit college/graduate school education, and is now what President Obama referred to as a "non-believer" in his inaugural address. In his own full disclosure, author Bart Ehrman relates that he attended a fundamentalist Bible college, furthered his theological education at Princeton, and is currently a professor specializing in New Testament studies at the University of North Carolina. He also states that he is agnostic, though specifically stating that it was not his study of the Bible that led him from evangelical Christianity to this alternate state of conviction.

This is a special book. It is not a rant, nor a screed. It is a careful, scholarly, and considerate review of what is either known, or reasonably conjectured, about the amazing book called the Bible. How was this book put together in the first place? The first listing of the 27 canonical books that are generally accepted as part of the New Testament today was in 367 CE. How did the 27 canonical books get chosen over many other candidate letters, Acts, and Gospels that existed (and still exist)? What, one wonders, did early Christians do in church without a Bible to read from? Ehrman has some thoughts on the subject. The earliest possible date that a church could have been "Bible-based" was more than 300 years after Christ's death (in reality, extremely low literacy rates and the lack of the invention of the printing press made "Bible-based" churches not feasible for another millennium). How did Christians come to agree on what they believed in without a canon of Sacred Scripture? What to do with the very clear evidence that some of the currently accepted gospels have been tampered with over time, with later versions of the gospels inserting whole passages that are absent from the earliest texts of the canonical books that have been recovered? What to do with some Pauline letters clearly not written by Paul (they contain references to events that didn't happen until after Paul had died)? Professor Ehrman has some cogent thoughts on the matter.

Grant an old sci-fi buff a bit of latitude here: If an alien theologian visited Earth with a mission of identifying and studying the books that Homo sapiens had declared sacred (e.g. the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita), using the advanced linguistic and archeological tools at his/her/its disposal, Jesus, Interrupted is the book that he/she/it would have written.

Whether you are a believer in an inerrant and coherent Bible, or are more interested in the Bible's literary and symbolic value, take a gander at Jesus, Interrupted. If you're a true believer, read it so that you know what you're up against. My pops was a dyed-in-the-wool arch conservative who told me to read the books of "the enemy" so that I could understand their arguments. So I read Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. It was informative (I didn't convert, but you know, the guy had some interesting ideas). If you're of the literary/symbolic tribe, but lack coherent scaffolding on which to hang your approach to the New Testament, read it: you'll hear all kinds of mental "ka-chunks" as concepts fall into place. Your time will not be wasted.

A worthwhile read
Bart Ehrman has become the patron saint (if you'll pardon the expression) of biblical skeptics. In a series of bestsellers he has applied his very considerable academic talent to exposing the Bible as a very human piece of work--much to the horror of those who still believe it to be the inerrant word of God. However, Jesus Interrupted is aimed not at a skeptical audience, but to the average church-going Christian. The premise of the book is this: Over 200 years of biblical scholarship has shown the Bible to be full of contradictions, inconsistencies, false claims of authorship and conflicting theological viewpoints. Preachers learn about these difficulties in divinity school. But rarely if ever do these preachers share this knowledge with their congregations. Ehrman's stated purpose in writing this book is to "let the cat out of the bag" and reveal these academic findings to a wider audience. The book is a worthwhile read both for Christians and skeptics, but it is definitely an introductory work, and readers who are familiar with the topic are not likely to find much new material. On the other hand, Christians whose knowledge of the Bible comes only from Sunday school classes will have the foundation of their faith shaken, if not shattered.
The only quibble I have with the book is that it does not quite deliver on the promise of the subtitle to "reveal the hidden contradictions in the Bible." There are indeed two chapters that deal with contradictions - mostly the famous ones that are easy to find in various internet lists, although Ehrman provides more background and analysis than the typical website will provide. Other chapters deal with questions of pseudonymous (i.e., false) authorship, historical knowledge (or lack thereof) of Jesus, and development of the biblical canon. Readers looking for a more dedicated discussion of Bible contradictions may also want to consider The Atheist's Introduction to the New Testament: How the Bible Undermines the Basic Teachings of Christianity by Mike Davis, or The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy by Dennis McKinsey.