Sergeant Cat reviewed Jesus before the Gospels by Bart D. Ehrman
Review of 'Jesus before the Gospels' on 'GoodReads'
3 stars
This is a really interesting book that helped me look at the Gospels, Jesus, and the way I think of the whole topic in a new way. I also have a history degree and if things had gone a bit differently for me I think I would have wound up following almost exactly in Ehrman's footsteps regarding his pursuit of religious education and employment. Religion was always important to me and I committed pretty heavily to it but I started getting hung up on inconsistencies in the narrative. Understanding how and why the narratives were constructed in the way they were isn't suddenly going to make me a 100% believer again, but it does make me better informed and gives me something to think about while I read through the Bible again. 100% accuracy and consistency maybe isn't as important as the morals of the stories that people were trying …
This is a really interesting book that helped me look at the Gospels, Jesus, and the way I think of the whole topic in a new way. I also have a history degree and if things had gone a bit differently for me I think I would have wound up following almost exactly in Ehrman's footsteps regarding his pursuit of religious education and employment. Religion was always important to me and I committed pretty heavily to it but I started getting hung up on inconsistencies in the narrative. Understanding how and why the narratives were constructed in the way they were isn't suddenly going to make me a 100% believer again, but it does make me better informed and gives me something to think about while I read through the Bible again. 100% accuracy and consistency maybe isn't as important as the morals of the stories that people were trying to get across. And we can learn a lot about what problems people were dealing with based on how they told those stories.
I also really appreciated that Ehrman dove into non-canonical gospels. I feel like they get a bad rep and should be more widely read.
I had some issues with Ehrman's writing style. It felt like there was a lot of summary and not as much analysis as I would have liked. I also think the summary he gave in the last chapter should have come at the beginning of the book and then he could have focused on each perspective in turn to give readers something to hold onto while picking up new ideas. Having finished the book, I feel like I need to read through it again to retain the information. Granted, I learn better by talking about a book with other people or through watching discussions online.
I also don't like how Ehrman regularly says in his books that he already discussed something in a previous book so he's not going to discuss it again here. Hey, guess what? Maybe I haven't read your earlier books, won't stop reading this book to go find them and read them first, and maybe it's relevant to the topic so you should in fact go into it a bit so I fully understand your point.
