Review by contributor Saby
Regardless of one’s religious persuasion, I believe I would not be overstating myself in claiming that The Bible, as an idea, plays a significant role in society today. It is mired in mystery and controversy yet remains forced by some to live up to the bizarre and supernatural claim that it is the revealed and inspired ‘Word of God’; a book that contains the inherent wisdom and authority of God to shape government policy, moral action, and the lifestyles of all. This is hardly the same book (actually, a consolidation of 66 books) as the one that comes to light through a reading of Jesus, Interrupted, Bart Ehrman’s attempt to encourage theists, agnostics, and atheists alike to ‘break the spine’ of their Bibles and promote an objective historical reality for this controversial book.
Ehrman’s Jesus, Interrupted is an attempt to get past the bigotry surrounding The Bible and begin asking the unbiased and not oft-asked questions that should rightly be expected of any book coming to us from antiquity. Ignoring any analysis of the transcendent (e.g. did Jesus really come back from the dead after three days), Ehrman asks us to consider what we know about the Bible historically: Why are the varying accounts of his birth, life, ministry, and death so discrepant? Why do the gospels not agree on the corporeal nature of Jesus?
In Jesus, Interrupted, we’re treated to an exploration of The Bible from a “historcial-critical” approach in lieu of the oft-presented “devotional” approach taught through churches and ministry efforts. Approaching The Bible from this lens allows us to see past the baggage and lets the book speak for itself. This approach reveals clear contradictions inside the Bible (e.g. Jesus died on two separate days), which are at times either reconcilable or seemingly insignificant (e.g. Did Jesus rode a into Jerusalem on a Donkey? A Colt? Or both?), but are in other instances foundational to historic and contemporary Christian dogma (e.g. Is faith in Jesus’ atonement for sin sufficient for salvation as it is according to Paul, or does one also need to keep Jewish law, as well if not better than other Jewish people, to attain salvation as Matthew wrote?).
Ehrman does an excellent job setting The Bible inside the historical periods which influenced its construction. Consider who wrote the individual gospels: not illiterate and poor aramaic Jews who first distributed the traditions orally, but learned, affluent Greeks writing decades later; even decades after the books attributed gospel writer had passed on.
Allowed to view The Bible historically, we see that during the context in which it was written: forgers falling en masse on The Bible in an attempt to get their particular flavor of Jesus’ life into the Canon. Could it have been possible that some forgeries are now knowingly sitting inside the codified Canon today? There almost certainly are (Colossians, Ephesians, The Pastoral Epistles). However, Jesus, Interrupted not only boldly forwards the claim that there are indeed clear forgeries in the bible, but also systematically lays out (as best as one can given the nature and length of the book) the scholarly criteria used to establish this seemingly austere claim. We’re also challenged to see why certain books did or didn’t make it into The Bible that exists now and how the books and ideas that were ultimately accepted continue to govern church dogma 2000 years later.
Jesus, Interrupted is not a book that assails or promotes faith, nor is it a book that is meant to destroy faith or promote any level of unbelief. I believe the author approaches the topic with the most noble of intentions: to write a book that bypasses the baggage and mysticism of theistic controversy and instead give those curious and open enough a honest and critical examination of the book they thought they knew. In the end, we are left with a book that was codified from decades old oral tradition, riddled with clear and concrete contradictions, assembled by committees with strong political and ethical agendas to push, and filled with the seemingly random and inconsistent message of a Middle-Eastern Jewish apocalyptic prophet (i.e. Jesus the Christ). Whether this book ultimately enriches, destroys, or offends faith is a view that is transposed onto it by the reader.
