About this title: The "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Misquoting Jesus" reveals how books in the Bible were actually forged by later authors and that the New Testament itself is riddled with contradictory claims about Jesus--information that scholars know but the general public does not.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperOne
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780061173936ISBN:0061173932
Description: New, Publisher overstock, may have small remainder mark. Excellent condition, never read, purchased from publisher as excess inventory. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperOne
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780061173936ISBN:0061173932
Description: New, Publisher overstock, may have small remainder mark. Excellent condition, never read, purchased from publisher as excess inventory. read more
Edition: First Edition/First Printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper One, New York, New York
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780061173936ISBN:0061173932
Description: Fine in Very Good jacket. "Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them)" Dustjacket has slight edge wear with one tiny tear. Very nice copy. read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: HARPER COLLINS
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780061173936ISBN:0061173932
Description: The "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Misquoting Jesus" reveals how books in the Bible were actually forged by later authors and that the New Testament itself is riddled with contradictory claims about Jesus--information that scholars know but... read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harperone
Date Published: 2009-03-01
ISBN-13:9780061173936ISBN:0061173932
Description: NEW. Hardcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780061173936. read more
Description: New. 0061173932 *NEW BOOK! * RETURNS ARE NO PROBLEM! We LOVE happy customers. All our orders sent with tracking information. ALIBRIS. read more
"Popular science is a well-established genre that makes abstruse scientific concepts approachable, comprehensible, and fun. Popular Christian theology, as a genre... is slowly catching up.
Much as with Ehrman's earlier book Misquoting Jesus, I found each section of this book firing my enthusiasm for the subject and then starving it somewhat with a sense of disconnection - the general structure of each chapter lays out the academic consensus in an area related to the New Testament (such as internal consistency, historical veracity, authorial motivations) and then follows with choice examples intended to illustrate the point. Some of these are less inspiring than others, and even give the sense of having been used simply to make up the numbers. Others, of course, are fantastic, but it makes for slightly staggered reading as one bogs down from time to time.
Nonetheless, most the content is very interesting and approachable regardless of background."
"Like many people, I had a vague picture of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John keeping journals of their everyday lives with Jesus and stapling them together to send them in to Random House for publication. Well, duh! Do you know who wrote the Bible? As it turns out, every seminary student learns in his first year of college that the 1st 4 books of the New Testament weren't written by MML&J at all, at least not the disciples, (though they could have been coincidentally 4 men with the same names.) And that's just the beginning of everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-the Bible, but never thought to ask.
The new testament wasn't written at the time of Jesus or during the disciples lives, but long afterwards by a variety of anonymous sources and the portions which came to us as the New Testament were just a few of many of the books written. So much for "eye witnesses" to the resurrection. It's sort of like that old game of telephone where people repeat a story until it has no similarity to the original version. Because even the 1st 4 books of the New Testament have significant contradictions. Having read this book, I really came to wonder why we have been treating the Bible as the sacred word of God for all these years, to the extent that people actually place their hand on the Bible as a symbol of their own honesty and sincerity. Christianity was not created by Christ, a Jew, but rather by Gentiles, who picked and chose over time which ideas would best promote their church.
This is not a quick read and I did get annoyed at the author for his pedantic style, as he frequently wrote liked he was actually lecturing, so I wondered if the book was taken from his already prepared online classes. Still, it's a tremendously informative book and he is well balanced, fair, and pretty brilliant. He never takes the low road of sarcasm or finger-pointing, though it must have been tempting at times. This book should be read by anyone who ever reads the Bible."
"Here's a question for you. How important is it that the Jesus of the Bible and the historical Jesus are more or less the same guy? Or even better, how important is it that the ideas Jesus was trying to spread by his ministry are the same ideas that have come to be followed in the various Christian churches?
There was a time when I would have thought that all Christians would have wanted to answer both of these questions by saying that it was fundamentally important to their faith that what they currently believe as Christians is exactly what the historical Jesus taught. I would have thought that Christians would have developed their ideas about what Christ had to say about the world from the Bible (which, I had always assumed was seen by most Christians as the inspired and inerrant word of God) and that their task, as Christians, would be to come to an increasing understanding of that message by close and intense study.
As Ehrman basically says somewhere in this book - if you truly believe that the Bible is a book that God wrote on how you should live your life it seems a bit strange that you might believe that and not have bothered to go on and read it.
The other side to this is that if the Bible is the inspired word of God then you would not expect there to be any contradictions in it - particularly not in the various tellings of the Jesus story which is presented four times, once in each of the first four books of the New Testament known as the Gospels.
But there are differences between these tellings and some of these are not just differences of passing interest only to the pedant - although, I would have thought that the guy responsible for creating the Universe might have been the world's worst pedant, myself. No, some of these tellings actually say opposite things, that is, are literally contradictory. And some of the differences have fundamental theological significance.
This is a book that looks at what scholarship is able to tell us about the historical Jesus and what his actions meant in his time and therefore the significance of those actions for him. It also shows how the significance of those actions to him would have been quite different to what those actions have come to signify to us a couple of thousand years later. The short version is that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew and he and his earliest followers believed that they were living at the end of times and that meant their world was about to end and to end immediately. When they say things like there are people here who will see me return in glory that was meant to be taken literally. Paul believed he would be alive to see the second coming. I would think that for these reasons alone the historical Jesus can hardly be seen as identical with the Christian Jesus.
Large parts of this book look at our earliest texts of the New Testament and then question whether Jesus and his earliest followers actually believed that he was divine and then if he was divine when did he become divine. For John, for example, the last of the gospels to be written, Jesus was with God at the beginning of time as the word that created the universe. For the other three Apostles his literal divinity is never quite so well spelt out and if he was divine at all, then he probably became divine after the resurrection.
There are fascinating questions asked in this book. For example, as Jesus was going to his death was he anxious and upset - as he is depicted in Matthew - or was he pretty well cool, calm and collected as he is depicted in Luke. You know, there is a pretty big difference between these two versions of Jesus' death which can be summed up by what they say his last words on the cross were: either "My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me" or "Forgive them for they know not what they do."
The point is that Luke and Matthew were wanting to make very distinct theological points with their tellings of the crucifixion story and they do this by telling very different stories. Ehrman makes it clear that how these contradictions are generally resolved is by having Jesus say both of these lines while he was on the cross and for some reason both Luke and Matthew left out the other one, but this does not go nearly far enough to resolve the many, many contradictions in the two stories. The problem with this way of resolving contradictions in the Bible is that it creates a new text which is different from both of the texts you are using as your source. But the real point here is that this third text you have just created by smashing together the two gospel versions has to be less accurate than either of the gospel versions, not more accurate as we generally assume. We confusedly think that the Bible is one book, whereas it is many books telling somewhat similar stories - this can make us think that the differences are just differences in detail, whereas some of the differences are much deeper than that.
These differences are fundamental and make for quite different ways of looking at Christianity. To focus on one more than the other gives quite a different 'Christianity'. And I would have thought that Christians would be told about the differences that exist in their gospels and the implications of these differences. But this is another reason why Ehrman has written this book. Although standard Christian scholarship has accepted and studied the contradictions in the Bible for around 150 years and have developed many explanations as to why and how these differences arose - this is virtually never taught either in Church services or (much more surprisingly) in Bible study classes organised by Churches - despite the fact that this is precisely what ministers are taught in seminary.
Ehrman's passion and depth of knowledge always make me want to spend time reading over passages of the Bible and consider the implications of the various differences and emphasises laid by the various authors of the Bible - if he can do that for an atheist, I would imagine he would only have a much stronger effect on a Christian, at least, I would like to imagine that would be the case. But it seems I'm invariably wrong about what interests Christians about their religion. This is another excellent book beautifully written."
"Admittedly, I knew nothing of the Bible before reading this book. Although this book is really interesting, the author repeats himself often about how many scholars agree with him in each chapter (and sort of rehashes the same "now this is what we have learned in the last chapter", he is constantly on the defense from his critics. I was annoyed though that he constantly name drops one of his other books a few times throughout, and then, in the middle of the book, he just takes a huge part of the chapter to defend himself against the critics of his other book!
I did enjoy his chapters on discrepancies and contradictions and the history of Christianity, so those are the chapters I'd recommend.
He also doesn't do a very good job explaining WHY the general public doesn't know about things that he assures us again and again are taught in every respectable seminary and religious training institute. I think the answer is obvious-- Christianity would fizzle out if people actually studied and critically judged the Bible and tried to live exactly as it is written. He goes to great lengths to convince us that this is not the case and that Biblical and religious scholars can still be Believers and go on to preach... but I am pretty sure large organizations find it easier to just sugar coat the stories, forget about the contradictions and inconsistent stories and just mold them into their own interpretations. It is easier to pick and choose what you want than to follow the Bible to a T."
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