Not a book I can imagine having broad appeal. I'm an Ehrman fan, I think he does an amazing job of explaining the science of the history of the bible. And I also enjoy reading about ecclesiastical history. This book follows the progression of the idea of Jesus over time, from the earliest believers who called him teacher and knew him as a fairly normal apocalyptic preacher through the early years of Christianity and into orthodoxies and heresies, ending with the creed that Jesus is both fully human (and thus, mortal) and also fully God (and thus, immortal) at the SAME TIME. If you aren't especially interested in the minutia of religious debate and/or the politics involved in choosing which beliefs to incorporate and which to denounce, then this isn't for you. All of Ehrman's books are excellent, mind, I'm just saying some have greater mass appeal (heh).

This is another one of the spring break books that Veronica and I ended up sharing, because not enough strength to carry all the books one wants to read over a few days.

Library copy

From Jesus to Constantine: A History of ... Understanding means learning how things became the way they are. Things are the way they are because they became the way they are. It's a tautology, but understanding often relies on a conclusion residing in a premise. (After all, F=ma is a tautology, and it got us to the moon, while it took the relativistic correction to that equation to give us GPS).

Just like there is a paleofantasy about the perfect diet (see the book [b:Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live|13707578|Paleofantasy What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live|Marlene Zuk|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356113438s/13707578.jpg|19340160]) there is something I would call the Christianofantasy. It's the belief that the early church (as mentioned in the 'bible') is the only real true church and we need to emulate that in order to be holy. Sadly, for modern day Christianofantasist they would have to give up their trinity and their bible and other dogmas that evolved well after the 2nd century.

The starting point for most knowledge is to assume things have always been the way they are now (more or less). The universe was considered 'static' until 1920 and even up to the 1950s with Fred Hoyle mocking the big bang as absurd. It was probably the dominant paradigm among the common folk until the discovery of the CMB. Or consider plate tectonics and continental drift it was denied until the 1960s.

There's a similar thing going on with most Christian churches. They just think what is considered orthodox today is the way it always has been. The Trinity, the perfect example, developed over time and would have been considered heterodoxy in it's time. (Isaac Newton, my favorite person who ever lived, was a unitarian and he believed the bible offered no support for the Trinity). The bible did not have a canonical status until the loudest voices won out.

I just really enjoy Ehrman's books and lectures. I always find them edifying. Truth (and knowledge) have a liberal bias and I love continuing to learn how we became the way we are. The more one learns about the history of the Church, the more unreasonable religion seems and the more one must appeal to faith alone for religious belief.

This is an interesting book, which is strongest in the middle. It takes a little while to get going as Ehrman outlines the general beliefs about humanity and divinity in Jesus' time, but it picks up when he starts actually looking at the Gospels in his historical search for how beliefs about Jesus evolved. It sags again at the end when we get into the politics of what eventually became "canon", and how.

Still, I appreciated having a better sense of context for the passages in the Bible that reference Jesus' divinity, and how Christians came to believe something that, now, seems as though it was never in question. But my favorite part was probably a bit of an aside, which was when Ehrman laid out how historians suss out what is likely to be historically true in the Bible vs. what was most likely written to spread a certain theology.

Jesus is a mystery that we will never be able to unravel, but it sure is fascinating to see how people try.

I'm not completely sure why I decided to read this one.  It's a different from the religion books I tend to read (I've also read God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything this month and that is an odd combination!)

 

This book is very focused on the early history of Christianity which is something I know very little about (this book and Karen Armstrong's The Case For God are really the only one's I've read that have anything to do with the early church).  

 

There are several things that stuck out in this book.  One is that the word betrayal itself might be a mis-translation becasue the word used really means "to give over to someone else" (likely not the complete/perfect translation, since that's from my memory).  Another is that stories were at the time often changed to suit the needs of the person telling them, historical accuracy didn't figure in at all. Historical accuracy is mentioned at the end of the book (and; therefore, this review).

 

The Gospel itself is interesting, although the codex has had a difficult journey from the desert to the point of this author having a chance to translate and read it.  It might have been complete (or very close to it) when it was discovered but the years (and humidity and freezing - really who thought that was a good idea?) have made parts of it hard or even impossible to read.  It was painstakingly pieced back together and some parts of it are completely unreadable. 

 

It presents a very different view of Judas and his 'betrayal' of Jesus.  Judas is the only one that really knows who Jesus is and understands what must happen -  the death of Jesus' human body so he can return home.  This view suggests that Jesus knew and even wanted Judas to "betray" (can it be a betrayal if the other wants it to happen?) him.  

 

The last chapter (? best guess, this is an audiobook and I didn't pay that much attention to chapters) is focused on Judas and Jesus as historical figures - who were they really and what did they do?  Really knowing the answers to these questions requires having several contemporary sources that do not get their information from each other but have similar stories to tell. We don't have that for either man's life, so it's hard to piece what might have really happened. There are some clues that suggest that Jesus and his followers were apocalyptic - they believed that the apocalypse was going to happen soon (within their lifetimes).  When it didn't happen the views had to change - they'd been wrong, clearly so the focus couldn't be on their apocalyptic views any longer. 

 

I really need to remember to take notes.  I did okay for the first half or so but completely stopped before part 4 (of 7 total) started.  Sorry if this review is confusing!

 

I really hated the music at the start and end of each part/chapter.  It wasn't so bad when the chapter was over and the narrator hadn't started talking again but it was hard to hear him over the music sometimes, since there was some overlap.

This book reads like a science book and I kept listening with my full attention. I found myself replaying segments multiple times because I really wanted to know what the author was saying. The author does three things to set up his thesis, he tells the listener 1) how a person would have historically thought about the terms used such as "Son of Man" and "Son of God" at the times of Jesus, 2) how the new testament evolved historically and how thought from 30 to 100 CE evolved, and 3) the way a historian would answer the problem without appealing to the supernatural and would go about understanding the problem.

There are at least four other ways the author could have explained how Jesus became to be thought of as a God and do appeal to the supernatural or are purely speculative 1) assume Jesus had an identical twin and use that to explain the Resurrection, 2) assume ancient astronauts visited Nazareth and gave Jesus powers for which would be seen as indistinguishable from Magic (see Clarke's Third Law), 3) allow for Eternal Recurrence with a time loop to be circumvented after the singularity is created or better yet appeal to Hugh Everett III's parallel universes (see a good time travel story like "Thrice upon a Time, by Hogan and available on Audible or read Nietzsche), or 4) assume the New Testament and the Old Testament are all written directly by God and his inspired agents on earth and the final form of the book is the intended inerrant book.

The author takes the incredibly different perspective to the problem and uses the methodologies of history instead! He answers the problem by not needlessly assuming unnecessary things and by applying Occam's Razor and considers the historical record by looking at the way things are known to have happened historically and not once appealing to the supernatural or assuming inerrancy that is never used anywhere else in the study of history (or for that matter in any known branch of science or anywhere else in life).

I enjoyed this book very much and know that this kind of approach is the only way to study historical events. After having had read this book, it's clear to me that existence preceded essence in this case and the best way to think about the issue is to have realized that "Jesus became God" as the title states.

I really wish this book had been available many years ago. It would have saved me many years of unnecessary thought and would have guided me in my bible studies. A historian will never appeal to the supernatural in order to explain, and he had no need for such explanations to tell his story.