Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

Description

In this highly accessible discussion, Bart Ehrman examines the most recent textual and archaeological sources for the life of Jesus, along with the history of first-century Palestine, drawing a fascinating portrait of the man and his teachings.

Ehrman shows us what historians have long known about the Gospels and the man who stands behind them. Through a careful evaluation of the New Testament (and other surviving sources, including the more recently discovered Gospels of Thomas and Peter), Ehrman proposes that 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. According to Ehrman, Jesus belief in a coming apocalypse and his expectation of an utter reversal in the world s social organization not only underscores the radicalism of his teachings but also sheds light on both the appeal of his message to society s outcasts and the threat he posed to Jerusalem s established leadership.
C.S. Lewis once noted that nowhere do the Gospels say, "Jesus laughed." He s probably laughing now, if he s got access to Bart Ehrman s Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. The title doesn t even hint at the yuks that Ehrman s prose delivers, but from its very first page, Jesus will tickle your funny bone and stimulate your brain. "At last count," Ehrman begins, "there were something like 8 zillion books written about Jesus .... It s not there aren t enough books about Jesus out there. It s that there aren t enough of the right kind of book. Very, very few, in fact. I d say about one and a half."

The right kind of book, according to Ehrman, is one that portrays Jesus roughly as Albert Schweitzer did, as a first-century Jewish apocalypticist: "This is a shorthand way of saying that Jesus fully expected that the history of the world as we know it (well, as he knew it) was going to come to a screeching halt, that God was soon going to intervene in the affairs of this world, overthrow the forces of evil in a cosmic act of judgment, destroy huge masses of humanity, and abolish existing human political and religious institutions. All this would be a prelude to the arrival of a new order on earth, the Kingdom of God." Ehrman s is a historical-Jesus book, a very smart, humble, and humorous popular summary of Christian and secular evidence of Jesus life, work, and legacy. He believes that apocalypticism is the true core of Jesus message, and that comfortable middle-class complacency among scholars, clergy, and laypeople has forged a counterfeit, domesticated, "ethical" Jesus to cover up their befuddlement about his misprediction of the apocalypse. The book will frustrate many readers because it offers no real guidance regarding what one should do with Jesus apocalypticism. Its project--to prove that Jesus was wrong about the apocalypse--may even appear destructive to some. Yet the argument is convincing enough to induce among careful readers a constructive experience of confusion. Jesus makes readers ask the very question it appears to ignore, in a newly humble way: how, then, should we live? A serious matter, but considering humanity s endless string of wrong answers and infinite capacity for self-delusion, worthy of some good belly laughs, as well. --Michael Joseph Gross