How Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” Has Laid the Case for an Historical Jesus to Rest
This book-length rebuttal by Earl Doherty to Bart Ehrman’s much anticipated and unexpectedly disappointing case for an historical Jesus (“Did Jesus Exist?”, published March 2012) first appeared in installments from March to August 2012 on the Vridar blog (under copyright), and is now being offered in e-book form, with extensive minor revisions.
It addresses virtually every claim and argument put forward by Ehrman in his book, and demonstrates not only the faultiness and inadequacy of those arguments, but the degree to which the author has been guilty of a range of fallacy, special pleading, and clear a priori bias against the very concept of mythicism and those who promote it.
In “Did Jesus Exist?” historicism has demonstrated the bankruptcy of its case for an historical Jesus, while in “The End of an Illusion” Earl Doherty has both exposed the failings of Bart Ehrman’s book and further developed the case for the non-existence of any traditional founder of Christianity.
Neil Godfrey
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Excellent. Just curious, is there any expanded material in the book that was not published here on Vridar?
Quite a few bits and pieces have been added, but no large blocks of material. Some corrections/clarifications have been made, and a couple of additions taken from the Comments sections of individual postings of the series on Vridar were inserted.
I noted in my Preface that I ran into too much trouble trying to convert Greek characters and even special English characters to render Greek words, and had to settle on plain transliterated English italics, with no indication of long vowels (my failed attempts had even threatened to screw up my em-dashes and apostrophes). My own experience with building e-books is that rocket science has nothing on Kindle, or presumably any of the other e-book systems.
My thanks to everyone who made the series posting on Vridar an interesting and productive experience, and, of course, to Neil himself who did a tremendous amount of work in adapting it for blog publication. I could do no less than dedicate the e-book version to him.
Earl, thanks for doing this. I see the Amazon link has been posted on Reddit/r/atheism. That should help with publicity.
Have you ever thought of doing an AMA through Reddit/r/atheism? You or your agent could message the mods, I’ll bet it would get quite a bit of attention.
I hate to show my ignorance, but what is an “AMA”?
It is an abbreviation for Ask Me Anything, and is basically a question and answer session with reddit users. You can take a look at some of the previous sessions here: http://www.reddit.com/r/iama
I would just add that any subreddit can do an AMA. r/IAMA may or not be the best subreddit for this subject which is why I suggested approaching the moderators of r/atheism. But I agree with Gnu that you can get a feel for an AMA but looking at r/IAMA.
I think that the problem lies with the assumption that the New Testament canon represents what the original founders of what became known as Christianity believed.
Nice Earl!!!
Hopefully every thread going around the web about Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” will get tagged with links to the new e-book. Thanks for going to the trouble of taking Ehrman to task.
I have just read the most astonishing review of my e-book on Amazon by Roo Bookaroo. He accuses me of a bloated and impenetrable writing style in a review which is many times and degrees more bloated and repetitive than anything I ever wrote. And this of someone who has been praised by many (see my website files on Reader Feedback over the years) for being an exceptionally lucid writer. (One I have always prized: “He is a clear writer. As clear as I’ve read.”)
What’s with this guy? He sounds like a demented English professor high on some kind of suds determined to bury a student under as big a pile of F’s as he can muster (despite having rated the book at 4 stars). This thing has to be read to be believed!
If anyone else who has bought the e-book has a different opinion, a review to that effect would be much appreciated.
http://www.amazon.com/End-Illusion-Ehrmans-Historical-ebook/dp/B00A2XN7EQ/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352345009&sr=1-6
Completely ridiculous review, especially the last part where Roo Bookaroo unnecessarily attempts to dissect your paragraph, Earl.
I gave it an unhelpful vote. His review certainly was more bloated and repetitive than anything he could possibly accuse you of. The only thing I’ve ever seen from Roo Bookaroo is the usual smear campaign and trollish efforts here and elsewhere. He seems to enjoy smearing mythicists and I’m not entirely sure why.
There’s a 16 page thread on Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” which contains ample links back here to Vridar: http://www.booktalk.org/post110397.html#p110397
I’m going to ask Chris if he’d consider putting your new book up for vote for one of the main book discussions.
How did I not know of this book sooner? Thanks for going to the trouble of putting it on Kindle, I took a vow not to buy non-Kindle books if at all possible to avoid reaching the point where I no longer fit into my house. I broke this vow for ED’s Jesus: Neither God Nor Man but I’d rather not. It also means no messing about with shipping etc. I will go and read the new one asap.