A Series of Tubes

I’ve been reading Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman.  In the book Bart goes over some of the peculiar things one finds in the Bible.  I’ve always heard that there are contradictions in the Bible, and this book is an interesting Journey through contradictions, disconnects, and other Biblical oddities.  I’m not that far in, but so far one of my favorite parts is the story of the last supper in the Gospel of John.  I had to go back and reread these quotes to make sure they were actually there.  To set up the quotes, Jesus is being questioned by his disciples about his imminent crucifixion:

John 13:36

Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”
Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

John 14:5-6

⁵Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

⁶Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 16:5

⁵“Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’

The explanation of how this obvious disconnect made it into the Bible is that the book of John had more than one author and the authors were crammed together without thinking about how the different portions of the story fit together.  If you are a fundamentalist, where nothing in the bible is allowed to be false, then the only explanation has to be that Jesus, the son of God, completely lost his short term memory.  Not only did Jesus forget about two people asking where he is going, but Jesus forgets that he responded to them only moments after it happened.

Here is a promo video for the book: