AUGUSTA, GA – It’s tempting sometimes, when I get frustrated with dogmatic Christianity, to do what Thomas Jefferson did and chuck everything but the life of Jesus out the window.

After all, Jesus’ life is the paragon of behavior, right?

The truth is, for a figure whose life is supposed to be the blueprint for humankind, historians know very little about the details surrounding it.

What’s more, the Biblical books that give details about his life, according to Bart Ehrman, author of 2009 New York Times best-selling book “Jesus, Interrupted,” contain numerous inconsistencies.

He argues that, if read in the proper way, the story of Jesus’ life yields more questions than answers. To see these contradictions, and the bazillion others Erhman discusses, he says one has to read each story from the Gospels side by side, or horizontally.

One of the many contradictions is in the timeline of Jesus’ birth. In Matthew’s version, his family escapes to Egypt avoiding King Herod’s persecution. In Luke’s version, this fairly significant escape from death is missing, and instead Jesus’ family returns immediately to Nazareth after his birth.

He raises other issues as well, such as if Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem, or whether the authors wrote different stories trying to refer to ancient Hebrew prophesies about the Messiah coming from Bethlehem, the City of David.

Another glaring difference, he points out, is in the crucifixion story in Luke. In this story Jesus appears certain and in full knowledge of his coming suffering. Jesus makes multiple confident statements during his trial and leading up to his final death that indicate acceptance of his fate, even promising one of the criminals hanging with him eternity in paradise.

The moments in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus sweats blood, he says were added in later manuscript copies, possibly copying other books. Yet in Mark, Jesus remains a suffering, silent martyr, uttering only these words of despair and uncertainty at the very end: “God, why have you forsaken me?”

In light of the discrepancies, Ehrman says, it is mistaken to believe that the Bible is the inerrant inspired word of God. Read side-by-side, the stories construct two very different Messiahs and, ultimately, lead to very different doctrinal conclusions, ultimately bringing into question everything from the virgin birth to atonement for sins, and just who the real authors of most of the New Testament were.

Before you dismiss this Erhman as another Dan Brown conspirator, consider this: In his own words, he grew up evangelical and graduated from Moody Bible Institute, a fundamentalist college. It was gradually, after a life of study, that he moved toward a more agnostic, historical-critical view of the Bible.

No critic of Jesus’ life as a paragon of human virtue will be without his detractors. Ehrman acknowledges and addresses his criticism head on. And he never takes a stab at conservatives who see the Bible as a literal path for perfection, even though it would be easy to do. In fact, one gets the sense he wishes he still believed it.

My own criticism is this: He uses hardly any citations when making generalizations about scholarship on historical Biblical facts. He says things like, “Almost all scholars agree on this point.”

I suppose we are supposed to believe him because of his prestigious position as a distinguished professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, but shouldn’t he of all people recognize the importance of including them in strengthening his position?

Even without citations, the literary argument alone is convincing. So, I say, read this book for yourself and consider the questions he asks. Make sure you have a Bible next to you, because reading the original Bible verses in their context are helpful to understanding his points.

To do this topic justice, though, you’d need at least three months of careful examination, cross-referencing his words with your copy of the Bible, an interlinear Bible with both the original Hebrew and Greek and their variations throughout history, Hebrew and Greek lexicons, copies of the complete writings of Josephus and Tacitus with indices, and a giant bottle of aspirin.