Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) (Harper, 2009).
Like Barry Wilson, Ehrman engages in critical analysis of how the texts selected for the Bible were written, how the messages of these texts co-relate, and how the various texts were selected for inclusion into the Biblical canon. He also considers some of the texts that were not included in the canon, exploring the history and themes within the texts, the arguments that raged around whether they should be included in the Bible.
Both authors cover information familiar to scholars of the Bible but that rarely fails to astound those whose critical inquiry has been limited to discussions held in church, or for whom the Bible is foreign territory. Essentially, the message is that the Bible is a product of distinctly human efforts developed over the course of more than a hundred years, that the authors of most of the books of the Bible are not known (despite the various books being named after disciples), and that there are a multitude of contradictions and inconsistencies even between the books accepted into the Biblical canon.
Both authors also describe at length the battles over the right to claim the legacy of Jesus, comparing the faith that developed around Jesus’ brother James in Jerusalem, which adhered closely to Jesus’ attempts to revitalize and strengthen a strict Jewish tradition, and the faith developed by Paul and his adherents that sought to discount many of the distinctly Jewish traits of Jesus’ teachings.
Ehrman's book is well-written and eminently readable, although not - at least to my mind - one of his best works.
See my comments on Wilson's book, How Jesus Became Christian elsewhere on this blog.
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