Ehrman's book is a no-nonsense examination of what we might be able to learn historically about the man at the center of Christianity.

But let's stop for a moment and think about this...is Jesus of Nazareth truly at the center of Christianity? Or did the religion evolve out of the ideal of such a life while glossing over the less savory aspects of the reality behind the myth? Did Jesus see himself through the same lenses his followers later employed? What was the message at the root of Jesus' ministry?

The book tackles these and other questions with an eye to what we can discern historically, without leaning into the realm of theology. Ehrman doesn't prop his ideas up on over-the-top conjecture, as some have done over the years. Rather, he goes to the primary sources...or at least, as close to the "primary" sources as a modern historian can get. We're reminded that not only are the majority of our sources theologically motivated, they also appear to have been derived from earlier documents not extant (such as the "Q", "M", and "L" sources).

As the book moves along from a general casting of the die with regard to first century Judaism against the backdrop of the Roman Empire, an important contextual awareness is developed for the reader. Situating Jesus outside of the milieu of the high tension "Holy Land" that produced many apocalypticists proclaiming coming judgments and kingdoms of God is to ignore what is all too clearly preserved in the books of the New Testament.

Without going into too many details, it becomes very clear from the evidence of Jesus' proclamations and disputes over Torah that an apocalyptic thread weaves through from start to finish. Among many perplexing statements put on the lips of Jesus in the gospels, there is the clear statement of the imminence of the end days and the establishment of God's kingdom:

"Truly I tell you, some of those who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power." (Mark 9:1)

"Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." (Mark 13:30)

There may be a clever way to explain these verses theologically, but if you read them without a bias, you may find some questions bubbling to the surface. If Jesus was divine, how could he have missed the mark so badly on his predictions? Not only did his generation pass away...but centuries have passed away and the world is still spinning along. Even if we fall back on Jesus' statement two verses later:

"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13:32)

He still drew a circle around his generation. So although he could not state the day and hour, he nonetheless saw the end as something that would happen very soon. So what do we make of this?

The above is a very brief summary of only one of the challenges put forward in this book. Several additional points are made that cannot be easily dismissed. Regardless of one's beliefs concerning Jesus, it seems to me that a good understanding of the many points of view can be beneficial. We could simply accept without question those doctrines developed by men living centuries ago...or we can do our own homework and ask if their conclusions really hold up to scrutiny. In my opinion, Ehrman does his homework and asks some tough questions here.

Ehrman's book is a no-nonsense examination of what we might be able to learn historically about the man at the center of Christianity.

But let's stop for a moment and think about this...is Jesus of Nazareth truly at the center of Christianity? Or did the religion evolve out of the ideal of such a life while glossing over the less savory aspects of the reality behind the myth? Did Jesus see himself through the same lenses his followers later employed? What was the message at the root of Jesus' ministry?

The book tackles these and other questions with an eye to what we can discern historically, without leaning into the realm of theology. Ehrman doesn't prop his ideas up on over-the-top conjecture, as some have done over the years. Rather, he goes to the primary sources...or at least, as close to the "primary" sources as a modern historian can get. We're reminded that not only are the majority of our sources theologically motivated, they also appear to have been derived from earlier documents not extant (such as the "Q", "M", and "L" sources).

As the book moves along from a general casting of the die with regard to first century Judaism against the backdrop of the Roman Empire, an important contextual awareness is developed for the reader. Situating Jesus outside of the milieu of the high tension "Holy Land" that produced many apocalypticists proclaiming coming judgments and kingdoms of God is to ignore what is all too clearly preserved in the books of the New Testament.

Without going into too many details, it becomes very clear from the evidence of Jesus' proclamations and disputes over Torah that an apocalyptic thread weaves through from start to finish. Among many perplexing statements put on the lips of Jesus in the gospels, there is the clear statement of the imminence of the end days and the establishment of God's kingdom:

"Truly I tell you, some of those who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power." (Mark 9:1)

"Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." (Mark 13:30)

There may be a clever way to explain these verses theologically, but if you read them without a bias, you may find some questions bubbling to the surface. If Jesus was divine, how could he have missed the mark so badly on his predictions? Not only did his generation pass away...but centuries have passed away and the world is still spinning along. Even if we fall back on Jesus' statement two verses later:

"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13:32)

He still drew a circle around his generation. So although he could not state the day and hour, he nonetheless saw the end as something that would happen very soon. So what do we make of this?

The above is a very brief summary of only one of the challenges put forward in this book. Ehrman makes several additional points that cannot be easily dismissed. Regardless of one's beliefs concerning Jesus, it seems to me that a good understanding of the many points of view can be beneficial. We could simply accept without question those doctrines developed by men living centuries ago...or we can do our own homework and ask if their conclusions really hold up to scrutiny. In my opinion, Ehrman does his homework and asks some tough questions in this book.

Perhaps reviewers/readers might like to compare and contrast this work with my A Jesus of Nazareth (Oct, 2007) - a genre-breaking work which readily encourages and lends itself to comparison and contrast with the Holy Bible, the Holy Qur'an, and the Holy Tanakh as well as with the principal philosophical Taoist texts, namely the Tao Te Ching and The Chuang-Tzu.

A necessary caveat respectfully however to the reviewer/reader: neither the Jesus of the Gospels nor the Isa (Arabic for Jesus) of the Qur'an exists within my work; no more too the Jesus of such works as Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, Brown's The Da Vinci Code or His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI's "Jesus of Nazareth".

A Jesus of Nazareth an essentially a contemplative work, written as it is to be interpreted both exoterically and esoterically is an attempt to restore to the bright - the light, the memory, and the power of insight, dream, and intuition.

Ehrman provides a compelling case for arguing that Jesus was truly and apocalyptic prophet, citing many sources and not just those included in the Bible.

In sophisticated rhetoric that asks us to make our own inferences rather than pounding us over the head with strident prose, Bart Ehrman's Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium paints Jesus as a doomsday prophet who, according to the Gospels, proclaimed the end would come before his disciples' lifetime and that he was wrong. Like many doomsday prophets of his age and those to come, even today, Jesus mistakenly thought the world was to come to an end and this error causes other lapses in judgment--a severe asceticism that asked us to reject worldly pleasures, an extreme loyalty that asked us to despise our own family, mothers, fathers, and children to follow him. In fact, Ehrman argues, Jesus' own family rejected his apocalyptic vision and this resulted in a rift between them.

In assured prose, Ehrman provides us the historical context to see that Jesus was not as so much a unique figure but a common type of prophet who emerged out of Palestine's occupied condition. The Israelites hungered for deliverance from the Romans who occupied Palestine and Jerusalem for centuries and what they wanted was a Messiah who would free them. Jesus was one such Messiah. According to Ehrman, there were at the time many such "Messiahs."

While C.S. Lewis would reject this book's central thesis, that Jesus was a misguided doomsday prophet, he would approve of Ehrman's decision to not patronize what Jesus said in the Gospels. To paraphrase Lewis, either Jesus was God or a madman but not some "wise man." Ehrman does not patronize Jesus; instead, he argues in very readable, sometimes suspenseful, exposition, that Jesus could not deliver the promise to his disciples that they would not taste death because they would be raptured before the world as they knew it vanished forever.

Oh Jesus! What they did to you!
Not Romans or Jews. Christians! They corrupted Your teachings, used them for their own purposes. Good one to be honest, but extremly different from what taught The Teacher himself.
This is one evening read which will open your eyes.

Despite disagreeing with many of Dr. Ehrman's conclusions, I cannot help but enjoy his books and lectures. In this work he does shares his belief, along with a crowd that went before him in the early 20th century, that Jesus is best understood as an apocalyptic prophet. He also asserts that the belief in Jesus' divinity developed over time and was not claimed by Jesus or his earliest followers while Jesus was alive. This too is no new theory. But, both theories, in my opinion, seem to fly in the face of the new testament and early church fathers.

Of course, the response of Dr. Ehrman's persuasion will be that the references to Jesus' divinity were added to the Biblical accounts. But what evidence is offered for this assertion? Only the evidence that we "know" that Jesus did not claim to be God. It is circular reasoning based on questionable presuppositions at best.

Despite these disagreements, Dr. Ehrman's scholarship is well respected and that respect is certainly deserved. His works are an have made the theories of others accessible to a general audience and that alone makes his contributions important to us. His writing style is enjoyable and challenging without being offensive to those with whom he disagrees.

But, for a better understanding of Jesus in the context of history, I have found that Pope Benedict XVI provides a much more likely view in Jesus of Nazareth. The holy father's approach gives us a much more believable and less 2-dimensional view of Jesus than do the skeptics. Do not make the mistake of buying into the hype of the historical Jesus crowd with only the Dr. Ehrman understanding. As much as I respect Dr. Ehrman, his conclusions seem forced and simplistic.

I first learned of Ehrman's views about the apocalyptic Jesus while reading his recent The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed. Even in that book, his interest in Gnostic Christianity seems seconary and he appears to be using the opportunity with that book to present again his arguments for an apocalyptic Jesus. So I decided to read this book for a more complete presentation of that viewpoint.

Ehrman generally explains material so well and his knowledge of history and the Bible seems so complete that, at first glance, it would seem foolish to doubt him. His case seems compelling. Given that the four New Testament gospels provide our first known accounts of Jesus and using well-established scholarly criteria for evaluating scriptural statements, Ehrman provides a convincing case that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew.

But is he too quick to accept the reliablity of the New Testament gospels in revealing the historical Jesus? In the The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels takes into account the historical conditions of each of the gospel writers and wonders to what extent those texts were concerned more with motivating the Christians of those times and not with a historical account of a Jesus none of those gospel writers is likely to have known first hand. She writes that the four gospels were "chosen not necessarily because they were the earliest or most accurate accounts of Jesus' life and teaching but precisely because they could form the basis of church communities".

Ehrman devotes only several pages of the main text to the views of Crossam (and hence the Jesus Seminar) that Jesus was not an apocalyptic Jew. He simply dismisses Crossan on the issue of the dating of some texts. He doesn't mention other arguments from the Jesus Seminar members supporting their view of Jesus ( The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate
appeared in 2001 and it seems unlikely these conflicting issues would have been unknown to Ehrman).

Having relied on the four gospels as the best evidence to reveal the historical Jesus, Ehrman then relies heavily on criteria used often by Biblical scholars which he himself admits are only probabilistic: independent attestation, dissimilarity and contextual credibility. Using these, he shows how changes since Mark, generally presumed to be the earliest gospel, suggest that the depiction of Jesus as an apocalyptic Jew became muted over time and that any depiction of Jesus as an apocalyptic Jew didn't seem to support subsequent Christian teachings about Jesus. That leads Ehrman to conclude that Jesus must have been an apocalyptic Jew, which helps him to make sense of some of Jesus's important but otherwise obscure statements in the Gospels. Ehrman does acknowledge important ethical teachings by Jesus but makes them seem dependent on the expectation of an imminent direct action of his god and not by the people.

I'm just a lay person but I grow suspicious when it seems that a scholar has avoided squarely addressing the views of other leading scholars, especially in an area for which any scholar must rely so heavily on speculation. What if the dating of the texts is wrong or if other texts were lost? What if the probabilistic criteria Ehrman relies so heavily on are wrong in some of these particular cases he applies them to? What about the motives of the Gospel writers and their distance from Jesus? Is it feasible, as Ehrman suggests, that Jesus viewed himself as having a special relationship with a god who would establish a kingdom on earth that would overturn Roman rule and place Jesus, with his 12 disciples, in charge? It may be and that may explain why Christianity soon afterward retreated from teaching a apocalyptic Jesus who seemed entirely wrong in his expectations, but the views of the Jesus Seminar and Pagels seem worth addressing. Ehrman appeals to a "wide range of scholars who have devoted their lives to studying the ancient sources for the historical Jesus [who have] concluded that he proclaimed the imminent end of history as we know it] without acknowledging almost at all those who didn't so conclude or who may have suspected Jesus was calling for popular action rather than an direct intervention by his god.

That Ehrman remains wedded to this view and wanting to present it even ostensibly in a book about "The Gospel of Judas" (i.e. The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed) and that he avoided to such an extent in this book discussing the views of the Jesus Seminar that Jesus was not an apocalyptic Jew calls into question for me Ehrman's commitment to scholarship. Even in a book such as this for a lay audience, and perhaps especially so given that us lay readers may find it difficult to understand the conflicting conclusions of scholars, it seems irresponsible to dismiss alternative views in a few pages. I may have to read The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate to get further input on this issue and, even if Ehrman is right, the manner in which he has presented his case will make me quite suspicious of his work in the future.

I first learned of Ehrman's views about the apocalyptic Jesus while reading his recent The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed. Even in that book, his interest in Gnostic Christianity seems seconary and he appears to be using the opportunity with that book to present again his arguments for an apocalyptic Jesus. So I decided to read this book for a more complete presentation of that viewpoint.

Ehrman generally explains material so well and his knowledge of history and the Bible seems so complete that, at first glance, it would seem foolish to doubt him. His case seems compelling. Given that the four New Testament gospels provide our first known accounts of Jesus and using well-established scholarly criteria for evaluating scriptural statements, Ehrman provides a convincing case that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew.

But is he too quick to accept the reliablity of the New Testament gospels in revealing the historical Jesus? In the The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels takes into account the historical conditions of each of the gospel writers and wonders to what extent those texts were concerned more with motivating the Christians of those times and not with a historical account of a Jesus none of those gospel writers is likely to have known first hand. She writes that the four gospels were "chosen not necessarily because they were the earliest or most accurate accounts of Jesus' life and teaching but precisely because they could form the basis of church communities".

Ehrman devotes only several pages of the main text to the views of Crossam (and hence the Jesus Seminar) that Jesus was not an apocalyptic Jew. He simply dismisses Crossan on the issue of the dating of some texts. He doesn't mention other arguments from the Jesus Seminar members supporting their view of Jesus ( The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate
appeared in 2001 and it seems unlikely these conflicting issues would have been unknown to Ehrman).

Having relied on the four gospels as the best evidence to reveal the historical Jesus, Ehrman then relies heavily on criteria used often by Biblical scholars which he himself admits are only probabilistic: independent attestation, dissimilarity and contextual credibility. Using these, he shows how changes since Mark, generally presumed to be the earliest gospel, suggest that the depiction of Jesus as an apocalyptic Jew became muted over time and that any depiction of Jesus as an apocalyptic Jew didn't seem to support subsequent Christian teachings about Jesus. That leads Ehrman to conclude that Jesus must have been an apocalyptic Jew, which helps him to make sense of some of Jesus's important but otherwise obscure statements in the Gospels. Ehrman does acknowledge important ethical teachings by Jesus but makes them seem dependent on the expectation of an imminent direct action of his god and not by the people.

I'm just a lay person but I grow suspicious when it seems that a scholar has avoided squarely addressing the views of other leading scholars, especially in an area for which any scholar must rely so heavily on speculation. What if the dating of the texts is wrong or if other texts were lost? What if the probabilistic criteria Ehrman relies so heavily on are wrong in some of these particular cases he applies them to? What about the motives of the Gospel writers and their distance from Jesus? Is it feasible, as Ehrman suggests, that Jesus viewed himself as having a special relationship with a god who would establish a kingdom on earth that would overturn Roman rule and place Jesus, with his 12 disciples, in charge? It may be and that may explain why Christianity soon afterward retreated from teaching a apocalyptic Jesus who seemed entirely wrong in his expectations, but the views of the Jesus Seminar and Pagels seem worth addressing. Ehrman appeals to a "wide range of scholars who have devoted their lives to studying the ancient sources for the historical Jesus [who have] concluded that he proclaimed the imminent end of history as we know it] without acknowledging almost at all those who didn't so conclude or who may have suspected Jesus was calling for popular action rather than an direct intervention by his god.

That Ehrman remains wedded to this view and wanting to present it even ostensibly in a book about "The Gospel of Judas" (i.e. The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed) and that he avoided to such an extent in this book discussing the views of the Jesus Seminar that Jesus was not an apocalyptic Jew calls into question for me Ehrman's commitment to scholarship. Even in a book such as this for a lay audience, and perhaps especially so given that us lay readers may find it difficult to understand the conflicting conclusions of scholars, it seems irresponsible to dismiss alternative views in a few pages. I may have to read The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate to get further input on this issue and, even if Ehrman is right, the manner in which he has presented his case will make me quite suspicious of his work in the future.

Bart Ehrman tells his reader from the very start that this is not a work aimed at academics so much as a work for interested folks who don't have an extensive background in biblical scholarship. Indeed, the thesis he offers in the book, is, he admits, not a new one among biblical researchers and historians. The value of this book lies in its accessibility to readers outside of Ehrman's field, and he has done an excellent job of not only explaining his main contentions but also of explaining HOW he has reached them. Ehrman provides a wealth of contextual information about 1st century Palestine, the gospels, and even examples of non-canonical texts as he attempts to push aside centuries of theology and catch a glimpse of the historical Jesus. The questions he asks are important ones: What did Jesus actually say and teach? How was he received during his ministry? Did he preach his own divinity or was that the work of his followers?

Some reviewers have noted that "other conclusions" can be reached with regard to the life and teachings of Jesus, and that is very true. Ehrman does not claim to have the ultimate answers, but he does present a tight argument for his thesis. Even if you find yourself in disagreement with Ehrman's conclusions, this book is still worth reading for the carefully set forth (if very much entry-level) historical and contextual information it provides.

And eye opener for anyone who thinks they know the New Testament. Thought provoking.

A lot of questions regarding the Gospels that had baffled me all my life, were answered in this book to me. Clearly, Sunday schools never teach this. I felt profoundly sorry for Jesus the man, who maybe thought that by confronting the Jewish authority would precipitate the coming of the Kingdom.
I recommend this book for people that are curious about Jesus historical context, that have questions about the accuracy of the Gospels and want to make their own opinion of who the man was, based on facts, not on myths. The read is easy and not devoid of humor.

This is my third Ehrman book and it was another tour de force. He reviews the various sources of information we have about Jesus and sifts, triangulates and analyzes the information to determine what is probably historicaly true, what is probably not true and what we just don't know. I found it absolutely fascinating and it reminded me of "Digging Dinosaurs" by James Horner, another Sherlock Holmes display of deduction and reasoning.

Let me start this review by saying that I am a fan of Dr. Ehrman's. As usual, he documents every point he makes and explains his position in terms any layman can understand.

Having said that, I don't necessarily agree with all of his positions, but you always know why he thinks the way he does.

I highly recommend this book. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, it is filled with though provoking ideas.