God’s Problem Notes 1 Bart D.

Ehrman

Chapter: Preface
-For a more in-depth explanation:
⋅ James L. Crenshaw’s Defending God: Biblical Responses
⋅ Antii Laato’s Theodicy in the World of the Bible

-Bart D. Ehrman was born & raised Christian:

⋅ Reared as an Episcopalian, altar boy.
⋅ Moody Institute in Chicago – Ministry.
⋅ Princeton University – Ph. D in New Testament Studies.

-Says the more he studied, the less he believed.

-Left the religion “kicking and screaming”.
-Could not explain an all powerful ruler, given the state of the world.
-His wife does not wrestle with these problems as he does.
-Quote: “If God had come into the darkness with the advent of the Christ child, bringing
salvation to the world, what explains the state of the world?”
-Why does God not again come into the darkness?
-Where is the God of the patriarchs, the God of Exodus, the God of the Israelites?
-Why does a child die approximately every 5 seconds of hunger?
-Quote: “Some think they know the answers, others are not bothered by the questions. I
am simply just not one of those people.”
-Does suffering come as punishment for sins?
-Does suffering come from God’s cosmic enemies?
-Does suffering come as a “test” to the people, and if so is that bias to sin?
-Some explain suffering as a mystery and that it is wrong to even question it.
-If the above statement is true, how must God gauge the severity of your answer to
suffering being wrong, are some people “more wrong” on their answers?
-Some say we should sit down and shut up, or “eat, drink, and be merry.” Yes, some
people explain the natural right of curiosity (which every human is born with) as a sin.

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-Is it not sick to think that God set up a world that not only allows, but requires him to
punish, kind of like the Marijuana Tax Stamp Law in American history.
-Can all 3 of these statements be true at once?
1. God is all powerful.
2. God is all loving.
3. There is suffering.
-Quote: “If God is all powerful, then he is able to do whatever he wants, therefore able to
remove suffering. If God is all loving, he obviously wants the best for his people, and
therefore would not want them to suffer. Yet people suffer.”
-Some deny one or the other of those statements, from reading these some explanations:
1. Rabbi Kushner explains that God’s hands are tied, and so he is the one to stand
aside you and give you the mental strength you need to endure the suffering;
therefore God is not all powerful, therefore the Judeo-Christian God is not God.
2. Elie Wiesel expresses that his anger toward God is how God has treated his
peoples, and argues he is not all loving, therefore, not God.
3. Still some argue “there is no suffering.” I quite frankly disagree with this and
believe it is bizarrely disconnected to the real world problems of today.
-Some argue that his people have violated law or have gone against his will, as the
Hebrew Bible explains, and he is bringing suffering upon them to force them back to his
will; as long as it is the wicked that suffer I support this theory, but as you can obviously
see, this is quite obviously not true. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
-What about the wicked that prosper at the sacrifice of the innocent who suffer?
-Epicurus’s old questions:
1. Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Therefore he is impotent.
2. Is God able but not willing? Therefore he is malevolent.
3. Is he able and willing, thence evil?
-Quote: “A world in which American farmers are paid to destroy their crops and most
American’s ingest far more calories than our bodies need or want”
-Look into the French philosopher’s book Candide

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-On the other side of this argument about free will and people that are just badly
exercising it, biblical authors knew nothing about not having free will. They knew
nothing of robots or machines, therefore had no reason to consider the fact.
-The free will explanation only works if you do not consider naturally occurring events
such as hurricanes, tsunamis, tornados, drought, etc.
-How will free will operate without suffering in the afterlife?
-You can’t argue God was not able to give us the intelligence necessary to function with
free will and not result with suffering if you are to claim he is all powerful.
-Why does God only intervene in the distant past? Or only sometimes when he:
⋅ Destroyed Egyptian armies.
⋅ Fed multitudes in the wilderness in the times of Jesus Christ.
⋅ Counteracted the Roman Governor Pilate’s plan to destroy Jesus (raising Christ
from the dead).
-The Bible contains many and varied answers to the problem of suffering.
-The vast majority of dying are absolutely miserable, so how is God ”intervening” by
providing strength, nobody would begin to make it or relieve they’re pain without
modern medical intervention.
-The book of Job gives two completely different answers (views) on suffering.
-Note-to-self: Read the Book of Job.
-“The Prophetic answer found in the Hebrew Bible is at odds with the Jewish
apocalypticists such as Daniel, Paul, and even Jesus himself.”
-Some social alienation of gay’s comes directly from simple-minded Bible “believers”
who insist gay relationships are condemned in Scripture; as it turns out this issue is barely
debated. People who believe that also are people who choose to accept only parts of the
Bible they want to accept or read.
-The same book that condemns same-sex relationships also requires you to stone your
children to DEATH if they disobey, to execute anyone working on Saturday, to execute
anyone who eats pork, and to condemn anyone who wears a shirt made of two different
kinds of fabric.
-Bart (author) finds it morally repulsive when theologians describe ‘evil’ as an idea
because of how disconnected that theory is from reality.

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-Questions that this book (God’s Problem) is asking:

1. What do the Biblical authors say about suffering?
2. Do they give one answer or many?
3. Which of they’re answers contradict one another?
4. How can 21st century thinkers evaluate these answers, which were written in
different contexts so many centuries ago?

Chapter 2: Sinners At the Hands of an Angry God

-Sinners that are at the hands of an angry God are the ‘classical’ view of suffering in
Scripture.
-The Holocaust, 11 million, each with an INDIVIDUAL story to tell.
-The Hebrew Bible’s explanation of suffering: People are suffering because God wants
them to suffer. Suffering comes as a punishment for sin.
-This works as long as it is only the wicked and sinners who suffer.
-The books of Moses were written approximately centuries after the events occurred.
Only told or heard of through oral circulation for hundreds of years.
-The Pentateuch was written roughly 800 years after Moses’ death.
-In later books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings I & II) that tell how God ‘gave’ the
Promised Land to Israel there were already people inhabiting the land, therefore they had
to brutally slaughter the men, women, and children of that land in order to obtain it.
-These books also describe disasters that struck the people of Israel, leading to the
destruction of Israel.
-Important to remember that these people (Israelites) were proclaimed as “God’s People”.
-Does it not say that all are created equal? If this is true then why do the Israelites get
special treatment at the hands of God?
-God delivers the Israelites from slavery in Egypt in the story of the Exodus. (Holy Bible)
-It is confirmed that this story was written centuries after the events happened.
-The God of Israel not only was a god of mercy but a god of wrath.
-Many people see the books of the prophets as a self-centered crystal ball foretelling
they’re future (“It’s all about me!”) when really these books are clearly telling stories of

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what was happening in a real time, with real events, and real people; centuries upon
centuries ago.
-Of course there is always going to be trouble in the Middle East, just because there was
trouble 2000 years ago does not mean they were predicting the future when writing of
trouble in the Middle East.
-Example of the self-centered view: They predicted conflict in the Middle East! They
foresaw Hussein! They tell of our Armageddon!
-When read (the book Prophets) from beginning to end it is clear they are speaking of
they’re time and they’re time only.
-What makes a Prophet? These are two general kinds:
⋅ Some “deliver the words of God” orally, spokespersons for God. Ones who
communicate God’s message to let the people know what God wanted them
to do and how to act (in particular how they needed to change).
⋅ Other prophets were writers of God’s word on what we would today call
paper.
-There are 12 ‘minor’ prophets, they are:
⋅ Hosea
⋅ Joel
⋅ Amos
⋅ Obadiah
⋅ Jonah
⋅ Micah
⋅ Nahum
⋅ Habakkuk
⋅ Zephaniah
⋅ Haggai
⋅ Zechariah
⋅ Malachi
-One way to describe the prophets is that they are “the mouthpieces of God”.
-“Predictions” are really just things that would happen in concrete situations centuries
ago, they are writing these things as they happen.

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-“The God who delivered the Israelites from Egyptian slavery would destroy them too,
given naturally occurring circumstances that cause sin.
-Writing prophets wrote around the time two great disasters ripped through B.C.E.:
Assyrians & Babylonians.
-The book of Amos is one of the clearest ‘prophesized’ portrayals in the Hebrew Bible.
-Amos believed it was because the rich got rich at the expense of the poor that judgment
would soon come.
-He (Amos) proposed that the Kingdom (786-742 B.C.E.) was going to suffer military
defeat; he makes this prediction in a time of peace among the land.
- Thus says the LORD:
For three transgressions of
Damascus,
And for four, I will not revoke
The punishment;19
Because they have threshed Gilead
With threshing sledges of iron.
So I will send a fire on the house
Of Hazael,…
I will break the gate bars of
Damascus,
And cut off the inhabitants from
The Valley of Aven. (Amos 1:3-4)

- Thus says the LORD:

For three transgressions of Gaza,
And for four, I will not revoke
The punishment;
Because they carried into exile
Entire communities,
To hand them over to Edom.
So I will send a fire on the wall of
Gaza,
Fire that shall devour its
Strongholds.
I will cut off the inhabitants from
Ashdod. (Amos 1:6-8)

-Amos says since Israeli are God’s chosen people, punishment for sin should be all the
worse.

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- Do two walk together

Unless they have made an
Appointment?
Does a lion roar in the forest,
When it has no prey?
Does a young lion cry out from
Its den,
If it has caught nothing?
Does a bird fall into a snare on the
Earth,
When there is no trap for it?
Does a snare spring up from the
Ground,
When it has taken nothing?
Is a trumpet blown in a city,
And the people are not afraid?
Does disaster befall a city,
Unless the LORD has done it? (Amos 3:3-6)

- (Amos 4:6-12) This is the God you don’t want to meet, this god starves, droughts,
causes war, and natural disaster; not to mention plagues.
-“All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword” (Amos 9:10)
-There is a set of predictions, from a ‘prophet’ (don’t go easily forgetting they SPEAK
THE WORD OF GOD, WHO IS ALL KNOWING) that is never fulfilled.
I will restore the fortunes of my
People Israel,
And they shall rebuild the ruined
Cities and inhabit them;
They shall plant vineyards and
Drink their wine,
And they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.
I will plant them upon their land,
And they shall never again be
Plucked up. (Amos 9:14-15)
-The reason Amos 9:14-15 is never fulfilled is because Israel continues to suffer after
these predictions are made, far after the initial suffering that was predicted; it happens
again, and ‘the Lord’ says it never will.
-The symbol Hosea’s message is that the Lord was in a sense Israel’s husband. Israel
was not faithful to God and had committed prostitution. How must a husband feel?

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-(Hosea 1:9) “You are not my people and I am not your God”, so God throws temper
tantrums?
-Hosea’s translation of Gods problem completely differs from Amos’s problem. Amos
prophesizes that the wealthy had oppressed the poor, angering God; where as Hosea’s
problem is people have started praising other gods.
- (Hosea 13:4-9) Not the kind loving God of nursery’s, this is a fierce animal who will rip
his people to shreds. (That was not a quote but a summary.)
-All the writing prophets speak of God’s wrath. How come God was never just happy
with his people, why does he only talk to them when he has a problem with them; is he a
God only of consequences?
-All or most of the prophets speak like God is on their side or if he is against them he will
switch sides if they obey.

Chapter 3: More Sin and More Wrath

-Quoting Bart: “Suffering is not only senseless, it also is random, capricious, and
unevenly distributed.
-How do we explain the suffering of war when it is clearly one person’s word against the
other?
-The book of Proverbs contains the ‘Classical View’ of suffering but blatantly forgets the
wicked that prosper for entire lifetimes.
-The Pentateuch is about God’s relation to the human race and the people of Israel (that
he chose).
-In Genesis the serpent of temptation is not said to be Satan, that is a later interpretation,
this is a real snake, with legs. (Lizard)
-Forbidden fruit is not an apple.
-According to the Christian translation Adam and Eve lose their innocence from eating
the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
-The unnamed "Forbidden fruit" became considered a form of apple (first in Northern
Europe), because of a misunderstanding of the Latin "malum", where malum as an
adjective means evil, but as a noun means apple.

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-The larynx in the human throat, noticeably more prominent in males, was consequently
called an Adam's apple, from a notion that it was caused by the forbidden fruit sticking in
Adam's throat as he swallowed, and the name has stuck.
-Some Slavonic texts (oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic and dating from
the 9th century) say that the Forbidden Fruit is actually the grape, later changed into
something good as was the snake (who lost its legs and speech.)
-In Gen 3:14-19 God calls punishment to the serpent, Adam, and Eve.
-The serpent is cursed by taking his legs and speech; Eve is cursed by excruciating pain
during necessary childbirth; Adam is cursed by making life harder and iffy, this is a
constant form of suffering that lasts forever. “The mood of the Bible has now been set.” –
Bart D. Ehrman.
-“Blot out from the earth the human beings I have created”-Gen 6:6. Along with
criminals, never clarifying what they have done wrong. It’s important to make a note of
the fact that the human understanding of animal intelligence in these times was very slim-
to-none. Animals were seen as mere objects of nature.
-Some theologians believe that the Armageddon will come (not by water though (9:9)),
by war. Other refuse to believe God is set on exterminating his people; both views have
their obvious flaws.
-God destroys the city of Sodom by fire & brimstone after Abraham convinces him to try
and find 10 righteous people in the town. God all along knows that only Lot (Abe’s
nephew), his wife, and his two daughters are the only good people. Lot offers his two
virgin daughters to the deprived townsfolk in exchange for the demand of Lot’s two
guests (godsends or angels) to be gang-raped. Angels intervene and escort Lot and his
family out of town but at the last minute, Lot’s wife disobeys orders and looks back at the
burning town, she is then turned into salt. (19:24-26).
-This story sounds a lot like the story of the man who retrieves his concubine and lets the
strangers of his town rape her to death.
-Why would Abraham question God’s all-knowing by asking him to find 10 good
people? Did God not create these very people? (By allowing the questioning it defeats
the purpose of all-powerful, all-knowing; rendering him not God.)

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-Why the suffering of Lot’s wife (1 of 4 good people) for a simple look at the place she
grew to know her entire life burn in flames?
-Why would God hold information from Abe and let him be wrong, and why would Abe
not trust God, how?
-Pentateuch’s final book: Deuteronomy (title means 2nd Law but is portrayed as Moses is
telling the law a 2nd time) tells how people of Israel are punished for being saved from
Egypt then doubting success of overtaking the Promised Land because inhabitants were
far too fierce. God then says: (Numbers 14:22-23) “None of the people who have seen
my glory and signs that I did in Egypt…and have not obeyed my voice shall see the land
that I swore to give their ancestors.”
-Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings – All referred to as the
“Deuteronomistic History”.
-These books explain how people finally conquered the Promised Land. (Joshua mainly)
-What qualifies the original inhabitants of the Promised Land to be enemies of God?
(Because obviously ‘his people’ had to brutally slaughter these inhabitants to gain the
Promised Land)
-Josh 6 tells the story of how the Israelites take Jericho simply by following God’s
instructions to march around the city’s walls, and of course after they murder every man,
woman, and child brutally with the exception of the prostitute Rahab & her family.
-For the people’s of Jericho the God of Israel sees them as enemies who worship foreign
gods, why had they not had the exposure? This renders them oblivious, yet still
punished?! Simply not knowing something because nobody has told you deserves
horrible death according to God.
-“Even the infants (slaughtered), a divine bloodbath for God’s people, and a crushing
victory.” Battle of Jericho, Book of Joshua

-“ Is the God of love, peace and redemption truly the author of ethnic cleansing? Did God
actually command total annihilation? Is the God of life for some the God of death for
others?” and “If I am honest with myself, the Book of Joshua depicts a non-biblical God.

But the Canaanites worshipped false gods and did despicable things before the eyes of
God, some may reply in defense of God -- as if God needs defending. Such unexamined
retorts undermine the very purpose of the biblical text, which is to force us to think and

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ponder that which makes us spiritually uncomfortable.” – Miguel De La Torre,

Associated Baptist Press

-Do we have a true right to destroy anyone who does not recognize the Judeo-Christian
God as the Biblical texts display time and time again?
-Some say that this is the result of reading the Bible selectively and thus believing
yourself and not scripture (St. Augustine), they say that the writers of the Old Testament
did not understand God as well as we do today because, after all, Jesus was the ‘ultimate
revelation’. What about Moses and Paul you morons? Are you actually trying to say
someone selectively reads a book when you clearly are forgetting TWO messiahs before
the one you proclaim made us understand God ‘better’? Does understanding God ‘better’
thus make us ‘better’ people?
-Historians still have found no actual evidence of these events, or to support the claims of
Jericho. Again, NO evidence.
-The Book of Judges explains how the 12 tribes of Israel lived before there was a King
who ruled them all.
-King Solomon had more than 1,000 wives and concubines (secondary legal standing to
wives), (to the surprise of most people this was NOT condemned by the Laws of Moses
and was not seen as too strange. But this doesn’t matter because Solomon disobeyed
God’s order to keep all relations with women between Israelites only (keep the purity).
Solomon slept with foreign women (11:1). These foreign women convince him to
worship foreign gods, which makes God’s reasoning apparent.
-Many similarities are between pagan rituals and ancient Judeo-Christian ones.
-It quickly becomes unclear how sacrifice ‘works’ once studied. We are unsure how this
brings forgiveness and are never informed how in any way this makes up for the sins of
our peoples. Kind of like a ‘missing chapter’.
-Yes original “God followers” made many sacrifices of animals and humans, just as
Satanic worship does/did.
-Israelite temple focused sacrifice as a way to mend things with God.
-Early Christians describe the death of Jesus as the ‘perfect sacrifice’. (Hebrews 9-10 in
New Testament)

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-Both the conqueror (Babylon) and the conquered (Israel) get punished by God for
they’re actions. Nobody is right, only God who orders Israel fall then punishes those
who make them, the Babylonians, of course.
-Ancient Judaism never had the idea that the messiah would suffer for others, this is why
Jesus was rejected by the Jews. The messiah was said to be a figure of grandeur &
power, for example a King.
-Many early Christians mis-concepted the writings of Second Isaiah to be talking of
Jesus. When studied it becomes very clear they are speaking of Israel, this became the
roots of Christianity, a misunderstanding. How sad.
-These misunderstandings came to color Christian beliefs of Jesus’ passion.
-It’s no accident the accounts of Jesus crucifixion sound so much like that of Isaiah 53.
-Through the sacrifice of Jesus others would be made right with God, Jesus was in fact
merely a sacrifice for sin.
-The New Testament was originally designed to show how much better Christian beliefs
were over Judaism.
-For this author (^): Jesus is superior to Moses, who gave the Law to the Jews (Heb 3); he
is also superior to Joshua, who conquered the Promised Land (Heb 3).
-Second Isaiah speaks to Israel in exile.
-When Christians told the stories of Jesus’ crucifixion, they did so with passages like
Isaiah 53 & Psalm 22 in mind; descriptions in those passages came to color Christian
stories of Jesus’ passion, though originally these were wrote for Israel in exile.
-The suffering servant (orig. Israel) was silent “Like a lamb” during his sufferings. (Isa
53:7), and thus Jesus is shown as silent throughout his trials.
-The suffering servant (Israel) was “Numbered with the transgressors” (Isa 53:12), and
Jesus was crucified between two evil-doers.
-The suffering servant (Israel) was “Despised and rejected by others” (Isa 53:3), and
Jesus is rejected by his people & mocked by Roman soldiers.
-The suffering servant (Israel) “was wounded for our transgressions” (Isa 53:5), and
Jesus’ death was thought to bring atonement.
-The suffering servant (Israel) “made his tomb…with the rich” (Isa 53:9), and Jesus was
thought to be buried by Joseph of Arimathea, a very rich man.

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- The suffering servant (Israel) was thought to be vindicated after his suffering so the
Lord would “prolong his days” (Isa 53:10), and Jesus is said to have risen from the dead.
-So now you (I) can see how its no accident the New Testament and Isaiah 53 sound so
much alike, because it’s authors were thinking of Isaiah’s writings the whole time, cross-
referencing stories and such.
-It’s through the death of Jesus that others will be made right with God, making Jesus in
fact a sacrifice, not a savior.
-For the authors of the New Testament Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, removing the need
for any more (Jewish/human) sacrifices.
-“It is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once and for all” (Heb. 10:10) Here is the idea that suffering of one substitutes for
the suffering of others (evil-doers).
-Christian readers mistakenly assumed Paul wrote the book of Hebrews.
-Paul’s formula: sin leads to punishment; Christ took the punishment upon himself;
therefore, Christ’s death can atone for the sins of others.
-Passover is a meal celebrated by Jews to commemorate the events of the exodus under
Moses. They eat a lamb to recall the lambs killed the night that the angel of death
“passed over” the houses of the Israelites en route to killing the firstborn children of the
Egyptians; they would eat bitter herbs to recall they’re bitter slavery in Egypt; they would
eat unleavened bread to recall that they had to escape from Pharaoh’s people quickly,
without having time to make bread with leaven; they would drink several cups of wine.
-Jesus’ final meal with his disciples adds up to be Passover, the “Final Supper”. At this
meal Jesus took the symbolic foods and furthered they’re significance, he breaks the
bread and says “This is my body.” He takes the wine and says “This is my blood of the
covenant that is poured out for many” (Mark 14:22-24)
-According the Prophetic view suffering for sin came in this life, sometime later Jesus
and most Christians came to decide suffering for sin would come in the afterlife; yet
again later Christians removed the need to suffer eternal torment for sin because he had
taken that suffering upon himself.
-The teaching of future punishment is most graphic in Jesus’ account of the judgment in
Mathew 25. (The judgment of the goats and sheep.)

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-Some think of the book of Mathew as one of Jesus’ parables; others think it is a
prediction of the end of time.
-The word utopia comes from two Greek words that mean “good place”; but when
different etymology is used it literally means “no place”.

Chapter 4: Consequences of Sin

-Prophetic explanation: Sin leads to suffering, not because God is punishing the sinner,
but because other sinners are causing affliction.
-Israelites are condemned from murder to each other (but apparently can slaughter the
Canaanites.).
-Women are usually seen as property of men in the Bible.
-Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel; Abel is a shepard and Cain is a farmer.
-For some unknown reason God prefers the animal sacrifices of Abel over the grain
sacrifices of Cain; so Cain decides he will sacrifice his brother and out of anger murders
him. (Genesis 4)
-In the story of Exodus: Jewish midwives are ordered to murder every newborn male to
prevent proliferation of the race.
-When King Herod discovers a new King has been born he orders every boy 2 years and
younger to be slaughtered in Bethlehem:
“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
She refused to be consoled, because they were no more.” (Mat 2:18; quoting Jer.
31:15)
-Originally this text described the people in Israel, but Mathew sees the text being
“fulfilled” in the events surrounding Jesus’ birth.
-In the Hebrew Bible’s book of Judges there is a man from the tribe of Levi who lived in
Ephraim; he has a concubine (a kind of secondary legal standing to a wife) who gets
angry with him and returns home to Bethlehem in Judah. After 4 months the man goes to

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retrieve her, finds her, and stays at her father’s house for a few days. On the way back
they needed a place to stay and try the town of Gibeah, north of Jerusalem, territory of
Benjamin. An old man offers them hospitality, and then the horror begins. “The men of
the city, a perverse lot, surrounded the house and started to pound on the door.” (Judg.
19:22) They demand the old man sends his visitor outside so that they can gang-rape
him. By ancient codes of hospitality the old man has responsibility for his guests and
can’t let them suffer. The concubine and the old man’s virgin daughter are another story,
merely women. Old man tells these men “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.
Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. Her are my virgin daughter and his
concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them;
but against this man do not do such a vile thing.” (Judges 19:23-24) However, the men
outside want the guest. To save himself the guest throws his concubine out the door, and
the men “wantonly raped her and abused her all night until the morning.” In the morning
she crawls back to the doorstep and dies. The guest-man wakes up next morning to find
her dead, packs her onto his donkey’s back and returns home. He then dismembers her
and sends her pieces to leaders of each of the 12 tribes of Israel. This is a call to war, a
war in which the tribes nearly destroy the tribe of Benjamin. (Judges 20-21)
-These tales are written to show the evil that transpired when there was no King in Israel,
but even when God gives them a king that king is the cause of more human abuse.
-This leads to the story of David and Bathsheba; Bathsheba is a wife of King David’s
solider Uriah but David wants her, and he does get her, and she gets pregnant. What does
David do? He has a great plan to let Uriah have sex with Bathsheba, but he declines
because he is such a faithful soldier. So David decides Uriah has to die, he makes
arrangements with Uriah’s general to put Uriah on the front line alone and let him be
slain. It happens. Uriah dies. David marries Bathsheba and life goes on, except for
Uriah, and innocent dead man.
-David’s son Solomon isn’t much better, who enslaves his own people to build things for
him.
-Later on we are told these slaves actually come from other tribes (1 Kings 9:15-22), this
apparently makes it all okay.

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-Many modern readers are surprised to find that the Bible says almost nothing about the
events of Jesus’ crucifixion. Not even Gospels, which says “and they crucified him.”
(See Mark 15:24)
-Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson is told to give an “accurate description of the
Gospels”, which oddly enough speak nothing this movie portrays (blood, gore, pain, and
agony).
-One possible reason the Gospels never write about the details of crucifixion is that its
readers were fully aware of what a crucifixion was.
-We have no descriptions from the ancient world of what a crucifixion was.
-Crucifixion was apparently a death by asphyxiation, not blood loss.
-Jesus’ death was by far not out of the ordinary; in fact 2 others died that morning, just
like him.
-Paul is the author who survived a stoning.
-The book of Acts narrates this stoning (but most historians have dis-credited its accuracy
because it was written 30 years after the event by someone who didn’t see it happen.)
-Paul somehow survives (can’t keep a good man down.).
-In Josephus’s writings of the siege of Jerusalem he describes a woman who eats her own
child out of hunger.
-Many people have interpreted suffering over time as a sign that the end of time is near.
-“Happy shall they be who take
Your little ones,
And dash them against the rock” (Psalms 137:1-9)
-If people do bad things because God ordains them to do them, why are the people held
responsible?
-Another approach is saying “Maybe trying to intellectualize religion is the whole
problem in itself.”

Chapter 5: Mystery of the Greater Good

-What is a believer to do when confronted with facts that contradict his religion and he
wants to be honest with himself?

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-“If I have food because God has given it to me, does that not mean he chooses not to
feed the hungry? By saying grace, wasn’t I in fact charging God with neglect and
favoritism?” Bart Ehrman
-What would we think of a father who starved his 2 sons only to fatten the 3rd one?
-How can you thank God without blaming him for the state of the world?
-Gen 37-50 is mainly about Jacob’s (a.k.a. “Israel”) family (12 sons who started the 12
tribes of Israel) and how God saved them from famine.
-Jacob is a grandson of Abraham.
-Jacob has 12 sons from a variety of wives.
-His favorite was Joseph, to whom he gave “a robe of many colors.”
-Joseph has 2 dreams: In one he is sheathing grain and they all bow to his sheathe; in
another the sun, moon, and his brothers bow to him, indicating to him that all will bow to
Joseph someday (Gen 37:1-11)
-His brothers did not like his idea so they decide to kill him. (Gen 37:18-20)
-Judah convinced the brothers to sell him to Midianite traders as a slave, who took him to
Egypt.
-His owner Potiphar was a wealthy aristocrat.
-Potiphar’s wife develops a crush on Joseph.
-Joseph will not sleep with her so she cries rape, and Joseph goes to prison & succeeds
there as well.
-Pharaoh hears Joseph is a great interpreter of dreams and summons him to interpret his
“7 cows” and “7 grains” dream. Joseph says this means 7 years of abundance and 7 years
of famine; so Pharaoh finds someone to watch out for this problem, realizes Joseph is
perfect for it and makes him his right-hand-man. (Chapter 41)
-This story sets up Israel’s “exodus” 400 years later.
-Joseph tells his brothers when they come to him out of fear when Jacob dies “Do not be
afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended harm on me, God intended
good, in order to preserve numerous people.” (Gen 50:19-20)
-Joseph promises protection until he dies, thus ends Genesis.
-In part of these texts of the plague of Egypt it states the Pharaoh hardened his own heart
(Exod. 8:15, 32) but in others it states that God did (Exod. 4:21, 10:1, 14:17).

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-God tells Moses “I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.” The
people being the Israelites. (Exod. 4:21)
-He then explains his logic: “I have hardened his heard and the heart of his officials, in
order that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell your
children and grandchildren how I have made fools of the Egyptians…so that you may
know I am the Lord.” (Exod. 10:1-2)
-Suffering can show forth the power and salvation of God according to the story of the
Exodus.
-This story (Exod.) relates closely to the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead (4
days dead.) by Jesus.
-Jesus is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25)
-This story of Lazarus starts with his illness. His sisters Mary & Martha send for Jesus.
Jesus refuses because “this illness is for God’s glory, so that the son of God may be
glorified through him.” (John 11:4). And so because Jesus loved Martha and her sister
and Lazarus, he stayed 2 days longer in the place he was.” (John, verse 6)
-This is direct evidence in Scripture that sometimes God is glorified through suffering.
-Back to the story of David and Bathsheba, David’s punishment for killing results in his
(innocent) child suffering and dying – these views just seem, to me, to be written by
someone who does not fully understand what they were writing, sure David feels horrible
sadness for his child’s death, but what of the child? It is as if the authors are completely
ignorant to the fact that the only one actually hurting here is the innocent.
-Paul’s teaching throughout his letters is that suffering for sing brings about salvation.
-Paul is convinced you can be made right with God not by keeping the prescriptions of
the Jewish Law, but by having faith in Jesus’ death.
-Jesus (as Paul admits in Gal 4:4) was born a Jew, worshipped the Jewish God, kept the
Jewish Law, followed Jewish customs, became a Jewish teacher, gathered Jewish
followers, and taught them what he considered to be the appropriate interpretation of the
Jewish Law.
-(Gal. 3:21) Paul basically says if people were4 made right with God by following the
Jewish Religion there would have been no reason for Jesus to die.

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-Paul’s thinking: sin requires punishment; and Jesus bears the punishment. Out of pain
comes salvation; Jesus pain, our gain.
-In Gal. 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us.
For it is written “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” This is Paul quoting the
Torah, Deuteronomy 21:23.
-See Romans 7 about everyone standing condemned.
-Mark says Jesus was silent during crucifixion, and Luke says he is not.
-“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:34 quoting Jesus.
-Why would Jesus not know?
-Two events happen upon Jesus death, the curtain in the Temple is ripped in half, and the
centurion who has just overseen the crucifixion cries out, “Truly this man was the song of
God!” (Mark 15:38)
-The curtain is what separated God from everyone else and when Jesus died, God is now
available to everyone; and the centurion comes to realize it.
-The earliest history of the Christian church is the book of Acts, written sometime near
the end of the first century (often dated 80-85 C.E.) by the same author that wrote the
Gospel of Luke.
-Many claim this author is Luke, although his work is anonymous and there’s good
reason to believe he was not a Gentile physician, travelling with Paul.
-Some of the things he says about Paul’s teachings and travels stand at odds with what
Paul himself says in his letters; that’s one reason for thinking the book was written not by
one of Paul’s companions.
-Paul never mentions his going to the synagogues and only reading to the Gentiles after
Jew’s persecution, although Luke seems convinced of this, it may not be historically
correct.
-The term messiah comes from the Jewish word masiach, which means “anointed one”.
The Greek equivalent is Christos, which is where we get the term Christ.
-So if someone is saying Jesus Christ they are really just saying Jesus the messiah.
-Jesus was precisely the opposite of what the messiah was thought by most people
(especially the Jews) to be.
-Paul would rather suffer God’s wrath than see the Jews cut off from God.

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-Paul thinks suffering builds character, example:

“We even boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces
endurance, and endurance produces a proven character; and a proven character produces
hope…” (Rom 5:3-5)
-He also states in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 that by suffering he was better equipped to console
others.
-“For when I am weak, I am powerful” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
-I personally do not believe that whatever does not kill us makes us stronger. I would if it
was true, but it simply is not. I especially am repulsed by the idea that someone else’s
suffering can help me. It is one thing for me to be thankful for what I now have; it is
completely different for me to say that I better enjoy the things I have simply because
some people cannot have them (e.g. great food, a job, happiness.) I find this view
completely disconnected from the real world and quite frankly disgusting. To think that
other people live horribly so that I can appreciate my life is an extremely close-minded
disease-of-an-idea.
-“Trying to see the good in evil is to deprive evil of its character.”

Chapter 6: Does Suffering Make Sense?

-The 1918 influenza epidemic killed more Americans than all of the 20th centuries wars
combined.
-This sickness caused the lungs to fill with fluid; body temperatures would soar “so high
the very hair of the person(s) would burn out”; people would turn blue and black; they
would eventually die from drowning. You could wake up healthy at breakfast and die
from the sickness before you could make dinner.
-By October 1918, New York was recording more than 800 deaths a day; in Philly 11,000
died in a month. They ran out of caskets.
-The book of Job was written by at least 2 different authors, with contradicting views on
suffering.
-The prose narrative of the beginning stands at odds with the poetic dialogues, in
beginning Job’s patient endurance is rewarded by God, and in the dialogues Job is not
patient but defiant and is grinded into submission.

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-In beginning of Job he is the richest man in the east world.

-The Satan basically claims Job is only thankful because he has everything he wants, not
because he fears God.
-The book is written in two genres: a prose folktale and a poetic dialogue.
-The folktale part indicates God deals with his people according to their merit, where the
poetry insists the opposite.
-The prose narrative gives an answer to suffering and the poetry states there is no answer.
-The narrator describes a scene where God’s sons including “the Satan” among them, in
this portrayal Satan is not God’s cosmic enemy, this occurs later in the Israelite religion.
-The Satan calls out Job for being nice solely because of his blessings.
-Even after God takes everything from Job and Job does not curse him, it’s not enough;
God decides (with Satan’s influence) to physically hurt Job to see if he will curse him
then.
-“Shall we receive the good of God’s hand and no the bad?” (Job 2:10)
-His friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are comforting in the narrative and don’t speak
but in the poetry they are mean and say he’s gotten what he deserves.
-A portion of the folktale must have been lost because God is angry with the friends for
what seems no reason.
-God basically causes all this pain to win a bet with Satan.
-Abraham was 100 when Isaac is born.
-Abe is ordered to sacrifice Isaac in a burnt offering and is only stopped at the last second
by an angel.
-The point they are pushing is that staying faithful to God is the most important thing in
life.
-No matter how contrary his order is to his own law, nature, and human decency it must
be done if God asks. This sets up all kinds of great opportunities for ‘speakers of God’s
word’ to get any command they want carried out, such as the Taliban uses “the word of
Ala” to influence suicide bombers.
-There have been many who kill innocent and claim it was God’s command, what do we
do with these people even though we “trust in God”? Imprison and execute them because

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obviously it’s okay to follow some rules and not others of the Bible, even if we claim to
follow him.
-The followers of Jesus are to follow suit, suffer as he did as they are told in 1 Peter.
-The suffering Christians are to endure is a test of their faith, even if it means horrid death
they are to rejoice.
-It is never answered why he wants this “final exam” to be taken.
-Quoting the author: “Are we to imagine a divine being who wants to torment his
creatures just to see if he can force them to abandon they’re trust in him?”
-Should we praise God for mutilation and torture? For his amazing power to inflict pain?
-The most offensive part of Job is at the end when God replaces Job’s children. Is the
pain of losing a child fulfilled by the birth of another? Are children replaceable and
expendable like a broken DVD or PS3? According to the Bible, yes it is.
-This God is worthy of fear only, no praise. Shame on anyone who praises such a being.
-God says he can not be judged by human standards, which he gave us. But doesn’t he
establish what is right and wrong? Aren’t we to be like him in the way we treat others?
If we can’t understand God by human standards how can we understand him at all?
-Author of Ecclesiastes calls himself the Teacher.
-He is son to David and King of Jerusalem.
-This means that he is Solomon.
-Ecclesiastes is basically a book stating nothing in life matters except life itself “A living
dog is better than a dead lion.”
-He published/fabricated the idea to “eat, drink, and be merry.”
-Teachers Hebrew name = Qoheleth.
-“Knowing there is no afterlife should make you cherish the time you have.”

Chapter 7: God Has the Last Word

-1 in 5 people do not have safe water to drink.
-80% of fatal childhood diseases are caused by bad water.
-25 people a minute die from bad water.
-Apocalypticist originated among Jewish thinkers who had grown unsatisfied with
traditional answers to suffering.

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-The prophetic answer could not deal with the problem that people were suffering for
they’re righteousness, and so arose the apocalyptic answer.
-Most Christians object this view because in they’re mind nobody can possibly do all
God has asked of them.
-The term ‘apocalypticists’ comes from the Greek word apocolypsis which means “an
unveiling”.
-Mark, an apocalypticist, believes God is going to intervene and make a Kingdom of God
in his lifetime or at least in the life of the people he is talking to.
-Daniel 7 was one of the first apocalyptic literatures.
-This style of literature became popular during the Maccabean period.
-The Maccabee’s were a Jewish family who started a Jewish uprising against their ruler,
Antiochus Epiphanes.
-These writings were written by a prophet who has seen a vision.
-Invariably an angel interprets these visions.
-These are usually claimed to be written by someone in the past, a man of God; and most
of these predictions have already happened, so obviously they had to be fulfilled.
-This is how most modern scholars believe the books of the prophets were writing; that it
was a popular style of writing in ancient times.
-Ancient Jewish apocalypticists invented Satan as being a powerful fallen angel who
wreaks havoc here on earth.
-Throughout most of the Hebrew Bible (most) authors think death is the end, but not for
apocalypticists.
-Apocalypticists invented eternal life.
-The first mention of that idea comes to us in Daniel 12.
-The reason apocalypticists write that the end is near is to cheer people up, they wrote in
times of terrible immense suffering.
-Mark suggests his generation will see this, which never happens.
-Jesus was not the originator of this idea.
-Jesus Christ tells those who follow him they will have a throne when the “Son of Man”
comes on judgment, sounds convincing to me!
-Jesus repeatedly insists this will happen in the generation he was talking to.

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-In scripture ‘fig tree’ usually means Israel. To put forth its leaves means to rise again.
-This happens when it becomes a nation again in 1948. When does the prophecy of
Judgment take place according to the Bible: ‘Within this generation?’ How long is a
generation in the Bible: 40 years. This is why Whisenant was convinced that 1988 is
judgment day, which obviously was false.
-He then goes on to claim he forgot to add the year 0 A.D. so all his timing was off by 1
year, so that 1989 was the actual year of the enlightenment. This never happens either.
-The Gospel writers and Paul had generally the same message.
-Of the 27 books in the New Testament, Paul claims to have fully written 13 of them.
-The Book of Acts is largely about Paul.
-The Book of Hebrews was accepted into the canon because it was wrongly believed to
have been written by Paul.
-Paul believed Jesus death and resurrection restored people to a right standing before
God.
-To an extent Paul agrees with the Prophetic view of suffering.
-The reason Jesus was crucified was that the Law indicates that anyone who “hangs on a
tree” is cursed.
-Paul tells us that he was a Jew trained in the traditions of the Pharisees.
-He also states he was an avid persecutor of the followers of Jesus.
-There were no Jews prior to Christianity that believed the messiah was to be murdered
and raised from the dead.
-Since Paul was a Pharisee traditional Jew when he heard of Jesus resurrection the only
theological conclusion he could come to was that this was the beginning of the end, the
new age is coming, right now.
-The New Testament never mentions Jesus appearing in front of 500 people like he does
in Corinthians.
-The reason Jesus was crucified was that the Law indicates that anyone who ‘hangs on a
tree’ is cursed.
-There were Christians in the Corinthian church who fully believed they had received the
full benefits of salvation.

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-Since Jesus was the first to be raised, everyone would be raised from the dead like him,
with physical bodies.
-This is immanent and will happen right away.
-In 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 it states the humans will become immortal.
-This is Paul’s solution to suffering.
-His evidence is that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
-This first appears to be his way of thinking in 1 Thessalonians.
-That book was written to solve the confused and disappointed people of Thessalonica.
-This is shown in 1 Thess. 4:15-17.
-Paul was completely in belief of ancient ‘Tri-Level Cosmology”:

-It’s hard to imagine what Paul would have thought if he knew what we know about earth
and space science as it is today.
-Paul says until the Judgment Day a lot of suffering will occur.
-In his letter to the Romans he strongly disagrees with those who think they are already
getting the benefits of enlightenment. The end of the end has not yet occurred.
-He claims pain in childbirth is proof of this.

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-Paul never mentions any of Jesus’ miracles, healings, exorcisms, or raisings from the
dead.
-He dwells on Christ’s crucifixion.
-He fully believes a true apostle’s life reflects the pain and agony of Jesus’ crucifixion.
-Bart points out that most people think the book of Revelations talks about our time.
-This comes back to his point of people thinking the Bible is ‘all about me!”.
-In the books of Peter the author redefines the word ‘soon’ to mean ‘distant future’.
-This okays things not happening right away as far as Judgment day goes.
-The word of God is sometimes referred to as a two-edged sword in Scripture.
-In John, Christ is referred to as the ‘lamb of God’.
-Revelation in essence describes the end of all things and the time of glorious
enlightenment at the end of days.
-Most all scholars today agree that the author of Revelation was talking about something
that was about to happen very soon either in his life or the next generation (40 years).
-In Chapter 17 were told that a one of the angels with the bowl of God’s wrath takes the
prophet into the woods to show him the great enemy of God. This is the famous “Whore
of Babylon.”. John sees a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, with seven heads and ten
horns (to remind the reader of the 4th beast in Daniel) that is bedecked with gold, jewels,
and pearls.
-This beast may be able to represent a city, the city of Babylon, which in the Hebrew
Bible is said to be the ultimate enemy of God. This could work, but in John’s time
Babylon is no longer a threat because it was non-existent at the time of the writing.
-We are told the seven heads of the beast represent seven kings, but also represent “seven
mountains on which the woman is seated.”
-This turns out to be the city of Rome (a city built upon seven mountains).
-This, the Roman Empire, is the enemy the book of Revelation is written against.
-In chapter 13 we are told the beast has ‘the number of a person’ and that number - the
mark of the best - is 666.
-An intelligent ancient reader would have had no trouble realizing who the number 666
represented.

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-Ancient languages like Greek and Hebrew used letters to represent numerals. (We use
Roman letters and Arabic numerals.)
-The author of Revelation is saying that if you add the letters of this persons name it will
equal 666.
-The perfect number of God is 7.
-666 is therefore someone far from the perfection of God.
-This may represent the 1st emperor to persecute Christians in Rome: Ceasar Nero.
-His name in Hebrew happens to total 666.
-What happens to an apocalyptic worldview when all this judgment never happens?
-In this case, they translated Jesus message to mean that this happens in the afterlife.
-In other words: the theory of heaven and hell arose out of this.
-The last of our Gospels contains this view especially in John where nobody mentions
Jesus saying apocalyptic teachings.
-John says those who believe in him will experience a re-birth ‘from above’, which is the
literal meaning of John’s Gospel.
-The teachings of Heaven and Hell as a place where individual souls go is not much
found in the Bible.
-Most authors in the Hebrew Bible did not believe in an afterlife.
-The apocalyptic worldview was designed to give hope to those who suffered.
-Near the end of the book Bart suggests reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers
Karamazov.

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