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Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman — who used to consider himself a Christian but now calls himself agnostic — has a new book out called Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, and he has been making the rounds. Over lunch, I heard his interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air. During this interview, he touched on a point that has long fascinated me.

Ehrman told Gross that he no longer considers the Bible to be the Word of God, but that he considers several of its authors to be “religious geniuses” — he explicitly included Paul and the writers of the four Gospels in this group of “geniuses.”

That’s interesting, isn’t it? Here you have 4 Jews and a Gentile, living and writing on the marginal fringes of the greatest empire in the world. Only in retrospective do we consider Israel and Jerusalem to have been an important part of the world. At the time, it was a minor province that, while occasionally troublesome, could be routinely put down by Roman force. Two of them (Paul and Luke) were well-educated by the standards of their day, but consider the others: John, a village fisherman; Matthew, a minor government official; Mark, whose “education” consisted of a series of missionary trips with Peter, Barnabas, and Paul.

According to Ehrman’s view of the Bible, there was nothing inherently special about the Jewish traditions they received. According to Ehrman, Jesus never rose from the dead, so Matthew and John might have known him and his teachings, but Mark, Paul, and Luke were all working from hearsay and secondhand stories. Not that his teaching counted for much: Ehrman’s new book makes the argument that Jesus was deluded. Would you trust your children’s education to the deluded followers of a deluded teacher?

And yet…

How do we account for this sudden explosion of religious genius? It’s as if Gandhi, MLK, Billy Graham, and the Dalai Lama all went to the same kindergarten.

Wouldn’t you want to know who they had as their teacher?

We had a great turnout last night.  If you missed the first class, feel free to drop in another time.  We’ll be meeting Wednesday nights at 6:30pm at Lakeside Christian Church. There are a couple of nights that I will be out of town, so we won’t be having class on March 24, April 28, or May 5. Missing class for two weeks in a row is not ideal, I know, but a last minute change of schedule came up just as we were starting class. On May 5, I’ll be in Chicago auditioning for Jeopardy!

Each week, I’ll post some additional resources online, as well as the notes and slides from the class. For Christianity, here are a few good resources:

• GetReligion.org follows media coverage of all religions. It’s a great place to see critical assessments of how well the media covers various religions, as well as to learn a lot more about different religions.
• Christianity Today’s news page collects Christianity-related news from across the Internet. CT also has a Christian History page that collects articles about Christian history, as well as important events. By utter coincidence, today is the day when Alexander Campbell, one of the founders of the Restoration Movement, died in 1866.
• The official website of the Orthodox Church in America is a great place to learn more about the 2nd largest Christian communion in the world.

Are there any other resources you are looking for? Resources from last night’s class can be found by clicking “Read more.” [Read more]

Tonight will be the first meeting of the World Religions Class that I’m teaching at Lakeside Christian Church. First up: Christianity. Might as well start off on something easy, right? Yeah, right.

If you are interested, feel free to join us, and let others know, too. I’ll be posting updates and helpful links about each of the religions that we cover. You can also drop in at any time. This ain’t college, you know.