 |
|
Title: Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)
ISBN: 0061173932
Author:
Bart D. Ehrman
Publicate Date: 2009-03-01
Publish: 2009-03-01
List Price: $25.99
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Hardcover
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest New Price: $15.01
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $13.89
Amazon Merchant Price: $17.15
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: A Must Read for Believers seeking Truth
Loved this book. An excellent source from highly creditable author. Would recommend to anyone believer or non believer seeking the truth about biblical readings.
|
2: Historical critical exposition of the gospels.
Along with Marcus Borg, John Crossan, William Funk, and Stephan Petterson - to name a few - Bart Ehrman is introducing the historical critical approach to the gospel narratives that main line seminaries have been teaching for years. Ehrmann erudition on the history ancient-world and textual analysis is some of the best modern scholarship on the subject in print today.
The author highlights what those trained in a historical critical methodology discover: the gospel narratives are rife with contradictory information. These contradictions are easily discernable simply by reading the narratives horizontally rather than vertically. Furthermore, the author discusses the disingenuous way the gospel narratives have been presented in churches often stifling the truth so to offer a homogenous picture of myth and legend rather than historical analysis of the texts.
Ehrman also notes that the gospels have been used to reinforce the mythic underpinnings of organized religion fearful of authentic challenges to their hegemony. In this model the devotional aspects are emphasized to the determent of historic methods that downplayed. This dishonesty has been perpetuated until a group of scholars launched what has been referred to as the quest for the historic Jesus. Albert Schweitzer was one of the first scholars to look at the historic evidence and was quickly followed by a handful of German scholars. In our contemporary moment, the quest is now acknowledged as being in its Third Quest phase most notably advanced by the Jesus Seminar.
Underscoring a modern plethora of scholarship and publication on historic research along with non canonical sources now being published and made available to a wider audience, is the undisputable fact that early Christianity was much more diverse than has been previously taught in the modern church.
The primary sources discovered in Nag Hamadi (along with the discovery of other non canonical sources in Upper Egypt) of numerous other Gnostic texts, underlies the early church controversies of a political process to weed out non canonical sources. No amount of religious zeal, fundamentalism, or rigid authoritarianism can undermine the historic record of the primary sources now coming to light in our contemporary moment. Another interesting assertion the author makes is a general and growing consensus among biblical scholars is that those letters attributed to Paul are most likely forgeries included in the canon by early church fathers: those who did not have the benefit of the tools of modern scholarship to discern authentic authorship of the texts. The discussion on these proxy texts, forgeries and the agendas they served in the ancient world is worth the price of admission.
Ehrman's chapters on Who Wrote the Bible, along with the Chapter on How We Got the Bible is particularly insightful and powerful, nor without too many holes in his analysis.
This book is really a tour de force in modern historical scholarship that is convincing and meaningful for any person of faith. This book may place into question the specifics of faith, but it certainly does not undermine the teachings of Jewish peasant who walked the dusty roads of Galilee in the ancient world at a time of great social transformations. The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are more likely to provoke authentic social praxis within given the devotional underpinnings and its foundations are now crumbling.
This scholarship underscores a more existential call to action that empowers faith rather than leaving it personally impotent.
|
3: If you REALLY wish to STUDY the Bible, this would be a good start.
If you are the kind of 'Christian' who assumes that you can not possibly be "wrong" about your religious beliefs, then do not touch this book.
If you are the kind of person who can make black be white, or water dry, then do not touch this book.
Many people have expressed opinions that Eharman "does not adequately understand" or "misinterprets" or ignores "obvious explanations."
But almost all the objections I read are quite typical of people stretching the limits of fact and reason to total incrudility to make sure their "religious beliefs" or their specific interpretations do not face any possible opposition. And many of the objections are wrong as to fact.
It greatly disturbs me that the level of education in this country is so abominable. And further, that people go to such great lengths to ignore factual information to "maintain" the skewed "truth" that they "know." The scariest three words I ever hear is "God says so." And too often this kind of intellectual reversal of cause and effect, and "the Bible says so" therefore averything else is false, is all too often perpetuated by religious leaders leading their flocks into ignorant self-serving religion and preconceived erroneous "truth."
BUT IF you truly want to try to understand the Bible within its true historic context -- trying your best to hold no preconceived ideas -- then this book is a very good start at examining the very basis of the Christian religion.
IF you are a questioning Christian, and truly wish to understand the Bible then this is a very good start.
IF you wish to be able to separate your "faith' from your "religion" then this book is a very good start.
There ARE serious contradictions in the Bible. Both as to fact and to theology. (If you insist otherwise, then please this book will be useless. You will still be one of those who can make any fact "go away").
However IF you are seriously trying to come to a TRULY MATURE faith, this kind of information about the Bible is ESSENTIAL.
I absolutely find EHRMAN easy to read, clear in his thinking, and usually right on. (I disagree with a few of his conclusions, but this is only to be expected).
And I am still a Christian. But definitely a better Christian for understanding the true relevance of what is written in the Bible.
|
4: Interesting and Intriguing but Incomplete
While much of the material within this book is known by many, many folks, it is herein presented by Bart D. Ehrman in a very entertaining, edifying, and at times eye-popping style. The basic premise: the Bible came to us and was writ by man, not God. There are too many discrepancies and cross-currents of thoughts to believe that its every word is from the Almighty. The story of Jesus as told in the four Gospels in the New Testament is shown to be contradictory in a number of places and the truth of the historical Jesus and his ministry and mission has been turned and twisted to suit the needs of various factions of the early Christians. As I've said, although covered in other similar books, this one is cleanly written and moves along at a mostly compelling pace. I say "mostly compelling" because the Professor has a tendency to get repetitive at several points in the text to hammer home key points made at earlier places within the book. He may have to do so with his university students, but not with the readers of his book.
Other than some overkill with certain points, I have one major problem with this work, however, and that is Professor's Ehrman's total lack of mention of the Shroud of Turin which is, in fact, an artifact that is far from being conclusively proven a hoax. One need only read Ian Wilson's several books on the topic or Mark Antonacci's superb and exhaustively, exemplararily detailed THE RESURRECTION OF THE SHROUD to realize that the artifact may, indeed, be the actual burial shroud of Jesus - and may even also offer some clues as to the Resurrection being an actual, historic event. (One theory being that as Jesus was brought back to life, some sort of radioactive burst may have been resposible for the scorched image on the cloth. Contrary to those who dismiss the mysterious Turin shroud, it is not a painting.) Most likely, Professor Ehrman discounts this relic as a hoax; however, he should still have addressed it in some manner since he says the resurrection - being an alleged miracle - is therefore beyond the range of the strict historian. (Historians should also speculate. What, for instance, may have truly happened to Saul on the road to Damascus to change him so drastically into Paul?) Also not addressed in these pages are the reality or mythology of the fates of the original Apostles of Jesus. Were they, in fact, martyred or mythologized by later-day writers whose works became part of the New Testament.)
One other small point: on page 261 of the book under discussion, the good Professor has trouble conceiving a disembodied afterlife wherein one might recognize one's grandparents. He says that to be able to do so would "require a body." I disagree. I am visited by departed relatives in my dreams quite often. My body is asleep. The dream-world is a spiritual-cerebral phenomenon. Also, Ehrman - ever the strictest of historians, always walking the narrowest of proveable lines - discounts several scientific studies of the Near Death Experience which may, in fact, offer us a glimpse of a postmortem existence. Out-of-Body Experiences are also well-documented - and offer the conclusion that one need not have a physical body to maintain awareness or recognition.
Anyway, for what it is, the book is very readable, very eye-opening and highly recommended. This is the first book I have ever read by this author - and looking at the list of several of his other works makes me wonder on his potential redundancy in covering much of the same ground. However, not having read anything else by the Professor, this one held my interest and will most likely hold yours if you are open-minded to the "reality" of Christian origins and Biblical history.
|
5: Excellent coverage of the topic, but does not address its subtitle
"Jesus, Interrupted" covers not only the various contradictions in the Bible (and I should add that they aren't really "hidden" in the sense that suggests a conspiracy theory, they are simply "hidden" in the sense that most everyday people are not aware of them, though they are plain as day if you actually read the Bible) but also discusses who scholars believe wrote the various books of the New Testament (mostly *not* the names now associated with them), as well as investigates what we can actually know about the historical Jesus, if modern Christianity is even anything like what Jesus really preached, and how certain aspects of Christianity were created in the early centuries. Simply put, it covers a lot more ground than simply naming the various contradictions of the Bible. These contradictions are mainly in one early chapter, and the rest of the book discusses other related issues such as what I named above.
The book is eye-opening for two reasons: 1) it's amazing how much of the Bible is contradictory or flat-out wrong, and 2) it's even more amazing that normal people just don't know any of this stuff. But that's where I feel like Ehrman didn't deliver on the subtitle (which, for all I know, the publisher may have stuck on later). There is really no discussion of *why* we don't know these things. In fact, Ehrman basically says "your guess is as good as mine" when it comes to why these things aren't taught to people. At the end of the book he offers a few reasons why we may not know these things, such as pastors choosing not to tell their congregation for fear the congregation would lose its faith, but these are simply guesses and are not a real discussion. I don't mind this, but the parenthetical subtitle creates an expectation that is not delivered on.
But if you are interested in the topic of how the four Gospels differ from one another (he also discusses Acts and the Epistles), why they do, and what those differences mean, as well as the topic of what Jesus really preached versus what the early Christians decided to accept as orthodox beliefs, then I highly recommend this book.
|
|
|
|
|
