Why You Should Not Be Intimidated by Bart Ehrman: A Review of Jesus, Interrupted (Part 1)

If you have not read those articles already, you can find them at the links below: It is a very obvious addition to my Ultimate Book List for Atheists.Nearly a year ago, I published a series of three articles in which I reviewed sections of Bart Ehrman’s book Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them).

I believe that anyone who has questioned the basis for their Christian beliefs, whether inside or outside of the faith, must read “Jesus, Interrupted”. He questions why this knowledge is not shared more often with churchgoers? Why do educated preachers go back to teaching the bible as a “god-inspired” book despite having been taught all the historical detail and context? Most of these stories were written long after the events and display clear attempts to sell personal belief systems - often through forgery or misrepresentation.Įhrman displays a wide and deep array of biblical knowledge but suggests that most of this knowledge is available throughout the protestant and catholic seminaries. One that, after all, is composed of many disparate stories, by fallible humans with very specific goals in mind. To me, however, it should definitely lead to any intelligent person seriously questioning their absolute belief in a very fallible book. He maintains throughout his book, that understanding the bible better doesn’t necessarily lead to his chosen path of Agnosticism. Ehrman is an ex-evangelical who lost his belief in a “god-inspired” bible as he studied at a protestant seminary. How did Christianity as we know it today, come to be?īart D.Why are there so many discrepancies in a book that was “written by god”?.Who was the real Jesus, what was his message, and is it decipherable after so many millennia?.Why was Jesus thought to be divine and when did this happen?.He uses this technique to answer all the questions I have asked for many years, backed up by extensive historical research. He speaks about reading the bible horizontally which refers to examining similar stories and how they are told across the gospels and other books of the bible. He answers the questions that my 8-year-old self began asking and those I continued to ask all the way to my deconversion.Įhrman explains how an historical scholar would approach the analysis of a book – he calls the bible “the most significant book in human history”.

Ehrman paints a picture in “Jesus, Interrupted”, of the bible, which makes complete sense to me.

Jesus interrupted by bart d ehrman