Reddit reviews Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
We found 10 Reddit comments about Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
writing in the name of God - why the Bible's authors are not who we think they arebiblical scholarship criticism
> tell me all of the reasons why the bible is flawed
That's rather a tall order. There are many perspectives from which it is flawed, and within many of those, a great many problems.
Are you after things like contradictions? Then see this question in the FAQ
Are you after finding out how the New Testament was altered again and again, and why? Then you may want to try to get the book Misquoting Jesus
Are you interested in common mistaken claims about and hidden contradictions in the New Testament? Maybe you'd enjoy Jesus, Interrupted
Are you interested in finding out which parts of the new testament were written by people claiming to be someone else? Then try Forged
Are you interested in whether there's solid evidence Jesus existed at all? Then try Nailed
Are you interested in refuations of many Christian ideas by a bunch of different authors? Then try The Christian Delusion
and so on and so on...
> I also plan on telling my family about my new found Athiesm soon so, any advice in that regards would be greatly appreciated.
Please read the advice in the FAQ. This is not a decision to be taken lightly.
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> why Athiesm is your preferred route
That's atheism (small a, e before i). It's not a choice, any more than I chose not to believe in leprechauns or Santa or flying monkeys. At some point I found I didn't have belief in these propositions. Discovering there weren't any gods I believed in made me without-god-belief. That's literally a-theism.
There are several books on the topic:
etc.
>Did they know that parts of what they were writing were false, or were they writing about what they had been told and believed?
The bible consists of oral traditions being written down, people adding and rewriting stuff, as well as complete forgeries to serve political agendas.
If you're interested in learning about an opposing viewpoint, consider Bart Ehrman's "Forged" (link). He's a well educated Christian scholar who writes on this topic - or he was, I think he's a deist or something now. Anyway, he has a ton of sources and is representative of the prevailing historian viewpoint regarding the Bible.
>The new testament on the other hand is more or less unchanged since it was written.
Sort of.
Also, on a similar topic (and by the same author).
A list of Bible verses not found in modern translations that are present in historical versions of the bible.
Any of the Bart D Ehrman books are worth reading.
I am currently reading Forged.
An important point...these are not chapters of one book, they are independently produced manuscripts, from dubious sources, many of whom purported (especially the gospels) to be an author more famous than themselves, especially an apostle.
http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012614
Forged by Bart D. Ehrman. http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012614
Not true. Having many ancient sources is the reason we know how much they differ from each other. You're right about the typos and such, but you're also ignoring the major issues like fake books written under someone's name (many of Paul's current letters in today's bibles are proven to be written by people claiming to be him). Also people at the time tried to insert texts to support their views because the views did not have solid grounds in the texts at the time. For example, the Comma Johanneum. Check also some books about this issue like Bart Ehrman's Forged.
Christians might be ok with the levels of preserving for the Bible, but comparing that with the Old Testament and with the Quran, clearly it's the least preserved.
It is tough to know what us legitimate and not. A lot of the time, it wasn't a deliberate forgery. The monks were trying to address modern issues with ancient text and writing what they thought the orginal author would have said. There is a good book on the subject of forgies. A pretty fascinating analysis of what is and is not a forgery, and how well we know what parts of the bible are original.
Coming across this post a bit late for the party, but: