There are two reasons I am somewhat reluctant to write about Bart Ehrman’s new book Jesus, Interrupted. The first is that whenever one talks about Jesus, the Bible, or religion in general someone is always wrong about everything and someone is always right about everything. It’s practically impossible to have a discussion where two or more people can disagree in a rational way. It always ends up feeling like Cardinal Bellarmine will break down the door any minute and stretch you out on the rack screaming, “Confess your heresy or lose your immortal soul to the damning fires of hell for all eternity.”
Secondly, in order to show that I have some minor expertise in these matters I’m going to have to reveal things about my past and I’m not that comfortable spraying ancient times all over this review but I came to the conclusion that Mr. Ehrman’s book is well worth the effort. So, here goes. I come from a rather strict Irish Catholic family; growing up on the South Side of Chicago. I mean this in all of its forms; altar boy; no meat on Friday; Lent was an Earthly version of hell; Catholic education all the way through college. About my education, I was at the hands of the Dominicans in grammar school, sometimes referred to as the Sisters of Perpetual Repentance. High school and college were taken over by the Jesuits. That was the period in my life when I spent six years studying to be a priest. It took me six years to figure out that the Church was really serious about that celibacy thing…bye bye.
In the seminary, as you might expect, we studied the Bible backwards and forwards, especially the New Testament which afforded me the unremitting bliss of reading in ancient Greek. Thankfully not all 27 books of the New Testament but enough that the memory of it now has me reaching for a tub of Ex Lax. In any event we read the Bible in a devotional, meditative way which is how 99% of all people read it…little bits at a time. We mostly read it, however, in huge chunks. When you read the Gospels all at once over, say, a three day period, you notice some extraordinarily interesting things. These four guys didn’t agree about anything.
Mr. Ehrman’s book is subtitled, Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible and Why We Don’t Know About Them. It is as informative, riveting, and revealing a book on early Christianity as I have ever read. A great companion piece is Mr. Ehrman’s previous book Misquoting Jesus. It is not necessary to have read it to enjoy his new book but, taken together they are a tour de force.
Here is a taste of a few things that Mr. Ehrman writes about and Biblical scholars have accepted and taken for granted in the last 60 years. These ideas seem to have missed the general Christian population because very few Christians are aware of them and they are not hearing anything from the pulpit about them.
The four Gospels were not written by the men to whom they are attributed. These Gospels were written a long time after Jesus died by men who didn’t know Jesus. They didn’t know anybody who knew Jesus. They were highly educated men who were writing in another language in cities far away from Jerusalem. The parts of the story they didn’t borrow from each other they learned from people telling them stories about Jesus via an oral tradition passed down in non written form. These were four men who were telling their own version of Jesus’ ministry. Each of their Gospels takes a different perspective because they were trying to say different things about Jesus. That’s why the Jesus during the crucifixion in Mark’s Gospel bears so little resemblance to the Jesus in the other Gospels. You might ask yourself if they were all writing about the same guy.
There were all kinds of Gospels floating around. Each little Christian community had their own books that proved their sect was the one true Christian version of Jesus’ ministry. It wasn’t until the Council Of Nicaea some 300 years after Christ died that the ROMAN version of Christianity got itself together and set in granite the 27 books we now use as the New Testament and embarked on a course to destroy all the other “books” that were in circulation.
Jesus was an itinerant rabbi preaching an apocalyptic form of Judaism. He was born a Jew, raised by Jewish parents, preaching to Jews a particularly Jewish message. This was a form of Judaism NOT a new religion. By all accounts Jesus never intended to start a new religion. St Paul, however, did, and St Paul’s story is one of the most interesting of the lot. Ehrman does a great job of telling it.
Bart Ehrman is an exceptionally good writer and Jesus, Interrupted flows as easily as a well constructed murder mystery, which, in a way, it is. It’s a must read for every Christian. Try to avoid the arguments because I assure you that after reading it you will become either a more serious, sophisticated Christian or a pagan. I know I did.
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