Ian Hammond's Reviews > Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth

Some parts were quite good and helpful. Other parts were quite bad and harmful.

Like "virtually every expert on the planet" Bart Ehrman believes Jesus existed, arguing from the fact that we have 7 independent Gospel sources (referring to "Q" and other source material for the Gospels) plus at least 10 other witnesses (such as Hebrews, Clement, Papias, Tacitus, Josephus) to the historical Jesus. His view of Jesus, however, is the one that Albert Schweitzer advocated. Jesus, in his judgment, was merely an apocalyptic prophet in the first-century Judaism. Though Ehrman agrees with Schweitzer's conclusion, he, interestingly, argues that most scholars would disagree with how Schweitzer arrived at it.

There were several parts of this book, which I think were quite good and helpful (Ehrman predicted this is how many Christians would respond to this work). What I found particularly helpful was Ehrman's refutation of myths that the mythicists (those doubting the existence of a historical Jesus) believe. One big one is that "The Romans were renowned for keeping careful records of all their activities, especially legal proceedings, making it surprising that there is no record of Jesus being tried by Pontius Pilate or executed." Ehrman responds, "If Romans were careful record keepers, it is passing strange that we have no records, not only of Jesus but of nearly anyone who lived in the first century." He adds, that we literally have one author whose works have survived from first century Roman Palestine, and he is Josephus (I would add: not including some of the New Testament books). Ehrman also takes on the ridiculous notion that because books in the Bible are written with a religious bias they cannot be used for historical study. He compares it to ignoring early accounts of the American Revolution because they were written by Americans. Ehrman puts a death nail into a lot of speculation by demonstrating that Christianity was not drummed up by adopting the pagan practice of worshipping dying and rising gods. He states, "There is no unambiguous evidence that any pagans prior to Christianity believed in dying and rising gods..."

There were several parts of his book, which I think were quite bad and harmful. His criteria of "disimialrity" is terrible. He argues that stories that serve the Christian movement are defacto unreliable. Holding this criterion renders the Biblical Jesus, the Jesus of Christianity, to be an impossibility prior to any research. To hold this criterion, one must simply assume that the Jesus of Scriptures is false. Scholarship, in this case, is merely the application of methodological skepticism to sources. Ehrman speaks out of both sides of his mouth when he talks about text-critical issues as well. On one page he hits some rhetorical home runs by revealing that we do not have the original writings of the New Testament, only copies of copies that differ (so who knows what they wrote?). Then on the next page, he says the differences between manuscripts are mostly quite innocuous and do not render it impossible to know what the original writer said. Ehrman's belief that the earliest Christology was a low Christology fails to do a close reading of Scripture. Jesus is understood to be YHWH in Mark and the earliest Christology was the highest Christology (Richard Bauckhman and Richard Hays have made this clear). There are several other places that I find objectionable. Throughout the entire work, Ehrman takes shots at those who believe the Scriptures are reliable and true, consistently comparing them to ignorant mythicists.

In the end, I found the book quite helpful. Ehrman is a lucid and entertaining writer, even though he gloats about himself a little much.