Turning a critical eye to the Bible

May 06, 2009|Rich Barlow, Globe Correspondent

Let's see whether you remember any of this from Sunday or Hebrew school: Different New Testament writers disagree on when Jesus died and how he went to his death, whether with serene self-control or in fear. Some of those writers forged the names of famous Christian apostles on their works. The account of the Israelites conquering the promised land in the Hebrew Bible is almost certainly fanciful, not historical.

Those statements are all matters of scholarly consensus. You learn such things if you go to seminary or divinity school, says Bart Ehrman, but pastors usually don't pass them on in sermons or religious-education classes - and as a churchgoer, I can attest that that's true. So Erhman, a University of North Carolina religion professor, has published "Jesus, Interrupted," a rundown of what scholars have believed and taught about the Bible, in some cases for a century or more, using the "historical-critical" approach to scripture rather than a purely pious one.

The subtitle is misleading. The Bible's contradictions, not to mention its outright errors and myths, are often in full view, not hidden. A cottage industry of books has emerged in recent years to lay them out for popular audiences. Ehrman's earlier effort, "Misquoting Jesus," about the errors and deliberate changes scribes made over the centuries to biblical texts, was a New York Times bestseller, and "Jesus, Interrupted" recently made it onto the list as well. Ehrman admits in this new book that none of what he says is new, and those literate in biblical scholarship will likely find much of his information ho-hum.

Yet judging from the e-mail I received as the Globe's former religion columnist, I expect that for more than a few folks, "Jesus, Interrupted" will be a grenade tossed into their tidy living rooms of religious faith.

Ehrman concentrates most of his attention on the New Testament because it is his specialty. A fundamentalist Christian as a young man, he lost belief in the Bible as God's inspired word while studying for his doctorate; later, he lost faith altogether and became agnostic because of the widespread presence of suffering in the world. But he repeatedly stresses that historical-critical study need not kill faith. And, honest scholar that he is, he admits that some of his contentions can be challenged.