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Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West
From the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus comes a surprising history of Jesus’ most radical commandment—a new kind of altruism—tracing how the extraordinary duty to love even those who are strangers to us has shaped our world and our lives.
When we donate money to victims of natural disasters, or offer our forgiveness, or consider it a government’s responsibility to provide some basic assistance to those in need, we are (knowingly or not) demonstrating the enduring legacy of a particularly Christian kind of love.
For centuries, Greek and Roman moral philosophers prioritized generosity towards friends and family. Even Old Testament exhortations to love your neighbor gave little reason to consider the suffering of those beyond your own community.
Jesus changed all this, introducing a revolutionary new ethical obligation to love those you didn’t even know—unconditionally—and to demonstrate that love through acts of care. The implications of this radical commandment would be debated, misunderstood, and resisted by early Christians. But by the fifth century, a new “common sense” began to transform the moral conscience—and the politics—of the West.
In Love Thy Stranger, New Testament historian Bart D. Ehrman charts the causes and consequences of this ethical revolution with his signature sly humor and verve. For in this moment of renewed debate over the limitations of Christian love, Jesus’ most demanding commandment remains a thrillingly provocative one, even two millennia on.
When we donate money to victims of natural disasters, or offer our forgiveness, or consider it a government’s responsibility to provide some basic assistance to those in need, we are (knowingly or not) demonstrating the enduring legacy of a particularly Christian kind of love.
For centuries, Greek and Roman moral philosophers prioritized generosity towards friends and family. Even Old Testament exhortations to love your neighbor gave little reason to consider the suffering of those beyond your own community.
Jesus changed all this, introducing a revolutionary new ethical obligation to love those you didn’t even know—unconditionally—and to demonstrate that love through acts of care. The implications of this radical commandment would be debated, misunderstood, and resisted by early Christians. But by the fifth century, a new “common sense” began to transform the moral conscience—and the politics—of the West.
In Love Thy Stranger, New Testament historian Bart D. Ehrman charts the causes and consequences of this ethical revolution with his signature sly humor and verve. For in this moment of renewed debate over the limitations of Christian love, Jesus’ most demanding commandment remains a thrillingly provocative one, even two millennia on.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 24, 2026
124 people are currently reading
388 people want to read
About the author
Bart D. Ehrman
67 books2,153 followersBart Denton Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 26, 2026
A weak 3*. After deciding that Richard Carrier is right and that Jesus did not exist at all, Bart D. Ehrman has fallen off the pedestal I have previously had him on. Nonetheless, I still think that analyzing Christianity is worthwhile to explain the current state of the world.
The idea of loving strangers was radically new and of course this has brought many positive things to the world. The shift in ethical norms led to institutions whose sole purpose was to heal the sick, feed the poor, house the homeless and so on. Decidedly a good thing.
What I find problematic with Christianity is that the focus on life after death and the upcoming apocalypse means that this life is not prioritized. Nor are we taking care of the earth, its creatures and the environment. If we would have the non Christian stand point that we hold no special place as the pinnacle of creation, maybe we would manage life on earth better.
As an atheist I do not believe in an eternal soul or any sky wizards. Think of all the gods you don’t believe in and remove one more. That’s all it takes to completely reframe your thinking and free yourself from the shackles of religion.
Becoming an atheist has not changed my moral or ethics one iota. (It’s not recent, I have been a happy and contented atheist for two decades now.) Although I do not believe in god or his entourage, I do believe in helping the needy. I donate generously every year and every month to a number of charities such as Amnesty and Doctors Without Borders.
This book will appeal to Christians, probably. The author is agnostic, but he makes a poor job of picking the Bible apart in this book. Which is his style, and I don’t find him as great as I once did.
The idea of loving strangers was radically new and of course this has brought many positive things to the world. The shift in ethical norms led to institutions whose sole purpose was to heal the sick, feed the poor, house the homeless and so on. Decidedly a good thing.
What I find problematic with Christianity is that the focus on life after death and the upcoming apocalypse means that this life is not prioritized. Nor are we taking care of the earth, its creatures and the environment. If we would have the non Christian stand point that we hold no special place as the pinnacle of creation, maybe we would manage life on earth better.
As an atheist I do not believe in an eternal soul or any sky wizards. Think of all the gods you don’t believe in and remove one more. That’s all it takes to completely reframe your thinking and free yourself from the shackles of religion.
Becoming an atheist has not changed my moral or ethics one iota. (It’s not recent, I have been a happy and contented atheist for two decades now.) Although I do not believe in god or his entourage, I do believe in helping the needy. I donate generously every year and every month to a number of charities such as Amnesty and Doctors Without Borders.
This book will appeal to Christians, probably. The author is agnostic, but he makes a poor job of picking the Bible apart in this book. Which is his style, and I don’t find him as great as I once did.
January 3, 2026
have read many books written by Bart Ehrman and am a faithful listener to his podcast. After reading the introduction to his book God's Problem many years ago, I became a fan of his work, For me the introduction was the right words at the right time for someone like me who was searching after having my whole world shook and my faith decimated years earlier. And the book is pretty darn good also.
After listening to his podcast and he and the host were referring to the new book Love Thy Stranger, I knew immediately it would be a must read for me.
I was not disappointed.
This is, in my opinion, Ehrman's finest book. It is a book which addresses many of the issues that this country and others are facing with regards to "the other".
I especially found it interesting that he writes about other ancient cultures/civilizations and how they addressed the issues of one who is not like them and how the Hebrews, Jesus and his teachings and then early Christianity turned the care for others not like them into acts of compassion.
This is a book that needed to be written as well as read.
Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.
After listening to his podcast and he and the host were referring to the new book Love Thy Stranger, I knew immediately it would be a must read for me.
I was not disappointed.
This is, in my opinion, Ehrman's finest book. It is a book which addresses many of the issues that this country and others are facing with regards to "the other".
I especially found it interesting that he writes about other ancient cultures/civilizations and how they addressed the issues of one who is not like them and how the Hebrews, Jesus and his teachings and then early Christianity turned the care for others not like them into acts of compassion.
This is a book that needed to be written as well as read.
Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.
November 26, 2025
An excellent and insightful analysis of the development of altruism as laid out by Jesus in his teachings. Dr. Ehrman provides a considerable foundation of Greek philosophy and Jewish theology in this slim guide to how altruism, love and forgiveness all led to radical new visions laid out by Jesus. But we also learn of how the early Christian church followed (and strayed) from the words of Christ.
Thought-provoking and challenging to a Christians and non-Christians alike.
Thought-provoking and challenging to a Christians and non-Christians alike.
December 8, 2025
Bart D. Ehrman’s Love thy Stranger teases out the complicated history of Christianity and charity (and the complexity of what charity or altruism even is). Ehrman starts with an overview of Ancient Greek and Roman philosophies on morality and perspectives on moral duties for others (spoiler alert: to the Greeks and Romans, if they weren’t family or friends, you had no obligation to care for them). Following that, Ehrman offers a compelling case that Jesus’s true message was of forgiveness based on repentance and radically giving away everything to care for the poor, as well as the poor being the closest to God, but that his followers changed the message into Jesus having made atonement for all and reduced the radicalness of generosity demanded by Jesus.
If you’re in for a scholarly and comprehensive yet totally digestible thesis on Christian charity, you’ve found it here.
If you’re in for a scholarly and comprehensive yet totally digestible thesis on Christian charity, you’ve found it here.
March 24, 2026
For all the intellectual brilliance and cultural achievements of ancient Greece and Rome—its philosophers, poets, athletes, and emperors—something essential was missing. Where, we might ask, were the hospitals, orphanages, and organized systems of charity? When did caring for the poor, the sick, and the stranger become a defining moral ideal of Western civilization?
In Love Thy Stranger, New Testament historian Bart D. Ehrman argues that the answer lies in the teachings of Jesus. According to Ehrman, the rise of Christianity fundamentally reshaped the moral imagination of the West, introducing the radical idea that compassion for the weak and vulnerable is not optional, but essential.
This book is “IMPORTANT,” Erhman posted at his blog, Why I Wrote Love Thy Stranger and Significant Benefits that Can Come Your Way (February 6, 2026).
That got my attention. I’m pre-approved for Simon & Schuster ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) via NetGally, where more than enough books compete for my attention and limited reviewing time. What would make this one more urgent or worthwhile than others? Is Ehrman covering new ground here?
Ehrman begins by contrasting early Christian ethics with the moral frameworks of Greek and Roman antiquity. In those societies, moral obligation was largely confined to family, friends, and social equals. There were no public hospitals, orphanages, or widespread charitable institutions. Love had boundaries; it did not extend naturally to strangers, enemies, or the marginalized. Against this backdrop, the teachings attributed to Jesus—love your enemies, turn the other cheek, give to those in need—were nothing short of revolutionary.
Ehrman’s central claim is compelling: as Christianity spread throughout the Roman world, it introduced a new ethical paradigm, one that elevated humility over power and compassion over status. Ideas that are now widely accepted—human equality, care for the poor, and the moral obligation to alleviate suffering—were not givens in the ancient world. As Ehrman puts it, while modern societies often fail to live up to these ideals, at least they exist as ideals to strive toward.
At times, Love Thy Stranger overlaps with arguments made by Tom Holland in his book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, which similarly credits Christianity with shaping modern concepts of human rights and moral equality. Ehrman, however, approaches the topic from a more skeptical, historical-critical perspective. A former evangelical Christian turned atheist, he does not affirm the divinity of Jesus. Instead, he argues that Jesus was a historical figure whose message was later transformed by his followers, particularly in the development of doctrines such as atonement and divine incarnation.
This is where the book becomes more uneven. Ehrman devotes significant attention to arguments against the divinity of Jesus—territory he has already covered extensively in earlier works such as Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus Became God. For readers familiar with his scholarship, these sections can feel repetitive and somewhat disconnected from the book’s central theme of charity and moral transformation.
Similarly, some digressions, such as discussions of Greek concepts of eros (a page devoted to man/boy love) or brief forays into comparisons with Eastern traditions, do not seem relevant to the main argument.
Ehrman notes that versions of the Golden Rule existed in earlier cultures, but that Jesus gave it a distinctive, positive formulation: not merely refraining from harm, but actively doing good.
One of the book’s more provocative threads is Ehrman’s suggestion that many modern Christians, particularly those in positions of power, fall short of the radical ethical demands of Jesus. In contrast, he observes that people of various religious and nonreligious backgrounds often embody these values more consistently in practice. Christianity, in this sense, did not make humanity universally altruistic—but it did help establish altruism as an aspirational norm.
Ehrman also emphasizes the limits of ancient moral systems in a practical sense. Even if compassion had been more widely valued, ancient societies lacked the institutional and technological means to respond to suffering on a large scale or across great distances. Today, by contrast, we have both the awareness and the capability to address global suffering—yet, as Ehrman notes, we often lack the political will.
Ultimately, Love Thy Stranger is less about theology than about moral history. Ehrman’s “important” message, as he describes it, is that the ethical teachings attributed to Jesus—regardless of one’s beliefs about his divinity—have had a profound and lasting impact on how we think about human dignity and responsibility. The enduring challenge is not whether these ideals exist, but whether we are willing to live up to them.
Ehrman, an atheist, has established charitable foundations for disaster relief across the globe, feeding and sheltering the poor, and welcoming immigrants. He implies that most Christian politicians are betraying the ideals they espouse.
If the book occasionally wanders or revisits familiar ground, it nonetheless raises a vital question: in a world where compassion is widely praised but unevenly practiced, what would it actually mean to take seriously the command to love the stranger?
In Love Thy Stranger, New Testament historian Bart D. Ehrman argues that the answer lies in the teachings of Jesus. According to Ehrman, the rise of Christianity fundamentally reshaped the moral imagination of the West, introducing the radical idea that compassion for the weak and vulnerable is not optional, but essential.
This book is “IMPORTANT,” Erhman posted at his blog, Why I Wrote Love Thy Stranger and Significant Benefits that Can Come Your Way (February 6, 2026).
That got my attention. I’m pre-approved for Simon & Schuster ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) via NetGally, where more than enough books compete for my attention and limited reviewing time. What would make this one more urgent or worthwhile than others? Is Ehrman covering new ground here?
Ehrman begins by contrasting early Christian ethics with the moral frameworks of Greek and Roman antiquity. In those societies, moral obligation was largely confined to family, friends, and social equals. There were no public hospitals, orphanages, or widespread charitable institutions. Love had boundaries; it did not extend naturally to strangers, enemies, or the marginalized. Against this backdrop, the teachings attributed to Jesus—love your enemies, turn the other cheek, give to those in need—were nothing short of revolutionary.
Ehrman’s central claim is compelling: as Christianity spread throughout the Roman world, it introduced a new ethical paradigm, one that elevated humility over power and compassion over status. Ideas that are now widely accepted—human equality, care for the poor, and the moral obligation to alleviate suffering—were not givens in the ancient world. As Ehrman puts it, while modern societies often fail to live up to these ideals, at least they exist as ideals to strive toward.
At times, Love Thy Stranger overlaps with arguments made by Tom Holland in his book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, which similarly credits Christianity with shaping modern concepts of human rights and moral equality. Ehrman, however, approaches the topic from a more skeptical, historical-critical perspective. A former evangelical Christian turned atheist, he does not affirm the divinity of Jesus. Instead, he argues that Jesus was a historical figure whose message was later transformed by his followers, particularly in the development of doctrines such as atonement and divine incarnation.
This is where the book becomes more uneven. Ehrman devotes significant attention to arguments against the divinity of Jesus—territory he has already covered extensively in earlier works such as Misquoting Jesus and How Jesus Became God. For readers familiar with his scholarship, these sections can feel repetitive and somewhat disconnected from the book’s central theme of charity and moral transformation.
Similarly, some digressions, such as discussions of Greek concepts of eros (a page devoted to man/boy love) or brief forays into comparisons with Eastern traditions, do not seem relevant to the main argument.
Ehrman notes that versions of the Golden Rule existed in earlier cultures, but that Jesus gave it a distinctive, positive formulation: not merely refraining from harm, but actively doing good.
One of the book’s more provocative threads is Ehrman’s suggestion that many modern Christians, particularly those in positions of power, fall short of the radical ethical demands of Jesus. In contrast, he observes that people of various religious and nonreligious backgrounds often embody these values more consistently in practice. Christianity, in this sense, did not make humanity universally altruistic—but it did help establish altruism as an aspirational norm.
Ehrman also emphasizes the limits of ancient moral systems in a practical sense. Even if compassion had been more widely valued, ancient societies lacked the institutional and technological means to respond to suffering on a large scale or across great distances. Today, by contrast, we have both the awareness and the capability to address global suffering—yet, as Ehrman notes, we often lack the political will.
Ultimately, Love Thy Stranger is less about theology than about moral history. Ehrman’s “important” message, as he describes it, is that the ethical teachings attributed to Jesus—regardless of one’s beliefs about his divinity—have had a profound and lasting impact on how we think about human dignity and responsibility. The enduring challenge is not whether these ideals exist, but whether we are willing to live up to them.
Ehrman, an atheist, has established charitable foundations for disaster relief across the globe, feeding and sheltering the poor, and welcoming immigrants. He implies that most Christian politicians are betraying the ideals they espouse.
If the book occasionally wanders or revisits familiar ground, it nonetheless raises a vital question: in a world where compassion is widely praised but unevenly practiced, what would it actually mean to take seriously the command to love the stranger?
April 10, 2026
The central thesis is delineating the differences between pre-christian Europe (the Greek and Roman religions and ethics), as well as the pre-existing jewish traditions that Jesus expanded on. In this we get plenty of detail and specific examples. Ehrman also spends a lot of time exploring the differences between what Jesus says and what Paul and the later christian tradition becomes - including a battle for the meaning of atonement and how ethics works if your sins are all forgiven (leading to absurd conclusions like avoiding baptism until ones death bed in early Christianity, to avoid sinning after being forgiven).
The primary problem with the thesis for me is showing that it's indeed the theological and ethical changes following Christianity that proves to be the driver of charitable reform and our new collective ideals. A comparative religious view would show the existence of charity being central to other religions, a sociological study on who follows the actual precepts of charity isn't primarily the most Christian (as Ehrman also discusses), so the obvious "what if", is whether there was an ongoing shift of consciousness that would have happened regardless (consider the amount of influence from greek philosophy on early Christianity as Ehrman also discusses in other books).
What we also do not explore much of is the later evolution of Christianity and the ongoing battles over ethics. The monastic tradition arising in opposition to failures of the church, the problem of amassing wealth and issues of corruption (like buying indulgences) leading to reform attempts, splinter groups and ultimately the reformation and counter-reformation. This isn't necessarily a strike against his thesis, as the search for "originalism" refers back to a source of christian ethics. But it's pretty central pothole to the problem of how the religion supposedly changed the moral conscience of western civilization.
Alternatives: A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, a giant account of Christianity giving much more context to the battles over the soul of the religion.
The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, another Ehrman book, that discusses the reasons for Christianity spreading across the world, but not from an ethical, but practical POV.
The primary problem with the thesis for me is showing that it's indeed the theological and ethical changes following Christianity that proves to be the driver of charitable reform and our new collective ideals. A comparative religious view would show the existence of charity being central to other religions, a sociological study on who follows the actual precepts of charity isn't primarily the most Christian (as Ehrman also discusses), so the obvious "what if", is whether there was an ongoing shift of consciousness that would have happened regardless (consider the amount of influence from greek philosophy on early Christianity as Ehrman also discusses in other books).
What we also do not explore much of is the later evolution of Christianity and the ongoing battles over ethics. The monastic tradition arising in opposition to failures of the church, the problem of amassing wealth and issues of corruption (like buying indulgences) leading to reform attempts, splinter groups and ultimately the reformation and counter-reformation. This isn't necessarily a strike against his thesis, as the search for "originalism" refers back to a source of christian ethics. But it's pretty central pothole to the problem of how the religion supposedly changed the moral conscience of western civilization.
Alternatives: A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, a giant account of Christianity giving much more context to the battles over the soul of the religion.
The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, another Ehrman book, that discusses the reasons for Christianity spreading across the world, but not from an ethical, but practical POV.
April 24, 2026
it was interesting to read through and it really changed my perspective of how i view the origins of jesus as a story. yeah, if a guy went around declaring himself the king of jews, he WOULD be put to a stake (or cross), that makes sense now. anyway, the comparison of charity in religious and cultural beliefs is skewed with a focus on only roman/greek ethics and christian/jewish ones. i will say that i feel there was a lot of information that was biased in that regard, although it was fun to think about how the religion has changed so dramatically in perception among the population since its birth. i really would like to see how the author would have approached his thesis if he had also taken in account more eastern/asian related information and others in africa, nordic areas, etc, or had collaborated with someone knowledgeable in such a field to crossreference his thesis and data with.
April 10, 2026
Ehrman is almost always an interesting read and this book holds up. I was worried that the entire purpose of the book would be a bit simple and not worth the page count, but Ehrman does a fantastic job of framing his question beforehand with an amazing recounting and history of the philosophical ideas and cultural anthropology that lead up to his question. A reader would get excellent value from just this first half of the book. I personally think that his conclusions are valid but I'm not in full agreement on every point or generalization.
Ehrman does propose some excellent questions and really fun thought experiments on what might have beens that those who are familiar with his work will be sure to enjoy. I was also very surprised how timely and at times piquant his comments were on the here and now. He's usually so grounded in antiquity that it was fun to hear him call-out and even give the scholastic middle finger to various faith based practices and administrations.
I was interested, but never amazed by the writing or conclusions, so this might have only been a 3 star read, but I think that regardless of content this was a very heartfelt and personal book for Ehrman to write, and I like knowing that he's doing his little part to make the world a bit better for all the strangers out there.
Ehrman does propose some excellent questions and really fun thought experiments on what might have beens that those who are familiar with his work will be sure to enjoy. I was also very surprised how timely and at times piquant his comments were on the here and now. He's usually so grounded in antiquity that it was fun to hear him call-out and even give the scholastic middle finger to various faith based practices and administrations.
I was interested, but never amazed by the writing or conclusions, so this might have only been a 3 star read, but I think that regardless of content this was a very heartfelt and personal book for Ehrman to write, and I like knowing that he's doing his little part to make the world a bit better for all the strangers out there.
April 23, 2026
Insightful review of the positive impact Jesus's teachings had on western civilization and our perspective about and responsibility of taking care of others.
A fascinating portion of the book is Dr. Ehrman's discussion of Jesus' radical teaching of forgiveness vs. Paul's and other early church leaders focus on atonement or paying a penalty for sin.
This book is highly recommended.
A fascinating portion of the book is Dr. Ehrman's discussion of Jesus' radical teaching of forgiveness vs. Paul's and other early church leaders focus on atonement or paying a penalty for sin.
This book is highly recommended.
April 11, 2026
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”--Ernesto Che Guevara
I’m an admirer of the historical Jesus, viewing him as representing a form of utopian socialism, see Foundations of Christianity: A Study in Christian Origins. And I am also an admirer of Bart Ehrman; this is only my second book--The first was Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. But I listen to him frequently on YouTube. While I think it quite likely that the teachings of Jesus played a role in people caring about others they don’t know, I think the socialist and labor movements have played a much bigger role, despite the abominations of Stalinism, which was not only a system of totalitarian rule, but which represented a Thermidorean counterrevolution both at home and abroad, and which first turned the Communist International into an arm of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and then junked it as a favor to F.D.R. (Out of dozens of books by Trosky and his followers, see The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? and The Third International after Lenin.
Labor and socialism changed things from the condescension of charity to the comradery of solidarity, a big change, since I don't think today's ruling classes have changed their morals all that much in 2,000 years.
Cuba is at present more than ever faced with starvation of people for their refusal to bend to the power of imperialism. Is there any other country or charity or religious group with the record of fighting colonialism and apartheid, as well as fighting disease on a world-scale as Cuba? I think I can safely answer “No.” There isn’t anyone else in the world who comes even close. And they never tried to force their social system or anything else on the liberation movements and countries they aided. There are so many books to illustrate these points, that I have to refer people to the website of www.pathfinderpress.com to find them all, but start with Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own, Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire In Africa, and Red Zone: Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa.
One will also find there Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and Trotsky, whose History of the Russian Revolution is essential reading for anyone interested in changing the world.
The US was on the wrong side of the fights against colonialism, and white domination in Rhodesia and South Africa. Cuba (and not the Soviet Union!) played an active part in this. On July 26, 1990, Nelson Mandela thanked the Cuban people for their decisive aid, including the 425,000 volunteers who served in Angola, more than two thousand of whom gave their lives there. He underscored the “truly historic significance of their presence and reinforcement” in the 1988 battle of Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola.
“The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa!” Mandela told the world. It has been “a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid.” See How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World for the speeches of Mandela and Castro on that day. The title comes from Castro’s speech; you can compare it to Ehrman on Jesus—“It is not the masters but the slaves who are superior.”
Early on, Cuba made the mistake of persecuting the Catholic Church, but like most things where they were wrong, they corrected it.
If you think Cuba is Stalinist, read Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation by Joseph Hansen, longtime leader of the Socialist Workers Party, and former secretary to Leon Trotsky in Mexico. Internationalism is not a Stalinist trait! If you prefer reading a more academically oriented book, read Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 by Piero Gleijeses. a professor of US foreign policy at Johns Hopkins.
While I admire people like Bart Ehrman and Bob Dylan who give so much to charity, I think they’re somewhat naïve about what most charities are. The charities are run by people from the upper middle class, who want to show what a sacrifice they’re making by not working for the even better paid private executive roles. See, Are They Rich Because They're Smart?, a look at the self-proclaimed “cosmopolitan enlightened meritocracy." Those who count themselves as part of this “enlightened meritocracy,” author Jack Barnes wrote, “truly believe that their ‘brightness,’ their ‘quickness,’ their ‘contributions to public life’ … give them the right to make decisions, to administer and ‘regulate’ society for the bourgeoisie—on behalf of what they claim to be the interests of ‘the people.' The growing social and moral gap between the working class and this meritocracy is understood by more and more workers….”
It took two revolutions in the United States, See America's Revolutionary Heritage in order to establish, on paper, what is in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal.” The struggle continues, as it does on a world scale.
I hadn’t been born yet at the time of the mass movement that established the CIO and turned some of the AFL unions into mass industrial unions. I was a strong supporter and in the later stages a participant, in the battle to win full equality for Black people—The struggle to defend busing for desegregation of the schools in Boston against racist mobs (incidentally, Joe Biden was on the side of the racists in that fight). While there were many clerics of all religions involved in the Civil Rights Movement, most importantly Martin Luther King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Malcolm X, the main thing is that it was another mass proletarian movement. There is a large number of good books on the Civil Rights movement, but I think the best is the 3-volume set starting with Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 by Taylor Branch, despite the fact that it’s centered around King. Along with this, read Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power
Then there was the movement against the War in Vietnam, which grew out of the Civil Rights movement and had a large Black participation at the beginning. The Black Panther Party put an end to that by simply sending one leader to white-bait the demonstration. They had no interest in mobilizing Blacks. Ending the war was part of their 10-Point Program, but they never organized around that--They used it as a catechism. The movement involved a lot of students but also a huge number of active-duty Gis, including many stationed in Vietnam. For the history of that, see Out Now: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States Against the Vietnam War. I was furious when some idiot on the New York Times staff decided that the Jew-haters supporting Hamas, see The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch, was how the antiwar movement must have been.
To understand the movement against the Vietnam War, look at all the Russian workers, soldiers, and intellectuals who support the fight for an independent Ukraine, and for democratic rights in their own country! They have much harder task in authoritarian Russia, but they’re doing the same thing we did, and Ukraine wouldn’t have had a chance without them.
Karl Kautsky wrote a book, Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History, which may be helpful for the philosophical background, but not until Trotsky do we have a book that lays out the concrete morality of Marxism, Their Morals and Ours: The Class Foundations of Moral Practice But even more relevant today are Fidel Castro’s writings to help convince the FARC that what they were doing was fundamentally wrong, and helping to bring peace to Colombia, Revolution and the Road to Peace in Colombia: Lessons from the Cuban Revolution.
Ehrman, writes that, “Prior to the spread of Christianity, there were no public hospitals in the Roman world; no orphanages, poorhouses, or old persons’ homes; no government assistance to help those in need or private charities to minister to the poor, homeless, and hungry. These are Christian innovations that evolved from Christian understandings of what it meant to be a good person.”
He writes that prior to this, “The idea of giving generously to strangers in dire straits was not just frowned upon, it was often discouraged. As a rule, when the wealthy did provide material support to those of the lower classes—and the vast majority of people were in the lower classes—it was not out of sympathy. It was to prevent riots.” Class conflict, and measures to prevent it; not so different from today.
Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, recently asked the American people to pray “every day, on bended knee” for a military victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ.” I was glad to see Pope Leo XIV reject this and say in a Sunday homily that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” The Catholic Church is itself very morally compromised, but it has an enormous working-class base, which is not pro-war.
Most workers who voted for Trump did so not because of his racism, but because the Democrats defended the status quo, while real wages, employment, and even lifespan were clearly on the decline. It was Hillary Clinton, not Trump who sounded openly pro-war. The US needs a party based on workers and working farmers, not on big business, like the Democrats and Republicans. Are the Democrats more pro-labor? Hardly. The first thing Joe Biden did was force rail workers to accept a contract they had already voted down. This is one of the legacies of the Stalinists, who made Franklin D. Roosevelt into a secular saint, and applauded when he threw the genuine Marxists of the Socialist Workers Party into prison. Within a few years, the Stalinists would be jailed under the same Smith Act thought-control legislation, see Teamster Bureaucracy and Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial.
Ehrman writes, "But many agnostics, atheists, and followers of other religions maintain the opposite, that Christianity has done unnecessary and inconceivable harm, that without Christianity we would not have had crusades, inquisitions, wars of religion, and pogroms against Jews that led to the Holocaust. Which is it? My view is that both sides of the argument are making simplistic and overgeneralized claims about a deeply complicated and entangled set of issues.”
This kind of argument against Ehrman bothers me; atheism isn’t a philosophy---It just tells people what you DON'T believe in. But most “atheists” today, ironically are idealists. Their view of religion is that it’s something that stands outside of time and space, (just like God!) whereas it’s been a major part of human culture. Every materialist knows that while wars in both the past and present use religion to justify themselves, they are always about very material things—Land, labor (in many periods the slave trade), taxes, plunder, including precious metals, and today oil and natural gas. If the crusades were about religion, why did they end up fighting other Christians who they ran into before they ran into Muslims? So, religion gets blamed for wars. Why doesn’t it get credited for the important music and art it influences? Today people only know the very different colloquial use of the term "materialism” and have never bothered even to look it up in the dictionary, much less read anything about philosophy, see The Origins of Materialism: The Evolution of a Scientific View of the World. It's what people do, not what’s in their heads (which is not even easy to determine) that matters.
Ehrman writes, “Most people are altruistic in one way or another—it is simply part of what it means to be human. Without altruism the human species would not have emerged, survived, and thrived. Nor would any of the prehuman species we count as our biological ancestors. Without some level of sacrificial cooperation, no social group can succeed in the competition for resources. This is not just a modern biological theory but a documented social and historical reality.” See The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. and Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History.
I’m an admirer of the historical Jesus, viewing him as representing a form of utopian socialism, see Foundations of Christianity: A Study in Christian Origins. And I am also an admirer of Bart Ehrman; this is only my second book--The first was Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. But I listen to him frequently on YouTube. While I think it quite likely that the teachings of Jesus played a role in people caring about others they don’t know, I think the socialist and labor movements have played a much bigger role, despite the abominations of Stalinism, which was not only a system of totalitarian rule, but which represented a Thermidorean counterrevolution both at home and abroad, and which first turned the Communist International into an arm of the Stalinist bureaucracy, and then junked it as a favor to F.D.R. (Out of dozens of books by Trosky and his followers, see The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? and The Third International after Lenin.
Labor and socialism changed things from the condescension of charity to the comradery of solidarity, a big change, since I don't think today's ruling classes have changed their morals all that much in 2,000 years.
Cuba is at present more than ever faced with starvation of people for their refusal to bend to the power of imperialism. Is there any other country or charity or religious group with the record of fighting colonialism and apartheid, as well as fighting disease on a world-scale as Cuba? I think I can safely answer “No.” There isn’t anyone else in the world who comes even close. And they never tried to force their social system or anything else on the liberation movements and countries they aided. There are so many books to illustrate these points, that I have to refer people to the website of www.pathfinderpress.com to find them all, but start with Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own, Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire In Africa, and Red Zone: Cuba and the Battle Against Ebola in West Africa.
One will also find there Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and Trotsky, whose History of the Russian Revolution is essential reading for anyone interested in changing the world.
The US was on the wrong side of the fights against colonialism, and white domination in Rhodesia and South Africa. Cuba (and not the Soviet Union!) played an active part in this. On July 26, 1990, Nelson Mandela thanked the Cuban people for their decisive aid, including the 425,000 volunteers who served in Angola, more than two thousand of whom gave their lives there. He underscored the “truly historic significance of their presence and reinforcement” in the 1988 battle of Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola.
“The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa!” Mandela told the world. It has been “a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid.” See How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World for the speeches of Mandela and Castro on that day. The title comes from Castro’s speech; you can compare it to Ehrman on Jesus—“It is not the masters but the slaves who are superior.”
Early on, Cuba made the mistake of persecuting the Catholic Church, but like most things where they were wrong, they corrected it.
If you think Cuba is Stalinist, read Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation by Joseph Hansen, longtime leader of the Socialist Workers Party, and former secretary to Leon Trotsky in Mexico. Internationalism is not a Stalinist trait! If you prefer reading a more academically oriented book, read Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 by Piero Gleijeses. a professor of US foreign policy at Johns Hopkins.
While I admire people like Bart Ehrman and Bob Dylan who give so much to charity, I think they’re somewhat naïve about what most charities are. The charities are run by people from the upper middle class, who want to show what a sacrifice they’re making by not working for the even better paid private executive roles. See, Are They Rich Because They're Smart?, a look at the self-proclaimed “cosmopolitan enlightened meritocracy." Those who count themselves as part of this “enlightened meritocracy,” author Jack Barnes wrote, “truly believe that their ‘brightness,’ their ‘quickness,’ their ‘contributions to public life’ … give them the right to make decisions, to administer and ‘regulate’ society for the bourgeoisie—on behalf of what they claim to be the interests of ‘the people.' The growing social and moral gap between the working class and this meritocracy is understood by more and more workers….”
It took two revolutions in the United States, See America's Revolutionary Heritage in order to establish, on paper, what is in the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal.” The struggle continues, as it does on a world scale.
I hadn’t been born yet at the time of the mass movement that established the CIO and turned some of the AFL unions into mass industrial unions. I was a strong supporter and in the later stages a participant, in the battle to win full equality for Black people—The struggle to defend busing for desegregation of the schools in Boston against racist mobs (incidentally, Joe Biden was on the side of the racists in that fight). While there were many clerics of all religions involved in the Civil Rights Movement, most importantly Martin Luther King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Malcolm X, the main thing is that it was another mass proletarian movement. There is a large number of good books on the Civil Rights movement, but I think the best is the 3-volume set starting with Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 by Taylor Branch, despite the fact that it’s centered around King. Along with this, read Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power
Then there was the movement against the War in Vietnam, which grew out of the Civil Rights movement and had a large Black participation at the beginning. The Black Panther Party put an end to that by simply sending one leader to white-bait the demonstration. They had no interest in mobilizing Blacks. Ending the war was part of their 10-Point Program, but they never organized around that--They used it as a catechism. The movement involved a lot of students but also a huge number of active-duty Gis, including many stationed in Vietnam. For the history of that, see Out Now: A Participant's Account of the Movement in the United States Against the Vietnam War. I was furious when some idiot on the New York Times staff decided that the Jew-haters supporting Hamas, see The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch, was how the antiwar movement must have been.
To understand the movement against the Vietnam War, look at all the Russian workers, soldiers, and intellectuals who support the fight for an independent Ukraine, and for democratic rights in their own country! They have much harder task in authoritarian Russia, but they’re doing the same thing we did, and Ukraine wouldn’t have had a chance without them.
Karl Kautsky wrote a book, Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History, which may be helpful for the philosophical background, but not until Trotsky do we have a book that lays out the concrete morality of Marxism, Their Morals and Ours: The Class Foundations of Moral Practice But even more relevant today are Fidel Castro’s writings to help convince the FARC that what they were doing was fundamentally wrong, and helping to bring peace to Colombia, Revolution and the Road to Peace in Colombia: Lessons from the Cuban Revolution.
Ehrman, writes that, “Prior to the spread of Christianity, there were no public hospitals in the Roman world; no orphanages, poorhouses, or old persons’ homes; no government assistance to help those in need or private charities to minister to the poor, homeless, and hungry. These are Christian innovations that evolved from Christian understandings of what it meant to be a good person.”
He writes that prior to this, “The idea of giving generously to strangers in dire straits was not just frowned upon, it was often discouraged. As a rule, when the wealthy did provide material support to those of the lower classes—and the vast majority of people were in the lower classes—it was not out of sympathy. It was to prevent riots.” Class conflict, and measures to prevent it; not so different from today.
Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, recently asked the American people to pray “every day, on bended knee” for a military victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ.” I was glad to see Pope Leo XIV reject this and say in a Sunday homily that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” The Catholic Church is itself very morally compromised, but it has an enormous working-class base, which is not pro-war.
Most workers who voted for Trump did so not because of his racism, but because the Democrats defended the status quo, while real wages, employment, and even lifespan were clearly on the decline. It was Hillary Clinton, not Trump who sounded openly pro-war. The US needs a party based on workers and working farmers, not on big business, like the Democrats and Republicans. Are the Democrats more pro-labor? Hardly. The first thing Joe Biden did was force rail workers to accept a contract they had already voted down. This is one of the legacies of the Stalinists, who made Franklin D. Roosevelt into a secular saint, and applauded when he threw the genuine Marxists of the Socialist Workers Party into prison. Within a few years, the Stalinists would be jailed under the same Smith Act thought-control legislation, see Teamster Bureaucracy and Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial.
Ehrman writes, "But many agnostics, atheists, and followers of other religions maintain the opposite, that Christianity has done unnecessary and inconceivable harm, that without Christianity we would not have had crusades, inquisitions, wars of religion, and pogroms against Jews that led to the Holocaust. Which is it? My view is that both sides of the argument are making simplistic and overgeneralized claims about a deeply complicated and entangled set of issues.”
This kind of argument against Ehrman bothers me; atheism isn’t a philosophy---It just tells people what you DON'T believe in. But most “atheists” today, ironically are idealists. Their view of religion is that it’s something that stands outside of time and space, (just like God!) whereas it’s been a major part of human culture. Every materialist knows that while wars in both the past and present use religion to justify themselves, they are always about very material things—Land, labor (in many periods the slave trade), taxes, plunder, including precious metals, and today oil and natural gas. If the crusades were about religion, why did they end up fighting other Christians who they ran into before they ran into Muslims? So, religion gets blamed for wars. Why doesn’t it get credited for the important music and art it influences? Today people only know the very different colloquial use of the term "materialism” and have never bothered even to look it up in the dictionary, much less read anything about philosophy, see The Origins of Materialism: The Evolution of a Scientific View of the World. It's what people do, not what’s in their heads (which is not even easy to determine) that matters.
Ehrman writes, “Most people are altruistic in one way or another—it is simply part of what it means to be human. Without altruism the human species would not have emerged, survived, and thrived. Nor would any of the prehuman species we count as our biological ancestors. Without some level of sacrificial cooperation, no social group can succeed in the competition for resources. This is not just a modern biological theory but a documented social and historical reality.” See The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. and Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History.
April 22, 2026
Bart Ehrman, biblical scholar and religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has made a career out of getting Christians to question their faith. Whether pointing out biblical contradictions, challenging historical narratives, or emphasizing the problem of evil, Ehrman has made it increasingly difficult for people to maintain their orthodox views. This book is no different: Ehrman will show you that, when it comes to Jesus’s ethical teachings, you probably misunderstand those, too.
When Jesus was asked how to gain eternal life, or enter the kingdom of God, he didn’t say to believe in him or in his death and resurrection—he said to keep the commandments, sell all your possessions, and give to the poor. His overriding concern was charity and helping those in need. And when he said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” he meant it. It was, in other words, impossible.
Ehrman lays out the case for taking Jesus at his word—and ignoring the faith-based requirements for salvation that came out of the development of early Christianity. Jesus wanted you to love and assist others and to serve only one master (God) at the expense of another (wealth). We soften these requirements only because they’re too difficult to follow.
But Jesus wasn’t being intentionally impractical, according to Ehrman. As a Jewish apocalypticist, Jesus fully expected the world to end—and within his lifetime. It’s true that Jesus asked his followers to abandon their family and leave them destitute—and to sell everything they owned—but what use are earthly goods when eternal rewards are just around the corner? The time to repent was now.
But the Day of Judgment never happened. If you wanted to be blunt about it, you could say that Jesus was a failed prophet. Nevertheless, according to Ehrman, he revolutionized Western ethics. He was the first to universalize acts of altruism, extending acts of love and charity to strangers and even enemies. This, Ehrman claims, is both philosophically revolutionary and a turning point in Western ethics. This is also where the book is most susceptible to criticism.
You could attack this view from different angles. You might propose that Jesus borrowed his ethics from others (especially, the Jews); that the Golden Rule is found in several pre-Christian philosophical systems and has deeper evolutionary roots; or that Jesus’s teachings are a bit more restricted to his followers than we might think (i.e., Jesus only taught us to love our enemies because our enemies would burn in hell anyway after the Day of Judgment).
Ehrman, to be fair, does consider much of this. He explores the concepts of love, charity, and forgiveness in both the Jewish and Greek traditions, but he doesn’t think these traditions went as far as Jesus did in their application. Again, you could debate this point on multiple fronts.
But for our purposes, let’s consider just one angle, and one critic. The philosopher I have in mind lived in 2nd-century Greece, and was a vocal critic of Jesus and his earliest followers. His name was Celsus.
“There is nothing new or impressive about their ethical teaching,” wrote Celsus. “Indeed, when one compares it to other philosophies, their simplemindedness becomes apparent.”
Celsus’s claim to fame is his suggestion that Christianity was utterly unoriginal. The Christians borrowed their ethics not only from the Jews, who said “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt (Deut. 10:19),” but also from the Greeks. The verse about the camel and the eye of a needle, for example, was actually borrowed from Plato, Celsus claimed:
“Not only do [Christians] misunderstand the words of the philosophers; they even stoop to assigning words of the philosophers to their Jesus. For example, we are told that Jesus judged the rich with the saying “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” Yet we know that Plato expressed this very idea in a purer form when he said, “It is impossible for an exceptionally good man to be exceptionally rich.” Is one utterance more inspired than the other?”
Consider also the representative verse of universal pacifism found in Matthew 5:39, where Jesus says: “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
Little do Christians know that this same sentiment comes from Plato in Crito:
“Be careful to see whether you agree with me and it is acceptable to you, and then let’s reason together on the assumption that it is never right to do wrong and never right to take revenge; nor is it right to give evil for evil, or in the case of one who has suffered some injury, to attempt to get even. Do you agree with my premises or not? It seems to me the truth of what I say is evident, and seems as valid today as it did yesterday.”
Ehrman seems to gloss over much of this. He writes, “The virtues of meekness, forgoing retribution, and refusing to assert oneself cannot be found in the repertoire of moral philosophers of the Greek and Roman worlds, with their ideology of dominance.” Except that we just saw an example from Plato. There were ideologies of dominance in ancient Greece, but it was far from universally accepted.
Ehrman is equally questionable in his coverage of Stoicism and Epicureanism, as he fails to appreciate the full significance of their views. Epicurus, after all, welcomed everyone into his philosophical school (called the Garden)—even women and slaves, an unheard-of practice at the time. As an atomist, Epicurus thought that human beings were all made of the same stuff (atoms) and therefore deserving of equal consideration. Jesus’s instructions to “love thy stranger” wouldn’t have seemed revolutionary to Epicurus because no one was considered a stranger in the first place.
The Stoics taught something similar—that we are all guided by “universal reason” and all belong to one universal human community. That is the entire basis for Stoic cosmopolitanism. Marcus Aurelius said that “people exist for each other,” and Epictetus told his students:
“If there is any truth in what the philosophers say about the kinship between God and humanity, what course is left for human beings than to follow the example of Socrates, and when one is asked where one is from, never to reply, ‘I’m an Athenian’ or ‘I’m a Corinthian’, but rather, ‘I’m a citizen of the universe’?”
Seneca, the other great Roman Stoic, said, “Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.” And on and on. These cosmopolitan ideas were widely known and shared, which makes it a bit surprising that Ehrman is trying to pass them off as new. Even Celsus—living around 2,400 years ago—knew that Christianity borrowed heavily from these traditions. The Christians simply expressed the ideas in terms those uneducated in philosophy could understand.
In any case, there’s still an important takeaway from the book: it’s not that Jesus invented Western cosmopolitan ethics, it’s that many self-proclaimed Christians ignore his teachings entirely. If you read his words carefully, Jesus is shown to be overwhelmingly concerned with the plight of the poor, and with the idea that one should shun material wealth in favor of helping those in need—regardless of where they come from (see the Parable of the Good Samaritan). If Ehrman helps more Christians to act on these teachings, then this will be one of the more important nonfiction books to come out this year.
When Jesus was asked how to gain eternal life, or enter the kingdom of God, he didn’t say to believe in him or in his death and resurrection—he said to keep the commandments, sell all your possessions, and give to the poor. His overriding concern was charity and helping those in need. And when he said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” he meant it. It was, in other words, impossible.
Ehrman lays out the case for taking Jesus at his word—and ignoring the faith-based requirements for salvation that came out of the development of early Christianity. Jesus wanted you to love and assist others and to serve only one master (God) at the expense of another (wealth). We soften these requirements only because they’re too difficult to follow.
But Jesus wasn’t being intentionally impractical, according to Ehrman. As a Jewish apocalypticist, Jesus fully expected the world to end—and within his lifetime. It’s true that Jesus asked his followers to abandon their family and leave them destitute—and to sell everything they owned—but what use are earthly goods when eternal rewards are just around the corner? The time to repent was now.
But the Day of Judgment never happened. If you wanted to be blunt about it, you could say that Jesus was a failed prophet. Nevertheless, according to Ehrman, he revolutionized Western ethics. He was the first to universalize acts of altruism, extending acts of love and charity to strangers and even enemies. This, Ehrman claims, is both philosophically revolutionary and a turning point in Western ethics. This is also where the book is most susceptible to criticism.
You could attack this view from different angles. You might propose that Jesus borrowed his ethics from others (especially, the Jews); that the Golden Rule is found in several pre-Christian philosophical systems and has deeper evolutionary roots; or that Jesus’s teachings are a bit more restricted to his followers than we might think (i.e., Jesus only taught us to love our enemies because our enemies would burn in hell anyway after the Day of Judgment).
Ehrman, to be fair, does consider much of this. He explores the concepts of love, charity, and forgiveness in both the Jewish and Greek traditions, but he doesn’t think these traditions went as far as Jesus did in their application. Again, you could debate this point on multiple fronts.
But for our purposes, let’s consider just one angle, and one critic. The philosopher I have in mind lived in 2nd-century Greece, and was a vocal critic of Jesus and his earliest followers. His name was Celsus.
“There is nothing new or impressive about their ethical teaching,” wrote Celsus. “Indeed, when one compares it to other philosophies, their simplemindedness becomes apparent.”
Celsus’s claim to fame is his suggestion that Christianity was utterly unoriginal. The Christians borrowed their ethics not only from the Jews, who said “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt (Deut. 10:19),” but also from the Greeks. The verse about the camel and the eye of a needle, for example, was actually borrowed from Plato, Celsus claimed:
“Not only do [Christians] misunderstand the words of the philosophers; they even stoop to assigning words of the philosophers to their Jesus. For example, we are told that Jesus judged the rich with the saying “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.” Yet we know that Plato expressed this very idea in a purer form when he said, “It is impossible for an exceptionally good man to be exceptionally rich.” Is one utterance more inspired than the other?”
Consider also the representative verse of universal pacifism found in Matthew 5:39, where Jesus says: “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
Little do Christians know that this same sentiment comes from Plato in Crito:
“Be careful to see whether you agree with me and it is acceptable to you, and then let’s reason together on the assumption that it is never right to do wrong and never right to take revenge; nor is it right to give evil for evil, or in the case of one who has suffered some injury, to attempt to get even. Do you agree with my premises or not? It seems to me the truth of what I say is evident, and seems as valid today as it did yesterday.”
Ehrman seems to gloss over much of this. He writes, “The virtues of meekness, forgoing retribution, and refusing to assert oneself cannot be found in the repertoire of moral philosophers of the Greek and Roman worlds, with their ideology of dominance.” Except that we just saw an example from Plato. There were ideologies of dominance in ancient Greece, but it was far from universally accepted.
Ehrman is equally questionable in his coverage of Stoicism and Epicureanism, as he fails to appreciate the full significance of their views. Epicurus, after all, welcomed everyone into his philosophical school (called the Garden)—even women and slaves, an unheard-of practice at the time. As an atomist, Epicurus thought that human beings were all made of the same stuff (atoms) and therefore deserving of equal consideration. Jesus’s instructions to “love thy stranger” wouldn’t have seemed revolutionary to Epicurus because no one was considered a stranger in the first place.
The Stoics taught something similar—that we are all guided by “universal reason” and all belong to one universal human community. That is the entire basis for Stoic cosmopolitanism. Marcus Aurelius said that “people exist for each other,” and Epictetus told his students:
“If there is any truth in what the philosophers say about the kinship between God and humanity, what course is left for human beings than to follow the example of Socrates, and when one is asked where one is from, never to reply, ‘I’m an Athenian’ or ‘I’m a Corinthian’, but rather, ‘I’m a citizen of the universe’?”
Seneca, the other great Roman Stoic, said, “Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.” And on and on. These cosmopolitan ideas were widely known and shared, which makes it a bit surprising that Ehrman is trying to pass them off as new. Even Celsus—living around 2,400 years ago—knew that Christianity borrowed heavily from these traditions. The Christians simply expressed the ideas in terms those uneducated in philosophy could understand.
In any case, there’s still an important takeaway from the book: it’s not that Jesus invented Western cosmopolitan ethics, it’s that many self-proclaimed Christians ignore his teachings entirely. If you read his words carefully, Jesus is shown to be overwhelmingly concerned with the plight of the poor, and with the idea that one should shun material wealth in favor of helping those in need—regardless of where they come from (see the Parable of the Good Samaritan). If Ehrman helps more Christians to act on these teachings, then this will be one of the more important nonfiction books to come out this year.
April 22, 2026
This is a very good book by Ehrman (as is usually the case with him). This is a different kind of book from what he normally does. This isn't an analysis of the early Christian writings and how people misinterpret them or how they were forged and the like. This isn't in-the-weeds understandings of what the gospels say in the original ancient Greek.
This argues that Christianity has profoundly impacted our ethics, creating our modern notion of giving aid to those in need, including (and especially) complete strangers. Actually, here's his thesis, baldly stated on page two (hardcover edition): "My argument in this book is tht the impulse to help strangers in need is embedded in our Western moral conscience because of the teachings of Jesus. As Christianity spread throughout the ancient world, it revolutionized the understanding of ethical obligation, leading to a fundamental transformation in the moral conscience of the West." The new religion took the ethics found in Judiasm and universalized it, so you should do more than to spread aid to those within your own tribe.
He notes that the ancient world had no orphanages or places for the poor or much government aid to thsoe in need. Even Rome's grain dole was just for one town and didn't always get to everyone there even. He looks at ancient philosophical schools and they never went for this. Cynics were more about personal liberation. Stoics had a duty to the world but also focused only on what one could control, which could lead to a callousness towards the suffering of others. Ultimately, Greek philosophy focused on how can *I* do well, not about helping others. There wasn't much concern over poverty as a problem to be solved.
Christ opposed idealogies of dominance. For him, you need to treat everyone well, especially the poor and those in need. It wasn't actually about faith in him, in his own words, but by the deeds you do for others. There's the Goats vs. Sheep story and the Good Samaritan. He actually didn't call for atonement, but just forgiveness. His followers add atonement later, in part (Ehrman theorizes) as a way to understand Christ's own crucifiction - the ultimate act of atonement. Another shift was more focus on how the community treats each other rather than the overall world, but overall alturism never went away.
Other stuff: Ehrman notes that the shift to monks & monastaries came right after the religion shifted from a potentially persecuted sect to the empire's favored religion. Might be something up with that. Plato's Symposium was five Greeks (including Socrates, of course) arguing on the ideal love, in which all agree on the main point, but with variations between them. That main point: the ideal form of love is between an adult man and a pre-puberty boy. (Welcome to ancient Greece!) Ehrman also gives a brief history of the rise of Jewish apocalypse belief: it can be traced back to the Maccabean Revolt in the 160s. They suffered not because they failed to keep the Torah but because they did keep it, thus the suffering must come from someone - it comes from Satan, who becomes The Bad Guy. Satan can't take on God, so punish those who follow him. A coming judgement would solve this. Now add in the Book of Daniel, written in the 160s BC, which speaks of a mysterious Son of Man.
This argues that Christianity has profoundly impacted our ethics, creating our modern notion of giving aid to those in need, including (and especially) complete strangers. Actually, here's his thesis, baldly stated on page two (hardcover edition): "My argument in this book is tht the impulse to help strangers in need is embedded in our Western moral conscience because of the teachings of Jesus. As Christianity spread throughout the ancient world, it revolutionized the understanding of ethical obligation, leading to a fundamental transformation in the moral conscience of the West." The new religion took the ethics found in Judiasm and universalized it, so you should do more than to spread aid to those within your own tribe.
He notes that the ancient world had no orphanages or places for the poor or much government aid to thsoe in need. Even Rome's grain dole was just for one town and didn't always get to everyone there even. He looks at ancient philosophical schools and they never went for this. Cynics were more about personal liberation. Stoics had a duty to the world but also focused only on what one could control, which could lead to a callousness towards the suffering of others. Ultimately, Greek philosophy focused on how can *I* do well, not about helping others. There wasn't much concern over poverty as a problem to be solved.
Christ opposed idealogies of dominance. For him, you need to treat everyone well, especially the poor and those in need. It wasn't actually about faith in him, in his own words, but by the deeds you do for others. There's the Goats vs. Sheep story and the Good Samaritan. He actually didn't call for atonement, but just forgiveness. His followers add atonement later, in part (Ehrman theorizes) as a way to understand Christ's own crucifiction - the ultimate act of atonement. Another shift was more focus on how the community treats each other rather than the overall world, but overall alturism never went away.
Other stuff: Ehrman notes that the shift to monks & monastaries came right after the religion shifted from a potentially persecuted sect to the empire's favored religion. Might be something up with that. Plato's Symposium was five Greeks (including Socrates, of course) arguing on the ideal love, in which all agree on the main point, but with variations between them. That main point: the ideal form of love is between an adult man and a pre-puberty boy. (Welcome to ancient Greece!) Ehrman also gives a brief history of the rise of Jewish apocalypse belief: it can be traced back to the Maccabean Revolt in the 160s. They suffered not because they failed to keep the Torah but because they did keep it, thus the suffering must come from someone - it comes from Satan, who becomes The Bad Guy. Satan can't take on God, so punish those who follow him. A coming judgement would solve this. Now add in the Book of Daniel, written in the 160s BC, which speaks of a mysterious Son of Man.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
In this book, Ehrman argues that the development of Christianity started a sea change in the Western world's approach to charity, altruism, and forgiveness. The idea is that both Greco-Roman philosophies and Judaism (Christianity's religious precursor) were more tribal. Those systems clearly presented arguments for being charitable and kind, but in the context of those closest to you -- your family and immediate neighbors -- i.e. your ingroup. However, Ehrman proposes that those systems did not suggest any obligation to be charitable or kind to those who were strangers to one.
This is an intriguing book and provides many thought-provoking ideas and lessons from scripture, philosophy, and history. Ehrman definitely makes a case, but I don't know that it is as strong as it might seem. In short, I think he did a great job of collecting stories and teachings that supported his point but showed less willingness to consider stories that might refute his thesis. I did appreciate how often Ehrman acknowledged contradictory views even when they conflicted with his own -- often (appropriately) in footnotes. That said, I can't recall seeing anything about the story of the Syrophoenician woman, a tale that seems to negate the book's argument. In that story, a woman (of Syrophoenician origin) comes seeking Jesus's help and is at first rebuked and turned away. Jesus says, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." Suggesting he neither sees her as the same species nor worthy of assistance. While it is true that Jesus does eventually assist her after she demeans herself ("Even dogs eat the children's crumbs,) it's still indication that he was far from advocating one behave lovingly toward all.
The book begins by dealing with broader questions, such as whether altruism actually exists (i.e. has existed) anywhere (i.e. are kind actions always self-serving?) and what the existing thinking was on the subject in Western philosophy and Abrahamic religion in Jesus's day. I thought these first few chapters were quite beneficial for setting the stage before jumping into the building of the book's central argument.
For those interested in what Jesus taught and what became of his teachings after his death, I'd recommend this book, or even for anyone interested in the changing shape of Western morality and ethics over time. I think the author conveys many interesting ideas in a readable and approachable way.
This is an intriguing book and provides many thought-provoking ideas and lessons from scripture, philosophy, and history. Ehrman definitely makes a case, but I don't know that it is as strong as it might seem. In short, I think he did a great job of collecting stories and teachings that supported his point but showed less willingness to consider stories that might refute his thesis. I did appreciate how often Ehrman acknowledged contradictory views even when they conflicted with his own -- often (appropriately) in footnotes. That said, I can't recall seeing anything about the story of the Syrophoenician woman, a tale that seems to negate the book's argument. In that story, a woman (of Syrophoenician origin) comes seeking Jesus's help and is at first rebuked and turned away. Jesus says, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." Suggesting he neither sees her as the same species nor worthy of assistance. While it is true that Jesus does eventually assist her after she demeans herself ("Even dogs eat the children's crumbs,) it's still indication that he was far from advocating one behave lovingly toward all.
The book begins by dealing with broader questions, such as whether altruism actually exists (i.e. has existed) anywhere (i.e. are kind actions always self-serving?) and what the existing thinking was on the subject in Western philosophy and Abrahamic religion in Jesus's day. I thought these first few chapters were quite beneficial for setting the stage before jumping into the building of the book's central argument.
For those interested in what Jesus taught and what became of his teachings after his death, I'd recommend this book, or even for anyone interested in the changing shape of Western morality and ethics over time. I think the author conveys many interesting ideas in a readable and approachable way.
March 31, 2026
Why do Christians contrast the “wrathful God of the Old Testament” with the “loving God of the New Testament”? What did Jesus actually teach about forgiveness versus atonement, and why do so many churches emphasize the latter? Bart Ehrman’s Love Thy Stranger finally gave me satisfying, well-reasoned answers.
One of the book’s central themes is how Jesus introduced a radical expansion of moral obligation. Not just caring for your own community, but extending that care to strangers and outsiders. Ehrman uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate this. The point of that story isn’t just “be kind.” It’s a deliberate challenge to the idea that your neighbor is only the person who looks, worships, or lives like you do. That reorientation was genuinely countercultural in its time.
Ehrman places Jesus firmly within his Jewish world and reframes Judaism on its own terms, how Jews actually understand the Torah, rather than through the lens Christians have historically imposed on it. The bias embedded in the Old Testament/New Testament contrast has a long and uncomfortable history that Ehrman exposes. The book also offers one of the clearest summaries I’ve encountered of the major ancient Greek schools of thought.
The argument I found most striking: Jesus taught that God forgives sins based on repentance alone, no atoning sacrifice required. Paul and the writers who followed him shifted almost entirely away from this, explaining Jesus’ death instead as God’s plan for saving the world through atonement. Ehrman traces how and why that shift happened.
He’s also fair-minded, giving Christianity credit for the genuine good it has done in the world while acknowledging the harm done in its name.
This book does a great job of explaining Jesus’ context, teachings, and the effect of his message. Additionally, if you’ve ever felt like certain parts of the Bible were never quite explained to you, or explained in ways that never quite satisfied, this book is worth your time.
One of the book’s central themes is how Jesus introduced a radical expansion of moral obligation. Not just caring for your own community, but extending that care to strangers and outsiders. Ehrman uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate this. The point of that story isn’t just “be kind.” It’s a deliberate challenge to the idea that your neighbor is only the person who looks, worships, or lives like you do. That reorientation was genuinely countercultural in its time.
Ehrman places Jesus firmly within his Jewish world and reframes Judaism on its own terms, how Jews actually understand the Torah, rather than through the lens Christians have historically imposed on it. The bias embedded in the Old Testament/New Testament contrast has a long and uncomfortable history that Ehrman exposes. The book also offers one of the clearest summaries I’ve encountered of the major ancient Greek schools of thought.
The argument I found most striking: Jesus taught that God forgives sins based on repentance alone, no atoning sacrifice required. Paul and the writers who followed him shifted almost entirely away from this, explaining Jesus’ death instead as God’s plan for saving the world through atonement. Ehrman traces how and why that shift happened.
He’s also fair-minded, giving Christianity credit for the genuine good it has done in the world while acknowledging the harm done in its name.
This book does a great job of explaining Jesus’ context, teachings, and the effect of his message. Additionally, if you’ve ever felt like certain parts of the Bible were never quite explained to you, or explained in ways that never quite satisfied, this book is worth your time.
April 14, 2026
I must admit, I always experience some tension as I take in Ehrman's teaching. As someone who was raised Evangelical, I have recognized for some time that the Bible contains a lot more tensions within it than Evangelicals generally let on. That being said, I still tend to look for ways to resolve those tensions and create a unified understanding of what the Bible teaches. That's not always possible, and it's rarely easy, but I tend to think that if you can get there, it's worth the effort.
Ehrman's inclination is the exact opposite: he not only sees the tensions, he focuses on them and sometimes seem to drive the biggest possible wedge between them. Sometimes, this feels forced. For example, I'm not convinced that forgiveness and atonement are as opposed as he makes them seem, at least not as the two concepts are presented within the Bible. However, because he begins by looking for tension, I often find that he highlights things I would have ignored or minimized, and is able to present a convincing narrative about how ideas developed throughout history. In this book, I was particularly impressed by his treatment of altruism. I'm convinced that he's right when he says that Jesus' radical love for strangers stemmed from his apocalyptic worldview, and that the early church softened the edges of his commandments even as it embraced the core concepts and revolutionized the Roman world. I think he made almost as compelling an argument about forgiveness, although I think he could have unified the concepts of forgiveness and atonement by considering Trinitarian theology and the concept of grace, neither of which factor into his thinking very much. Ultimately, this boils down to little more than a semantic difference, though... all in all, I found this book very helpful, and happily recommend it to anyone who wants to grapple with what really makes Jesus and Christianity distinct from other worldviews!
Ehrman's inclination is the exact opposite: he not only sees the tensions, he focuses on them and sometimes seem to drive the biggest possible wedge between them. Sometimes, this feels forced. For example, I'm not convinced that forgiveness and atonement are as opposed as he makes them seem, at least not as the two concepts are presented within the Bible. However, because he begins by looking for tension, I often find that he highlights things I would have ignored or minimized, and is able to present a convincing narrative about how ideas developed throughout history. In this book, I was particularly impressed by his treatment of altruism. I'm convinced that he's right when he says that Jesus' radical love for strangers stemmed from his apocalyptic worldview, and that the early church softened the edges of his commandments even as it embraced the core concepts and revolutionized the Roman world. I think he made almost as compelling an argument about forgiveness, although I think he could have unified the concepts of forgiveness and atonement by considering Trinitarian theology and the concept of grace, neither of which factor into his thinking very much. Ultimately, this boils down to little more than a semantic difference, though... all in all, I found this book very helpful, and happily recommend it to anyone who wants to grapple with what really makes Jesus and Christianity distinct from other worldviews!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 23, 2026
Bart D. Ehrman delivers a brilliant, deeply researched, and intellectually compelling exploration of one of the most radical ethical ideas in human history the command to love the stranger. Love Thy Stranger is far more than a study of Christian theology; it is a profound examination of how one moral teaching reshaped the foundations of Western conscience, politics, and social responsibility.
What makes this book especially remarkable is Ehrman’s ability to trace the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ teaching within its historical context. By contrasting early Christian ethics with Greek, Roman, and even Old Testament moral traditions, he clearly shows how extraordinary and disruptive the idea of unconditional love for strangers truly was. This perspective transforms what many assume to be a familiar teaching into something radical and historically transformative.
The book shines in its exploration of how this idea evolved, was resisted, misunderstood, and eventually embedded into Western assumptions about charity, forgiveness, justice, and public responsibility. Ehrman’s writing is sharp, accessible, and enriched by his signature clarity and wit, making complex theological and historical arguments engaging for both scholars and general readers alike.
Especially in a time when debates around compassion, obligation, and the limits of moral responsibility remain central, this book feels urgent and deeply relevant. It asks readers to reconsider not only history, but also the ethical foundations of modern life.
A remarkable and essential contribution to religious and historical nonfiction.
What makes this book especially remarkable is Ehrman’s ability to trace the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ teaching within its historical context. By contrasting early Christian ethics with Greek, Roman, and even Old Testament moral traditions, he clearly shows how extraordinary and disruptive the idea of unconditional love for strangers truly was. This perspective transforms what many assume to be a familiar teaching into something radical and historically transformative.
The book shines in its exploration of how this idea evolved, was resisted, misunderstood, and eventually embedded into Western assumptions about charity, forgiveness, justice, and public responsibility. Ehrman’s writing is sharp, accessible, and enriched by his signature clarity and wit, making complex theological and historical arguments engaging for both scholars and general readers alike.
Especially in a time when debates around compassion, obligation, and the limits of moral responsibility remain central, this book feels urgent and deeply relevant. It asks readers to reconsider not only history, but also the ethical foundations of modern life.
A remarkable and essential contribution to religious and historical nonfiction.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This is a book for our times. With all the fuss white Christian nationalists give to expelling the immigrant or riding us of toxic empathy, this book puts out there both these views are antithetical to Jesus’s message of love.
This is a well researched and written book exploring the context of Jesus’s times to explain what his message is. Ehrman goes back in time to look at how the Greeks and Romans as well as the Hebrew Scriptures focused on loyalty and generosity with their own communities while Jesus’s imperative was for unconditional love for all even the stranger. With rigor, Ehrman points out the passages where this imperative is given, but alas this seems to have been lost in some 21st C religions.
Jesus’s brought an ethical imperative to his world and followers. He was focused on the poor and downtrodden. He really didn’t care about the rich except to say that at gates of heaven the rich man will be judged for what he had and the poor for what they didn’t. The point being that like the Good Samaritan what did you when faced with another in need of help.
The book divides itself to Jesus’s message while alive and the “post Jesus.” I thought helped in illustrating what may have happened over time. Jesus alive in Ehrman’s theory has a sense the world would end soon so haste should be made to repent and give away one’s positions. Post Jesus as in part seen through Paul this sense of urgency isn’t as shrill. Later religious leaders like Basil take up the post Jesus initiatives creating institutions and agencies to help the poor.
I’m hoping to re-read this because it is a profound examination of what it means to live a moral, ethical life.
I want to thank NetGalley and Fly Leaf Books for allowing me access to this ARC.
This is a well researched and written book exploring the context of Jesus’s times to explain what his message is. Ehrman goes back in time to look at how the Greeks and Romans as well as the Hebrew Scriptures focused on loyalty and generosity with their own communities while Jesus’s imperative was for unconditional love for all even the stranger. With rigor, Ehrman points out the passages where this imperative is given, but alas this seems to have been lost in some 21st C religions.
Jesus’s brought an ethical imperative to his world and followers. He was focused on the poor and downtrodden. He really didn’t care about the rich except to say that at gates of heaven the rich man will be judged for what he had and the poor for what they didn’t. The point being that like the Good Samaritan what did you when faced with another in need of help.
The book divides itself to Jesus’s message while alive and the “post Jesus.” I thought helped in illustrating what may have happened over time. Jesus alive in Ehrman’s theory has a sense the world would end soon so haste should be made to repent and give away one’s positions. Post Jesus as in part seen through Paul this sense of urgency isn’t as shrill. Later religious leaders like Basil take up the post Jesus initiatives creating institutions and agencies to help the poor.
I’m hoping to re-read this because it is a profound examination of what it means to live a moral, ethical life.
I want to thank NetGalley and Fly Leaf Books for allowing me access to this ARC.
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