I've enjoyed every book I've read by Bart Ehrman, including his latest, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them). I only had time to read the first couple of chapters carefully (the publisher didn't send a review copy), so I'll only make a few remarks.
This book functions like volume three of a trilogy on the theme "how I lost my faith in God by becoming a bible scholar." Misquoting Jesus and God's Problem were the first two installments. Like those two books, Jesus Interrupted includes a fair amount of personal reflection by Ehrman on how the material covered in the book (about inconsistencies and errors in the Bible as we have it) contributed to changes in his own personal faith.
On the other hand, Ehrman is not a New Atheist. He carefully labels himself an agnostic, not an atheist; he doesn't proselytize for atheism or agnosticism; and he is quite clear that, in his view, scholarly study of the Bible does not at all preclude retaining an active faith in God, the Bible, and whatever denomination one associates with. It just didn't work that way for him. He expressly notes that it was not biblical criticism that changed his views:
There came a time when I left the faith. This was not because of what I learned through historical criticism, but because I could no longer reconcile my faith in God with the state of the world that I saw all around me.
He goes on to note that many of his academic friends have had a different experience:
All of my closest friends ... in the guild of New Testament studies agree with most of my historical views of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, the development of the Christian faith, and other similar issues. ... All of these friends, however, have remained committed Christians. Some teach in universities, some in seminaries and divinity schools. Some are ordained ministers. Most are active in their churches. HIstorical-critical approaches to the Bible came to many of them as a shock in seminary, but their faith withstood the shock.
I think Ehrman deserves a lot of credit for emphasizing the personal nature of the response to historical-critical bible studies in these books. He's not trying to pop anyone's faith bubble, just relate some of the general results of modern biblical studies in books directed to the general reader.
As for content, I thought Chapters Two and Three, a longish review of various contradictions and conflicting accounts in various biblical books, were a little tiresome, but for someone unfamiliar with those problems the material may be more worthwhile. Chapter Four, on the actual authorship of biblical books, was well done, as was Chapter Six on the canonization process, including a short discussion of the late emergence of orthodoxy and the creeds. It's the sort of material that Evangelicals ought to be very familiar with before criticizing LDS faith claims.
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I recommend this thoughtful critique of Ehrman's book, which gave me some perspective on some of Ehrman's positions taken in Jesus, Interrupted. It's several parts long and somewhat lengthy, but worth reading.
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-detailed-analysis-of.html
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-detailed-analysis-of_08.html
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-detailed-analysis-of_13.html
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-part-four.html
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2009/04/bart-interrupted-detailed-analysis-of_20.html
[Note: Ben Witherington now posts at a Beliefnet blog, Bible and Culture. The linked posts are reposted there as well: Part Two, etc.]
"I only had time to read the first couple of chapters carefully (the publisher didn't send a review copy), so I'll only make a few remarks."
I can hear the bookstore owner saying, "Hey, this ain't no library. Buy it or get out."
Here is a podcast critique of Ehrman's latest by Greg Koukl and Ben Witherington:
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://www.strcast2.org/podcast/weekly/061409.mp3
Interesting stuff.
Todd Wood: "So is Bart's position on the Bible in this book to be what the General Authorities and the BYU-Idaho religious department should be pushing?" That's a tough question. In the English department, you'll hear lots of scholarly approach to scripture (a la Bart Ehrmann), but in the religion dept where correlated materials rule (and many correlation committee types seem devoted to scriptural literalness that is truly unscholarly), you're going to hear the watered-down "Sunday School answers."
"And I think all the LDS bishops are way behind the times when it comes to correlating a consistent higher criticism in both the KJV and the other standard works." I completely agree. Our stranglehold tie to the KJV seems rooted in a few things (despite its being one of the worse translations out there): 1) that it's what JS had access to, and is therefore quoted liberally in the BOM, 2) that it's what JS based the JST on, and 3) that the extensive cross-referencing, footnoting, and topical guides done by Ludlow and McConkie were done in the KJV. Issue #1 is not a major problem, IMO. Issue #2 gets thorny, depending on what members perceive the JST to actually be (and how literalist they are) - I don't find it an issue if you consider the JST to be JS saying "What God really meant to say is . . ." To me, Issue #3 represents a major practical problem for Gospel Doctrine classes, but alternate translations should be valued for their insights, especially where the text is superior.
Bart Ehrmann commented in an interview that the people he hears from most in response to his books are Mormons who are saying "Hey, we don't have that issue because we have revelation and the Book of Mormon and we believe there are translation errors in the Bible, unlike your evangelical roots." Unfortunately, many Mormons have fallen into the same anti-scholarly, literalistic trap, in my experience. Too many haven't taken enough thought to consider the real implication, the role of human beings in what we call "scripture," and by extension "revelation." It's not as facile as we might like to think.
For example, in Jesus Misquoted, Bart Ehrmann points out that most scholars reject the story of the woman taken in adultery as a much later addition, therefore likely a moral story that was added later, not an actual event in the life of Jesus. Yet, it's been told and retold at GC as if it happened. We're not immune to taking things too literally, no more than anyone else. We just take our own stuff literally and everyone else's stuff with skepticism.
Dave, do you support historical criticism of the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price? Other types of criticism? What is the status of such criticism amongst Mormon scholars?
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