JESUS BEFORE THE GOSPELS:
How the Earliest Christians Remembered,
Changed and Invented Their Stories of the
Savior
By Bart Ehrman
HarperOne. 326 pages. £25.50
ISBN 978 0 062 285 201
Bart Ehrman’s literary assault on biblical authority continues with his latest book, Jesus before the Gospels.
The heart of his message is that oral tradition – certainly over a period of decades – is unreliable, and that people’s memories play tricks on them. Since the Gospels did not begin to be written until about AD70 (his estimate), they are not historically trustworthy. Much of Ehrman’s book repeats what he has previously written and, in that respect, for anyone who has read several of his books, certain aspects may be tiresome.
