Destroying your faith one page at a time (oh wait, not really, just kidding!)
[A review for the Ooze Viral Bloggers Network]
I recently read Jesus, Interrupted by New Testament scholar and best-selling author Bart Ehrman. Over the years I had heard a lot about Ehrman’s scandalous books, but this is the first one I’ve ever read. For a little background, Ehrman went to college as a very conservative Christian, went on to study New Testament scholarship, earning a PhD, but eventually became an Agnostic. Ehrman still teaches and writes about the New Testament, but no longer from a place of faith.
Before reading the book I listened to an excellent interview of Ehrman by Tony Jones for the Homebrewed Christianity podcast. I highly recommend checking out this interview – it’s well worth listening to. Tony does a great job of asking questions beyond simple matters related to Ehrman’s books. In fact, I was surprised how much I liked Ehrman in this interview (surprised because I had heard how evil he is! – out to wreck the Christian faith, etc). It turns out, Ehrman doesn’t desire to destroy the Christian faith. But more on that later.
So basically this book is an introduction to the historical-critical approach to the Bible and early Christian development. Ehrman wants Christians (particularly conservative ones) to have a better grasp of how scholars understand the Bible when they read it like any other book. Ehrman is a good writer and he makes the material very readable and interesting. However, I have a difficult time believing that any strict conservative Christian would make it past the second chapter of the book. I do not think Ehrman takes an adversarial position against Christianity in the book, but a very conservative Christian just isn’t going to swallow what Ehrman is offering. If Ehrman wants to reach this audience, I think he needs to go about it in a different way. The final chapter of the book tries to convince the reader that the point of the book was not to destroy faith, but I don’t think conservative readers will make it that far. And so in that regard, I think the book might be a failure of sorts, even though I thought it was a very good, and fairly impartial, introduction to the material. I say impartial, but very conservative Christians would not see it as impartial. If Ehrman wants to reach this audience he needs to speak their language more effectively by directly addressing the way very conservative scholars respond to Ehrman’s approach to reading the Bible.
The most significant point Ehrman makes in the book, in my opinion, is that this kind of scholarship somehow needs to be discussed in the church. Most pastors are aware of everything in Ehrman’s book, but they never approach the subject matter within the church. I agree that this is a significant problem.
In short, I recommend this book if you are somewhat familiar with and already open to the historical-critical approach to New Testament studies. But otherwise, I imagine this book is not for you. But either way, I highly recommend listening to the podcast interview at Homebrewed Christianity – Ehrman is quite an interesting figure and a highly regarded scholar in his field.
