How could that be? Don't these books all have the authors' names attached to them? Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the letters of Paul, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2 and 3 John? How could the wrong names be attached to books of Scripture? Isn't this the Word of God? If someone wrote a book claiming to be Paul while knowing full well that he wasn't Paul - isn't that lying? Can Scripture contain lies? Students taking a college-level Bible course for the first time often find it surprising that we don't know who wrote most of the books of the New Testament. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them) What people do is, by combining these Gospels in their head into one Gospel, they, in effect, have written their own Gospel, which is completely unlike any of the Gospels of the New Testament.' 'So Jesus says all the things that he says in Mark and in Luke, and thereby robbing each account of what it's trying to say about Jesus in the face of death. 'They put the two accounts into one big account,' says Ehrman. The two stories offer very different accounts, says Ehrman, yet many people tend to merge them. But in the book of Luke, Jesus prays for forgiveness for his killers. In the Gospel of Mark, for instance, Jesus dies in agony, unsure of the reason he must die and asking why God has forsaken him. He had his own message,' Ehrman tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. to interpret his Gospel in light of what some other author said. 'When Matthew was writing, he didn't intend for somebody. He says that each Gospel writer had a different message - and that readers should not 'smash the four Gospels into one big Gospel and think that get the true understanding.' The answers to those questions vary depending on which Gospel you read, says Bible scholar Bart Ehrman.Įhrman is the author of Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them). What is the story of Jesus' birth? How did Judas die? What did Jesus say when he was crucified?

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