This is something right up my alley, as I always had strong interest in possible historical roots (or backgrounds) of religion and you can bet that from time to time I will poke my nose in literature such as this. For the start, let me state here that although I am agnostic, I have no problem with accepting that there was a real living and breathing person who lived two thousands years ago in Middle East, who probably was the follower of his predecessor John the Baptist and who was executed by occupying Roman authorities. This all sounds very probable and even fits with historical informations we have about that period. However, I do have big problem with the rest of the intolerant religious dogma that afterwards grew out if it, demanding that its followers must literary take beliefs in this man's supernatural powers, walks on water, magician's tricks and the rest of shebang. I also have no doubt that much later, when Christianity spread across the Roman Empire, authors of gospels decided that it would be better idea to make Jews and not Romans, guilty of his death so they turned it all upside down and conveniently completely changed the focus of blame for his execution.
Every time I read books with theories about possible historical background of this first century Jewish preacher (let's call him Yeshua from Nazareth) the little red alarm lights suddenly lightens when some casual sentence catches my attention. Another prophet, John the Baptist (whose real name at the time might have been Yohannan) and who might have been far more important than later church authorities wanted us to believe, belonged to the sect Nazirite (!) that often fasted, lived celibate and ascetically, disciplining flesh trough abstinence and strict self denial. Sounds familiar? Who is to say that perhaps our Yeshua as his follower was not also Nazarite (hence, he never married) and trough the times it all got confused with small village Nazareth - based on archaeological evidence, Nazareth did exist in more ancient times and through the Bronze Age but then there was a hiatus. It ceased to exist and did not exist in Jesus’s day. Than there is a reference to Yeshua in Jewish Talmud as widow's son or someone called Ben (son of) Panthera but we are simply too far removed from the first century AD to understand was it a sarcastic jab pointing at real-life Roman soldier Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera or something to do with a Greek word for virgin - parthenos, close in spelling to Panthera (in any case, Talmud had completely different version of him and accused him to have been sorcerer Yeshu ben Pandera who learned magic in Egypt). On the other hand, tradition of Islam remembers very same Yeshua as completely mortal human, born to virgin Maryam but to them he was one of prophets and therefore a Muslim! It is truly a fascinating subject, although the real historical person has been completely obscured by layers of various interpretations trough centuries, where everybody used him for their own agenda and explained him from their own perspective, which is completely wrong as we talk about wandering Jewish preacher from Middle East who has to be interpreted trough historical context.
Bart D. Ehrman has lifetime of experience in his field, you can tell he knows Gospels inside out, upside down, from left to right, sideways and than some. He is the kind of guy who can probably quote Matthew in his sleep and who does crosswords in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic for fun. He also has a very open, honest face with the eyes of the old soul so I can't possibly make myself criticising him but must admit it has been a long time since I read something as challenging - not because of the subject, since I basically agree with him but (paradoxically) because he is the type of that old fussy university professor who has so much knowledge in his little finger that he can't be bothered with niceties: he mercilessly dismisses generations of mythicists (theoreticians who proposed that Jesus was amalgam of previously known religions) with the tone that simply assume he is right and everybody else is wrong. First, all these people have no academic background so what do they know. Second, chapter after chapter he waves all the arguments, ideas and possibilities as "not relevant" to such degree that reader can't help but wonder what is the difference between mythicists who misread or misinterpreted something and Ehrman who decides what is relevant and what is not. Example: "The fact that these lines were not really written by Peter are immaterial for my purposes here." Oh well.
The fact that we have no tangible archaeological evidence about existence of Jesus is not surprising - Ehrman points that its not unusual for anybody who lived two thousands years ago, in fact until 1961 (when the stone with his name was unearthed in Israel) we were not so sure even about Pontius Pilate himself - and he was official Roman governor. What we do have are Gospels and Ehrman examines them with detached historical curiosity, quickly dispensing with supernatural stories and focusing on explanations how the story evolved and metamorphosed with time. What Jesus certainly was, author points, he was apocalyptic preacher - one of the many around at the time - who taught the end of the world is near and God's punishment/mercy awaits everybody. The books end with surprisingly clear eyed look at both mythicists and believers, where Ehrman shows that he actually understands both sides, their reasonings and perspectives.
"Jesus would not recognise himself in the preaching of most of his followers today. He knew nothing of our world. He was not a capitalist. He did not believe in free enterprise. He did not support the acquisition of wealth or the good things in life. He did not believe in massive education. He had never heard of democracy. He had nothing to do with going to church on Sunday. He knew nothing of social security, food stamps, welfare, American exceptionalism, unemployment numbers, or immigration. He had no views on tax reform, health care (apart from wanting to heal leprosy), or the welfare state. So far as we know, he expressed no opinion on the ethical issues that plague us today: abortion and reproductive rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, or bombing Iraq. His world was not ours, his concerns were not ours, and—most striking of all—his beliefs were not ours. The problem then with Jesus is that he cannot be removed from his time and transplanted into our own without simply creating him anew. When we create him anew we no longer have the Jesus of history but the Jesus of our own imagination, a monstrous invention created to serve our own purposes."
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