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Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)

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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.

I've read quite a few books on early Christianity (including others by Ehrman), so I can't say that I found an abundance of new information in this book, but I can say that this is easily the best, most concise and well presented discussion of the historical Jesus and historical/critical view of the New Testament I've come across.

One thing that always strikes me when I am reading Ehrman's work is how respectful he is of religion and people of faith. I've read a few books by atheist authors who (while I often find their work interesting and entertaining), do have a tendency to be a little smarmy about religion. Ehrman is a former fundamentalist Christian, who describes himself now as agnostic, but unlike some authors in this genre, he isn't trying to convince people to give up their faith, he really wants readers to understand the origins of the Christian faith and how it has evolved over centuries.

Jesus Interrupted is very readable (Ehrman's writing style is accessible for `non scholars') and each chapter builds on the others very effectively. Ehrman is clearly an expert on this topic and is an excellent teacher, and this is conveyed throughout Jesus Interrupted.

If this subject matter interests you - Jesus Interrupted is a must read. Highly recommended.

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 edited book, "The Christian Delusion."

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.

Bart Ehrman, a distinguished professor of religious studies at the Univ. of North Carolina, is one of the foremost popularizers of New Testament (NT) research today. His latest book, "Jesus Interrupted," continues along the path he followed in his previous and more technical work, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, but is superior in that he now is dealing with fundamental issues of the Bible and Christianity that are of more interest and relevance to the average layperson. While being a more provocative book than MJ, it is still not nearly as controversial as one would think from the inappropriate subtitle, which, like the subtitle for MJ, appears to have been chosen for marketing purposes. In fact, no new ground is broken here, as he once again devotes a lot of space to material he has covered thoroughly in other books, and people who are well-versed in NT research are unlikely to encounter anything that they haven't seen before.

Prof. Ehrman's motivation in writing this book is to introduce the results of 200 years of critical NT scholarship to the masses. He laments the poor level of knowledge of the Bible, even among students entering seminaries, so here he gives an overview of what has been determined through historical-critical methods, focusing generally only on the most widely agreed (among critical scholars) conclusions. Even though this material has been a standard part of the education of ministers and priests for decades, little of it has been passed on to their congregations, a deficiency that the author hopes to address.

However, he also appears to have a second, implicit motive, namely, he argues against a literalist understanding of the Bible. Prof. Ehrman was an evangelist and Christian apologist when he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, but what he learned there convinced him that his beliefs in the inerrancy of the Bible were unsupportable. After much resistance, he adopted a more liberal view of Christianity, one that is very common among his peers in theology departments, but eventually he lost even that faith through his inability to reconcile his beliefs with the suffering present in the world, which is the subject of his book God's Problem, not this one. But he still holds a very positive view of liberal Christianity, although no longer of fundamentalism. By no stretch is this book anti-Christian, and he even complains about atheists using his research uncritically to support their views. He repeatedly emphasizes that he is not out to weaken anyone's faith - he just wants people to think about their religious views.

Since he intends to counter literalism, he devotes a couple of chapters to a discussion of contradictions in the NT. This is only a small subset of all the contradictions that have been claimed to exist, as he is not attempting to be comprehensive (contrary to what the subtitle seems to suggest, this book is NOT unduly focused on contradictions in the Bible). He treats a few major contradictions among and in the Gospels (Was Jesus crucified before or after Passover dinner? What happened immediately after his birth? Who saw the resurrection and when?) and some minor ones, which may be more familiar (e.g., Judas's death). Even while going into some of these in depth, he still abbreviates the discussion (e.g., giving only a partial explanation of the discrepancies in the genealogies of Jesus), presenting only enough material to make his point without belaboring it. After discussing counterfactuals he moves on to differences in the points of view between the different authors of the books in the Bible, differences of opinion on such important questions as, Who was Jesus? What did he teach? Why did he have to die?. Again, he treats only a few cases, such as Paul's and Matthew's differences over whether Christians should follow Jewish customs. His point is that the authors of the different books, who were separated from each other in time and space, didn't all agree on every issue, and each should be allowed to have his own say, without conflating one author's opinion with another.

The next chapter goes through the NT, book by book, presenting scholarly consensus on who wrote each book and when. Ehrman gives an explanation for the majority belief that only 8 books (7 of Paul's letters and Revelation) were written by the people claimed, while the rest were misattributed or pseudepigraphic (i.e., forged). He discusses the widespread practice of forgery in ancient times, and why it was so common. He doesn't justify so much his dates for the Gospels, which are perhaps slightly more conservative than that for the average critical scholar.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book largely regurgitates material from his other books. He spends a chapter speculating on the historical Jesus, and concludes that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher (as he expounds more fully in his book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium). He briefly touches on the evidence for the existence for Jesus, but his discussion of Josephus and Tacticus is very superficial. He also presents his theory about why Jesus was executed and Judas's involvement, which can be found in Ehrman's The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot. He fails to acknowledge, however, that some of the views expressed in this chapter, unlike those in previous ones, are more particular to him and not as widely accepted. Moreover, he barely addresses the wide disagreement among scholars about what Jesus actually said and did.

The next few chapters cover textual criticism, the main topic of his Misquoting Jesus, and the development of the canon. He talks briefly about variations in the text of ancient NT manuscripts and why we don't know what was originally written in some cases. Here he defends himself well against some conservative criticism of MJ, and to his credit he even lists 3 books and 2 websites that oppose him, although he doesn't present much detail on their objections. He also explains how the books of the NT were selected from among all the competing early Christian literature, and then peruses that literature and describes the wide diversity of early Christian groups that wrote and used it. His conclusion is that the final version of Christianity that won out was not the same as the original religion of Jesus or Paul. Again, his treatment is a summary of the material is his other books, in particular, Lost Christianities and The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.

He ends with defense of the notion that faith is possible even given the knowledge we have of the Bible as a product of humans; in fact, he feels that this knowledge can enhance one's faith. While repeating his reasons why literalism is in his opinion unsustainable, he argues that it is impossible to prove or disprove the resurrection historically, and that one should be able to build a personal Christianity that uses only selective parts of the Bible. He concludes with an explanation of why Bible study remains relevant, even if it is not the inerrant Word of God ("inspiring even if not inspired"), as it is after all "the most important book in the history of Western civilization."

Overall, this is an excellent summation of basic NT criticism, Ehrman's best book yet. He succeeds in presenting knowledge that every believer should have in a thought-provoking but non-threatening way that seeks to challenge not faith, but rather the reader's assumptions. It may even inspire a more open discussion of the Bible by the clergy, as I'm sure this will generate many questions from their congregations.

On the other hand, I do have a few criticisms of this book: None of the material is original, with even the author himself having covered most of it in earlier and fuller books. There is no index and the meager bibliography is scattered among the end notes, although in his defense, this is after all not an academic work but a popularization. He also doesn't carefully distinguish the few places where he is presenting his own opinions that are not as widely held. I also think he should've presented more evidence to support his assertions, even though this material may be well known among scholars. Finally, he hardly addresses at all the conspiratorial-sounding question of why the contradictions in the Bible are not more widely known, but instead spends only one page saying that pastors don't discuss the knowledge gained from historical-critical analysis because either they don't know how, they're afraid it may weaken faith, or they think it's irrelevant. (BTW, there's a bad typo on pages 41 and 71: On both pages, the name Matthew has been replaced by Mark on the right-hand margin in roughly the middle of the page.)

If you are interested in learning what scholars have concluded about the Bible through centuries of research, and you're not already an expert, then I highly recommend this book.

Bart Ehrman is all the rage these days. His book, Misquoting Jesus, was immensely popular, earning him the status of being a household name. He's been on tons of press spots; heck, he even got interviewed by the distinguished journalist Steven Colbert.:) With his followup, Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman continues the same line of claims he began with Misquoting Jesus. As a result of his writings, countless people who at one point claimed to follow Jesus abandoned their faith, as Ehrman "obviously" proved that the Bible was an unreliable document, and if the document is unreliable, the faith it speaks of must be unreliable as well, right?

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.

I must give credit to Ehrman for writing a very irenic and scholarly book about the contradictions found in the Bible. His exposee did not shock me or affect my faith. As a matter of fact, I believe that the only people whose faith would be shaken after reading Ehrman's book are hard core fundamentalists, but not evangelicals who subscribe to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) or Roman Catholics who uphold the Vatican II's dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum (1965).
Ehrman , after a few autobiographical pages, in which he explains to his readers his conservative evangelical background, his rejection of biblical inerrancy and finally, after wrestling with the problem of evil, his abandoning the Christian faith and embracing agnosticism, goes into detail about the following points:
* There are un-resolvable discrepancies, inconsistencies and contradictions in the biblical texts, which he claims cannot be reconciled without doing violence to the text.
* The Bible is not a unity, but a massive plurality (p. 279).
* Some variants in the manuscripts make a world of difference, theologically and exegetically speaking.
* Lots of texts are pseudo-graphical, which is to say, sheer forgeries (ex: some of Paul's letters): how can they be God's Word?
* The Bible is not the divine, inspired, revealed Word of God, but a very human book.
* Biblical canon was formulated way too late (IV century) to be credible.
* Some doctrines of the Christian faith are not found in the earliest NT tradition but were developed over time and super-imposed the Christian faith.
* Rejection of Lewis' view of Jesus as "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" based on the fact that the sayings of Jesus are authentic: they are not, since they are nothing but a legend (i.e, jesus never taught he was divine).
* Jesus does not fit Jewish expectations of the Messiah.
* Christianity and some NT texts are anti-semitic.
* Doctrines like the Trinity, Jesus' divinity and Heaven and Hell are not found in earliest manuscripts.
* The way orthodox Christianity emerged is way too human: it has no trace of divine origin and/or support: The wild diversity of Christian churches and the struggle of the orthodox party to assert itself do not suggest a divine intervention.
* Christianity is NOT the religion of Jesus, but the religion about Jesus: it's a human invention.

I picked this book up a few days ago, as soon as it went soft cover (the hard covers in my local Borders were all sold out). This book is classic Bart Ehrman. By that, I mean he provides some autobiographical information on himself (as in Misquoting Jesus) which gives you a better sense of where he is coming from (always useful information for a reader) and he puts his argument in clear, concise terms. He doesn't swamp the ready with technical, specialized terms but makes concepts easy to understand. Sometimes frustratingly so when you want more information.

Much of the information in Jesus Interrupted has appeared before, in a different form, in other of Ehrman's books. For example, I recognized information from "The New Testament" (the text book he speaks of writing for Oxford - and an excellent book, I highly recommend it). Yet even if you have all of Bart Ehrman's books, as I do, you will enjoy this book and find things that you aren't familiar with, or haven't thought about in that way before.

As he has argued in other publications, the Bible is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, and though apologists like to argue that these are not substantive, it is difficult to understand what they could mean by this objection. If the Bible is the inerrant word of God, contradictions are impossible. If the contradictions change what you need to do in order to be saved, I'd say those contradictions are pretty substantive, wouldn't you?

Ehrman does not simply list these contradictions, and to be honest, he doesn't bury the reader through sheer quantity. Rather, he picks out some of the more glaring inconsistencies and takes the time to discuss them, explaining why they cannot be reconciled even when apologists insist there is no real problem. I'll cite one example, from page 52, "What did the centurion say when Jesus died?"

As Ehrman says, everyone remembers that he said "Truly, this man was the Son of God." But that's in Mark (15:39). In Luke, the centurion says something quite different: "Truly, this man was innocent (23:47).

"There have been interpreters," Ehrman tells us, "who have wanted to insist that this comes to the same thing; of course if he's the Son of God he's innocent. But the words are different and have different meanings. If a potential criminal is declared 'not guilty' by the court, that is certainly not the same thing as being declared the Son of God."

Any attempt to reconcile the two accounts, as Ehrman frequently points out, is to invalidate both and create a third. And again, Ehrman explains why Mark may have found it expedient to have the centurion say one thing and Luke may have preferred another - they each had theological points to make; different - and contradictory - points.

There are eight chapters:

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?

The book isn't long - 285 pages in soft cover - with a few pages of notes at the end. If I have a complaint at all it's that there is no index. I find this rather appalling, but the book is organized in such a way (and is short enough) that you can find what you're looking for by skimming through it.

I see "Misquoting Jesus" and "Jesus, Interrupted," as similar. I think that if I were to recommend Ehrman to a new reader I might suggest they start with these two books, and then move on to his biography of Jesus. It's important to recognize that unlike some authors Bart Ehrman does not deny that Jesus existed; he insists upon putting him into his proper historical context instead (which is just as much a crime for some apologists). I think one of the most important parts of this book comes at the end when he discusses the divinity of Jesus and another issue many Christians take for granted (I did when I was a Christian): when did this event occur?

Food for thought and I won't provide any spoilers here. I highly recommend this book, as I do all Bart Ehrman's books. The simplest way to put it is to say that if you're already a Bart Ehrman fan, this book will not do anything to change that.

"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.

Right up front, the author states the Bible is the most important book in western thought. The contradictions specifically pointed should not really surprise anyone, except perhaps the gentle folks who keep giving me bad feedback on my review of "Signs and Wonders. Why Pentecostalism is the world's fastest growing faith." The present collection of the twenty-seven "book" canon was a very human process (p.223)which is a compilation of documents by writers who probably did not witness the life of Jesus, who based their writings upon decades old oral traditions, perhaps the erstwhile Q, and perhaps even their own interpretations. Even those "original" documents appear to be no longer extant and the present texts are copies of copies, etc. that may have been altered accidently or to fit the present concept of Christianity (pp. 267-268). Various factions exterminated the interpretations of other less powerful factions. Now, various Christians factions interpret the same book in seemingly different manners. A life can could be spent studying the Bible as an historical document, and this is a good enough introduction for the novice. Those who found this text to be of interest might also enjoy Dr. Ehrman's other titles "Misquoting Jesus" and "Lost Scriptures."