God's Problem

Why does an all-powerful God allow suffering? Bart D. Ehrman explores the Bible’s sharply conflicting answers.

One Bible, Many Answers

Ehrman examines the ancient prophets who viewed famine, conquest, and drought as divine retribution for communal sin.

The book contrasts those prophetic warnings with the poetry of Job and Ecclesiastes, where innocent misery defies easy moral formulas.

Drawing on biblical history from the Torah through the New Testament, the author explores how apocalyptic writers attributed earthly agony to cosmic adversaries rather than human wrongdoing.

In God's Problem, the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus challenges the contradictory biblical explanations for why an all-powerful God allows us to suffer.

• Theodicy: Investigates the stark divide within the Book of Job, contrasting the prose folktale of a heavenly wager with the poetic voice from the whirlwind that refuses to justify divine justice.
• Old Testament: Explores the radical skepticism of Ecclesiastes, where the Teacher insists that chance happens to all, the righteous and wicked share the same mortal end, and life’s fleeting pleasures should be embraced.
• Biblical Interpretation: Examines the concept of redemptive suffering in Second Isaiah, tracing how the exiled servant bearing the transgressions of others laid the groundwork for Christian doctrines of atonement.
• Problem of Evil: Unpacks the apocalyptic worldview in the Book of Daniel, detailing how Syrian persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes inspired visions of monstrous beasts and the promise of bodily resurrection.
• Also by This Author: Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God and Jesus, Interrupted.