Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium [Paperback]

I have read many books about the historical Jesus. Ehrman's Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium is by far the best. Although a popular account, Ehrman presents evidence and evaluates it logically. His main thesis is that Jesus believed that God would intervene, destroy all evil, and establish a Kingdom of God on earth (rather than in heaven), and that this would occur during his lifetime. Ehrman concludes that many of Jesus' sayings and deeds are best explained by Jesus' assumption that the present world would soon end. People must repent and prepare for the imminent judgment. One consequence of this belief is that Jesus was not a proponent of family values. Ehrman stresses that apocalypticism was an ideology that tried to make sense of the suffering of the Jewish people, giving them hope for the near future.

To me, Ehrman's arguments are far more persuasive than those of members of the Jesus Seminar who believe that Jesus was not an apocalypticist. Ehrman does not push unorthodox views, but presents consensus views of Bible scholars to the general public. Ehrman emphasizes Jesus' Jewish environment during the first century. He explains that Jesus was not unique except in his supposed resurrection. Christianity is based not on the actual resurrection of Jesus, but on belief in his resurrection. Written sources claim that healings and exorcisms were accomplished by other Jews in ancient times, and by Hebrew prophets. Ehrman also points out the diversity of Christian views during the first and second centuries. As any scholar taking a true historical approach must, he makes no evaluation of supernatural events. A special treat is Ehrman's sense of humor. A must read for those wishing to understand the historical Jesus, as opposed to a theological Jesus.

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. Or, even more precisely, a Jewish version of the synoptic Jesus sans miracle.

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.

But is Ehrman right? Was the real Jesus what the title of this book suggests: a Jewish apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium?

No idea. But at least Ehrman has stated the moderate position of Biblical criticism clear enough.

Bart Ehrman writes for a lay audience in an engaging and intelligent way, and has a knack of asking startlingly simple and yet important questions. Why was there "no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries"? Why the long interval between his death and the earliest accounts of his life? How can we tell which stories - if any - in the Gospels are historically accurate? What are we to make of the fact "that early Christians modified and invented stories about Jesus"? And, the subject of this book, whatever happened to the apocalypse?

In the twenty-first century, impending catastrophe is more likely to be linked with climate change than with the will of God, though there have always been some enthusiasts who have made the connection between destruction and the deity. Predictions of the end of time are made and the world continues to turn. That these millenarian fantasies were often couched in biblical terms did not prevent them from being pushed to the fringes of Christianity. After all, having built all those lovely churches and established their careers, few priests were keen for the end to arrive on their watch.

According to Ehrman, however, Jesus himself "predicted that the God of Israel was about to perform a mighty act of destruction and salvation for his people." This wasn't a distant event, far into the future. Jesus "thought that some of those listening to him would be alive when it happened." So, "how does one understand the movement from Jesus the Jewish prophet, who proclaimed the imminent judgment of the world through the coming Son of Man, to the Christians who... maintained that Jesus himself was the divine man whose death and resurrection represented God's ultimate act of salvation?"

The answer lies in accepting that - whatever he later became to Christians - Jesus was himself a thoroughgoing apocalypticist. While he never described himself in public as the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah or the King of the Jews, he did, in multiply attested traditions, use the phrase "the Son of Man" to refer to "a cosmic judge of the earth" - someone other than himself. Although the early Christians thought Jesus himself was the Son of Man, Ehrman argues that, "in sayings like Mark 8:38, there is no indication that he is talking about himself." The phrase goes back to "our oldest surviving apocalypse, the book of Daniel".

Most ancient Jews "believed that God had made a covenant with his people to be their divine protector in exchange for their devotion to him through keeping his Law." So why was Israel "constantly being dominated by foreigners?" A new way of thinking developed in which "God was still in control of this world in some ultimate sense" but "for unknown and mysterious reasons he had temporarily relinquished his control to the forces of evil that opposed him." Only at the end of this age would God intervene in history and destroy the forces of evil by sending the Son of Man. Only when this new kingdom came would God fulfil his promise to his people and establish them as rulers over the earth.

That Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist - an apocalyptic prophet - is a familiar story. It is also likely to be historically true - not something "the early Christians would have been inclined to invent, since it was commonly understood that the one doing the baptizing was spiritually superior to the one being baptized." Jesus, a repentant sinner, seeking baptism? No wonder Mark's plain tale needed a little embroidery by the later evangelists. However much the details were revised, one thing is clear: this "ministry began on a decidedly apocalyptic note".

Throughout his teachings, "Jesus warns of the coming judgment and the need to prepare for it" and thought, like other apocalypticists before and since, "that God was going to extend his rule from the heavenly realm where he resides down here to earth." Preparation for the coming kingdom was all that mattered. Far from promoting "family values" as some Christians fondly imagine, Jesus "urged his followers to abandon their homes and forsake families". He didn't encourage people to pursue fulfilling careers and he "did not propound his ethical views to show us how to create a just society and make the world a happier place for the long haul." What would be the point? There wasn't going to be a long haul.

"If Jesus were to be taken literally - that is, if he really meant that the Son of Man was to arrive in the lifetime of his disciples - he was obviously wrong." No wonder Christians soon began the business of interpreting his words and taking them out of their original apocalyptic context. They tend to interpret his life "from a dogmatic, rather than a historical, perspective." There is a Jesus of history, it seems, and he was "a Jewish teacher who taught his Jewish followers about the Jewish God who guided the Jewish people by means of the Jewish Law". He "did not teach about his own divinity or pass on to his disciples the doctrines that later came to be embodied in the Nicene Creed."

In one sense, the absence of Jesus the apocalypticist from Christianity is not surprising, since "Christianity is a religion rooted in a belief in the death of Jesus for sin and in his resurrection from the dead." It is not a sect of Judaism. For the historian, "Christianity begins after the death of Jesus, not with the resurrection itself, but with the belief in his resurrection." As one can ask - which Bible do you believe to be the word of God? - one can also ask - which Jesus do you believe in? There will be as many answers as there are believers, but the answer no Christian will give is the historical Jesus: the first-century prophet who was proved wrong.