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A review by dean_issov
Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart D. Ehrman
challenging
informative
medium-paced
1.0
7/11/22 Update:
I moved it from 2 stars to 1 star, I simply cannot believe how many misinformation and incompetent scholarly research this one book has, I am even more now disappointed in Ehrman (and that's coming from someone who already read 10 of his books at the time of writing this). To see a more thorough review of this book, see:
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/1026
Original Review:
Being already a big fan of Bart Ehrman's work, I was quite excited to read this book because its title alone made me interested. Before I read it I was already on Ehrman's side, believing that Jesus is a real person in the 1st century AD, but if I'm being honest I didn't really enjoy Ehrman's delivery in this one.
This book had the same amount of, if not more, pettiness as Richard Dawkins' "The Greatest Show On Earth" when it comes to handling opponents. While Dawkins' arrogance toward young earth creationists is a bit annoying, it's atleast not as irritating as Ehrman's arrogance toward mythicists in this one. It felt so embarrassing to read 2/3rds of this book, it's basically filled with ad hominems and strawmans that I was shocked to see it from a biblical scholar who I thought was pretty unbiased until now. I don't know much about mythicists and their claims but even I could detect that Ehrman wasn't taking them as seriously as they should, just from the introductions that Ehrman gave of each individual mythicist are just complete ad hominems.
That's not even the worst part, as soon as Ehrman gave all the evidence for Jesus' existence, I immediately felt skeptical. Only Josephus mentions Jesus in the first century AD, outside of biblical sources? Can we really trust any of Paul's claims? Why should I trust the independent biblical sources (Q, M, L; which are all hypothetical btw) when it still originated from people we have no information on? It's common for authors to write their heroes from humble beginnings, so why is it unusual for Jesus to be born in Nazareth instead of Bethlehem? Those are all questions I just thought from the top of my head, there are probably more if I took my time but that just goes to show how Ehrman didn't do a good job of convincing me, and I'm already a fan of his books! Imagine what actual mythicists felt while reading this book, I highly doubt that they finished this book feeling defeated. After reading this book, I went from believing in a historical Jesus to now being just agnostic about it. Thanks Ehrman!
Overall, I'm disappointed with this book more than any of the other books that I read by Ehrman. My next book in my religion list is actually "On The Historicity of Jesus" by Richard Carrier, which Ehrman did a not-so-good job of introducing him so I'm quite interested in hearing what he has to say for a change.
I moved it from 2 stars to 1 star, I simply cannot believe how many misinformation and incompetent scholarly research this one book has, I am even more now disappointed in Ehrman (and that's coming from someone who already read 10 of his books at the time of writing this). To see a more thorough review of this book, see:
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/1026
Original Review:
Being already a big fan of Bart Ehrman's work, I was quite excited to read this book because its title alone made me interested. Before I read it I was already on Ehrman's side, believing that Jesus is a real person in the 1st century AD, but if I'm being honest I didn't really enjoy Ehrman's delivery in this one.
This book had the same amount of, if not more, pettiness as Richard Dawkins' "The Greatest Show On Earth" when it comes to handling opponents. While Dawkins' arrogance toward young earth creationists is a bit annoying, it's atleast not as irritating as Ehrman's arrogance toward mythicists in this one. It felt so embarrassing to read 2/3rds of this book, it's basically filled with ad hominems and strawmans that I was shocked to see it from a biblical scholar who I thought was pretty unbiased until now. I don't know much about mythicists and their claims but even I could detect that Ehrman wasn't taking them as seriously as they should, just from the introductions that Ehrman gave of each individual mythicist are just complete ad hominems.
That's not even the worst part, as soon as Ehrman gave all the evidence for Jesus' existence, I immediately felt skeptical. Only Josephus mentions Jesus in the first century AD, outside of biblical sources? Can we really trust any of Paul's claims? Why should I trust the independent biblical sources (Q, M, L; which are all hypothetical btw) when it still originated from people we have no information on? It's common for authors to write their heroes from humble beginnings, so why is it unusual for Jesus to be born in Nazareth instead of Bethlehem? Those are all questions I just thought from the top of my head, there are probably more if I took my time but that just goes to show how Ehrman didn't do a good job of convincing me, and I'm already a fan of his books! Imagine what actual mythicists felt while reading this book, I highly doubt that they finished this book feeling defeated. After reading this book, I went from believing in a historical Jesus to now being just agnostic about it. Thanks Ehrman!
Overall, I'm disappointed with this book more than any of the other books that I read by Ehrman. My next book in my religion list is actually "On The Historicity of Jesus" by Richard Carrier, which Ehrman did a not-so-good job of introducing him so I'm quite interested in hearing what he has to say for a change.