Did Jesus exist?

In this answer to those who claim Jesus never existed in any form, Ehrman worries that his skeptic fans will be put off by this book while his fundamentalist detractors will find more to their liking than usual.

I can't speak for the Christians, but I suspect if they don't like Ehrman's approach to Jesus in his previous books I doubt they'll find much solace in his defense of the historical Jesus.

I can't really speak to his normal, god non-fearing fans either, since I am only myself, but I will say that for me the appeal of Ehrman is his methodical approach to scholarship. Yes, I take pleasure in knowing that the bible is provably full of fictions, but from the first Ehrman book I've read I've been fascinated by the idea of painstakingly comparing documents to feret out the truth. I suspect I would find this as interesting with other, non-Christian documents, but I'm familiar enough with the bible that it's a more satisfying subject that, say, a study of Plato, who I've barely read.

The nice thing about this book is Ehrman isn't going over too much familiar ground. One problem with his books is that he often repeats a lot of information, but because this book isn't concerned with religious philosophy, but is simply concerned with gleaning useful information and discounting the "mythicists" who say Jesus was made up. His approach is painstaking, taking every little argument and dissecting it, and making a persuasive case that there is a solid body of evidence that there was a Jewish rabbie named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans.

I haven't read any mythicist books, so perhaps their authors would object that he phrased their arguments poorly or cherry-picked data. Who knows? But it's an enjoyable, well written book.

Written by an atheist academic historian, I find this most interesting for it's historical arguments and analysis of the texts. I suppose from this perspective, Ehrman has books that may have been more useful than this particular one. Though it was vaguely interesting to hear the arguments and refutation of the so-called mythicists who argue that Jesus didn't exist from a historical perspective, I could have done without the quarter of the book which focused more on these aspects.

I was glad that Ehrman did come around in the final chapter to suggest a reason why the mythicists exist and what their potential agenda may be, though I wish I had read that chapter first and skipped the rest of the text to read more of his other academic work instead.

The title of the book obviously panders a bit toward a much larger and wider audience and the structure of the book is aimed at both humanists and Christians to drive home a much more historical flavor of who Jesus was and what he did from a historical perspective. Since I generally agree with Ehrman's final analysis, I could have done without the general window dressing and would have preferred just the history.

I'm a huge fan of Bart Ehrman. I've learned more from reading his pop-history books than the work of any other individual author, and I've found him to be a fascinating and engaging writer. I have looked forward to every single book he's released in the last 10 years, eagerly awaiting the day it's available and devouring it.

Because of my admiration for Ehrman and his work, it brings me a great deal of pain to admit that "Did Jesus Exist?" is Ehrman's worst book, at least of those I've read. And it's not his "worst book" in the way that "Eyes Wide Shut" is Kubrick's "worst movie" where even the worst output of a visionary is better than average. Did Jesus Exist? is a bad book. I hate it.

Let me first set the stage. I am nonreligious but a big fan of historical, evidence-based information about religion and Christianity in general. Most importantly, I have always taken it for granted that Jesus was a real human being who actually lived. I've never considered myself a mythicist, in that I've never taken the position or even taken seriously the position that Jesus is pure myth.

So Ehrman's central thesis, that Jesus really did exist, did not strike me as particularly controversial, and I largely found myself wanting to read it not on the strength of its premise, but on the strength of its writer. I hoped Ehrman would quickly prove Jesus existed and then move on to more interesting topics for consideration.

The book starts off on the wrong foot, with an absolute barrage of ad hominem attacks. Ehrman lists a number of mythicists and dismisses their arguments out of hand, on the grounds that they do not have his academic credentials. This infuriated me - Ehrman is far too smart to rely on these kinds of silly ad hominem attacks, why did he devote almost an entire chapter to them? If these mythicists' claims are bunk, simply address their claims, there is no need to also argue that they are unqualified to make these arguments. What's more, these claims aren't even accurate - I'm not familiar with many mythicists, but I do know the name of one person Ehrman singles out: Richard Carrier. Ehrman claims that Carrier's degree is in "classics" which is not even true, Carrier has a degree in early Christian history.

Listening to Ehrman academically urinate on his opponents in such a personal attack set an awful tone for the rest of the book. It made Ehrman seem unsure of his own claims, relying not just on the strength of his arguments but on the weakness of his opponents, and it put a bad taste in my mouth. There's little I hate more than a terrible argument in favor of a position with which I agree.

Ehrman discusses the burden of proof, arguing that we should assume Jesus existed, and place the burden of disproof on deniers. This is nonsense, and it's one of the favorite arguments of the religious to require nonbelievers disprove the existence of God. Jesus's existence is not the default assumption - it's been MY personal default assumption simply because I assumed sufficient evidence existed but I was unaware of it, but Ehrman arguing that this is the scientific perspective is baloney. Ehrman reluctantly accepts that, though he believes the burden of proof truly rests with mythicists, he's willing to indulge them and pretend the burden is on him, at least for the duration of the book. If that's the position you're taking for the book, why bother with paragraphs arguing that you shouldn't have to prove it anyway? Again, it stinks of Ehrman's lack of confidence in his position.

The book goes on to present, broadly, a number of mythicist positions, then attempt to dismantle them one by one. What was so stunning about this portion of the book was that, nearly every single time, I found the straw-man version of a mythicist position relatively compelling, and was let-down by Ehrman's attempt to destroy it, finding each one full of fallacies and unconvincing arguments.

For example, Ehrman more or less acknowledges that virtually no mention is made of Jesus outside of the bible itself, which I found surprising and made me somewhat more sympathetic to the mythicist view. But then he proceeds to provide poor reasons why one should not require Jesus to be mentioned outside of the Bible, and that we can use the Bible as evidence alone. That's extremely unconvincing considering the sheer number of problems the Bible has as a historical volume, which Ehrman acknowledges but argues around. In particular, he argues that, while we don't have any writings of people who knew Jesus, we have writings from an author who quotes someone who claims to "know people who know the apostles or companions of them." Know people who know the apostles or companions of them? So that's Jesus->Apostles->Companions->People who know them->First Author->Quoting Author? I find that source pretty much useless.

After each fairly well-presented mythicist view, Ehrman proceeds to take the reader through a series of mental gymnastics to argue against it. Each time, Ehrman's arguments are less convincing than the version of the mythicist view he presented before it. At one point, Ehrman admits that not a single author of any New Testament books knew or even claimed to know Jesus personally (pretty damning), but then argues that Paul claims to have met James (Jesus's brother) and Peter (Jesus's best friend). How do we know that Paul actually met them? Because he claimed to, and he insisted, in the passage describing meeting them, that he wasn't lying.

Ehrman acknowledges that Paul failed to quote much of anything Jesus had to say, even when the quotation was directly relevant to the point he was trying to make (again, pretty damning), but then handwaves over it without much of any satisfying explanation. Consistently, the mythicist view is the more convincing, and I wasn't even a mythicist when I started reading the book! Ehrman's argumentation is so bad in this book that he actually managed to convince me of the exact OPPOSITE point of view from the one he was arguing, as I was left with a sense of "really? If these are the best arguments for a historical Jesus, maybe the mythicists are right" after nearly every section.

It is not until about halfway through the book, in Chapter 6, that Ehrman finally makes an argument that I found pretty convincing. It goes like this: the Jewish people had a set of expectations about the Messiah, none of which included him suffering and dying on a cross (the interpretations of Old Testament writings that argue that the messiah was always meant to suffer are real stretches). But Christians argued that, against expectation, Jesus was the Messiah. Christians had a very hard time convincing Jews that the concept of a suffering Messiah was reasonable, in fact, it was the biggest hurdle to converting Jews at the time. So if Jesus was going to be more-or-less made up, why not make him up to be consistent with expectation, which would make proselytization easier. In other words, there MUST have been a man named Jesus who actually WAS executed, because Christians went through so much effort to coalesce the notions of the Messiah with the fact that the person they claimed to be the Messiah suffered and died on a cross. This effort indicates Jesus really was a man, since they had to admit that their claimed Messiah was executed, it must have been because everyone knew it.

Similarly, the Messiah was predicted to be born in Bethlehem. Matthew and Luke both contain stories of Jesus birth, and both give different accounts of why Jesus, who was born to a couple from Nazareth, found himself born in Bethlehem. The Gospel of Luke tells a story about a huge census that required Mary and Joseph return to Bethlehem to and Mary just happened to give birth while they were at it (an account for which there is no historical evidence), while Matthew gives an account of King Herod forcing Mary and Joseph to flee from their home, which resulted in Jesus being born in Bethlehem. If Jesus was pure myth, he would have just been invented to have been from Bethlehem, as the ancient scriptures predicted. The fact that Matthew and Luke both had to come up with unbelievable, credulity-straining (contradictory) stories explaining why a person from Nazareth was the messiah indicates that they had to explain away why Jesus must still be the messiah despite evidence to the contrary for ancient people. In other words, there must have ACTUALLY been a man named Jesus who everyone knew was from Nazareth to make Matthew and Luke jump through such hoops to smooth over the plot hole.

I found these arguments quite convincing since they show believers making sense of historical facts that everyone at the time knew, indicating that they must have been true. These arguments closed the book on the matter for me. I cannot fathom why it took 6 chapters for Ehrman to finally make a convincing argument for the historicity of Jesus, or why it was preceded by pages upon pages of elitist, ad hominem attacks on his opponents.

Perhaps most infuriating is that, as soon as Chapter 6 concludes, Ehrman is BACK AT IT. The remainder of the book is a much more detailed look at very specific mythicist claims, rather than the general claims he so thoroughly failed to debunk in Chapters 1-5. And once again, Ehrman provides the mythicist argument, which is relatively convincing (or at least thought-provoking) then makes incredibly poor arguments against it. I'm about halfway through Chapter 7 as I write this, and I can barely stand the idea of wading through the second half of the book if it's just a repeat of the embarrassing arguments from the first half. I had hoped he'd move on and into more interesting territory, but it appears that Ehrman wishes to go even deeper in the areas he's already been.

I don't know if I'll be able to make it all the way through the book like this, every session is a struggle not to give up and read something else. I'm writing my review now because I have a hunch that I will soon abandon this book, and I wanted to write my thoughts down while they are fresh in my mind.

I suspect that Ehrman would not care what I have to say about the book. If the first chapter is any indication, his level of disdain for those who lack his qualifications is palpable, and I hold no degrees of any sort in history. I'm just a fan of his work who had high hopes for this book.

It is worth mentioning though, that if Ehrman's book is so bad, that it fails to convince a reader who ALREADY AGREED WITH HIM that he was correct, and in fact made that reader far more sympathetic to the opposing view, I cannot imagine how entirely unconvincing it must be for those who already consider themselves mythicists. If your attempt to convince those who are on your side to stay there sends them running for the opposition, I'd say your attempt is about as monumental a failure as one could conceive.

As I said, I'm a huge fan of Ehrman's, and I look forward to his next book with the same excitement as I have with every other book of his. This book is the oozing pimple on his otherwise unblemished writing career. I cannot think of a single soul I'd recommend this book too, and I hope Ehrman's next brings a return to form for him.

UPDATE: I did wind up finishing the book eventually. The good news is that the book actually does get substantially better. After 2 more god-awful dissections of mythicist claims, Part III of the book begins, which essentially asks "now that we know Jesus existed, what can we know about what he said and what he did". This part of the book is far, far, far more interesting and engaging than the rest of it. It almost seems like Ehrman simply needed to prove Jesus existed to look at this material, but then why devote 2/3rds of a book to get to the real interesting stuff? In fact, why talk about it at all, why not just operate on the premise of "assuming Jesus existed..." or "if Jesus existed, what can we say about him?" I recognize that this answer is that this is a personal mission for Ehrman, but as I've said earlier he does a crummy job with that part.

The actual discussion of what we can be confident Jesus said and did, and how he was an apocalyptic Jew who had and espoused certain supernatural beliefs is actually quite interesting. In fact, it really warrants a book all of its own. In fact, it did! That book is called "Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium" and it is by none other than Bart D. Ehrman.

It's kind of disturbing that the best part of this book was when Ehrman recycled material from a (much better) book he wrote eleven years ago, but I have to acknowledge that its inclusion does make the book much better by the end.