God's Problem by Bart D. Ehrman

God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a thorough refutation of C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain. Unfortunately, both works depend on a world view that the Bible can only be approached literally where in reality a majority of Christians in the world treat the Bible metaphorically. It's precisely this evangelical literalist prejudice that kept me away from Christianity for so long. Wide reading has brought me back.

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Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman

Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Some of the reviewers below don't like what historian Bart D. Ehrman has to say, so they simply misconstrue what he actually wrote in this book. The part of the book's description that best summarizes this book is, "Jesus can be best understood as an apocalyptic prophet--a man convinced that the world would end dramatically within the lifetime of his apostles and that a new kingdom would be created on earth." Ehrman does not diminish the importance of Jesus in any way. In other books he wrote, he explained that he has personally gone from being a literal interpreter of the Bible to an atheist and maybe that's what's drawing the ire of some reviewers. My (non-literalist) Christian beliefs are not in any way threatened by a careful historical analysis of what Jesus probably actually said based on multiple Biblical references and the historical context of the time. I think this is very well-done and gives me a lot to think about.

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Jesus, Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is very good and thorough and I would have highly valued a book like this in high school. But it can be a little tedious for those of us who long ago surmised the central tenant of this book which is that the Bible cannot be literally accurate in its depiction of events. There is no end of proof to that thesis, many of which come from other fields.

But personally, I think Ehrman undersold the value of the Judeo-Christian faiths separate from the literal truth of the Bible collection and that might be misleading to some less educated readers. Ehrman came to his religious conclusion via the religious extremist route, then learning real scholarship, slowly liberalizing, and finally rejecting his religious beliefs. But if you were never so wedded to the literalism in the first place you might find more longterm value in the religious metaphors. Sometimes metaphors are more real than reality. That's what I've arrived at via the study of literature, philosophy, science, and even politics. If you've dedicated so much of your life to just one field, you're likely highly educated and have been exposed to a lot of knowledge in other fields, but maybe you haven't had the opportunity to afford them equal weight or consideration.

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