Bart Ehrman's "Jesus, Interrupted": New York Times Bestseller

I recently came across a book that does an excellent job of explaining the enormous gap in knowledge that exists between Bible scholars and the rest of the population, which is Bart Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them). This is one of Ehrman's four New York Times bestsellers, which explains why he is one of the most well-known Bible scholars among the general public.

In this book Ehrman recounts his personal journey as a conservative evangelical Christian who went to Princeton Theological Seminary to earn a doctorate, and was determined to hang on to his belief that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God. But at Princeton he was exposed to the critical-historical methods of research into the writings that make up the Bible for the first time, and this experience would forever change his entire view of what the Bible actually is.

He explains in detail how and why he changed his views on the Bible. In short, when one is exposed to higher education in this field, you discover things you've never heard before, and the evidence is simply overwhelming. It also just makes far more sense than the simplistic approach to the Bible taught in fundamentalist churches. I can identify with Ehrman because I had the same experience 16 years ago when I first started doing this kind of research.



Ehrman explains how that scholars have known things about the Bible for 200 years that many lay Christians would find shocking. They know, for example, that most of the books in the Bible were not written by the men who most people imagine they were written by, that the Bible is filled with errors and internal contradictions, and that many of the stories are not original but are found in older religions. Ehrman emphasizes that these are not new or radical ideas, but are the mainstream views held by virtually all critical historical scholars for a very long time.

Ehrman goes into detail on some of the contradictions, especially in Genesis and in the gospels, encouraging the reader to look the passages up for themselves. I remember when I first came across these things, and it can be quite a shock to come face to face with undeniable evidence that much of what you were taught in religion is just plain wrong. At that point, the only options are to accept the truth about what the Bible is and is not, or to try and lie to yourself and continue hanging on to beliefs that you now know aren't true. For me, this wasn't much of a choice. I've never been a good liar.

Ehrman has three other books that you also may find interesting: Misquoting Jesus: The Story of Who Changed the Bible and Why, Forged: Writing in the Name of God - Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, and Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics. These three focus on how the early church fathers (of the Roman Catholic Church) used all kinds of deception in putting together the Bible that we have now. Entire books/epistles were forged in the names of earlier "apostles", some scriptures were changed, and new passages were written and added to earlier writings.

But for most people, you should start with Jesus, Interrupted, especially for the average Christian who wants an introduction to higher education in the field of Bible scholarship