Jesus Before The Gospels by Bart Ehrman

Jesus Before The Gospels by Bart Ehrman

Many believe that the Gospel stories of Jesus are based on eyewitness testimony and are therefore historically reliable. Now, for the first time, a scholar of the New Testament, New York Times bestselling author Bart D. Ehrman surveys research from the fields of psychology, anthropology, and sociology to explore how oral traditions and group memories really work and questions how reliable the Gospels can be.



Focusing on the decades-long gap between when Jesus lived and when these documents about him began to appear, Ehrman looks to these varied disciplines to see what they can tell us about how the New Testament developed. In the book, Ehrman examines:

 

• How cultural anthropologists studied the oral traditions of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Ghana to reveal how stories always change as they are passed along.
• How psychologists have discovered the routine phenomena of "false memories" and how strongly people contend that these false memories really happened.
• How modern legal scholars and psychologists have shown how unreliable eyewitness testimonies really are, with people regularly distorting what they experienced.
• How sociologists have shown that a group's collective memory is strongly shaped by the issues and concerns of the remembering community just as much by the events themselves

Jesus Before the Gospels is a compelling narrative that not only demonstrates Ehrman's deep knowledge and meticulous scholarship, but also challenges the historical accuracy of the Gospels and what they tell us about the historical Jesus, the way we read and think about these sacred texts, and how we view history.

Ehrman, Bart D.: - Bart D. Ehrman is a leading authority on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity, and the author or editor of more than thirty books, including the New York Times bestsellers Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, and The Triumph of Christianity. A Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he has created eight popular audio and video courses for The Great Courses. He has been featured in Time, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, and has appeared on NBC, CNN, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, BBC, and NPR. His most recent book is Heaven and Hell.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780062285225
ISBN 10	006228522X
Title	Jesus Before The Gospels
Author	Bart Ehrman
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Year published	2017-02-28
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.