Just as with "Misquoting Jesus" where Ehrman revealed how the corruption of scripture by scribes caused him to reject his once-conservative Christian beliefs, in "God's Problem" Ehrman will discuss for the first time his personal anguish when he discovered the Bible's incoherent explanations for suffering and how that caused him to lose his faith altogether.In a fresh departure from Ehrman's recent focus on the New Testament, he expands his research to include much of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in "God's Problem" and reveal the core responses to suffering proposed by the different biblical writers. The prophets: suffering is a punishment for sin; Job (two different answers): suffering is a test, for which you'll later be rewarded for passing; and that suffering is beyond comprehension, since we're just peons and God, after all, is GOD); "Ecclesiastes": it's just the nature of things, so suck it up; and, all apocalyptic texts ("Daniel", plus the Apostle Paul's letters and the book of "Revelation" in the New Testament): God will eventually make right all that is wrong.

Author Biography

Bart D. Ehrman chairs the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A leading authority on the early Church and the life of Jesus, he has been featured in Time and has appeared on NBC Dateline, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, History Channel, major NPR shows, and other top media outlets. He is the author of twenty books .