Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

Bart Ehrman's Jesus is deeply Jewish and deeply apocalyptic, two attributes that modern Christians tend to disregard if not deny. Ehrman lays out his thesis that Jesus' entire ministry was just preparing for the end (which would happen in the lifetime of his apostles). Everyone needed to be ready for the "destruction and salvation" of the imminent Judgment Day. His ideas of social justice and political reform are secondary, reflecting the power structure of the Kingdom, but why get too embroiled in earthly struggles when the present earth will soon be destroyed?

This is not your mama's Jesus. Clearly. Ehrman's historical biography of Jesus makes him a fascinating but unfamiliar figure, not terribly connected to present day Christianity. show more Not that he has to - Ehrman himself is agnostic because of his biblical scholarship, actually - but at times I felt like Christ was over time made irrelevant to Christianity. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet re-connects its readers to Jesus, but does not attempt to re-connect Jesus to his relevance in the church today. Excellent book anyway, that will absolutely affect the way people read the Gospels from now on show less

One of Ehrman's earlier books and surprisingly one of the better introductory ones. Themes he will return to in later books are all found here, complete with a logical step by step introduction to the historical analysis tools he will return to over and over in later books and perhaps not explain as well.

He lays out the case for the (a) historical interpretation of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet among a tradition of such thinkers in judaism with good references from the Bible itself as well as secular and jewish sources, and does so in a compelling fashion.

The thorough, pyramid-like construction of this book is perhaps due to all this being Ehrman's wheelhouse as a scholar, with very little in the way of new ideas - as he states show more himself in the introduction. Rather it's just a solidly presented book of a standard view. show less

I can forgive biblical scholars for writing impenetrable prose. They have to know about 8000 languages. They study the most studied book of all time, and the temptation to split hairs must be overwhelming. On the other hand, biblical scholars write about *the bible*, so they've got an enormous in-built audience that other humanities people can only dream of. So maybe they should actually take advantage of that?
Well, Ehrman does. Kudos to him; he writes clearly and says exactly what he thinks. What he thinks, along with a whole bunch of other people whom he's happy to praise, is that Jesus was a Jewish prophet who thought the end of the world was really, really nigh; that his ethical preaching and his actions were all geared towards show more this thought, and that most Christian theology, and much of the new testament, has very little to do with the man Jesus who wandered around a couple thousand years ago. It seems pretty plausible, and he's very clear that this is a history book, and not a theology book.
Two problems: first, this is the sort of thing that you might read and then say to yourself, well, you know what? Hell with the Christian tradition then. A more productive angle for a conclusion or something might have been to suggest that since the 'identity' or 'biography' of Jesus never had squat to do with Christianity, people could more productively spend their time thinking about living good lives (and, if you're Christian, therefore deserving God's forgiveness), rather than being New Atheists or Creationists and thinking all the time about other peoples' genitals.

Also, it gets really repetitive over the last few chapters. A bit too much padding over all. show less

While this book was quite informative it got rather more repetitive than it needed to be. [a:Bart D. Ehrman|643|Bart D. Ehrman|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1237161718p2/643.jpg]'s hypothesis of Jesus of Nazareth being an apocalyptic prophet is one that is largely regarded as accurate in historical circles. Other books, notably [b:Zealot|15748275|Zealot|Jim Etchison|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1343240812s/15748275.jpg|21440585] did a better job of explaining this stance in an interesting and compelling way. So, while I enjoyed this book I feel it could have been more entertaining and less repetitive than it ended up being.

Ehrman's book offers a concise, compelling argument for the apocalyptic Jesus. Accessible to the lay reader, Ehrman walks through the historical time period in which Jesus lived and offers evidence for the historical Jesus based on the historical information presented as well as through text criticism which he also takes time to carefully explain.

One of the better books about the historical Jesus. Worth a look for free reading or for writing a paper about the historical Jesus.

list of books I want to read.