Who is this guy Bart Ehrman and why should we listen to him? He was raised as an evangelical, attended Moody Bible Institute, then went to Princeton Theological Seminary where he was first confronted with a historical-critical approach to the study of the Bible and began to question some of what he had learned as a child and young man. But he remained a Christian for at least a dozen years after he graduated, although he is now an agnostic.

Ehrman claims that most seminaries teach and most theologians agree with the conclusions he outlines in this book. He maintains that Jesus Christ was an apocalyptic Jewish preacher who taught that the Son of Man would appear during the lifetime of his listeners to judge the righteous and the sinners and that the Son of Man would rule over paradise on Earth. He also taught that Christians should obey Jewish laws and that they should practice good works. Ehrman shows that St. Paul, the supposed thirteenth apostle, taught something entirely different. According to him, all Christians needed to do was have faith that Christ died for our sins and that he rose from the dead. Ehrman shows how Christianity further evolved by the end of the first century when John wrote the last gospel. According to St. John, Jesus was now divine and had always been so.

Ehrman also claims that since the apostles were poor fisherman and laborers they would not have known how to read and write. The authors of the gospels were well-educated and most likely gentiles who wrote in Greek. The gospels were originally anonymous but for public relations purposes the church fathers felt they needed apostolic ties.

Ehrman isn’t entirely cynical. He argues that Jesus probably was a real person. He does this using Nazareth and John the Baptist. If the writers of the gospels were going to make Jesus up, they would not have had him born in an obscure place like Nazareth. According to scripture, Bethlehem was the place the Messiah would be born because of its ties to King David. Matthew and Luke get him to Bethlehem in different ways. And they would not have had Jesus submit to being baptized by an inferior prophet.

We are also given a brief look at religion and politics. Ehrman shows that the original Christian religion was supplanted by something he calls proto-orthodox Christianity. The Gnostic gospels as well as the gospel of St. Thomas and Mary Magdalene were rejected. Only those that conformed to the proto-orthodox creed were allowed to remain.