Reddit reviews The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
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You are correct, your professor is a fundamentalist. Check out The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings by Bart D. Ehrman and An Introduction to the New Testament by Raymond E. Brown.
You wanted to be part of the intelligentsia, but throughout your philosophical journey, you always based your convictions only on authority and tradition instead of on evidence and arguments. Don't you realize that this is the epitome of anti – intellectualism?
It is correct that the New Atheists aren't the pinnacle of atheistic thought and didn't contribute many new ideas to the academic debate of atheism vs. theism or religion. But this was never their goal, and it is also unnecessary, since the academic debate is already over for many decades. If you want to know why the arguments for theism are all complete nonsense and not taken seriously anymore, why Christianity is wrong just about everything and why apologists like Craig are dishonest charlatans who make a living out of fooling people, your reading list shouldn't be New Atheists, but rather something like this:
Colin Howson – Objecting to God
George H. Smith – Atheism: The Case Against God
Graham Oppy – Arguing about Gods
Graham Oppy – The Best Argument Against God
Herman Philipse – God in the Age of Science
J. L. Mackie – The Miracle of Theism
J. L. Schellenberg – The Wisdom to Doubt
Jordan Sobel – Logic and Theism
Nicholas Everitt – The Non-Existence of God
Richard Gale – On the Nature and Existence of God
Robin Le Poidevin – Arguing for Atheism
Stewart Elliott Guthrie – Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion
Theodore Drange – Nonbelief & Evil
[Avigor Shinan – From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609086)
Bart Ehrman – The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
Bart Ehrman – Jesus, Interrupted
Bart Ehrman – Misquoting Jesus
Burton L. Mack – Who Wrote the New Testament?
Helmut Koester – Ancient Christian Gospels
John Barton, John Muddiman – The Oxford Bible Commentary
John Dominic Crossan – Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
Karen Armstrong – A History of God
Mark Smith – The Early History of God
Randel McCraw Helms – Who Wrote the Gospels?
Richard Elliott Friedman – Who Wrote the Bible?
Robert Bellah – Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
Robert Walter Funk – The Gospel of Jesus
I've seen people bash him as biased, which basically translates to 'expressing an opinion that isn't mine', but his textbook is used by Yale.
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Historical-Introduction/dp/0199757534/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=0Q6BZ93J12DD40QV0N3R
I've also never seen him engage in polemic ... the guy maintains an even tone in the face of retards, and acts like a teacher should.
I would like to point out the very obvious problem with this method; even if the New Testament were mostly or even completely accurate in regards to the naturalistic and historical aspects of the story it portrays, this in no way lends credence to the supernatural and unverified portions. In other words, just because history corroborates many of the key characters, dates, and events of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter this does not suddenly make it credible that he hunted vampires.
If you are looking for some good study on the historical authenticity and context of the New Testament, this book by Bart Ehrman has been on my reading list for a while, and is supposed to be quite informative.
All of these things are majority mainstream views. This is what I was taught a state university.
Bart Ehrman's textbook on the New Testament goes over this exact material.
Here is the Amazon link! Like I said, this is the best comprehensive New Testament text book I have come across in my study and research as a budding scholar of religion.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534
Most of it came from classes and lectures. I don't have the class book list and sources anymore. I do hope you really, really like reading!
Forged writingss
Misquoting Jesus A well known book.
Introduction to the new testiment
The new testament: a historical intoduction
Revelation and the End of All Things Also a somewhat popular book
You can also do some Wikipedia reading on Gnosticism and other early Christen sects to get an idea of just how many groups their were and how differing their beliefs could be. Also look for things on the Q, M and L source.
Edit
You can likely find a number of online pod-casts (or whatever you call them) and lectures on these things.
I am not a historian so my access to books and memorized sources is very limited, I am a student and have been accused of reading serial boxes at least once when I accidentally quoted the wrong book name, It was too much fun to make the correction as no one had ever said that too me before and I felt special, like I had hit an academic milestone.
Also, Don't feel bad about asking for sources.
This book was required reading at my Christian seminary.
Two other relevant, interesting and easy-to-read texts from my M.Div. program were Denzey’s Intro to “Gnosticism” and Ehrmam’s The New Testament
I don't know of any great online sources that directly answer "did Jesus exist?", but if you are interested check out The New Testament by Ehrman. It is a great introduction to "historical Jesus" studies and the origins of the New Testament documents. Also check out this Open Yale course. They both explain the historical tools used to answer these kinds of questions.
On 1 Corinthians 14.34-35, see this paper for a good start: "the hallmarks of interpolation are exemplified" in these two verses (inconsistent placement in the text, textual variations, atypical vocab for the author, disruptive to the otherwise natural flow of the text, and early awareness in manuscripts that something was "off" about the passage).
On the pastoral letters, see this book, chapter 24, by Ehrman. Despite some of the sensationalism of his popular level books, his academic books really are well received among scholars, and this book is representative of the cumulative efforts of the field, not just himself.
> Most scholars are reasonably convinced that all three Pastoral epistles were written by the same author. . . . was that [author] the apostle Paul? . . . we do find an inordinate number of non-Pauline words, most of which occur in later Christian writings. Sophisticated studies of the Greek text of these books have come up with with the following data: . . . 848 different words found in the Pastorals; of these, 306 occur nowhere else in the Pauline corpus of the New Testament . . . This means that over one-third of the vocabulary is not Pauline.
Of the vocabulary in common with Paul's authentic letters (faith, righteous, etc.), several are now used with very different definitions. There's more than just vocabulary and style, though, so I recommend reading the full chapter on the issue.
The wiki for this sub suggests the following:
If any moderators are reading I personally propose adding this to the Wiki, it's excellent:
Came here to recommend the same Yale course, and combine that with Bart Erhman's book Introduction to the new testament.
The search for the historical Jesus is a futile endevor. If he existed at all, he certainly doesn't resemble anything that we would recognize as Jesus. All we know is a a spruced up ancient Greco-Roman biography that was synthesized to transmit a new theology by playing on existing tropes.
You would enjoy reading The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings to get some more context for what was going on then and how Christianity formed.
>certainly the Romans killed a lot of Christians back then
Not anywhere as much as martyrdom theology has led you to believe.
IMO, MacCulloch's book is quite a commitment, and, I suppose, it would depend on what time frame you are seeking the history of. If you are looking for an in-depth history of the biblical era, this isn't the book for you - only the first few chapters are devoted to anything pre-Jesus, and the life and times of Jesus get another few dozen pages. Perhaps I'm biased as post-biblical era Christianity doesn't interest me, but I view it as more a book of theology rather than history. Make sure you explore the table of contents to make sure you know what you are getting into.
If you are not seeking something devotional, I recommend these Yale Religious Studies courses every chance I get. They will give you the background you need to tackle more specialized books in areas of interest.
If you are looking for books, I'd recommend Kugel's How to Read the Bible or Coogan's Intro for Old Testament, and Ehrman is the standard academic introduction to New Testament.
"History of Christianity" is a pretty broad topic. If there is something specific that interests you, I'll try to come up with more recommendations.
I don't think there's such a thing as a "Christian scholar" or a "Muslim scholar". That's an oxymoron, really. Faith has no place in the methodology of science.
Now, one can be a scholar of Christianity or a scholar of Islam. And indeed, there are many of these. Although some of them are religious, most are atheists and agnostics. This should not be surprising, it's my experience that studying religion makes one give up their faith.
So I repeat, wide scholarly consensus is that Mark was in some form composed either late in The Great Revolt. Soon after at the latest. If you're interested in why you could start here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Historical-Introduction/dp/0199757534
It's written biblical scholar who used to be a Christian but is now an atheist/agnostic. He's writing for a low level college class, and is careful to only include content with wide consensus around it.
Now, of course they could be wrong. And history is a soft science at that. This point is, you shouldn't deny the results just because you don't like them. That is something a "Christian scholar", "diaper scholar", or even an "atheist scholar" might do.
Thanks. I have his book The New Testament which is excellent if you want to see all the early strains of "Christianity" and the way they all had differing versions and how that came to eventually be unified and people who didn't hold to the adopted version were persecuted:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534/ref=asap_B001I9RR7G_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414348600&sr=1-3
I have two textbooks on the history of the New Testament that were both required for the courses I took at the University of Toronto, which is where I did my undergraduate degree and where I'm currently finishing up my master's degree (the specific courses I took were offered by a religious college within the university; and my degrees are in mechanical engineering, not history).
It's not too terribly difficult to find full copies of the textbooks I used online, but here are somewhat safer Amazon links: textbook 1, and textbook 2. That said textbooks are hard to read, and if you're in college or will be going to college soon I would suggest you take courses on Biblical history if you're interested in learning more. I've also done a lot of extracurricular reading on NT history for my own edification, to which end I've read books by NT Wright, EP Sanders, Dale Martin, and John Meier--I'd recommend all of those authors.
I haven't read or heard of the historians you listed, which is not to say they don't do good history. But if you name any historical construction of Jesus, no matter how bizarre, you'll probably find some scholar somewhere to support your position. And when it comes to the orthodox religious construction of Jesus there are a larger number of scholars than say in the Jesus myth camp or whatever (likewise there are more traditional Catholic historians than fundamentalist Baptist historians in scholarly communities etc. etc.), but most NT historians fall into the camps I described above.
>... I do believe (obviously) that the apostolic and Paul's Jesus is the one I believe in.
Okay... I mean the point is that you're probably unaware of what historians think Jesus actually preached and what Paul likely believed about Jesus. For example, do you think Jesus said he was a part of the Trinity? Do you think Paul thought Jesus was a part of the Trinity? You can find historians who support those positions, but most historians would say "probably not" to both questions (with a relatively high degree of certainty).
>> That's what this conversation is about.
> It's a simple enough problem: If Jesus existed and is not a deity, then the people who claim he is immortal might well be wrong about every word they've said about him, which calls the entire bible (and any other "sacred" or "holy" works) into question.
No, please read the wikipedia article on the Historicity of Jesus that I linked. The article explains the process by which modern, secular scholarship studies secular and non-secular sources to conclude that a historical Jesus existed.
For further reading, see Bart Ehrman's textbook, (The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings )[http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Historical-Introduction/dp/0199757534]. It goes into some detail on the question of a historical Jesus. (Sidenote: I recommend this book to you because Bart Ehrman is not a Christian.)
> Ok maybe the source isn't the best but that's not the only one.
Carrier says that it pretty much is. At the end of that review to which I linked, he laments that no one has replicated Grave's work.
But I'm happy to be convinced otherwise.
>So what are your reasons for Christianity not having ties with pagans?
This isn't how arguments work. The one making a claim provides the evidence.
But I won't deny that some pagan concepts influenced how the New Testament authors wrote. For example, Paul's use of ἱλαστήριον in Romans 3:25 almost certainly has some overtones imported from pagan Greek thought. But that's a far cry from Grave's suggestion, popular among the New Atheists today, that the whole notion of the crucified and risen Jesus is a myth taken wholesale from pagan thought.
I'll repeat my exhortation that I edited into my comment above: studying how the New Testament and early Christianity related to its own historical context is a laudable goal that I would commend to anyone willing to put in the effort, and there are good resources out there to help. Go to the scholars who are well regarded in their field, and avoid sensational, popular-level works. Ehrman's undergraduate-level textbook is a good start. For the more ambitious student, N. T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God contains quite a bit on the historical context of early Christianity in the Greco-Roman and Second Temple Jewish worlds; it appears on many a grad school syllabus.
You just have to be smart enough to go to a university library and use a terminal.
Here is a good place to start.
This is like a YEC creationist asking where they should begin researching the scientific view of biology. Remove your head from your own ass and look literally anywhere that discusses the subject. Nobody with a degree in the field makes the claims you do. You sound like a rube.
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings by Bart Ehrman. This is his text book for an intro class.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534/ref=la_B001I9RR7G_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521610864&sr=1-15&refinements=p_82%3AB001I9RR7G
If you need to do school work, you should totally not read The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.
Who Wrote the New Testament and The New Testament a Historical Introduction are both good places to start. The latter is by Bart Ehrman, who Bikewer mentioned.
Honestly, it's not something I've put a lot of thought in to... His textbook on the New Testament is the one we used for our class, and it is actually a pretty good analysis of the history, structure, etc of the New Testament, but it isn't a theological text that attempts to confirm/deny the validity of Christianity.
Now, I'm assuming (but correct me if I'm wrong) that the "beliefs" you asked about are his beliefs that the Bible has been corrupted over time and is therefore unreliable as a theological text. And, by extension, if the Bible is unreliable, the things it says about God must be false. I think this is one of the big problems one runs in to when using Bible as the sole source of your faith, as many of our protestant brothers & sisters do. In Catholicism, we base our beliefs on not only what the Bible says, but on the teachings & traditions that have been passed down to us since apostolic times. Indeed, I'd say the we tend to give primacy to the teachings & traditions that are handed down over those put forth in the Bible, which is a good thing since books/passages in the Bible often have multiple interpretations (on a side note, that's why there are 20,000+ protestant denominations).
So, say that Mr. Ehrman was able to 100% prove that the Bible was corrupted and is entirely false -- impossible, but play along for sake of discussion. Would it cause some theological difficulties? Sure. But would it affect the teachings & traditions of Christianity? Not so much, unless the Bible was your sole source of theology (applies to many protestant denominations, not Catholicism).
I hope this makes sense. If not, feel free to ask for more info.
You can look at religion (in my example religious text) from an academic lens (ex:Bart D. Ehrman’s textbook on the New Testament) where using historical fragments of manuscript you can see what portions were likely edited or added later. You factor in writing styles and other variables and evaluate it as a historical text that changes over time (and why those changes occur). This evaluation let’s you see that say some authors may have influenced the writing of other later writers who may have added elements they thought weren’t sufficiently elaborated (ex: resurrection) which then led to later editors adding that to the earlier authors so they all were in agreement. It can actually be really interesting to look at the text in this way.
Within Catholicism, the Jesuits are particularly interested in science / academia which has sometimes created theological debate where they push / publish something at odds with a historically held position. They’ve actually contributed to several areas of science (ex: experimental physics in the 17th century), but someone with more background would need to speak more to this.
Comparing a class I had in primary school (the equivalent of 6th grade) to later classes outside of school in the US there were notable differences. The first emphasized ethics and pulled in history and science as tools to help explain and answer “why is this the case” or “how does this work” questions while the second was more “this is what is true and anything that conflicts must not be true” which threw out a lot of history / science that didn’t agree (ex: evolution).
It’s the difference between allowing scientific knowledge to influence your beliefs so that you see evolution as an even greater and more powerful miracle than a simple creation as is vs. ignoring science and seeing evolution as fiction because it wasn’t in the book.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534
great Book!