Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior

Bart Ehrman, a prominent New Testament scholar, has performed a valuable service bringing NT scholarship to general readers in a number of short, readable, satisfying books. JESUS BEFORE THE GOSPELS: HOW THE EARLIEST CHRISTIANS REMEMBERED, CHANGED, AND INVENTED THEIR STORIES OF THE SAVIOR (2016) is especially valuable because he brings some new science to bear.Of thousands of books on Jesus, Ehrman says that "the vast bulk of them" have not explored this research in psychology, sociology, anthropology on the transmission and construction of memory. This knowledge is highly relevant to the search for the historical Jesus because our main source, the Gospels, are edited compilations of long chains of memories, word of mouth stories told by numerous unknown persons over four to seven decades before the Gospels were written. He notes the remarkably wide variety of memories, versions of the story of Jesus, held today by worshippers and scholars. This variety is explained by the science on how memories are constructed. This knowledge is useful for evaluating all our knowledge of history and biography, as everything we think we know is what others have told us, most of which does not come from eye-witnesses, or interviews of witnesses, or even complete mastery of all available evidence. One of the key findings of the science is the highly unreliable nature even of eye-witness testimony.Ehrman effectively presents an overview of the science and makes his point succinctly with selected passages from the Gospels. The same approach is taken comprehensively by Dale C. Allison Jr. in CONSTRUCTING JESUS: MEMORY, IMAGINATION, AND HISTORY (2010). In his first 17 pages he cites nearly all the scientific studies cited by Ehrman. Allison is more explicit about the shortcomings of scholarly work on the life of Jesus over the past century. He says he has come to the "conviction that the means that most scholars have employed and continue to employ for constructing the historical Jesus are too flimsy to endure ... After many years of playing by the rules, I have gradually come to abandon them. I am trying something else."

Herman did, I think, a tremendous job of explaining the Gospels and of explaining MEMORY.I found some of the exploding how memory works and how reliable - or unreliable- it can be.I think he focused a bit much in the contradictions in the Gospels.But it did provide fodder for reflection.His writing style is a bit tough; it took a while to get into the book. But it was informative and clear.I’m likely to read another of his books.

Ehrman has chronicled the discrepancies in the New Testament books in his previous publications. In Jesus Before the Gospels, Ehrman wants to focus on the role of memory as an explanation for these discrepancies. As Ehrman writes: “They are memories of later authors who had heard about Jesus from others, who were telling what they had heard from others, who were telling what they had heard from yet others. They are memories of memories of memories.” Ehrman uses anthropological, sociological and cognitive psychological research to support his claim that memories are “frail” and unreliable. He gives us other examples of revisionist history, including the notion that Abraham Lincoln was against racism when in fact he was outspoken in his racist beliefs that held white men above people of color. Ehrman also points out that in the South the Civil War isn’t about the moral abomination of slavery but “Northern aggression” and “state rights.” Our memories of Christopher Columbus, too, depend on what era we studied him.In Ehrman’s specific treatment of the Gospels, he points to German scholar Rudolf Bultmann who argued that Jesus stories were changed and “improved” over the years by the storytellers who circulated tales of Jesus 65 years after Jesus’ death before these tales were written and then later canonized 300 years later, during which time there was even more editing.To discuss memory in specific terms, Ehrman explains that there is episodic and semantic memory. The former refers to how we remember events from our past. The latter refers to general assumptions you make about the world ,”quite apart from whether you have personally experienced it.”Just as important, Ehrman makes clear, is collective memory: “a term used by sociologists to refer to how various social groups construct, understand, and ‘remember’ the past.”I inferred from Ehrman’s book that what we often call “memory” is in reality the fictive imagination that creates drama, metaphor, and meaning for what are perceived as significant events and that this fictive imagination creates a mythology that teaches us semantic lessons.Ehrman concludes that, from a historical perspective, he does not think that one of the greatest stories ever told should be dismissed by secularists. The New Testament’s profound world influence commands our attention. There are metaphorical richness of wisdom to be found in these stories or “frail memories” and the dismissal of these stories would impoverish us.For Ehrman, then, a literal reading of the Bible doesn’t stand up to history. However, a metaphorical reading is edifying and an important part of world culture.Writing as an agnostic, Ehrman does a good job of showing the “memories” and worldview these storytellers had that compelled them to reshape these stories the way they did. Highly recommended.

It's a good read. Except in 1989 we were not filming, we were videoing.

Bart Ehrman provides a realistic account how memory has affected the Biblical accounts of the gospels. He describes how memories are influenced by the past and the present and may not be accurate, but still tell useful accounts of events that may or may not be truly historical. The book is well worth a read and study. Many Christians would benefit by reading it.

Great author, historian, researcher and communicator. How are memories preserved is what he delves into in this book. Are oral cultures preserved in an unchanging way from one to the other relating it?One of his major works.

The Christian Gospels are derived from memories of Jesus, and these memories, like all memories, are fallible and prone to distortion. Yet underlying these memories are a bedrock of facts that can be discerned from looking at memories with a historian's eye. Bart Ehrman navigates these issues in a manner that modern Christians should find enlightening and sympathetic.

Everything done well. Just took a long time to get here.

Ehrman prosegue nell'analisi del primo cristianesimo.Da anni pubblica libri molto interessanti sull'argomento.In questo suo ultimo lavoro,utilizzando i risultati degli ultimi studi sull'attendibilità della memoria e della sua trasmissione orale,Ehrman passa al setaccio le testimonianze dei primi "diffusori" del cristianesimo,siano essi gli evangelisti ( i 4 canonici e non) o altri autori delle origini.Le conclusioni a cui l'autore giunge mi sembrano valide e convincenti : buona parte dei miti cristiani nasce da una "memoria distorta" di fatti comunque avvenuti; per esempio l'autore sostiene che molto difficilmente il "discorso della Montagna"( Matteo) è davvero stato pronunciato,ma si tratterebbe di una sorta di "compilation" (absit iniuria verbis) di frasi e sentenze davvero pronunciate da Gesù.In taluni casi fatti relativi a Gesù venivano deformati o alterati sulla base delle necessità teologiche e sociali delle prime comunità cristiane, in particolare rapporto con il crescente distacco dall'ebraismo.Questo spiega il forte accento antiebraico di alcuni passaggi dei canonici,la luce negativa in cui appaiono i Farisei (corrente dell'ebraismo in polemica coi primi cristiani) e il ritratto quasi assolutorio di Pilato.In questo vi è ben poco di storico.In conclusione Ehrman mi pare anni luce avanti rispetto alle posizioni reticenti ed arretrate della chiesa cattolica.La cosa non mi pare sorprendente...

it was a revelation. understood the whole history of Jesus in a new light. The gospel of St. Thomas was a revelation.