Flannery O’Connor

Bart D. Ehrman’s new book, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them), attempt to free himself from his Evangelical Christian past. Whether he has personally or not I can’t say. I can say that I found very little of value in the work and was often distracted by the author’s attempt to free himself from an understanding of Christianity in which he no longer believes but which I suspect still haunts him. Like Flannery O’Connor’s South, Jesus, Interrupted is haunted, if not by Christ then certainly by the author’s own Evangelical past.

Though out the book I found myself wondering why the author bothered. I don’t doubt that most Protestant and Catholic seminarian learn some form of the historical-critical approach to the study of Sacred Scripture. And I don’t doubt that most of them forget what they learn as soon as they finish their studies. Nor do I find it in the least surprising that “pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible” from historical critical scholarship (p. 13).

Ehrman, however, is amazed and perplexed “that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors” (p. 12) The author’s amazement and perplexity, I think at least, does not reflect (necessarily) a deficiency in pastors but the fundamental disconnect between the academic study of Scriptures (and really, the academic study of religion in general) and the life of the Church.

Thinking of my ministry and preaching, I am hard press to think of a situation where I might want–as evidently Ehrman would have me do–present to a congregation “the discrepancies and contradictions” of Scripture. Nor do I know when it would be appropriate to examine with those entrusted to my care the “historical errors and mistakes” of the Bible. Or, to take another example, when I might want to share with people how “difficult” it is “to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did” (p. 12).

No where does the author explain to me the circumstances under which his research might aid my ministry. Nor is it even clear to me if he has any understanding of what it means to pastor a congregation. In other words, why on Sunday morning would I want to preach a sermon based on the historical-critical scholarship of the last 200 years?

I am not, as an Orthodox priest, adverse to the historical-critical study of Scripture anymore than as a psychologist I’m adverse to the study of brain physiology and its relationship to human behavior. What I am opposed to is reducing human life to its biological foundations and limiting our understanding of Scripture to meaning in its original historical context. Just as a good knowledge of physiological can be helpful in a counseling relationship, the work of Ehrman and his colleagues can be helpful in ministry. But, in both cases, it belongs to researchers to make a case for the importance their work for mine.

To be fair, I do not think I am a member of Ehrman’s target audience. He’s concerned with justifying historical-critical research to those Christians who believe “that the Bible is a unified whole, inerrant in all its parts, inspired by God in every way” (p. 279). As an Orthodox Christian this is not my understanding of the Bible. And so Ehrman’s assertion that in the Scriptures “There are too many divergences, discrepancies, contradictions; to many alternative ways of looking at the same issues, alternatives that are often at odds with one another” does not overly concern me. My faith is not in a book but the Holy Trinity and the Orthodox Church. These, and not my own personal understanding of the text, are content within I read and understand the Scriptures.

While I think Ehrman is rightly critical of how many American Christians read the Bible, I do not think that–in and of itself–a historical-critical approach to Scripture is the solution. To be sure understanding the various books of the Bible in their historical context is important. Parallel to this, however, is the context within which Christians have historically understood the various books of the Bible, the Tradition of the Church. We can no more limit our understanding of say the Gospel of Matthew to its original historical context than we can to a putative literal reading of the text or our personal understanding in light of our own experience. All this, potentially at least, have their role to play in how we understand St Matthew’s Gospel; we cannot however make any of these the normative understanding.

Often when I read books critical of Evangelical Christianity I find myself agree with the diagnosis and opposed to the cure that the author would apply. In the current situation, the illness is fundamentalism and biblical illiteracy; the cure is historical critical method and a rationalistic understanding of human history. Though he describes himself as an agnostic, it seems to me that Ehrman is still wedded to his own Evangelical past for his understanding of the nature of Scripture and how we ought to approach it. Granted he’s rejected the popular Evangelical Christian approach to Scripture. However it is still this tradition that informs–now in negative sense–Jesus, Interrupted.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

One discrepancy he pointed out struck me as rather obvious once I saw it–humorously so. In John 3 in the account of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus: Jesus tells Nicodemus that if he wished to see the kingdom of God, he would have to be born “from above.” The Greek word used here is “anothen,” which has two meanings in the Greek. One meaning is “from above,” the other is simply “again.” Every time the word anothen is used in the Gospel of John it means “from above.” The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus therefore revolves a rather humorous misunderstanding. Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born anothen, meaning from above, and Nicodemus takes Jesus to mean that he must be born anothen, meaning again. So he asks Jesus how a man can be born a second time (deuteron). Jesus goes onto to correct the misunderstanding, saying that the birth Jesus was talking about is a spiritual birth, not a second physical birth. Can you anticipate the problem here? It’s really quite obvious: Jesus and Nicodemus would have been speaking Aramaic, not Greek. In Aramaic, the word for “from above” does not have a double meaning. In Aramaic, there would have been no room for the misunderstanding. In other words, the whole conversation could not have happened as it did. It is a rather humorous, very theologically instructive, Greek conversation. It couldn’t have happened in any other language the way it is recorded in John.

Of course, except to strict inerrantists, it shouldn’t strike anyone as a serious problem that the Gospel of John isn’t strictly historical. On the one hand, Ehrman even admits that John wasn’t really doing history. In Ehrman’s terms, John was doing theology. But then Erhman turns around and censures John for not doing history. Ehrman can’t have it both ways. Nevertheless, this little episode was striking.

One of the ones that stuck with me and continues to haunt me was his chapter about the divinity of Jesus. He quite rightly points out that of the four gospels, only John speaks about Jesus as divine. I investigated this for myself and found out it’s true. Only John–the latest of the four gospels–speaks about Jesus as a divine being, equal with God. The others use exalted language–calling him “son of God,” which just means “king,” and things like that. But John is the only gospel to speak about Jesus as God. Ehrman points out the oddity there. If Jesus really did go around claiming to be equal to God, a claim no sane person ever made before in Israel, you would think something like that would make it into any biography of Jesus. But it doesn’t–only into the last and the latest of four.

Unfortunately, Ehrman doesn’t discuss at any length at all the fact that Paul speaks unequivocally of Jesus as God in Philippians and (assuming Pauline authorship) Colossians. Philippians at any rate is considered early. Ehrman doesn’t touch that. But elsewhere he does go into a significant discussion about the fact that early Christianity was comprised of several streams each with its own set of emphases about who this Jesus was and what his significance is. Perhaps Ehrman would answer that there were early streams of Christianity (Pauline streams) that saw Jesus was divine, but that Mark and Q did not see Jesus as divine. Perhaps he would have some other explanation. But regardless of what we think about Paul, it remains striking that talk of Jesus’ divinity is entirely absent from the synoptics.

This is just one of many examples of the kinds of arguments Ehrman makes that challenge even non-inerrantists like myself who still profess faith in Jesus of Nazareth. What exactly it means for my faith, for your faith? I don’t have the answer. Perhaps that’s why it took me so long to write this response to Ehrman’s book. Eventually I guess I realized answers weren’t going to come quickly, so I’d better go ahead and write the response anyway.

Again, a lot of Ehrman’s arguments and scriptural interpretations fall short of persuasive to me. Unfortunately, many of Ehrman’s claims may appear correct to those without any background in biblical studies, so I cannot recommend it to the novice–the very sort of person to whom Ehrman professes to be writing. But to those with some background, who know how to take what with a grain of salt, overall the book is a very welcome challenge from, I think, a very sincere individual.

By the way, after reading this book I finally took the time to read the debate between Ehrman and Tom Wright on the problem of suffering. I must admit, apart from a few obvious points to Wright for his critique of Ehrman’s old-fashioned reading of Paul, in my book Ehrman won the day in strides. I’ve been critiquing Wright and other NPPers about this for some time now–for not incorporating historical criticism into their discussion of the development of Second Temple Judaism. Wright reads the Bible just like Paul does–as one grand narrative with Abraham as one of the central figures. So Wright can sideline all the problematic texts related to God and suffering, while arguing that through Abraham God was “bringing the world to rights.” Ehrman nailed Wright to the wall here, because the fact of the matter is, the Bible isn’t one grand narrative, but a wild collection of disconnected narratives that are frequently at odds with each other. It’s all very well for Wright to read the Bible like he thinks Paul does. But it’s illegitimate for him to claim that that’s what the Bible is, which is what he does. When Ehrman brought up several texts that would seem–far from solving the problem of suffering–rather to impugn God and make him culpable for suffering. Among other texts (like the Canaanite genocide texts), Ehrman brought up the flood. How does the flood get God off the hook for suffering? It’s precisely God who is responsible for the suffering and death of the entire world, save eight. Wright responds by claiming (without any explanation) that the flood somehow fits within the narrative of Abraham, and should be read in that context. Of course, Wright doesn’t explain how that’s possible given that Noah came before Abraham.

Ehrman is also right that the apocalypticism of Jesus should be seen as an answer of sorts to the problem of suffering (though not necessarily a philosophically conscious answer), but that even apocalypticism has problems of its own.

You might recall that, back in April, I teased a review of Bart Ehrman’s new book, Jesus, Interrupted. As an author of a book about the Bible and an armchair student of theology and biblical studies, I’m pretty fascinated by Ehrman’s work — as well as his personal story. (He entered college and then seminary from a fundamentalist Christian background, interested in studying the Bible in its original languages. By the time he earned his doctorate, he’d become an agnostic.)

So I’ve read the book. Actually, I read the book very quickly, and have been postponing a review of it for awhile because I wasn’t sure what to write. A single-post review won’t really do the subject justice — especially as much as Jesus, Interrupted relates to my own writing career (and faith) — so I’m going to spread it out a bit.

To begin, I thought it would be fun to explore the book using my friend Bryan Allain’s quirky, efficient, and totally subjective “Cannarf Rating System.” That’s right: Cannarf. What’s a Cannarf? Read this to find out. In short, it’s a means of reviewing almost anything based on your expectations going in. Was the book better or worse than you expected?

So…here we go.

Author: Bart Ehrman

Book Name: Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them)

I’m Glad It Wasn’t Called: Jesus, Interrupted: A Book Intended to Destroy Your Christianity (Bwa-ha-ha-ha-HA)

Book Synopsis in Twitteresque 140 Characters or Less: The New Testament has some serious reliability problems, which you probably aren’t aware of since they’re rarely discussed in church.

Where I Bought It: I didn’t. A review copy was provided to me free by the publisher, HarperOne. Which I’m always tempted to pronounce “Harperone,” as if it rhymes with chaperone or megaphone.

Paid for With: My mortal soul. (Or not.)

How Long It Took Me to Read: About a week. I don’t have time to just sit for hours and read — I have to make time for it — but I kept returning happily to the work. Because, being a big nerd, I enjoy reading Bible scholarship. No, really, I do. That’s one reason I wrote Pocket Guide to the Bible: to bring Bible scholarship to the masses. With jokes. And it should be said that this book can be described as “Bible scholarship,” but it’s not a heavy, hard-to-read book. It’s a popularization of scholarship, when means you can read it without having to know, in advance, words like eschatology or dispensationalism or Nag Hammadi.

Who I WOULD NOT Recommend This Book to: That’s a really interesting question, and one that deserves more than a paragraph of explanation. Here’s the deal: If your Christian faith is wrapped up in the inerrancy of the Bible — the belief that every word of scripture is inspired by God and contains no errors — this book will either make you 1) confused; 2) dismayed; or 3) angry. Ehrman goes to great lengths to explain how he doesn’t see Jesus, Interrupted as an attack on Christian faith. And I agree, to an extent. It is, however, an attack on the kind of Christianity that requires an inerrant Bible and cannot allow any human fingerprints on the Old and New Testaments. Other than a few opinions he carefully qualifies, Ehrman isn’t presenting any new or unusual scholarship. He’s simply outlining some of the contradictions and discrepancies (from dating of events to diverging views about Jesus by the biblical authors) that are apparent in the Bible. If these human elements are new to you, then yes, you’ll struggle with this book.

So I’m not sure whether to recommend it or not. I believe all Christians need to be better informed about the Bible. That’s why I wrote my own book about it (and which discussed a few of these contradictions). After all, truth is truth, and if your faith can’t withstand some honest questioning, then what kind of faith is it anyway? But I know a lot of Christians whose faith might not survive becoming aware of the “humanity” of Scripture. If you grew up in the kind of biblical fundamentalism that says, of the Bible, “God wrote it, I believe it, that settles it,” then you probably won’t enjoy Jesus, Interrupted. At all. It’ll complicate things, but personally I’d rather have a complicated faith than a simple but uninformed one.

Who I WOULD Recommend This Book to: Pastors, ministers, students of theology, anyone wanting a better understanding of the scriptures and ideas from which Christianity developed (…with all the hesitations rambled about above).

What I Used for a Bookmark: An outdated business card from my days in the advertising world.

What Were Some Interesting Stories from the Book? There were tons, though I wouldn’t call them stories. More like examples. I’m pretty familiar with most of the biblical discrepancies in the New Testament — again, scholars have been noting them for some time — although Ehrman pointed out a few new ones. In the Gospel story of the healing of Jairus’ daughter, the account in Mark 5:21-43 has Jesus learning the girl is sick and dying. Jairus asks Jesus to heal her. But Jesus is interrupted on the way to visiting her, and eventually hears from Jairus’ servants that it’s too late. The girl has died. (He goes to see her anyway and raises her from the dead.) In the same story as told in Matthew 9:18-26, Jairus comes to Jesus and tells him, “My daughter has just died.” He asks Jesus to bring her back to life. So which is it? Is she dying when he approaches Jesus? Or is she already dead?

What Is the One Thing I Will Take from the Book? Because I’ve done a lot of reading about the Bible already, there weren’t too many “surprises” in Ehrman’s book. Most of this stuff — as he points out many, many times (almost too much) — is widely known and widely accepted. What strikes me the most was Ehrman’s contention that it wasn’t his knowledge of these biblical problems that led him to abandon his Christian faith, but rather his inability to get past the problem of evil. But that’s another book entirely. (It’s called God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer. I haven’t read it.)

What I Learned from This Book That I Will Apply to My Next Book: It confirms my hatred of end notes. Ehrman cites a lot of scholarly sources and adds comments via endnotes, but you have to turn to the back of the book to read them. Big pet peeve of mine. I personally love to use footnotes in my writing, but only if you can read the note without having to turn to the back of the book. True footnotes are best used on the bottom of the page in which they appear. If I have to interrupt the reading of the chapter so I can turn to the back of the book, look up the chapter and note, and then read it before going back to the original page, then I am officially annoyed. My books all have true footnotes, and always will if I have my way.

Expectations Going In: Again, I wasn’t surprised by the information, but I was surprised by a couple of things. First, Ehrman’s writing is very accessible. His wordcraft isn’t elegant by any means, but he’s good at distilling the information in a way the average pew-sitter can read and understand. Secondly, I was surprised at his tone. Based on some responses to his books, I almost expected him to be the kind of raging, angry atheist who is intent only on dragging you out of your faith and into their own non-belief system. (I guess I was expecting a Christopher Hitchens-type diatribe?) But this doesn’t seem the case at all with Ehrman. He seems very concerned with making sure the reader realizes he’s not trying to attack faith or deter his readers from Christianity — even though he has personally left the faith. This concern seems genuine, and almost pastoral. Like he’s torn between his desire to educate people about the Bible and his concern that their whole belief system not end up torn to shreds.

Cannarf Rating: So I was fascinated by the subject matter, enjoyed his approach as a writer, and appreciated a tone that was more gracious than I expected. And it’s thought-provoking, too, which is good. +2 cannarfs.

Have any of you read this book? (Or another Ehrman book?) If so, how do you rate it?

About a month ago, my wife was invited to review several books on her blog, in exchange for keeping the books afterward. Never one to turn down free reading material, I volunteered to assist.

The book I’m reviewing is called Jesus, Interrupted, by Bart D. Ehrman, also known for another book, covering similar subject matter, called Misquoting Jesus.

The topic of this book is scripture – specifically, the New Testament. Ehrman’s purpose in writing this book, he says, is “to explain why scholarship on the Bible forced me to change my views.” In it, he catalogues his journey from an evangelical Bible scholar at Moody Bible Institute, to an agnostic professor of religious studies who still holds a great deal of reverence for scripture, but no longer believes in much of what it teaches.

First, the good. This book makes a very convincing argument in the debate over Scriptural infallibility. After checking up and verifying some of the assertions made in this book, it was enough for me to conclusively say that I do not believe Scripture to be infallible.

The significance of this statement is largely dependent on what I mean by it. Ehrman does a good job cataloging a number of inconsistencies within the New Testament – particularly between the different accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus found in the gospels.

Most of them are mere nitpicks. Was Jairus’ daughter dead (Matthew 9:18) or alive (Mark 5:23) when he came to see Jesus? The day after John the Baptist baptized Jesus, was he in the wilderness being tempted or was he still hanging out with John (John 1:29)?

And whatever happened to Judas Iscariot after he betrayed Christ? Matthew 27 tells us that he gave back the 30 pieces of silver and went and hung himself. The blood money, Matthew says, was then used to buy a field for burying strangers in, which came to be called the “Field of Blood.” Acts 1, on the other hand, tells us that Judas himself bought the field, and then fell off a cliff into it. As Ehrman so picturesquely puts it, “For Luke, the reason the field was called the Field of Blood is because Judas bled all over it.”

As I said, though, these are largely nitpicks. Whichever account is the accurate, it probably has no effect on anybody’s theology. However, not all the contradictions Ehrman points out are equally insignificant. For example, Mark 14 contains a detailed account of the Passover meal Jesus ate with his disciples just before his death. However, in John 19:14 it is very clear that Jesus is being crucified on the night of the Preparation of the Passover, before the event actually occurs. This is more significant than the other discrepancies I have mentioned, because of the importance that is given to Christ’s role as the ultimate Passover sacrifice. Was he actually crucified on the night of Passover, or was that a detail slipped in later by some well-meaning scribe in an attempt to ensure that readers understood his death as sacrificial?

These are important questions to be asking – and we do ourselves a disservice when we term scripture “infallible,” or when we take refuge in one of the many explanations that have been created to get around the more obvious discrepancies, such as “it’s infallible in the original texts” (how do we know, since we don’t have them?) or “none of the discrepancies are anything more than semantics” (some are, some very plainly are not).

Why is it important? Because, in attempting to reconcile some of these discrepancies, Christian culture has in some cases managed to invent a whole new “biblical” narrative that is not found anywhere in Scripture. One example Ehrman gives is the scene at Jesus’ tomb on Easter Sunday. When the women showed up that morning, Ehrman asks:

Do they see a man, as Mark says, or two men (Luke), or an angel (Matthew)? This is normally reconciled by saying that the women actually saw “two angels.” That can explain everything else . . . The problem is that this kind of reconciling . . . requires one to assert that what really happened is unlike what any of the gospels say.”

It is important that, when we read Scripture, we actually read Scripture. All too often, we instead read into Scripture whatever we want to see pictured there. Ehrman makes this point quite vividly.

That being said, you might think that I would recommend this book to anybody looking to better understand Scripture in its historical context. The truth is, I would not. There are three reasons why.

The first reason lies in Ehrman’s tendency to oversimplify. Granted, on an incredibly complex and well-worn topic like this, with two thousand years of careful study behind it, there is a need to simplify somewhat in a book of fewer than three hundred pages. However, Ehrman’s retreat for a lot of statements that are fairly controversial (at least outside of academic circles) is that “most academics agree.” Consensus, however, is never a prima facie case for truth. Just because a group of people – even a group of experts – agree on something does not make it true.

Take, for example, the fairly well-accepted assertion that Mark was the earliest of the gospels to be written, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Ehrman asserts this throughout the book, and uses it to make a number of claims. For all I know, it may well be true, but Ehrman never demonstrates the truth of this claim – he simply makes it. If it is indeed true, in the pages of this book we have only his word for it.

A second flaw in Ehrman’s methodology is his tendency to overlook or explain away passages that don’t fit his narrative. For example, he spends an entire chapter on an argument very familiar to anyone acquainted with the cottage industry that has sprung up surrounding attempts to prove that Dan Brown’s books Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons are as fictional as their author claims. Perhaps the most important – and flawed – claim in the entire book is that Christ did not truly understand himself to be divine, and that his divinity was a later invention of the Church.

His basis for this is that nowhere in the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – does Christ claim divinity, and that this claim was not made until the later gospel of John was written. He notes – correctly – that in the synoptics, Christ tends to refer to himself as the “son of God” or the “son of man” and points out that these terms had multiple meanings, not all of which referred to the divine.

Fair enough. But Ehrman’s entire case falls apart at Christ’s trial before the Sanhedrin. Ehrman asserts that Christ was crucified for his political rabble rousing . . . and that is probably true from the Roman perspective. But according to Mark, by Ehrman’s own account the earliest source we have for the life of Christ, the Sanhedrin convicted him of blasphemy based on the same two claims – the claim to be the Son of God and the Son of Man (Mark 14:60-63). They, at least, understood that he was claiming divine status, and used his own words to condemn him.

So Ehrman’s tendency to overlook passages that don’t fit his narrative trips him up throughout the book, but most importantly, on this claim that is the very heart of Christianity.

The final flaw in his methodology is his tendency to fill in historical gaps with his own imagination. He spends a great deal of time arguing that a historical perspective cannot comment on certain aspects of Scripture – miracles, for example – because reconstructing history from uncertain sources by definition requires historians to speculate about what was likely to have happened.

Again, fair enough, but at the same time, this sets a very low bar for getting at anything resembling actual fact. For example: As I mentioned, he makes a (common) assertion that Mark was written first, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. This explains why several passages are common to Mark and Matthew, or Mark and Luke, but not any other gospels. He also asserts that a great deal of common material from Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark, likely came from another source, now lost to us. Biblical historians call this missing source, largely comprising many of Jesus’ aphorisms and sayings, “Q.”

For all I know, again, that’s exactly what happened. But the truth is that nobody really knows if Matthew and Luke really used Mark, or if there ever was a “Q.” Another perfectly logical explanation could be that all three of them pulled different (but sometimes overlapping) source material from a single “proto-gospel.” We just don’t know.

Another claim of this type is that most of the books in the New Testament were not written by the authors to whom they are attributed. In the case of the two gospels – Matthew and John – attributed to Christ’s original disciples, he makes a very good case. A Hebrew tax collector and a fisherman were not likely to be literate at all, much less educated in Greek, though it is entirely plausible to think that they might have dictated their memories of Christ to someone who was. Mark – supposedly written from Peter’s perspective – could well be the same. We know far less about Mark and Luke – little, in fact, other than that they were companions of Peter and Paul, respectively – so the claim is far less sustainable in their cases based on any sort of actual evidence.

But more significant is the simple fact that it doesn’t matter.

Certainly, those who originally compiled the canon gave more weight to certain books based on whether they (legitimately or otherwise) bore the names of certain authors. But the fact is that the gospels and epistles we have are the most credible accounts we have of Christ’s mission on earth – accounts that are likely the result of a generation or two of oral tradition between the life of Christ and the authors of the gospels. Are they flawless? No, but they do capture, to the mind of any honest enough to truly examine it, a coherent theology-in-transition from pre-Christian Judaism into Christianity itself.

And that, to me, is the ultimate flaw with Ehrman’s book. He is quick to impute to the authors of Scripture the lowest of motives – regularly spicing his chapters with words like “forgery” and “agenda.”

The truth, though, may be far more mundane – an oral tradition of a nascent Christianity still in search of itself, captured in writing by those rare few who were both willing and able to do so, and brought to maturity as others built on their work, ultimately culminating in the creation of the canon.

Is Ehrman’s explanation – the life of a Jewish apocalyptic prophet (Jesus) promoted to deific status by a Jewish philosopher (Paul) and spread throughout the Western World as a means to power by an opportunistic emperor (Constantine) plausible? Sure. But it’s not history – at least not in Ehrman’s sense of the word. It’s not truth. At least not in any known sense.

And therein, perhaps, lies the problem. Ehrman is an eminent scholar in Greek and Hebrew, and a respected researcher with regard to the Bible in general, and the New Testament in particular. It may even be argued that he is a historian – though having read this book I would term him an inconsistent historian at best.

But what the study of Scripture needs is a psychologist’s eye. Too often the historical researcher looks at the dusty old documents before him and is ill-equipped to fill in the gaps because he does not understand the “why” . . . why did John write thus, and why did Paul say that? A historian can try his best to fill in those blanks, but he is ill-equipped to do so, because he does not understand the mind.

I am neither a historian nor a psychologist, but I would wager that any differences in tone or word choice between, say, Matthew and Paul, stemmed not from the fact that they were pursuing radically different belief systems than because they were writing for radically different audiences. Certainly there seem to be some genuine differences of theology – Matthew, for example, is far more willing than Paul to insist that converted Christians follow Jewish laws. But those differences largely reflect the unsettled nature of first-century Christianity. We know from Acts that this issue, in particular, was argued over at the highest levels of the Christian community. But much of it likely stems from the fact that Matthew was speaking to a largely Jewish audience, while Paul’s audience was largely Gentile. Those distinct groups are going to have distinct cultures, preferences, and methods of processing information. And, contrary to Ehrman’s implications, there is nothing particularly sinister about that.

So I cannot recommend this book as anything other than an interesting read. For those, like myself, who are fascinated with history in general, and with the history of the early church in particular, I would highly recommend From Jesus to Christianity by L. Michael White as a much more balanced and thorough alternative to this book.

Ehrman’s book is interesting, but not compelling. Much of what he has written has been hashed and re-hashed in recent years. For those who come to this book presupposing the Bible to be an error-filled product of some ofttimes disingenuous writers this will simply be more grist for the mill. For those whose presuppositions require an inspired Word, Ehrman is easily dismissed.

As I read through Jesus, Interrupted I was continually reminded of Marcus Borg. But there is a world of difference between Ehrman and Borg. Ehrman comes across as dry and secular, whereas Borg, in spite of his divergent views on the inspiration of the Scriptures, gives the reader an alternative spirituality which still includes (or at least allows) God, and even Jesus Christ, as legitimate objects of our faith. I have always enjoyed reading Marcus Borg, even when I disagreed with him. I simply can’t say the same for Bart Ehrman.

For the most part, Jesus, Interrupted serves as an introduction to the historical critical approach to understanding Scripture. Simply put, this approach evaluates Scriptures not as a sacred devotional text, but as historical documents that merit critical scrutiny. Erhman’s primary thesis is that most pastors learn about the historical critical approach, and the difficulties it brings to how we view Scripture. Yet, most lay people in church have no knowledge of this as pastors don’t talk about it. Jesus, Interrupted seems to be Erhman’s attempt to bring this conversation to a wider audience.

A few thoughts that came from my experiences reading the book:

From what I understand, Erhman has a bit of a reputation at times of being somewhat condescending in his tone toward Christianity. I didn’t get that feel out of Jesus, Interrupted at all. I appreciated the tone with which he wrote the book.
I also appreciate the attempts to present a historical-critical understanding of Scripture at a more popular level. I think it is an important conversation to bring in to churches. I’m not aware of a book that has attempted to do this from a Christian scholar at a popular level…thus enforcing one of Erhman’s main points.
Because the book was written at a popular level, there is the danger of overgeneralizing, and I think Erhman did so. After reading the book, one would be left with the impression that all conservative Evangelical Bible scholars don’t see any inconsistencies in the Scripture, and all non-Evangelical scholars see many and doubt the authorship of a good portion of the New Testament. The discussion simply can’t be reduced to those two camps with those two views.
Ehrman’s approach seems to be hyper modern in that he only wants to view the Scriptures through a historical critical approach. I can respect this and think seeing Scripture as a historical text sheds a great deal of light on our reading. Yet I also think it is important to understand that the Scriptures weren’t written by people who even comprehended a rational modern way of thinking, and can’t be evaluated only in that light. To oversimplify my point, I wonder if this would be akin to only critiquing Edgar Allen Poe as very poor Haiku. The historical critical approach should not supersede attempts to approach Scripture as a sacred devotional text, and vice versa.
If there is a shortcoming to the book from a Christian perspective, it comes in the fact that Ehrman writes this as an agnostic scholar. I give him credit for saying that he didn’t become agnostic because of the material he is presenting. And he doesn’t demand that others do so. But, he also seem compelled to provide a way forward for someone who is just being introduced to this material. I suppose he is hoping that a reader will bring the conversation into their own faith circles…and he is probably right.

originally posted at http://www.somestrangeideas.com/2009/06/03/jesus-interrupted/

Bart Ehrman is a competent scholar. I think that’s what really baffles me about his writing. No, I’m not saying what he is writing is dumb at all. He’s obviously brilliant and has some good points to make. The problem is, his generalizations and many of his one-sided assertions don’t mesh with a scholar of his caliber.

Let me give you an example. Ehrman says, “Most of the books of the New Testament go under the names of people who didn’t actually write them. This has been well known among scholars for the greater part of the past century, and it is taught widely in mainline seminaries and divinity schools throughout the country. As a result, most pastors know it as well. But for many people on the street and in the pews, this is ‘news’.” (p.112) The problem lies in his sweeping generalization that this is taught widely and that most pastors know this as well. In reality, he is talking about liberal scholarship. Conservative scholars rise up to stand against his claims. Ehrman makes it sound like all of academia (in the Christian world, at least), believes this. In truth, many liberal scholars do while most do not. To further the point, many books in the New Testament were NOT written by the person we traditionally associate authorship with. News to you? Yes, many letters were written down by what was called an amanuensis, a person who essentially took dictation down from the author. So, in Galatians, it’s most likely Paul did not physically write the letter. But, he did speak it, and his amanuensis wrote it. Paul signed off on the writing, however, saying “See what large letters I write with my own hand!” This doesn’t mean Paul wasn’t the author- it just means that as was typical of the day, he dictated it to someone else who wrote it down. Paul likely read and approved the final copy as authentic.

Ehrman likes to speak about contradictions in the text. The truth is, the contradictions he speaks about are there. He says, “When students are first introduced to the historical, as opposed to a devotional, study of the Bible, one of the first things they are forced to grapple with is that the biblical text… is chock full of discrepancies, many of them irreconcilable.” (p.19) He goes on to discuss discrepancies between stories contained in the gospels. Ehrman fails to really capture the opposite view that each of these gospels are written from starkly different viewpoints, written to vastly different audiences. Finally, the Bible nowhere claims to be a historical document. God allowed things to be written through the eyes of the respective writer, and it’s natural that perspectives are different. There are no theological discrepancies. Sure, one gospel may contain a glimpse of a story (the crucifixion, for example) that seemingly has contradicting accounts (did Jesus cry out to His father and seem fearful of the cross or was He calm and collected?). But reconciling these against the theological message of the Scripture is not a problem at all. One must remember genre when discussing the Bible, as well.

A favorite topic of Ehrman comes regarding variants between Greek manuscripts. Many scholars and critics use big numbers in an effort to make a point. Sure, the NT has over 100,000 words, and 300,000 variants. What liberal scholars fail to point out is that most variants are as simple as inverting the words Jesus Christ for Christ Jesus, or putting the letter n at the end of the word rather than in the word (the variable nu). No cardinal doctrine is affected by this. Another topic is copyist errors. Ehrman claims that copyist errors throughout the centuries have led to an unreliable manuscript. He also claims that the documents we have came hundreds of years after the original writing. Again, in a case of selective presentation, he fails to mention that the earliest extant manuscripts have been traced back to 125AD, a generation from their writing. No other ancient literature can boast anywhere near this claim. What he has done is give stats that at first glance cause everyone to say, “Holy Cow!” without qualifying them (which would greatly reduce the shock value).

What bothers me is that his attempt to bring “what the scholars know” to the laypeople who this supposed truth is kept from doesn’t present all the information, leading good people who trust the Word of God to doubt their Holy book and the Christ it speaks of. I enjoy when good scholars present their view but clearly state other views as well. Ehrman writes matter-of-factly (and why shouldn’t he, it’s his book?) about heavy topics that are by no means “settled” in the academic community. Textual Criticism has operated within ebbs and flows for the last two centuries, and competent scholars on both sides of the issues produce excellent scholarship. But to present things as if they are widely accepted without giving the inverse argument is a scary place to be if I’m a scholar like Ehrman. It undermines his credibility and causes deep doubt to set in the hearts of many people unnecessarily. I’d encourage you to read Ben Witherington, Dan Wallace, Scot McKnight, and other competent scholars to see their take on the same viewpoints. They frequently bring both sides of the issue into their writings. Ehrman has a nasty habit of making his and other liberal scholars’ beliefs the norm.

Here are three important takeaways I’d ask readers to think on.
First, I think Ehrman is absolutely correct that pastors have not done a good job conveying some of the concepts he speaks of (NT manuscripts, controversies, etc). I personally believe a healthy discussion about how we got our bible could do a lot of people good in the church today. It’s important that as followers of Jesus, we have open and honest discussion about important issues like this, and people learn the history of the faith they engage in.
Second, I think it’s important for people to read from people who disagree with their beliefs. Despite arriving at different conclusions than I have, I appreciate Ehrman’s contributions to the field of study. He’s right- we need to talk about these issues. They ARE important. We shouldn’t shy away from them.
Finally, if you’re a pastor and you checked your brain at the door when you graduated bible school or seminary and your only reading today is popular how-to methods books, you NEED to read books about the Bible. I can’t say that strongly enough. The field of study didn’t stop when you left school. It moves on. People in your church are reading Ehrman and John Shelby Spong’s books, and they are filled with doubt, some eventually leaving the church and their faith altogether. Don’t be ignorant of some things that are being discussed right under your nose. I have a rule of thumb- I try to read a balance of 50% of books about the Bible/Bible-related and 50% about other subjects (practice, etc). That’s why I read books like this one. I want to know the current issues. I want to learn what new discoveries have been made. I want to keep my mind sharp. When was the last time you looked at a commentary other than to pull a quote for a sermon? When was the last time you thought about how this book or that book arrived at it’s present state? Dig!

Ultimately, I think Ehrman did genuinely follow Jesus as a young man. I think his brilliant mind was afforded the opportunity to study with the best of the best (Dr. Bruce Metzger). I don’t think the academics really were the reason he chose to go this other path. I believe he began to wrestle with the problem of suffering (how does a good God allow suffering), and his bright intellect ate at him and overwhelmed his faculties, and once he crossed the line of doubt, his intellect kicked in yet again and took him down this path. I understand that. I know it’s a tough issue, and I admit I don’t fully understand it as well (although I can give you a nice textbook answer). I think Erhman’s faith unraveled over this fact, and his academic mind began to see things in another light. In short, God just doesn’t tell us everything. We have to trust in Him and ask Him for truth. Ehrman believes he found the truth, and is now an agnostic. Jesus said “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” I believe the truth Ehrman believes he has found has taken him down a defensive path of un-freedom. I pray that his heart meets up with the Creator of all truth once again.

original post on my blog at http://larryboatright.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/jesus-interrupted-review/

Nearly 10 years later, I’m wishing it had been Ehrman’s latest book on the syllabus. Jesus, Interrupted, while qualifying for one of the most misleading titles of the year, is subtitled Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them), which is the book’s truer, albeit less marketable moniker. I was ready to dismiss this book as another one of the bastard children of the Jesus Seminar’s legacy, which was exacerbated into a rabid frenzy by Dan Brown’s infamous DaVinci Code. One more book about all the stuff the Vatican’s been hiding from us? Nevertheless, familiar with Ehrman, and interested in how he was currently rehashing and reusing old material, I began reading.

Jesus, Interrupted was a more than pleasant surprise. I haven’t read all of Ehrman’s works, although I’m familiar with his reputation. In this book, he lays all his ideological cards out on the table in the first chapters, revealing his own journey to agnosticism, clarifying that historical criticism was not responsible for that agnosticism, and then stating that this book is not an expose of a clerical conspiracy, but rather an attempt to reveal at a lay level what many in the clergy already know, but for ambiguous reasons, are not preaching from the pulpit.

Ehrman’s thesis, in a nutshell, as revealed in the subtitle, is that the Bible is full of contradictions, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Furthermore, as Ehrman discusses in his final chapter, admitting these contradictions does not, of necessity, lead to a loss of faith. This balanced discussion contains no surprises for anyone who’s read anything about historical criticism, with Ehrman using what I consider the lynchpin of the argument, the discrepancy in the time of the crucifixion chronicled in the four gospels. He follows this example up by challenging the usual response to the contradictions, which is the assumption that since the facts don’t agree, it clearly never happened, or that clearly it doesn’t matter, since the point is that Jesus was crucified. The when is immaterial. Instead, Ehrman encourages his reader to ask not “Was Jesus crucified” but also “What does it mean that Jesus was crucified?” And for this, Ehrman continues “little details like the day and the time actually matter” (27).

Whether one agrees with everything Ehrman puts forth in Jesus, Interrupted, his fair treatment of the subject matter cannot be denied. He delineates the difference between devotional and historical approaches, without being derogatory or dismissive of the former. Throughout the book he displays a genuine concern for proper study of the Bible, and an undeniable love of the material he studies, all the while reminding the reader that he is not a professing believer. In chapter seven, “Who Invented Christianity,” he allows history to remain a complex process, rather than assuming that it was just the Council of Nicea or the ascension of Constantine which was some sort of ancient tipping point for Christianity to suddenly spring into being.

Christianity as we have come to know it did not, in any event, spring into being overnight. It emerged over a long period of time, through a period of struggles, debates, and conflicts over competing views, doctrines, perspectives, canons, and rules. The ultimate emergence of the Christian religion represents a human invention–in terms of its historical and cultural significance, arguably the greatest invention in the history of Western civilization. (268)

One could disagree with Ehrman here, and still conceivably come away without the feeling that their faith has been slandered. Ehrman pays Christianity a very high compliment here, one mirrored in Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity? I am in unequivocal agreement with Ehrman on several points he makes in Jesus, Interrupted, and while I am guarded about some of his conclusions, my reading of this book felt more like an amicable conversation about the academic study of the bible over coffee or beer than it did an attack on the innerrancy of the Word of God. I went away from reading it encouraged, and strengthened in my own faith position. As Ehrman rightly says, “a historical-criticism approach to the Bible does not necessarily lead to agnosticism or atheism. It can in fact lead to a more intelligent and thoughtful faith–certainly more intelligent and thoughtful than an approach to the Bible that overlooks all of the problems that historical critics have discovered over the years” (272).

In the years that followed my “Jesus” course, I had to fight my way through wondering whether accepting historical criticism meant I had to give up on my faith. After all, I was denying everything Josh McDowell had ever written about, and in the late 80s and early 90s, making the statement that McDowell was wrong was a sort of Evangelical heresy. I’m no longer an Evangelical Christian, but I am still firmly rooted in the religious identity of some sort of Christian. Ehrman’s Jesus, Interrupted gave me a bit more licence to remain Christian, while still admitting there are some serious textual issues when it comes to the bible. I had learn all this the hard way, and while I’m of Schopenhauer’s opinion when it comes to experienced knowledge as superior to read knowledge, I must nevertheless recommend this book. I recommend it for anyone who has some serious questions about the contradictions in the bible, but continue to choose to believe in the truth of the resurrection. I’ll end this review with Ehrman’s words on the subject, since they’re rather powerful. I’m strongly convinced they could have been the closing remarks of my Easter Sunday sermon so many years ago. Maybe they will be for some unpreached Easter Sunday sermon I have yet to give.

The resurrection of Jesus was not a historical event that could proved or disproved, since historians are not able, by the nature of their craft, to demonstrate the occurrence of a miracle. It was a bold mythical statement about God and the world. This world is not all there is. There is life beyond this world. And the horrible actions of humans, such as crucifying and innocent man, are not the end of the story. Evil does not have the last word; God has the last word. And death is not final. God triumphs over all, including death itself. (276)