Bart D. Ehrman

I'm mostly skimming rather than reading fully but I've got into reading Jesus mythicism stuff and felt like skimming this along with a couple of the famous recent mythicist books. To be fair here I feel slightly more sympathetic to the mythicist negative argument even if I don't find the positive alternatives they posit more convincing but I'd like to be convinced of the historicist argument because, you know, it's the academic consensus and I don't want to be believing in disproved stuff.

His discussion of the Testimonium Flavianum takes it as a given that there was an original core to it, gives a reconstruction, and then tests every mythicist argument criticising it by pointing to his reconstruction and saying "if it looked like this, this argument fails, therefore the mythicist criticisms of it are wrong". I understand that he's repeating academic consensus here (and at many points) and can't explicate every detail of why it's the consensus, but it strikes me as extremely unconvincing. He also claims he's going to deal with the “the brother of Jesus, who is called the messiah” reference but then doesn't? Odd.

A reoccurring argument goes something like "mythicists criticise x story about Jesus. [usually at least a mild rebuttal] Even if they're right, legends appearing around a real person doesn't mean the real person doesn't exist". It's both obviously correct but also reduces the historical Jesus you can say much about down further and further.

There's also an odd reluctance to even suggest that there could be deliberate fictional writing involved at any stage in the creation of the gospels - it's all just various "traditions"… (mer)

Another fascinating, educational selection from The Great Courses. Professor Bart D. Ehrman, a renowned New Testament scholar and speaker takes us through a concise, albeit brief for time allotment purposes, tour of the gospels of the New Testament and the history of them.

Professor Ehrman is a fantastic lecturer and extremely knowledgeable on his subject matter. I was quickly drawn into the lectures and played them several times over to make sure I had ingested the information. After finishing the book, I felt I had a good rudimentary, begginers' understanding of the New Testament and knew infinitely more than I had at the outset. The amount of information I learned after all these years of ignorance on the subject is mind boggling. I can't imagine why I didn't bother to get a basic understanding of the New Testament from a scholarly, historical standpoint years ago.

Highly recommended. Humankind would benefit so much from receiving widespread education on the Bible, and the New Testament in particular. Learning, understanding and diminishing ignorance is the key to the future of the human species.… (mer)

This is one of Ehrman's lesser books for non-christians, as it deals heavily with theological and interpretive issues for christianity based on Bible verses dealing with suffering and the role of God in inflicting or alieving suffering. From an outside perspective, most of this battle comes down to the fusion of the jewish interpretation(s) of God in the OT, with the God of the NT (which has far less direct involvement in toying with humanity and therefore less problematic verses), and so the dilemma of reconciling the vengeful, even spiteful OT God with the NT verses just isn't there.
From a "religious studies" perspective then, what remains is about a quarter of the book, dealing more universally with the problem of theodicy, perhaps best articulated (and quoted by Ehrman) by Epicurus. Can a monotheistic view support a world with evil in it? For Ehrman, a doctrine about Satan, or defaulting to 'free will' or 'mystery' handwaves does not cut it.
Great book for doubting Christians or a general overview of these problems (and common answers) but nothing new to say.… (mer)