A Short Note on Two of Bart Ehrman’s Jesus Books
Focus: How Jesus Became God:
The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee and Did Jesus Exist?: The
Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
While both these books were written for the general reader, the first (at least) has a “Subject and Author Index” making it easily to check Ehrman’s sources.
Since the matrix of Jesus is to be found in the pagan myths of Hellenistic Judaism, Williams' chapter has much to say about how popular faith, interlocked with Judaism, were creating new religions in Roman Palestine. On this, I summit my post a year and a half ago: TheJewish Pagan Matrix for Jesus as The Christ
While both these books were written for the general reader, the first (at least) has a “Subject and Author Index” making it easily to check Ehrman’s sources.
The second book appears to have been
written hastily without much thought on subject credibility. Unlike the first, it has no Subject
and Author Index other than citing books by Mythicists only to be incorrectly countered by main line
scholars on the New Testament over who they think a Historical Jesus might have been.
However, most all of Ehrman’s selected proof
texts for the Historical Jesus listed under his heading “Studies of the
Historical Jesus (and Related Topics)" were NEVER written to prove Jesus
existed, but, with the assumption Jesus did exist, these texts' goals are to mostly present conflicting portraits of Jesus giving alternative views to counter the Jesus of the Christian faith. Most (if not all) these texts were never written to debate Jesus’
existence despite Ehrman having listed them!
Finally, Ehrman seems to
have totally missed Margaret
Williams’ chapter in the The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 3, The Early Roman Period. Since the matrix of Jesus is to be found in the pagan myths of Hellenistic Judaism, Williams' chapter has much to say about how popular faith, interlocked with Judaism, were creating new religions in Roman Palestine. On this, I summit my post a year and a half ago: TheJewish Pagan Matrix for Jesus as The Christ
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