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Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium
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Average Rating:  out of 37 Reviews
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Price: $19.99
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Sale: $11.00
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780195124743
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Bart D. Ehrman
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Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
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Dewey Decimal Number: 232.908
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Publication Date: 2001-05-31
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Reading Level: 288
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Description: C.S. Lewis once noted that nowhere do the Gospels say, "Jesus laughed." He's probably laughing now, if he's got access to Bart Ehrman's Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. The title doesn't even hint at the yuks that Ehrman's prose delivers, but from its very first page, Jesus will tickle your funny bone and stimulate your brain. "At last count," Ehrman begins, "there were something like 8 zillion books written about Jesus .... It's not there aren't enough books about Jesus out there. It's that there aren't enough of the right kind of book. Very, very few, in fact. I'd say about one and a half." The right kind of book, according to Ehrman, is one that portrays Jesus roughly as Albert Schweitzer did, as a first-century Jewish apocalypticist: "This is a shorthand way of saying that Jesus fully expected that the history of the world as we know it (well, as he knew it) was going to come to a screeching halt, that God was soon going to intervene in the affairs of this world, overthrow the forces of evil in a cosmic act of judgment, destroy huge masses of humanity, and abolish existing human political and religious institutions. All this would be a prelude to the arrival of a new order on earth, the Kingdom of God." Ehrman's is a historical-Jesus book, a very smart, humble, and humorous popular summary of Christian and secular evidence of Jesus' life, work, and legacy. He believes that apocalypticism is the true core of Jesus' message, and that comfortable middle-class complacency among scholars, clergy, and laypeople has forged a counterfeit, domesticated, "ethical" Jesus to cover up their befuddlement about his misprediction of the apocalypse. The book will frustrate many readers because it offers no real guidance regarding what one should do with Jesus' apocalypticism. Its project--to prove that Jesus was wrong about the apocalypse--may even appear destructive to some. Yet the argument is convincing enough to induce among careful readers a constructive experience of confusion. Jesus makes readers ask the very question it appears to ignore, in a newly humble way: how, then, should we live? A serious matter, but considering humanity's endless string of wrong answers and infinite capacity for self-delusion, worthy of some good belly laughs, as well. --Michael Joseph Gross
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: The moderate version of Biblical criticism |
Date: 2008-12-29 |
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Details: Bart D. Ehrman is something as strange as a professor of religious studies who writes best-selling books. "Misquoting Jesus" is probably his most well-known book. He has also written a number of introductory textbooks to the New Testament, plus some more scholarly works. Indeed, Ehrman has even penned a critique of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code"!
A certain kind of Christians love to hate Professor Ehrman, probably because he was himself once a fundamentalist Christian (he even attended services of the Plymouth Brethren), became progressively more liberal, and finally turned atheist-to-agnostic. That, plus his best-selling books, is enough to make him a constant object of fundamentalist venom and evangelical criticism, perhaps on a par with Richard Dawkins (and then, perhaps not - Richard probably still takes the devil's chaplain prize).
It may therefore come as a surprise to sceptics, that Ehrman belongs to the moderate faction of Biblical criticism. This can be clearly seen in "Jesus. Apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium". Ehrman believes that the three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) contain many authentic traditions about the historical Jesus. Thus, the synoptics can be used as regular historical sources. Ehrman explains in some detail which parts of the synoptic gospels he finds reliable, and why. The Gospel of John, on the other hand, he considers more or less unreliable. The same is true of the apocryphal "Gospel of Thomas", which Ehrman believes to be a much later Gnostic work.
From the gospels attributed to Mark, Matthew and Luke, Ehrman weaves a portrait of Jesus that can be summarized as follows. Jesus was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet who believed that the millennium was imminent. He was born in Nazareth, and had originally been a follower of John the Baptist. Jesus taught that the Jewish Temple was about to be destroyed, and that a saviour figure known as the Son of Man would establish the kingdom of God on Earth. Jesus himself would become the ruler of this kingdom. Thus, Jesus saw himself as the Messiah. The new kingdom would exalt the poor, downtrodden and oppressed, and humble the mighty and powerful. Salvation was based on works, not faith. Jesus didn't question Jewish laws and customs, and often participated in Jewish celebrations. However, he believed that the commandment of love trumped the other commandments, both love of God and love of thy neighbour. To some extent, the small community around Jesus was a foretaste of the kingdom, since it was based on the commandment of love, as set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus created a disturbance at the Temple in Jerusalem, where his apocalyptic preaching was seen as a threat by both the Jewish leadership and the Romans. After eating a Passover meal, Jesus was betrayed by one of his own disciples, and sentenced to death. The crucifixion was a real event, but the traditions about the resurrection are so confusing and contradictory, that it's impossible to say what actually happened. After the supposed resurrection, the followers of Jesus exalted him into a God-like figure.
While this obviously isn't the Christian view of Jesus, it nevertheless strikes me as an eerily familiar scenario. Why? Because Ehrman has essentially retold the synoptic gospel stories, from start to finish, minus the supernatural embellishments! The historical Jesus turns out to be the synoptic Jesus sans miracle. And no, I'm not saying Ehrman is wrong. I strongly suspect that he might actually be right!
Since a currently fashionable trend in New Testament scholarship, the Jesus Seminar, claims that the historical Jesus wasn't apocalyptic, Ehrman devotes part of his book to critically scrutinize their claims. For instance, he points out that the crucifixion is inexplicable if we assume that the real Jesus was a non-apocalyptic sage, or simply preached moral reform. The Romans didn't crucify Cynics, or even Pharisees! (Not unless they actually rebelled.) Ehrman also points out that all available sources about Jesus are strongly apocalyptic, and that even the hypothetical document known as Q is apocalyptic. As already indicated, Ehrman believes that "The Gospel of Thomas" is a late work without pre-Gospel antecedents. Most scholars on the subject seem to agree.
The main mistake of many scholars who attempt to reconstruct the historical Jesus, is that they end up with a Jesus strangely similar to *their own* historical period, attuned to the political and religious agendas of the scholars' themselves. But that, of course, is not the historical Jesus. This criticism isn't new. It was put forward by Albert Schweitzer already a century ago. However, it has lost none of its force. Indeed, Jesus is the only historical character nobody wants to reject, but everybody claims, suitable revised! Man creates a Son of God in his own image.
The real Jesus was probably what the title of this book suggests: a Jewish apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium.
Deal with it.
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Review Summary: If nothing else, this book will give you something to think about... |
Date: 2008-05-31 |
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Details: 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. |
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Review Summary: Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium |
Date: 2008-02-15 |
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Details: 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. |
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Review Summary: God in the Flesh or Leader of a Lunatic Fringe? |
Date: 2008-02-08 |
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Details: 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.
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Review Summary: Want to be closer to true Jesus? |
Date: 2008-01-21 |
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Details: 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. |
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