In my previous posts on Bart Ehrman’s assertions about the argument of Earl Doherty’s Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, I think I have uncovered enough evidence to demonstrate that Ehrman at best only very patchily skimmed a few pages of the book. Was he perhaps merely attempting to grasp directions from some of Doherty’s critics rather than reading the book for himself? He has made a complete fool of himself, or worse, by building a recurring criticism upon a blatant misquotation from the book and accusing Doherty of arguing the very opposite of what he in fact writes.
I return here to Ehrman’s opening words about Doherty’s book. It looks like Ehrman never even bothered to read its cover!
He writes:
[Doherty’s] now-classic statement is The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? This has recently been expanded in a second edition, published not as a revision (which it is) but rather as its own book, Jesus: Neither God nor Man: The Case for a Mythical Christ.
This is only a tiny thing, but it is a curiosity.
The cover of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man twice says it IS indeed published as a revision of The Jesus Puzzle.
The front cover says:
NEW – REVISED – EXPANDED
and on the same cover beneath those words we read:
First Published As THE JESUS PUZZLE
Turn now to the verso of the title page where one normally reads the publication data:
A revised and expanded version of The Jesus Puzzle
The cataloguing in publication information says the book is published as a
New edition, Revised and Expanded, of The Jesus Puzzle.
It tells us a third time:
Originally publ. under the title: The Jesus puzzle.
So why does our good doctor and reviewer say of the book that it was not published as a revision of The Jesus Puzzle even though the cover and title page verso inform us five times that it is such a revision?
Why did he even think to make such a point that is clearly wrong? Continue reading “Did Bart Ehrman Not Even Read the Cover of Earl Doherty’s Book?”