Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior

by Bart D. Ehrman

Overview

The bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus, one of the most renowned and controversial Bible scholars in the world today examines oral tradition and its role in shaping the stories about Jesus we encounter in the New Testament—and ultimately in our understanding of Christianity.

Throughout much of human history, our most important stories were passed down orally—including the stories about Jesus before they became written down in the Gospels. In this fascinating and deeply researched work, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Erhman investigates the role oral history has played in the New Testament—how the telling of these stories not only spread Jesus’ message but helped shape it.

A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman draws on a range of disciplines, including psychology and anthropology, to examine the role of memory in the creation of the Gospels. Explaining how oral tradition evolves based on the latest scientific research, he demonstrates how the act of telling and retelling impacts the story, the storyteller, and the listener—crucial insights that challenge our typical historical understanding of the silent period between when Jesus lived and died and when his stories began to be written down.

As he did in his previous books on religious scholarship, debates on New Testament authorship, and the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, Ehrman combines his deep knowledge and meticulous scholarship in a compelling and eye-opening narrative that will change the way we read and think about these sacred texts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062285225
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/28/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	122,272
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bart D. Ehrman is one of the most renowned and controversial Bible scholars in the world today. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is the author of more than twenty books, including the New York Times bestsellers How Jesus Became God; Misquoting Jesus; God’s Problem; Jesus, Interrupted; and Forged. He has appeared on Dateline NBC, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, History, and top NPR programs, as well as been featured in TIME, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and other publications. He lives in Durham, North Carolina. Visit the author online at www.bartdehrman.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Oral Traditions and Oral Inventions 17

2 The History of Invention 49

3 Eyewitness Testimonies and Our Surviving Gospels 87

4 Distorted Memories and the Death of Jesus 131

5 Distorted Memories and the Life of Jesus 179

6 Collective Memory: Our Earliest Gospel of Mark 227

7 The Kaleidoscopic Memories of Jesus: John, Thomas, and a Range of Others 255

8 In Conclusion: A Paean to Memory 289

Acknowledgments 297

Notes 301

Index 317

Editorial Reviews

No one makes it easier to study the Bible than Ehrman. Jesus Before the Gospels is essential. Ehrman presents a much needed, brilliant argument-one that challenges unsubstantiated assumptions about the reliability of the Gospels.

David Kyle Johnson

A fascinating look at how memory affects the stories we tell and even our recollection of history.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Ehrman is known to his legion of readers as a scholar who has spent his academic career debunking long-held assumptions of traditional Christian belief. Jesus Before the Gospels applies contemporary memory science to the oral traditions of the early Christians.

Religion News Service

Were the authors of the gospels who told fanciful stories about Jesus making stuff up, or did they have faulty memories, or both? Bart Ehrman, one the most renowned and controversial religious scholars in the world, tackles the issue of Jesus and memory.

Progressive Spirit Podcast

In his latest book, controversial New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman applies new scientific understanding of how memory works to the gospels.

WYPR

Author Bart Ehrman tackles a central question for scholars of the New Testament— the accuracy of the text.

NPR's Interfaith Voices

Ehrman is one of the foremost voices in the historical Jesus debates. In this, the latest of a long list of influential books, he combines his ideas about Jesus with cutting-edge research from cognitive psychology, cultural anthropology, and sociology. He more than succeeds in achieving his goal. Highly recommended.

Spirit Connection NY

Why buy this book if you’ve already got lots of volumes about Jesus? This book is something new. You’ll discover people in this book that you would never encounter in other religious books. There’s nothing like this 300-page exploration of our earliest human memories of Jesus.

Read The Spirit

Our secular culture continues to be profoundly impacted by biblical influences - including fundamentalist biblical influences - and this controversial book raises some important questions.

State of Belief Radio

With Jesus Before the Gospels, Bart D. Ehrman has written a thought-provoking book prompted by his interest as a historian in the various traditions about Jesus. Enjoyable to read

America Magazine

”Jesus Before the Gospels is a scholarly yet readable study of Jesus and the Gospels. Ehrman’s scholarship remains unmatched. Ehrman unveils several unexplored aspects of the life of Jesus and the Gospels. Everybody with an interest in Christianity and religion in general will find this fascinating book useful.

Washington Book Review

One can see why Ehrman is so widely known and respected by so many people. Here Ehrman takes a completely different approach from his previous books. This book is a new approach to the study of the beginnings of Christianity.

Association for Mormon Letters

03/14/2016
With his typical humor, passion, and vivacity, Ehrman (How Jesus Became God) explores the ways that memory shapes, distorts, changes, and preserves the stories of Jesus passed along by the Christian community. He points out, for example, that the numerous accounts of Jesus circulating before and after his death each portrayed a very different man, one shaped by the tellers' own religious and cultural concerns. Ehrman locates the empirically verifiable memories of Jesus that inform the gospels—he was an itinerant teacher; he had a number of followers; he was born and raised a Jew—and then examines the ways that early Christian literature preserves or invents its own memories of Jesus. Engaging in a close reading of Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount, he illustrates that the event represents a "collection of sayings of Jesus that the writer of the gospel has shaped into a long and memorable sermon." Before readers get too uncomfortable, Ehrman convincingly points out that the remembered Jesus—the figure whose existence is shaped by the memories of him handed down through time—is the one who made history. Ehrman's provocative book raises engaging questions that drive readers back to the sources of our information about Jesus, challenging them to read the gospel with fresh, skeptical eyes. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

03/01/2016
In this work, New Testament scholar Ehrman (religious studies, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Misquoting Jesus) draws sharp distinctions between oral culture, with its inaccurate transmissions, and modern historiography's factual exactness; eyewitness testimony and recent psychological studies; and cultural memories and modern sociology, to show how a community's motivations and concerns alter what information is maintained. The author contends that Jesus's culture was not simply "oral," that he and his followers interacted with Pharisees and Romans on many levels. Yet, Ehrman's comparisons of the way students today tell stories and the approach Jesus's followers might have taken is not necessarily precise given cultural differences, educational backgrounds, and perceptions of time. Ehrman seems to "set up a strawman," knock it down, and partially restore it as he points out that the Bible is valuable, just not as history. He argues that the Gospel writers were not claiming to be documenting history or biography; rather they were proclaiming the "good news" of Jesus as they experienced or heard of it. VERDICT For readers interested in an intriguing and entertaining take on the formation of the Gospels.—Carolyn Craft, emerita, Longwood Univ., Farmville, VA

Library Journal

2016-01-09
Understanding the role of memory in the formation of the Christian Gospels. In his latest work on the historical Jesus, Ehrman (Religious Studies/Univ. of North Carolina; How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, 2014, etc.) delves into the oft-neglected role of memory in the context of the early Christian church. The author argues that memory is of paramount importance to understanding such basic Christian writings as the four Gospels, since these arose from remembered events and were written decades after the life of Jesus. Ehrman demonstrates the widely accepted view of scholars that none of the Gospels were written by people who actually knew and followed Jesus personally. As such, each is based upon the memories of others, often transmitted through unnumbered sources in the early Christian community. Understanding the science behind memory, therefore, helps students of the Bible to understand the origins of, and differences among, the Gospels. Ehrman provides an intriguing overview of memory studies over the past century and introduces readers to a variety of important pioneers and studies in the field. The author finds that memory constructs the past. No matter if the topic is ancient history, recent news events, or personal happenings, the human understanding of all things past is constructed via memory. Furthermore, memories are often flawed or "distorted." This fact is simply a reality of the human condition; nevertheless, distorted memories lead to distorted history. Readers of the Bible can, however, assume that "gist memories" are based in solid reality. Gist memories reflect the basic situation (e.g., Jesus was crucified) without potentially distorted qualifications (e.g., dialogue at the site of the crucifixion). Despite the fact that his work is highly critical of the Bible as history, Ehrman concludes that it is still important, just as Shakespeare and Dickens are important. "The historical Jesus did not make history," he writes. "The remembered Jesus did." An intriguing new angle on the well-worn field of "historical Jesus" studies.

Kirkus Reviews