A must read for a Christian (if they dare) or anyone interested in gaining a greater understanding on the works of the New Testament. ( )

This is the third book I have read by Bart Ehrman and I have listened to two of his classes on CD through The Teaching Company so, full disclosure, I am a fan. He is a clear thinker and a courageous thinker. His work is meticulously reasoned and redundant at times, which actually aids retention as the subject matter is so voluminous.

Whether one believes or doesn't believe, one needs to contemplate the bible - otherwise one might as well be reciting a nursery rhyme. This book delivers plenty to think about and layers a rich and loving human dimension on the sometimes unapproachable bible.

The author's easy, anecdotal style makes the going even easier.
Recommended.

I really like Ehrman's writings. He is a very thoughtful writer on subjects that aren't discussed much in public because they involve, for some people, a radical reinterpretation of the Bible. In fact that is one of the reasons he wrote the book: so few lay people have been taught anything about the last 200 years of Biblical scholarship.

The book is something of a sequel to his previous work Misquoting Jesus. In both he points out that a view of the Bible as literally true and inerrant has been made impossible by facts. We do not have the original Biblical texts, first of all. Secondly, there are thousands of existing copies made prior to the invention of the printing press, and no two are alike... they all contain errors, some major, most minor, some deleting text found in other versions and some adding text. The errors in all of these copies add up to more words than are in the Bible.

Ehrman points out, however, that many if not most Biblical scholars are believing Jews or Christians, that knowing the Bible is not inerrant by no means mandates a loss of faith. Ehrman is candid in revealing that he has become an agnostic himself, but says it had nothing to do with the issue of inerrancy, but rather the issue of suffering (which he addressed in a different book).

Ehrman reconstructs the New Testament (he is a Greek scholar, not a Hebrew scholar, so does not treat the Old Testament), discussing who wrote the various books, which are forgeries, when they were written, etc. He talks some about the process by which the canonical books of the New Testament became canonical. Prior to this, around the fourth century, there were many competing Christianities (discussed in more depth in his book Lost Christianities). In some Christians had to follow Jewish law, in others they were not to do so, and then there were the Gnostics, a wholly different kettle of fish. Each group had its own set of works it considered sacred.

Ehrman has an extensive discussion of the value of reading the books "vertically" (comparing the same story in different books), rather than "horizontally" (reading the books in order straight through). By doing so the unique viewpoints of the authors come out. Mark, for example, was the earliest of the Gospels to be written, and is one of the sources for Luke and Matthew. Mark's view of Jesus is that he is the one who atones for the sin of the world, and so his emphasis is on Christ's suffering.

Bart Ehrman has produced another excellent book on Biblical scholarship for the lay reader. ( )

A good survey of the existing evidence. ( )

This book makes one think of the Bible in a new way. Having read the bible before many of the things discussed in the book were not so much new to me but things I had never really thought about before. The only thing I did not like was the author's need to repeat certain ideas over and over again. Really some of us can remember concepts from one chapter to the next. Otherwise I thought it was an thought provoking book. If you believe in the Bible as the inerrant word of God than this book may not be for you, but if you see the Bible as a model for a life than this book will be fascinating. ( )