(Part 3) Best christian bible study books according to redditors
We found 3,796 Reddit comments discussing the best christian bible study books. We ranked the 1,111 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
1.) I think the wording of this title is hilarious.
2.) I just finished Benjamin Sommer's book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel which examines the different theologies that Israelites had regarding the body and bodies of God, and related beliefs from other Near Eastern cultures. It was amazing. I could go into it, but it's better if you listen to Sommer himself. Here's parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of lectures he gave. If you don't want to listen/read, you can still always ask me questions and I'll do my best to provide a general gist.
Free PDF here: http://uuhouston.org/files/The_Jefferson_Bible.pdf
Or the big evil Amazon option: http://www.amazon.com/The-Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Edition/dp/158834312X
> Until recently it has been commonly thought (again, even among scholars) that oral cultures could be counted on to preserve their traditions reliably, that people in such societies were diligent in remembering what they heard and could reproduce it accurately when asked about it. This, however, is another myth that has been exploded by recent studies of literacy. We have now come to see that people in oral cultures typically do not share the modern concern for preserving traditions intact, and do not repeat them exactly the same way every time. On the contrary, the concern for verbal accuracy has been instilled in us by the phenomenon of mass literacy itself; since anyone now can check to see if a fact has been remembered correctly (by looking it up), we have developed a sense that traditions ought to remain invariable and unchanged. In most oral societies, however, traditions are understood to be malleable; that is, they are supposed to be changed and made relevant to the new situations in which they are cited.
EDIT: grammar
The difference with Jesus is the motivation of the authors. Historical accuracy is a modern concern. These people were writing to forward the concerns of their particular communities. The world wasn't "global". Each gospel reflected the needs of the community that produced it, whether it's Gentile vs Jew, the proliferation of miracles, high vs low Christology, etc.
I think you would find this one interesting: http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/019020382X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458179626&sr=8-1&keywords=the+early+christians+ehrman
tldr; There are millions of us that feel the same way. I hope you don't forsake Christ in name in response to those around you who are forsaking Christ in deed.
__
I'm writing this during a break at work. Since I have to make it quick, I'll be recommending a lot of books. There is really too much here anyway to do justice to all of the questions you've put up, so even if I were to give a real, detailed response, I would probably have to resort to suggesting books anyway.
> 1.) I don't think that all of the Bible can be taken literally. I strongly believe in the sciences, so I think that Genesis was written either metaphorically or simply just to provide an explanation for creation. Are there others here that believe that or something similar? How do others respond to your beliefs?
There are many, many, many others who believe similarly. And not just recent people responding to evolution, there has long been a tradition of taking Genesis metaphorically. For a good group of scholars and prominent Christians that take a stand for a reading of Genesis that respects the way that science currently understands origins, see the Biologos Forum.
For a good book that shows the error of inerrancy, how it stunts your growth as a Christian and a moral agent, and how inerrancy limits either human free will or God's sovereignty see Thom Stark's excellent new book The Human Faces of God.
> 2.) Why does it seem that Christianity is such a hateful religion? I am very disappointed in many Christians because they spew hatred towards other instead of spreading love. I think that the energy that is going into the hatred that many spew could be used for good. Why aren't we putting these resources towards helping others? This would help bring people in instead of deter them away.
Again, millions of us feel the same way. It makes me sick as well. However, I don't think the answer is forsaking Christ in name in response to others forsaking Christ in deed.
There are many strands of the Christian faith that have strongly opposed violence of any sort. Look into the Anabaptists, the Mennonites. Podcasts from Trinity Mennonite are pretty good.
For a good book about Jesus and nonviolence see Jesus and Nonviolence by Walter Wink.
> 3.) How can people be against gay rights still? This is clearly religious issue and not an issue of morality. If you choose to follow the parts of the Bible that are against homosexuality, then why do you not feel the need to follow many of the other ridiculous laws that are in the Old Testament?
I'd like to stress that, again, there are millions of us that feel the same way. And many, many of those who still believe it's a sin think that we have no place emphasizing that in a world where LGBT teenagers are killing themselves from the humiliation. There are many, many of us that think that whether their lifestyle is "sinful" or not the only thing we should show them is love.
For more about interpreting the Bible in light of today's social issues, see Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb and Sex and the Single Savior by Dale B. Martin.
> Do you believe that the government has the right to say who can and cannot get married? Why can't this just be left up to each individual church?
I'm actually strongly in favor of civil unions for everyone. I wholeheartedly agree that I don't want the government defining marriage... and the only way for the government not to define marriage is for the government to take its hands off marriage altogether; whatever the sexual orientation of those getting married.
> 4.) This was a question that I was asked in my other post that I was unable to answer.
Yes, the penal satisfaction view of atonement has its shortcomings. It's not a completely bankrupt idea, but it takes a lot of nuance to convey it in a way that isn't altogether abhorrent and senseless.
The first Christians believed something similar to what we call today "Christus Victor" atonement.
For a picture of the varied atonement theories available for understanding what Jesus did on the cross, see A Community Called Atonement by Scot McKnight. For a list of ways to understand atonement in a contemporary context, see Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross by Mark D. Baker. For more on a view of God that is consistent with the love of God as revealed in Jesus, see Rob Bell's Love Wins: A book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person that ever lived.
> 5.) I asked this in the other post, so I feel that I should ask it here. How many of you do or will teach your children about other religions? Will you present them as options or will you completely write them off?
I'd be wholeheartedly open to exposing them to other religions. And I'd want to do it in a way that does them justice. Most Christian "worldviews" books frustrate me due to the way they portray other's religions. In the long run if you don't accurately portray the rest of the world and you try to shelter your children from it, they'll simply feel betrayed when they grow up and finally learn what's out there.
I believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I actually believe this. Why wouldn't I try to raise my children as Christians?
But again, I wouldn't want to misrepresent the other religions and I certainly wouldn't want to shelter my children from them. For a book that I feel shows the good from many of the world's most prominent religions, see Huston Smith's The World's Religions.
Eh. I’m sure this is pointless, but I did my undergrad in church history. The ‘overwhelming scholarship’ you reference just doesn’t exist. If anything, scholarship is overwhelming in the OTHER direction.
Just, take the canonization of the Bible for example. In THE MOST general of terms, a cannon was somewhat agreed upon about 250 years after the birth of Christ, and would go through a progressive series of additions, subtractions, and revisions until the 16th century!
One of the criteria for canonization was authorial integrity, that the book was written by who it claimed to be written by. What’s known as pseudepigraphy, or writing in another authors name pretending to be that person, was INCREDIBLY common in the ancient world. Modern scholars agree that Paul wrote 8 of the 13 books attributed to him. The other 5 are very questionable.
This is a good history of the subject: https://brill.com/view/title/13087
Bart D. Ehrman’s work is a good place to start reading, as far as general scholarly consensus is concerned: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings https://www.amazon.com/dp/019020382X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_pd5dBb4EWCZRH
Be warned: you WILL find a lot of blogs and word press websites that refute these texts and authors with a scholarly front. You will not find serious, peer reviewed refutations of these authors or ideas.
So that raises an interesting question, doesn’t it? Isn’t all scripture God breathed? Did God lie when he said Paul wrote the books he didn’t?
Also, yes, scholars very much agree that the Bible, as a whole and in parts, is a continuity NIGHTMARE.
There is a version for you :)
Try either the
Reader’s Edition
or the
Study Edition
of the Book of Mormon, both by Grant Hardy. He’s a literary scholar who felt as you do.
Grant Hardy has created a Reader's Edition of the Book of Mormon where he has formatted the text (added paragraphs, indented quotations, formatted poetry) all to make it a lot easier to read. Much of the difficulty in reading the BoM comes from the fact that is is formatted into verses and columns that are hard to read. He also has a nice guide called Understanding the Book of Mormon which addresses themes and the narrative structure of the text.
One significant but controversial book on this topic is Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century by John Boswell.
I'd also recommend Dale Martin's book Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation as well as his book The Corinthian Body (if you can get it), which is not only about homosexuality, but does discuss it and how it pertained to Paul's views on the subject.
One thing that should be understood is that the ancients did not think of sexuality in terms of fixed orientation. That is, they did not think in terms of "gay and straight," but much more along the lines of "tops and bottoms." Martin says in The Corinthian Body, that being a passive partner - being penetrated - made one more vulnerable to spiritual corruption. This was true for either male and female. Being a passive male partner in sex was seen as feminine, but not being the active, penetrative partner. However, Paul still thought it was risky to be the top because one could become corrupted by the passive partner, so that's why he wanted to limit sexual conduct as much as possible and restrict it to (at most) monogamous marriage.
The Greek terms in 1 Corinthians 6:9 (echoed in the Pseudo-Pauline 1 Timothy 1:10) which are commonly translated as referring to homosexuality are malakos and arsenokoites (pl. malakoi and arsenokoitai) are discussed at some length in an online article by Dale Martin here: Arsenokoités and Malakos: Meanings and Consequence: History of Condemnation in the Church
I think those terms most likely refer to pederasty and male prostitution, not to homosexual relationships in general but to exploitative sexual behavior. I did a paper once on the word aresnokoites and I tracked down every single extant attestation of he word from antiquity and I'm reasonably sure it refers to pederasty, whether mercenary or otherwise.
This is still an open question, though, so you should do your own reading.
I've posted this before (a few times probably, haha), but this is a good Catholic "starter pack" list that I got from my classes:
Start here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764807188/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019925995X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Then go here:
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Christianity-Vol-Church-Reformation/dp/006185588X
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061855898/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=T5D86TV1MTCSQAYZ4GHR
G.K. Chesterton is always a good supplement (Heretics and Orthodoxy):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ALKPW4S/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
One of the best apologetic anti-atheist books:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1587314525/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Bible Study:
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Testament-Anchor-Reference-Library/dp/0385247672/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477868333&sr=1-1&keywords=raymond+brown
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1585169420/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809147807/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
(Jewish perspective on NT): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195297709/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I bought the Jefferson Bible about two months ago. I went for the nicer "Smithsonian Edition". So worth it. Each page is a high resolution scan of Jefferson's handwritten notes, and annotations. And you can see how Jefferson literally cut paragraphs and sentences out form the King James bible and pasted it into his own "bible".
Example of the differences between the traditional King James Version, and Jefferson's Bible: The Story of Finding Young Jesus in the Market Preaching to the to the old Scholars.
KJV/NIV Version: The story goes that Joseph and Mary left the city of Bethleham, and realize they left Jesus behind (people in those days travelled in caravans and kids were running around everywhere I guess). So they travel back to the city and search for young Jesus. They find him in the Temple preaching to the old Scholars, who were blown away by Jesus's teachings. Mary goes up to young Jesus and says, "why'd you leave us? Don't you know how worried we were?". Young Jesus famously responds: "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"
Jefferson's Version: Same as above...Mary goes into the Temple, finds young Jesus talking to the old Scholars of the city, who all seem blown away by how smart Jesus is. . Mary goes "don't you know you worried us?" ...No response from Jesus. Jefferson cut out the God-like sounding "Don't you know you were in my Father's house?", but left the fact that Jesus was in fact found in the the Temple and that the old smart guys were blown away by the intellect of Young Jesus.
The Jefferson Bible is fascinating. I recommend everyone get a copy if they have the slightest interest/background in Catholicism/Christianity.
Btw, Jefferson didn't call it his "Bible". He called it "The Morals of Jesus Christ".
Fun trivia fact: Jefferson thought Paul the Apostle was a quack.
Source: I'm more or less an Atheist, and think Jesus was an insanely smart prodigy for his time who was very wise and said peaceful nice things that made good/common sense. I believe all the miracles/magic were added to the Bible by later people to make it seem more inspiring and awesome. All that stuff is bullshit. (I heard Jefferson thought that too, so I bought his compiled book, aka: The Jefferson Bible.)
EDIT: The version I bought: http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Morals-Nazareth/dp/158834312X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1449859239&sr=8-2&keywords=jefferson+bible
There is also a Kindle Version that is super cheap (99 cents I think). Pretty sure you can just google it and find PDF versions.
So I went through a phase where I studied the Quran quite thoroughly for a few years. I read a bunch of English translations.
Hands down the best English translation, the one that opened my eyes to a lot of what was going on under the surface, was The Message of the Quran by Muhammad Asad.
Muhammad Asad was born in Austria as Leopold Weiss, the son of a rabbi. He moved to Palestine, and then to Saudi Arabia where he lived with bedouins. He learned Arabic fluently, converted, married a Saudi woman, and wrote several books on Islam.
His translation of the Quran is mainly made up of his footnotes, and they don't always follow mainstream Islamic views. But it's definitely worth a read. I always recommend that English speakers stay away from the translations authorized by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs and refer to this one instead.
Ok, so first things first, stop saying it in the plural - Its the Revelation to St. John, so "The Book of Revelation."
Secondly, some fun tidbits.
FOr a good lay treatment of the text by a scholar, try pagels - https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
I always liked Ken's Guide to the Bible. Succinct and easy to read
Read Robert M. Price's (whom Fitzgerald mentions 2 minutes into his talk) The Incredible Shrinking Son of man
Very interesting stuff and a very entertaining read.
I have the Didache Bible. It's RSV-2CE. I've only had it about a month now, but I'm loving it so far.
The Didache Bible is great for study, but for just reading for the New Testament I like The Richmond Lattimore translation. It's very natural and reads more like a book. There are no distracting chapter or verse delineations and no commentary. It reads very naturally.
How to Think About God: A guide for the 20th Century Pagan
Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity
Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief
Biblical Games: Game Theory and the Hebrew Bible
The Probability of God: A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth
The Abolition of Man
Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith
Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally
For Greek:
I highly recommend Bill Mounce as a Biblical Language teacher. I used his books to help me get a grasp of the basics of Greek and they are hands down the most easily accessible.
For Hebrew:
Unfortunately I don't know of many cheap Hebrew resources to recommend you. I learned the basics using "Biblical Hebrew Grammar" by Bailey and Strange but it seem as if this isn't in print anymore and the price for a copy has gone up significantly.
I very strongly disagree. Basing my opinions on the work of New Testament scholars who are not Bart Ehrman, I maintain that the content of Paul's message coheres rather brilliantly with that of the synoptic gospels. You are perceiving a contradiction because (1) you are forgetting the Second-Temple context in which the Pauline epistles and synoptic gospels emerged and (2) you are reading Paul through a reductionist lens, insisting that the emphasis was principally on Jesus' death as having paid for our sins. While Paul certainly does reflect a great deal on Jesus' death and its consequences for sin, the apostle's theological vision is so much more broad than just that one issue: as N. T. Wright contends in the masterpiece of biblical scholarship Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Paul's primary concern was articulating how exactly Jesus, as Moshiach, fulfilled in his person the promises that God had made to the people Israel.
You say that Jesus can be characterized in the synoptics as an "apocalyptic prophet," a characterization that I take to be inseparable from the fact that, within those gospels, Jesus' primary focus is on the proclamation of the "Kingdom of God" (as you acknowledge here). This apocalyptic notion of the "Kingdom" did not simply emerge out of nowhere as a wholly Christian innovation, but rather was a response to the eschatological imagination of Second-Temple Judaism in which God was expected to return to dwell among his people as their king (having previously withdrawn his presence, his shekinah, at the Babylonian exile, plunging his people into a period of pain, foreign domination, and darkness). N. T. Wright summarizes the eschatological expectations thusly:
>Central to second-Temple monotheism was the belief... that Israel’s God, having abandoned Jerusalem and the Temple at the time of the Babylonian exile, would one day return. He would return in person. He would return in glory. He would return to judge and save. He would return to bring about the new exodus, overthrowing the enemies that had enslaved his people. He would return to establish his glorious, tabernacling presence in their midst. He would return to rule over the whole world. He would come back to be king
This is what Paul is concerned about. He wants to answer the question: How did Jesus fulfill these Jewish eschatological expectations? Or, phrased in a way that makes the connection with the synoptic gospels more obvious: How did Jesus institute the Kingdom of God? How has God, through Jesus, "delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Colossians 1:13)?
Paul's answer is that God has kept his promises by returning to Israel in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (for "in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell" (Colossians 1:19)), the Messiah who himself is king and whose 'glory' is made manifest in his saving cross. Not only does Jesus defeat the greatest enemy, namely death, but his identification as the one true kyrios—Lord—directly contradicts Caesar's own claim to be the true ruler of the world. God's tabernacling presence has returned to his people, such that the Spirit of the one God can be said to dwell in the Messiah's followers (1 Corinthians 3:16). In other words, for Paul, Jesus has truly established the Kingdom of God, for which reason the message of his epistles and of the synoptics are entirely complementary.
My recommendations from books I read in the last year or so (yes, these are all VERY STRONG recommends curated from ~100 books in the last year) -
​
Science fiction-
Derek Kunsken's The Quantum Magician (I would describe it as a cross between Oceans Eleven with some not-too-Hard Science Fiction. Apparently will be a series, but is perfectly fine as a standalone novel).
Cixin Lu's very popular Three Body Problem series (Mixes cleverly politics, sociology, psychology and science fiction)
James A Corey's The Expanse Series (which has been made into the best sci fi tv series ever!)
Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief series (Hard science fiction. WARNING - A lot of the early stuff is intentionally mystifying with endless terminology that’s only slowly explained since the main character himself has lost his memories. Put piecing it all together is part of the charm.)
​
Fantasy-
James Islington's Shadow of What was Lost series (a deep series which makes you think - deep magic, politics, religion all intertwined)
Will Wight's Cradle series (has my vote for one of the best fantasy series ever written)
Brandon Sanderson Legion series (Brandon Sanderson. Nuff said. Creative as always)
​
Manga -
Yukito Kishiro's Alita, Battle Angel series (the manga on what the movie was based)
​
Non-Fiction-
Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (and how we are not as rational as we believe we are, and how passion works in tandem with rationality in decision making and is actually required for good decisionmaking)
Rothery's Geology - A Complete Introduction (as per title)
Joseph Krauskopf's A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play, available to read online for free, including a fabulous supplementary of Talmud Parallels to the NT (a Rabbi in 1901 explains why he is not a Christian)
​
Audiobooks -
Bob Brier's The History of Ancient Egypt (as per title - 25 hrs of the best audiobook lectures. Incredible)
​
Academic biblical studies-
Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible and The Exodus (best academic biblical introductory books into the Documentary Hypothesis and Qenite/Midian hypothesis)
Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed (how archaelogy relates to the bible)
E.P. Sander's Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63BCE-66CE (most detailed book of what Judaism is and their beliefs, and one can see from this balanced [Christian] scholar how Christianity has colored our perspectives of what Jews and Pharisees were really like)
Avigdor Shinan's From gods to God (how Israel transitioned from polytheism to monotheism)
Mark S Smith's The Early History of God (early history of Israel, Canaanites, and YHWH)
James D Tabor's Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (as per title)
Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (engrossing - will make you view the gospel of Mark with new eyes)
Jacob L Wright's King David and His Reign Revisited (enhanced ibook - most readable book ever on King David)
Jacob Dunn's thesis on the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis (free pdf download - warning - highly technical but also extremely well referenced)
The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
Reading the Bible Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg
Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
The Meaning of Jesus by NT Wright and Marcus Borg
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton
A Lever and a Place to Stand by Richard Rohr
Yeah, I used the Harper Collins Study Bible when I was in school (I did a double major in English and Religious Studies in a Canadian University) but I believe the Oxford Annotated Bible is also popular when studying the bible academically.
Edit: I also used Ehrman’s The New Testament as a companion when studying the Bible in school.
If you would like to PM me and ask more questions, I'm always happy to help people who were where I was 4 years ago.
​
Here are a few good Affirming (A) resources to start out with:
Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-VS-Christians Debate by Justin Lee (A)
God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vines (A)
Modern Kinship by David and Constantino Khalaf (A)
Blue Babies Pink by Brett Trapp / B.T. Harmann (A)
Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church's Debate on Same-Sex Relationships by James Brownson (A)
Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation by Dale Martin (A)
Risking Grace, Loving Our Gay Family and Friends Like Jesus by Dave Jackson (A)
​
I'm compiling a list of other good resources / bad ones (from all perspectives, not just ones I disagree with), so let me know if you're looking for something more specific.
Try the Jefferson Bible. Good writer and he did very similar to what you suggest.
http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Morals-Nazareth/dp/158834312X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1317942974&sr=8-2
>https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0062565249/ref=sr\_1\_2?gclid=CjwKCAjwgqbpBRAREiwAF046JaVNeJ5yZNwKeP1o7r1L0oZyJw2qPr111h-4Kwyk6nmHI-B6HdqBZhoCGN4QAvD\_BwE&hvadid=243313926217&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1020828&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=903754418635646465&hvtargid=kwd-412648818155&hydadcr=19740\_10212620&keywords=the+exodus+by+richard+elliott+friedman&qid=1563029649&s=gateway&sr=8-2The
This link should get you there.
I love the Reader's Edition.
For those not familiar with it, here is a description:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Mormon-Readers-Edition/dp/025207341X
>"Grant Hardy's new "Reader's Edition" has reformatted the complete, unchanged 1920 text in the manner of modern translations of the Bible, with paragraphs, quotation marks, poetic forms, topical headings, multichapter headings, indention of quoted documents, italicized reworkings of biblical prophecies, and minimized verse numbers."
Here's an example that shows the unobtrusive chapter markings and displays the poetic form, and Hardy's section headings: http://i.imgur.com/SrYHNZ8.png
Try this. Paul reworked the Shema so that Jesus received a place of mention beside the Father. Also note how Paul sometimes treats them as interchangeable.
For non-biblical sources, N. T. Wright has put out a couple books on the subject: Jesus and the Victor of God is perhaps the most relevant, but his recent monster of a book Paul and the Faithfulness of God dedicates a portion of the book to Monotheism in Paul's thought. If you're into academic stuff you could give PatFoG a try, as it goes over historical research in the time as well. It's 1700 pages though.
> Paul is a Stoic through and through
I really hate to nitpick, and I know of at least one scholar who agrees with you, but I think Paul wasn't as much of a stoic as some think. N.T. Wright (in his latest gargantuan work on Paul) argues expertly against Troels Endberg-Pedersen, effectively demonstrating that Paul has some very important (almost irreconcilable) differences from stoicism.
***
> Neoplatonism is an incredibly obvious influence, especially on the Gospel of John
Interesting... How so? Are you referring to the hellenistic idea of the λόγος? I didn't know that was neoplatonistic. I knew it was hellenistic, but I'm not all that familiar with neoplatonism.
The story of Jesus? Water into wine, resurrection, walking on water? Nope.
Do I think it's silly and frankly stupid to pin a historical theory of nonexistence purely on the lack of primary sources? Yep. Do I get into a tiff with people here on /r/exmormon about this every couple months or so? Yep. Is Zeitgeist a terrible movie because it sounds smart and well-founded but is nothing better than the crap usually found on the "History" Channel? Yep. Is the Jesus Myth Hypothesis (no historical individual known as Jesus of Nazareth existed and the Christ mythos that built up was fully imported from traditions outside of Christianity) a real historical theory with serious historians behind it? Yes. Is it currently a minority theory? Yes.
For those who want to talk about this realistically, please get your information from more than YouTube videos or popular documentaries. The issue of where the Christ mythos came from has been debated for centuries and is still unresolved, but there are accepted ways of doing historical research that have arisen in the past few hundred years because they work. Simply parroting somebody who says "There's no mention of Jesus in contemporary records, ergo no historical existence" isn't going to get you very far when talking to real historians of any stripe.
This book is a collection of essays by some of the current leading experts on this issue and includes an essay from one of the few respected historians who promotes the Jesus Myth Hypothesis, Dr. Robert Price, and defends it far more ably than what you usually find floating around on the Internet.
Also, Dr. Bart Ehrman, who is pretty much the biblical studies equivalent of Grant Palmer (ie, while he's a respected researcher and authority, his best skill is in distilling existing research for popular consumption) has recently released his own rebuttal to much of the Jesus Myth arguments.
For me personally, the reason I feel that Jesus of Nazareth was a real individual comes from a careful analysis of early Christian works (the Gospels and the genuine Epistles of Paul, especially Galatians) using them against each other to discern where they have overlap that they would probably have rather not had (usually called the Criterion of Embarrassment). There are many such tools used by historians in biblical and other non-religious historical studies to try and determine facts from biased historical sources through contextual analysis and such secondary research.
Let me put it another way: how many of us feel that every single prophet in the Old Testament, including the folk heroes of Elijah and Elisha, were similarly non-existent? David? Solomon? Do you think that a real box was carried around by ancient Jews and was placed in their temple at Jerusalem? Do you think there was a temple at Jerusalem before some Jews returned from Babylon? A tent that it was patterned on located at Shiloh? Could you describe it's size and layout? Because there's no proof for any of these items at all (well, the Babylonians prided themselves on destroying Jerusalem with its temple, but that's the only external mention of it), and I think most of us would probably be very comfortable with the idea that some actual historical figures and things existed (probably vastly different in real life from how they were remembered). Why should Jesus (a figure with far less time from when his own followers felt he lived and when they started writing their own stories about him) be any different?
It's the latest from Richard Elliot Friedman, who's an absolute giant in biblical scholarship, but it hasn't seen a lot of mainstream circulation yet, so the best I could find was a New York Times review of Friedman's The Exodus:
>We know that some central figures in the biblical account have Egyptian names: Moses, Aaron, Phinehas, Hophni. All eight such names, Friedman notes, belong to Levites. For it was the Levites who left. The Exodus story is really the tale of how the people we call Levites left Egypt and joined up with the Israelites already in Canaan. To support this reconstruction, Friedman relies on several converging lines of evidence.
>
>Why conclude the Levites were the ones who left Egypt? Well, in the Song of the Sea right after leaving Egypt (Exodus 15), the word “Israel” is never used. Various Egyptian practices and themes appear in Levitical sources of the Bible — and none appear in the non-Levitical sources. And each — Levites and Israelites — has a distinct name for God. The name El is of Canaanite origin and was used by the indigenous Israelites before the Levites arrived. The other, Yahweh, we find in the priestly (i.e. Levitical) sections of the Bible and was brought with them. Neither is discarded; rather they are combined and both used for the God of Israel. In other words, the Levite tradition was added to the Israelite tradition and together they formed the way the people refer to God.
>
>Friedman also argues that the Bible’s preoccupation with the stranger is not from the Israelites who, after all, already lived in Canaan. Rather it is a product of the Levite experience of wandering and eventual acceptance into the people of Israel. (“Fifty-two out of 52 references to aliens occur in Levite sources.”) If Friedman is correct that the laws about the treatment of slaves and the story of the plagues and Exodus itself are from Levite sources, we owe to the Levites some of our most humane and influential ideas.
Not sure what sorts of perspectives you're looking for, but NT Wright is a top notch academic writing from a somewhat conservative Anglican perspective, and has written a ton on these two guys:
Jesus and the Victory of God
The Resurrection of the Son of God
Paul and the Faithfulness of God
And if ~3200 pages isn't quite enough to scare you out of attempting the project, you should also read the first volume in this series, The New Testament and the People of God.
For those interested, there is a Cambridge University text The Bodies of God that expands on these passages and much more, also from the prophets, illustrating a corporeal conception of God.
You might enjoy this:
https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264
Monotheism expressed via divine plurality and fluidity - the foundation of Trinitarian theology is a coherent Ancient Near Eastern idea that does not equate to polytheism.
I have this one:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Message-Quran-Muhammad-Asad/dp/1904510000
It's pricey, but very nice. A great translation, and some additional tafsir to go along with the ayahs alongside the arabic.
This one is my favorite (by Johnathan Star):
http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Ching-Definitive-Lao-Tzu/dp/158542269X
This is not a pocket edition, and in fact is quite large, because it has a verbatim translation in the back as well as a fairly sizable introduction, which explains some of the difficulties when translating such a text. The gist of his style is to leave the mystery in the words. So he tries to leave the same level of ambiguity from the original Chinese in the translation of each passage.
For a smaller version by Johnathan Star:
http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Ching-Translation-Definitive-Cornerstone/dp/1585426180
Although this one is pretty much just the text.
Yeah, there's plenty of translations haha, but I'd recommend Muhammad Asad's translation in your case(not being familiar with the Qur'an), since he provides context with his commentaries.
It really is awesome!! :)
Seeing some of your responses gives me the impression that you have the intention to argue the case that the violent acts against non-believers for the sole fact that they are not believers is supported by the Quran. It is in fact not supported. I recommend that you get a copy of The Study Quran or Mohammad Asad's The Message of the Quran and look up those verses and read the commentary by the translators and scholars on each of those verse. And if you have doubts on the expertise of the scholars then please read the preludes/prefaces in these texts. If you are wanting a discussion in good faith and on the basis of having read the Quran, then I believe the knowledge therein is a prerequisite.
Edit:
This Wikipedia article is a start I guess
Also,
>I would argue that according to the Quran the radical Muslims are the ones actually living out their religion!
So amazing how all of a sudden in the last decade, people in the west are claiming this. This is completely and utterly false; a conclusion that only one who entertains only the ideas of "experts" like Robert Spencer and the like. It's not Islam that keeps arguing for the idea of an inevitable "clash of civilizations" which is essentially a self-fullfilling prophecy.
You'd enjoy this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Incredible-Shrinking-Son-Man-Tradition/dp/1591021219
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/158834312X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511497080&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=smithsonian+jefferson+bible&dpPl=1&dpID=51ynes2125L&ref=plSrch
:)
This, or any worthwhile academic book on the New Testament. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019020382X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5
This isn't fringe scholarship, this is day 1 101 class stuff. We have no eyewitness accounts.
readthescriptures.com. There are recordings that you can listen to in the car on the way home and/or follow along with which might help. There is also a doubleday edition of the book of mormon that doesn't have the verses in it and flows with the story more. Grant Hardy's bofm readers edition has explanations https://www.amazon.com/dp/025207341X/ Lots of people study the scriptures via topics rather than just reading any of the books straight through. Elder Nelson suggested studying the words of the Savior. Here's a help for doing that: http://ldsgeo.org/ElderNelsonChallengeOnSteroids.php
Another potential good read for those interested:
Paul and the Faithfulness of God https://www.amazon.com/dp/0800626834/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_4-wJAbN6F1NS6
I'm a big N.T. Wright fan for the perspective he gives on the context and world of 2nd Temple Judaism and Jews in the Grecko-Roman world.
For more academic and lengthy reading, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. For more casual and accessible reading, Paul: A Biography
All I can offer up is Richard Elliot Friedman’s new book The Exodus in which he hypothesizes that the Exodus out of Egypt actually happened though it was accomplished by the Levites. The rest of us who would later become “The Jews” were already in Canaan clobbering the other Canaanite tribes who desperately needed a good clobbering. Quite provocative.
I’d always understood that when Moses was attributed to leading the former Hebrew slaves of Egypt within sight of what would become Israel, the Trojan War was taking place hundreds of miles away to the Northeast.
We only have Scripture, not a functional time machine to see for ourselves.
Jewish scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, in The Exodus, suggests that the Exodus involved only Levites. Its history propagated through all of Hebrew culture through Levites role as priests.
excerpts from a shorter interview:
> Levites have names that come from Egypt. Other Israelites don’t.
> This is also significant because the architecture of the Tabernacle and its surrounding courtyard matches that of the battle tent of Pharaoh Rameses II, for which we have archaeological evidence, as was shown by Professor Michael Homan in a brilliant combination of archaeology and text (To Your Tents, O Israel, 2005).
> Likewise, only the Levite authors emphasize that males have to be circumcised, which was an Egyptian practice.
> And the Levite authors are also the ones who explicitly insist that Israel must not mistreat aliens (foreign residents).
> One of the Levites’ main tasks as priests was to teach Torah to the Israelite people. Naturally, when the Levites taught Torah, they taught the tradition they had brought with them out of Egypt.
Apparently I can't post this as a direct reply, but:
Richard Elliott Friedman's new book The Exodus talks quite a bit about this topic. I found this part of the book not quite so interesting to me personally so I won't try to muff my way through a detailed explanation, but in short according to Friedman it started with the Levites, the group he proposes as the only ones who were actually enslaved in Egypt and left for Canaan as the book of Exodus describes. When the Levites arrived in Canaan they were allowed to assimilate into the lands owned by the other tribes. The Levites brought with them the idea of YHWH and as the priest and teacher class were able to integrate the idea that their YHWH (their only god) and the god the Israelites worshiped, El, were one and the same. They worshiped no other gods at this point, hence "monotheism". I generalize of course, but this is the basic chain of events. Read the book for the details.
Luckily the book as has a lengthy free preview on the topic on Amazon although I didn't look to see how many pages on this topic could actually be read in free preview.
Here's a link: The Exodus.
> Aune suggests the book was written in two stages, with the first stage being in the late 60s, and the second stage (that resulted in the current text) in the 90s.
Elaine Pagels also agrees with this assessment. She paints a a fascinating portrait of John of Patmos in her book, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
>Well as a Christian if you don't think it's a lake of fire he throws people in, you're wrong.
You're claiming that the Eastern Orthodox Churches (and Oriental Orthodox maybe?) aren't Christian? That's a bold statement, Cotton.
Besides that, Revelation is about the persecution that the author's readers were going through. A pretty accessible book on that would be Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels. Even if you don't accept that view, apocalypses and visions are known to use metaphors and allegories.
Now, in regards to other ideas of the "fate of the damned", there's multiple words that are used: Gehenna, Hades, Sheol and one instance of Tartarus (in Petrine letters). Gehenna is a literal physical place of burning, Hades is the Greek underworld and Sheol was just your grave, nothing else (later it picked up a connotation of an afterlife "realm" where all souls went after death). Once we understand that, it's not too hard to see that they're all being used as metaphor - this shouldn't surprise you because Jesus is presented as using that literary device as well as parables throughout his life. Understood as such, it's quite easy to see that the wicked/damned/whatever experience a sense of lostness, burning (like desire but the opposite?) Etc. In this case, they could be in the same "realm" as the sanctified, but experience it differently.
But that also neglects what the Greek (in the New Testament) actually says about those descriptions. For instance, the words for "eternal punishment" could be (and most likey should be) translated as "ages/age of discipline". So not only is it not "forever", it's a discipline not a punishment. And I'm perfectly inline with early Christian thinkers on this. Here's an Academic Book and a more accessible book outlining people throughout history with that interpretation. I have PDFs of the academic books, if you want to read them. A good translation with all this is mind would be this one by David Bentley Hart.
Once again, even knowing all of the above and still believing what you said , you haven't explained how people get there. Rejecting God? How could one do that? People can only reject an "idea of God". But, your view on this "lake of fire" is just one big misunderstanding.
>their "loving" God.
Just a nitpick: God is not "loving". To say God is loving is to say that there is a metaphysical order (Love) above God, which is absurd. God "is" Love, in the sense that to be "loving" one participates in the Divine.
Any typos and weird phrasings are because I'm typing on mobile at work.
A good study Bible like this will include a couple of introductory pages at the beginning of a book to help, plus tons of notes, charts, timelines, etc. Definitely helpful in understanding context! There's also more in-depth resources like these excellent Introduction to the Old Testament and Introduction to the New Testament books.
Visual Greek. Learn using cartoons!!!! A similar method is Greek To Me. Again, learn using cartoons! I've read most of the book and it was a HUGE help. Also, both are Koine, and the visual greek method uses Mounce's book, which is THE standard intro. Mounce also wrote an easier intro for people who just want to know enough to do basic bible studies and use some of the better Greek tools out there, it's called Greek for the rest of us. Other books that take it easy on you are Learn Biblical Greek by John Dobson and English Grammar to Ace New Testament Greek. If you're wondering "Why grammar?" it is because you need to know how grammar works. If you know how it works in your language, you'll have a better grasp of grammar in other languages (at least you'll know what the books you read mean when they talk about active and passive verbs etc...).
If you're going to be working on your computer anyway, this is what you want.
It keylinks to this lexicon. Which you also want.
Both of these will also work on a mobile device (with Logos), if you're away from a PC.
If you're teaching yourself, you might want to take a look at Mounce's Greek for the Rest of Us, which has modest aims (helping the student come to terms with most commentaries), and leads quite nicely into his Basics of Biblical Greek for the more serious do-it-your-selfer.
N.T. Wright is generally considered to be the current expert on Paul.
A really great and short book, adapted from a lecture series: Paul in Fresh Perspective.
An exhaustive 1700 page monster: Paul and the Faithfulness of God. I'm working through this one now. It's very informative and a good read, but it really does engage with pretty much every academic writer of any substance from the past hundred years, so sometimes it feels like you're listening in on the middle of a conversation. The earlier books in this series, particularly The New Testament and the People of God (which is volume 1, and has much of the background material) covers the political and religious situation during the Second Temple period. It has a lot of great discussion about the Pharisees (a very complex group of people) and their opponents, Roman and Greek stuff, and so on.
Here are a few of my favorite theologians, Bible scholars, and books
For Biblical exegesis
Inductive Bible Study by Robert Traina and David Bauer
For Systematic Theology
Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology by Thomas C. Oden (Almost anything by Oden is good really)
For Pauline Studies
Paul and the Faithfulness of God by NT Wright
The Theology of Paul by James D. G. Dunn
For Cultural Background in New Testament
Craig S. Keener (his commentary on John's Gospel is phenomenal, as is the IVP Background commentary by him)
Ben Witherington III (his commentaries are generally good)
For Christian ethics
Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays
For Old Testament
Walter Brueggeman (pretty much anything by this guy)
Terrence Fretheim (I especially like his commentary on Exodus)
Sandra Richter (Epic of Eden, a good primer on ancient Israelite and Canaanite culture and how it shaped the OT)
Philosophy of Religion
Soren Kierkegaard (my absolute favorite philosopher, I especially recommend Fear and Trembling)
Thomas Aquinas
St. Augustine
Alvin Plantiga (I personally dislike Plantiga's philosophy, but he's become a big name in philosophy of Religion so not someone to be ignorant of)
William Hasker
William Abraham
Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes by Charles Hartshorne (I'm not a process theologian, but this book in particular is highly important in modern theology, definitely worth a read)
Edit:
If you wanted a broad, general sweep of theology, I'd recommend The Modern Theologians by David F. Ford. It's a good overview of various theological movements since the start of the 20th century and covers theology from many different perspectives.
You should use a secondary introduction like Lawrence Boadt's Reading the Old Testament, or Kaminsky and Lohr's The Torah: A Beginner's Guide (which I think is excellent). Many parts of the Bible are difficult to read without some sense of context and methods of interpretation. If you feel like a beginner I'd highly recommend the Access Bible as a study edition.
I wouldn't recommend reading it in order from Genesis to Revelation. It's okay to jump around when it comes to the Bible. Otherwise it will feel like quenching your thirst with a fire hose when you wanted a glass of water.
Use a reading guide, ask your pastor for help, or even talk to a professor if you're going to school.
These two reading plans, one from Kristy Burmesiter and another "narrative reading plan" are good imo.
Some books that helped me:
How Do Catholics Read the Bible?
Short book that discusses the holistic approach to Scripture study in the Catholic Tradition
Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction; Second Edition
Comprehensive historical discussion of the books of the Old Testament with some theological interpretation
Reading the Bible: A Study Guide
Covers pretty much the whole Bible with historical context and modern application of Scripture
Faith Comes from What Is Heard: An Introduction to Fundamental Theology
This is a huge book with just a LOT going on, but it has a very clear response to the question of the historical reliability of the gospels in the later chapters. It’s pretty well comprehensive for Catholic apologetics, but it’s aimed at a more academic audience than, for example, Catholic Answers
The Bible, the Church, and Authority: The Canon of the Christian Bible in History and Theology
On the development of the canon of Scripture
Jesus Christ is a manufactured entity, made up by people who thought they were being inspired by god who were following other people who though they were being inspired by god, going back to at least 500 BC. Other good book.
People need to educate themselves on mythological literature. If you still want to believe in god, even a lot of believers are taking a second look at their mythological literature.
Yes and no.
There are multiple gods in the bible. You might want to read Mark S. Smith's books:
https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X
I haven't gotten to read this one yet, but it looks interesting:
https://www.amazon.com/God-Translation-Cross-Cultural-Discourse-Biblical/dp/0802864333
Might also check this one out:
https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264
I really enjoyed A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, though it is a memoir. I read it when I was having a rough time, myself. The author lost his parents when he was at University and inherited his 8 (?) year-old brother. It's lightly written and often pretty hilarious, but also occasionally heartbreaking (as the title suggests.)
Something in a similar vein might be the Year of Living Biblically. That may be a little lighter than what you're looking for, however. It's very funny, but also more poignant than I expected.
Have you read A Year of Living Biblically? http://www.amazon.com/Year-Living-Biblically-J-Jacobs-ebook/dp/B000SEPAYO/ref=sr_1_1? It is a great story of a man who tries to live according to the bible for a year. He is an atheist who comes away with many similar conclusions. And it's very well written and an interesting story. You'd like it.
I am about 100% sure there was a guy who did this to write a book about 10 years ago. Is that where the idea came from?
Edit, found it: https://www.amazon.com/Year-Living-Biblically-Literally-Possible-ebook/dp/B000SEPAYO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519832850&sr=8-1&keywords=living+biblically
These are all excellent recommendations. A couple more:
Approaching the Qur'an by Michael Sells
Free copy of the intro online (PDF link).
Message of the Qur'an by Muhammad Asad, widely acclaimed as one of the best English translations in publication.
Free copy of Message of the Quran by Asad (PDF link)
And you can check out some more recommendations here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/11wl21/lets_make_a_book_list_for_people_interested_in/
M. Asad, for sure
Look into Robert M. Price, particularly The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. A taste of the subject matter is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzOrc_kwcU4
Do you know the Jonathan Star translation that's in his book alongside the translation for each character in the original text -- sort of a make-your-own translation? Very cool.
My favorite translation of the Tao Te Ching is Jonathan Star's Tao Te Ching
and my favorite book would be
The Tao of Daily Life by Derek Lin
which is full of short stories that encompass the ideals of the Tao Te Ching.
Some of the stuff from Taoism, the religion, is definitely not for me. For instance, the health books tell you to retain your semen at all costs to live a long life. Also, as with most religions, it promises immortal life as a being of nature if you follow the practices provided. I would recommend staying away from books about Taoist "Alchemy" if you are Agnostic/Atheist.
oh yes, a must read for the wise and zen-like Ent :)
a close friend gifted this to me on my b-day last year, and i foolishly set it aside hoping to read it later on. when my calendar rolled over to 2011, i did the usual re-alignment of priorites...and this book ended up high on the list.
i spent a week or so, reading a few 'chapters' per night (usually around a [5], relaxing in a hot bath). it's hard to sum up how many times i felt overcome with the beautiful simplicity in the way the verses make you think. there are several editions and translations out there, this is the one i happened to have:
http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Ching-Definitive-Lao-Tzu/dp/158542269X/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1300900646&sr=8-8
Check this site, which contains a lot of different translations. Compare them and see what you like! Personally I enjoy reading this translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English; I find that it has a nice flow to it.
This translation by Jonathan Star has a slightly different tone to it, but some of the analogies may be easier to grasp. The physical version of the book contains the original Chinese text, with translations of individuals words, if one finds that appealing.
Only somewhat related, but if you haven't already, you should read "The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEPAYO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_vKKUCb09SWVAS)
It's a really funny (and respectful, really) chronicle of the author trying to adhere to as many biblical requirements as possible (while acknowledging the inconsistencies and contradictions). I read it a long time ago, but I think this is one of the things that's covered (no pun intended).
I don't think anyone takes every single thing in the Bible literally; some things are just so obviously meant to be metaphorical that you'd have to be blind not to see it. Biblical literalists can go pretty far, but not too far, I suppose :P
I'm reminded of this book, which is absolutely hilarious (unless you get easily offended, I guess)
You could probably get a copy from the Library. Otherwise, they're not that terribly expensive depending on how you go.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Jefferson+Bible
This is the one I have, and it's a scanned copy of the original with notes, and other documents. Well worth the extra investment.
http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Morals-Nazareth/dp/158834312X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450106577&sr=8-2&keywords=Jefferson+Bible
>How are VOSLs of different faiths redundant
If you had actually read the Holy Bible, the Thomas Jefferson Bible, and the Tanakh ...you might know.
I was a Christian since the fifth grade. I went to church at least once a week for years. Then, I went to college and took a history of Christianity course. Specifically "How reliable is the Gospel Tradition?". After that class, I realized that nothing is the way it is taught in church. Absolutely nothing that you are told in church is reliable and that everything you are told was probably created hundreds of years after Jesus supposedly died.
The main reason I am no longer a Christian is because I took it seriously enough to investigate it. I am glad that I did.
If you don't have the opportunity to take a course like this, this book is very useful in learning what we actually know about Jesus.
Also, another thing to look into is the dates the gospels were written, and the purposes they were written for.
Verse 60, Line 1, the Tao Te Ching reads:
>Chih ta kuo jo p'eng hsiaao hsien.
Jonathan Star translates this as:
> Govern a nation as you would fry a small fish.
Are you, like, 14? Have you never encountered a liberal Christian before? Is this only the first of what is sure to be ENDLESS discussions like this?
As I said, read this book:http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Bible-Again-First-Time/dp/0060609192/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319831658&sr=1-1
On 1 Corinithians 14:33b-36 specifically:
The best commentary I have found on this is in a book by Gordon Fee, but I doubt that will suit your immediate practical purposes. This article is the best I could find on short notice. Also, the wikipedia entry for 1 Corinithians talks about this issue.
Other sources I haven't read but have seen cited:
More broadly, about Deutero-Pauline pseudepigrapha in general:
A great read that covers these issues as a whole is Marcus Borg's Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. Borg is a great writer in general, and it is through his writings that I first learned about the authorship issues in the New Testament. I have not yet read it, but I imagine this book covers the authorship issues in great detail.
Finally, this is what I have in my NRSV translation of the bible: https://imgur.com/UTaZWDa.jpg
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I'll propose for you the way most American apologists solve the problem:
Calvinism.
I tend to leave it out because I find it distasteful at it's core. The basic idea is that God has chosen and saved with irresistable grace a high percentage of America, but only a small percentage of China.
The reasons I reject it are:
1)This view of God seems to make him a downright Jerk. Almost every conversation I have with a Calvinist ends with "who are you to question god?". A more moral creature than him it seems, if they are right.
2)If they're right, I have no choice in believing they are right or not. Either God chooses to reveal himself to me or not.
It's an incredibly self-centered view, but it does have a mechanism to explain why there are so many non-believers.
While it "solves" that particular problem, it doesn't solve the problem created by a lack of historical Adam(more here), nor does it solve the biblical hermeneutics problem created by our increasing scientific and archeological knowledge. If you're interested in that, read Marcus Borg's Reading the Bible Again for the First Time.
These basic questions have been with us for over 100 years, and the reason the rest of the world is deChristianizing.
The reasons the US has kept so many believers for longer are than the rest of the world are numerous, and interesting.
I was a Christian less than a year ago. It was the Adam issue that got me questioning, and these and many more problems popped up in my search to find an answer. In the end, the answer I got wasn't the one I wanted when I started, but I also have a better life now than I did then.
And that is my hope for all the people I talk to, that they will enjoy their journey.
I'd be happy to answer any questions, but I think that's quite enough "proselytizing" for now. ;-)
Shalom.
The Exodus by Richard Elliot Friedman is a good moderate-liberal academic-light book on the historicity of the Exodus/Conquest. Probably can't beat Lost World of Israelite Conquest by John Walton.
The first question one would have to answer is is the account of the Exodus accurate, historically.
There is much debate about this and scholars fall on varying sides from 'didn't happen at all' (Finkelstein and Silberman) to 'probably happened but was not the same in number' (Friedman and some others).
The most interesting book I have read on this recently is Friedman's Exodus^1 which argues for the arrival of 2 main groups inside the 'Holy Land' the second later group being the Levites who were in Egypt/From Egypt although whether they were slaves is still some debate. Which Friedman goes into, and notes examples of items like they had knowledge of Egyptian brickmaking techniques compared to Canaanite techniques. Moses is an Egyptian name, he gives some other examples however I don't have the text in front of me at the moment.
The early tribes in Israel would have come (or risen to power) and conquered/Mixed with the tribes already in Canaan and taken on some of their deities, some of the early types would have been El and Baal, for example, we note that some of the early creation stories map to Canaanite creation stories.
The earliest person we know of to accept the Israelite religion was Abraham as per the Torah itself, and there is evidence for someone like an Abraham around 1800 B.C.E. But there's no direct connection. What we can see is the common earliest reference to Israel as a unique entity which is in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1200 BCE, although some scholars have identified a possible reference to Israel (the text is not complete, however) on a pillar in Egypt going back as far as 1400 BCE.^1.
So we know that the Israelites spread out and mixed with Canaanite cultures and were a part of them but eventually, the culture (and religion) of the Israelites eventually won out and developed into its own distinct religion. This would have been in the time of the Iron Age I (1200-1000 BCE). Going back to Friedman here, he shows genetic and historical evidence that the Levites come in and adapted themselves as another Tribe and planted the Exodus story among the existing (forming) Israelites. This Iron Age I would have been when this happened. This Yahewism would have been the basis for monotheism. This could have been from the Levites who brought the YHVH diety with them from the Midianites and supplanted it over the others.
However, there were pockets of idolatrous worship especially on the North for some time. Statuettes of different home or hearth goddesses have been found near Tel Dan for example in the Temple there. This Temple in Northern Israel would not have been condoned by the people in Judea and would have been in a contest with it (Schiffman^3) as the Priests in Judea (First Temple) would have felt the only true Temple was the one in Jerusalem. Really some forms of idolatry continued into the First Temple period and in the Second Temple period, it would have most likely been Monolatry (accepting that others deities could exist along theirs). The clearest case for this is the changes to the Shema (Duet 6:4) which at that time read: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” this statement defines the deity YHVH as the one for Israel although it allowed for other cultures to have theirs as well. This is shown in sources such as the Septuagint and in the Nash Papyrus in the Second Temple period. An amulet found in Halbturn, Austria called The Halbturn amulet shows the current version (in Greek) as we now know it to be “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
So to sum all that up, the historical evidence points to a polytheistic culture that developed into a monotheistic culture.
>Because in between the Exodus and the Promised Land it wasn't strictly Judaism yet, was it?
Which type of Judaism? Current Judaism is Rabbinic Judaism which takes the written tradition (Torah) plus the Oral Tradition (Talmud/Mishna) this developed most notably in the Babylonian Exile, prior to that there was the Temple Cult.
As it turns out, I just finished reading the book Relevations by Princeton professor Elaine Pagels. It's a fun read, and it tells all about what we know about the book's origin and why it was included in the New Testament canon. Highly recommended!
Also, one more really great book. Elaine Pagels: Revelation: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
I recommend Elaine Pagels, Princeton. u/zacharmstrong9
Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, Politics
I read the bible with the aid of a commentary (The New Jerome Biblical Commentary), and a Bible Dictionary (HarperCollins Bible Dictionary). It slowed the pace a bit, but I got a lot out of it. I also had some good intros to the New Testament (An Introduction to the New Testament by Raymond Brown and The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings by Bart Ehrman).
Some other interesting study aids:
Good Luck.
I believe that they are referring to The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition by Grant Hardy. His other book, Understanding the Book of Mormon is highly recommended by other redditors. /u/Karl_Marxxx
This is interesting. I picked up the Grant Hardy edition of the BoM a little while ago, I might have to grab this one to compare.
(Note, these will probably go against or "provide a nice contrast with" captainhaddock's view --the current most popular post in the thread).
For the New Testament, Carson and Moo's Introduction to the New Testament is great: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0310238595/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_0?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=&sr=
You can get it for a good price, and it gives very balanced views. It will outline the different positions and go through the current academic questions.
For the Old Testament, there's a counterpart by the same publisher, but I have no experience with it: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Old-Testament-Second-ebook/dp/B000SEL1FQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UN4C24G87RZ3&keywords=an+introduction+to+the+old+testament+longman&qid=1561995832&s=books&sprefix=an+introduction+to+the+old+testament%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C128&sr=1-1
Another option is a Catholic Introduction to the Old Testament, which is excellent: https://www.amazon.com/Catholic-Introduction-Bible-Old-Testament-ebook/dp/B07H46F524/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RP4QZX3LE5HE&keywords=a+catholic+introduction+to+the+bible+the+old+testament&qid=1561995878&s=books&sprefix=a+Catholic%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C131&sr=1-1
The two first ones get called 'Evangelical,' and that's true. But, they don't settle things with pure theology. They argue both sides on any issue and give their opinion. The Catholic Introduction is Catholic, but that doesn't mean that it only gives one view either.
Thank you! Got An Introduction To The New Testament by Carson and Moo.
I'm working through this one and the workbook that goes with it. That's what was recommended to me when I decided to go back to learning. Just started it, so I can't speak to how good it is quite yet.
I learned Koine (Biblical Greek) from the Mounce book.
Classical Greek is much more complicated.
Koine is usual taught to grad students in two semesters.
This book:
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Know-Much-About-Bible/dp/0380728397
I read it in an earnest attempt to more fully understand my religion. At the time I was a Christian who argued vehemently against atheists.
But reading the Bible and reading about the Bible and putting it back into context lead me away from faith in the Bible. The problems that I previously ignored before became clearer and just started piling up until it broke.
It really helped me get over some deep-seated internal struggles I was having and I've felt much better ever since.
Hey, there. As someone who's been where you are and left the Christian faith for decades before returning, I'll share my two cents. Something that helped me was moving away from thinking of Christianity as a set of rules I had to follow to ensure I went to "the right place" after I died. Yes, there are inconsistencies in the Bible. That's because it's not one book; it's many books arranged together over a period of centuries. Those inconsistencies are a result of a community of faith wrestling with what it means to be God's people, and making a record of their understanding of that at given points in time. I found that learning about how the Bible came together, and what believers believed about it, helped me to come to a greater appreciation of it, and ultimately, to faith in Christ. There are lots of readable books that talk about the Bible's history. Here's a popular one. Learning about God's word isn't scary; God wants us to ask questions! That's why God's gifted us with reason. The only faith worth having is an examined one. The fact that you're asking is, I think, a sign that you are craving deeper relationship with God.
So, if Christianity isn't about rules for who's in and who's out, what is it about? While everyone has to work that out for themselves, for me, the answer is trust and relationship: in Christ, through the Holy Spirit who he has sent to guide us, and with others. I consider my own faith in Christ to be the greatest gift I've ever received, all the more precious because I have to continue to wrestle with what it means. I've found the only way I can live the way Christ calls me to live is in the Church, as part of his body. I had to leave my childhood church, because it was very rule and fear based. Finding a church based in love and relationship has helped me grow in faith immensely. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to talk more. You're engaged in holy work, and the difficult, painful questions are the most important ones.
I think the best rebuttal (which you already touched on in your comments) is that there Ancient Near East had no concept of loving, equal relationship between same-sex couples.
Early Christians (including those with Jewish backgrounds) were all extremely Hellenized but would have also viewed Greek society as "worldly" and something that they needed to separate themselves from. So, since their only exposure to homosexuality was between an older man and a young boy for the purpose of material gain or idolatry.
>Some scholars locate its origin in pool initiation ritual, particularly rites of passage on Crete, where it was associated with entrance into military life and the religion of Zeus.[[5]](https://6trtt to ⅝6/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece#cite_note-5). The wiki has a lot of good info.
I'd also recommend [Sex and the Single Savior](https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Single-Savior-Sexuality-Interpretation/dp/0664230466
by Dale Martin), who is the professor of the Yale NT course.
Being gay and being Christian are not mutually exclusive. You have some reading to do.
If you liked Dale Martin's class, you might also enjoy his book Sex and the Single Savior. It was interesting to me because both Dale and I are gay Christians. I thought he raised some interesting points.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0664230466/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1418422830&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40
Boadt's, Reading the Old Testament, An Introduction is an awesome resource. I need to dig my first edition out again.
Also, an OT intro I really like is Reading the Old Testament from Lawrence Boadt. Like the New Collegeville series, it's Catholic and academic but written at a layman's level for a wider audience.
It’s a little older, but Lawrence Boadt’s Introduction “Reading the the Old Testament” is a good overview. It has a second edition which I should probably get and see what has been updated.
https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Old-Testament-Introduction-Second/dp/0809147807/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=lawrence+boadt%2C+reading+the+old+testament+an+introduction&qid=1572617990&sprefix=lawrence+boadt&sr=8-1
Delving into Robert Price would probably be a lot of work with very little return on the investment given that he is, effectively, the only scholar to hold his position. There are scores of well received historical Jesus works I would recommend before cracking open anything by Price, perhaps the only exception being The Historical Jesus: Five Views
If you are up for an entire book, try "The Historical Jesus: Five Views". The five writers each present their own view, and each rebut the views of the others.
Here is a good resource which lists the different views on the historical Jesus and which scholars and books support those views.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html
Here is a book which is written as a debate between five scholars: Price, Crossan, Dunn, Johnson, and Bock.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Historical-Jesus-Five-Views/dp/0830838686
When you say "historicity," are you talking about whether or not Jesus existed or what the historical Jesus would have been like?
Bart Ehrman, an atheist, has a book on the former that pretty well represents the consensus of historians that Jesus did, in fact, exist.
I haven't read this, but this book looks like it might be a good intro to the historical Jesus. I don't know all of the scholars on this list, but the ones I do know are good, and it shows a spectrum.
Definitely go ESV. The ESV has a nice readability while also being very accurate. I've checked the Greek several times (went to school for Theology/Greek), and I've so often been pleased with the results.
My recommendation for something fun/different has to go to Lattimore's translation of the NT.
This is only the New Testament, but you might be interested in the translation by Richard Lattimore. Lattimore was classics scholar who translated both the Iliad and Odyssey, many plays from Sophocles, et cetera. My understanding is that there is nothing either religious or irreligious about it. I believe the translation is meant to be a-religious: meaning, simply a faithful translation of the Koine Greek in which the New Testament was written.
> I implore people to simply read their Bibles without any aids.
While I think there tends to be a great deal of atheism in this forum, I agree it can be enlightening to simply read the Bible - particularly as it applies to a comparison with what the WTBS presents as biblical truth. And, for those who might want to pursue such a course, I've been working through the following title as an alternative to the standard KJV or NIV:
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Richmond-Lattimore/dp/0865475245
While Lattimore has significant credibility as a translator, I've found reading the Bible (or at least the New Testament in this case) without the intrusion of chapter and verse to be particularly useful. There is less a tendency to be captured by the writing as clause and sub-clause as you might with a legal document and more an opportunity to follow the writing as it was originally presented; the epistles were just epistles after all.
I've noticed a number of instances where this approach has shifted my understanding of what was intended and, by contrast, how fractured our view of the biblical narrative becomes when we simply verse hop as the favoured study approach of the Witnesses.
Ken's Guide to the Bible is a great little book. It's broken down into categories such as violence/sex/crazy...like SAB. I think Godless by Dan Barker has a good list of Biblical contradictions.
Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible
Ken's Guide to the Bible: All True! Violence! Sex! Absurdity! Weirdness!
>%99.9 of religious people wouldn't be caught dead reading atheist material.
On a side note, 99.9% of religious people also haven't read religious material, not their own and certainly not other religions' books. just throwin' that out there.
maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. i have read the Bible (it is hard to get through) and I have many Christian friends, not one of whom who has done that or anywhere near close. And it's certainly fun to be smug about, but really not necessary. Atheists don't have an obligation to prove that they're smarter or better than theists.
also: ken's guide to the bible. you should prolly go check it out.
"Messianic Jewish" stuff? Really?
Orthodox Jew Daniel Boyarin and Conservative Jew Benjamin Sommer made more palatable references from the Rabbinic, Judaic side. Heck, there's this article by Yishai Kiel!
Concerning # 3 check out Marcus Borg's "Reading The Bible Again for the First Time," looks at how to read the Bible in a historical/metaphorical way that doesn't diminish it into fanatical fable or static fact.
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Bible-Again-First-Time/dp/0060609192
1 Karen Armstrong's "A Case for God" has a really good/brief breakdown of the evolution of the Old Testament.
Both books should be available at your local library.
There are so many awesome texts out there!
I'm really partial to the character of Enoch, and the more weird, apocalyptic sorts of books. I'll throw a few of those out there for your perusing pleasure.
I'm using two Wiki links to give a general overview of the two texts I'll talk about, but please
The Book of Enoch, or First Enoch - this book is regarded as canon by Christians in Ethiopia/Eritrea, but not by other churches. I think it is particularly interesting because Enoch is taken around on a grand tour of the cosmos: he sees the world, up into the heavens, and even down to Sheol. It's pretty cool to read how people reckoned the cosmos worked back then. There are weird visions of angels, a few parables and even an astronomical calendar text thrown into the mix.
Slavonic Enoch, or, Second Enoch is unrelated to First Enoch (i.e., different author, very different date and region) but contains a lot of the same sort of stories about good old Enoch. There's also some stuff about Melchizedek, whom you probably recognize since it seems you're interested in Gnostic stuff. (the Wiki link for this one isn't as strong as the first- please check out more sources for better analysis of the text)
More information on the books of Enoch:
Jewishencyclopedia.com
Detailed analysis by Andri Orlov
If you are looking for more fun Gnostic stuff to peruse, and haven't checked out Apocalyptic/Gnostic scholar Elaine Pagels yet, you're missing out:
Youtube Discussion about the Book of Revelation
I'd definitely check out her books on the Origin of Satan and Revelations
The book of rev was discarded as heresy until it was championed for it's ability to target heretics by labeling them anti-Christs. There was a ton of other apocalyptic literature at the time that never made canon for good reason. Any Christian who's done research on the early church, yet still believes in the rapture doctrine, is fucking 110% delusional by their own standards; at least Islam is consistent in their madness. Elaine Pagels wrote a fantastic, short book on the subject:
http://www.amazon.ca/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
Congrats on your mission call, and double congrats on going to Central America.
As far as understanding and following the New Testament, you really can't do better than getting a good study bible. In addition to the text of the scripture, you also get scholarly essays that introduce each book, as well as notes running parallel to the text that help clarify and contextualize the tricky parts, written by academics from a variety of faiths. Either of the following two are great:
The New Oxford Annotated Bible
The HarperCollins Study Bible
You might also check out the next book, which is a standard text in divinity schools.
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
I don't know how much any of these are going to help you in 87 days, but I respect your ambition in trying to tackle the scriptures in such a short span.
>you imbecile
I can already tell this is going to be fun.
>Jesus has literally ZERO contemporary historical data.
That's not what you asked for. You asked for peer-reviewed arguments for the historical existence of Jesus, of which I said there are thousands, and to which I said you'd have a much more difficult time finding the opposite--- peer reviewed articles and books arguing that Jesus was entirely a myth.
>I’ll wait for those libraries of sources you have.
Where do you want to start?
Probably the best place for you to start is with Bart Ehrman, a leading scholar of on the development of Christianity, and he's also a popular skeptic speaker and writer. In addition to publishing he's written popular books about how many of the books of the Bible were forgeries, and how the belief that Jesus was divine developed in early Christianity, he also wrote an entire book laying out the widely accepted case that Jesus was likely a real historical person, written directly to skeptical lay people like yourself.
If you want a great introduction to the scholarly debate about the historical Jesus, you could start here or here. I also think Dale Allison's work is great critical look at some of the issues at work in the debate. There are lots of historical reconstructions of Jesus' life. Some of the more popular ones like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan tend to sell books to liberal Christian audiences, so I've always thought E.P. Sanders treatment was perferable. I'll spare you the links to scholars who identify as orthodox Christians, like Luke Timothy Johnson or N.T. Wright. It sounded like you specifically wanted more scholarly sources and not popular books, so you could just look at the scholarly journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus. Or the Jesus Seminar. Or either of the following Introductions to the New Testament textbooks which are used in secular universities throughout the english speaking world:
Introduction to the New Testament by Mark Allen Powell
Introduction to the New Testament by Bart Ehrman
These are the ones I'm personally most familiar with. There are tons more like Geza Vermes and Amy Jill Levine I haven't read and I'm not as familiar with.
But I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't learn in any basic 101 intro to New Testament Class. The academic consensus is that regardless of what you think about him as a religious figure, it is extremely likely that there was a first century Jew named Jesus who started a faith movement that led to him being crucified. Why do scholars think this? Because by the time Paul started writing his letters 20 years later there was a growing, spreading religious movement that worship a crucified Jew named Jesus as their messiah, and given critical analysis of the texts produced by this movement, some of which are now in the New Testament, there really doesn't exist a coherent argument for the development of this movement that doesn't include the existence of a first century Jew named Jesus who was crucified.
Here are some more options for you if you want a Book of Mormon, and want to avoid missionary contact:
from store.lds.org (costs $2.50, this is the one that you can get for free)
Doubleday edition (costs $11.82)
Reader's Edition (costs $19.80)
The first two are official publications. The Doubleday, I believe, removes versification and columns. The third is not official, but does use pretty much the same text (technically it uses an older version of the text that is now public domain). The main difference is that it lays the text out in paragraphs, and puts prose into a verse format.
I second Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide.
One of the best Book of Mormon companions I have purchased, especially alongside his Readers Edition of the Book of Mormon, which removes the verses and organizes the book into chapters that are grouped appropriately and the poetic parts of the book into a format instantly recognized.
I have learned more from this work than any other Book of Mormon verse-by-verse study guide. We often get stuck in a specific study format for the scriptures. This 'Reader's Guide' produces a different way read that may entice some that need some new encouragement.
You should also check out The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition. It doesn't offer a ton of new scholarship, but reformats the book to make it more accessible. Reading this version I got a whole new insight into the book.
I trust Dr. Martin's lectures are quite beneficial, though I confess the busyness of the season will likely preclude my viewing them. However, rest assured I am familiar with a very similar series by Dr. Fantin, this book by Dr. Carson & Dr. Moo, and the writing of John Drane in his Introducing the New Testament. They assert synoptic dates in the late 50s through late 60s, mid 50s through the mid 60s, and mid 70s through mid 80s, respectively.
Your response was significantly more stream-of-consciousness than before and I trust you'll forgive me some questions of clarification? Which "more accurate description of events" are you referring to? In the wikipedia article's reference to oral tradition I see Halivne, Kalet, Herford, Wansbrough, and Henaut listed as authors asserting Christians had no written Gospels before AD 70, but I admit I am not familiar with any of them. Which would you recommend?
For further clarification, which assurances of mine are you referring to? More specifically, which assurances have lacked evidence? If you are indeed accusing me for failing to produce undeniable (concrete) evidence for the dating of the writing of the gospels... there's not any? If there was concrete evidence, it wouldn't be a dating puzzle, scholars would agree, and you and I would not be having this conversation.
You're right, we don't know where the apostle John was exactly in AD 70-75. However, whether he was in Judea or Asia Minor (Turkey), each was a center of Christianity by that point anyways. The notion that the only living disciple/apostle would be unable to correct an honest mistake (written or oral) strikes me as an unacceptably large assumption.
Unless I am mis-reading (and I apologize if it's the case!), your final assertion is that your weak assumption is negated by my weak assumption that early Christians were of trustworthy character. Did I not present valid historical evidence, dated within forty years of the AD 70s, that vehement enemies and torturers of Christians bore witness to their commitment to trustworthy character? This would be the equivalent of a letter from a British governor to the British monarchy, dated 1816, stating "I tortured those damned patriot Americans I captured. I hate their guts, but the only thing they had done wrong was trying to be the most upstanding men they could be."
My assumption is not based on conjecture, intuition, meditation, fasting, prayer, mushrooms, divine inspiration, dreams, voting, accepting a story I heard, or the most vivid story 2000 years later, but primary evidence from the time period.
I found this statement of yours particularly thought-provoking.
>If one is willing to risk one's life for a cause, one might also be willing to sacrifice historical accuracy.
It prompted me to do a willy-nilly google search on "Why do people risk their lives." I've read some interesting stuff, most of it about adrenaline junkies (though that's clearly not what we're talking about). Most interesting though, this quote, which I found here.
>Rohit Deshpande, a professor at Harvard Business School, has delved into the science of heroism to find out what causes someone to spring into action despite the danger to help or save someone else.
>
>In his research, Deshpande focused on how hotel workers took extreme risks to protect guests during the deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008. ...
>
>He found heroism had nothing to do with age, gender or religion. It started with personality.
>
>"It seems that they have a much more highly developed moral compass," he said. "They have this instinct for doing something good for other people. We find this across a whole series of situations. We find people who risk their own lives to protect people from harm."
I found nothing about people dying for a cause they know is a historically inaccurate lie.
I'm not quite sure what you are looking for, or where the 700 years comes from that you are referring to, and I'm not as experienced in books written from Christian perspectives as I am with others but I'll just leave these here for you to look into until someone else has more suggestions so you have somewhere to start for now. They are all written by Christian professors/scholars. This being the case however I am not sure that they will accomplish your goal. I only have real experience with the one written by Jeffers which is more about life in the era the NT was written.
http://www.amazon.com/Backgrounds-Early-Christianity-Everett-Ferguson/dp/0802822215
http://www.amazon.com/The-Greco-Roman-World-New-Testament/dp/0830815899
http://www.amazon.com/Arius-Heresy-Tradition-Rowan-Williams/dp/0802849695
http://www.amazon.com/An-Introduction-New-Testament-Carson/dp/0310238595/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
Mostly what /u/koine_lingua said. I think a lot of people have recommended this book and the accompanying materials. I minored in Ancient Greek, so my preference is to study Attic Greek.
Since you will be on your own, I would recommend this vocab book. It will break vocab up into manageable sections and if you learn all the words in the book, BOOM, you know like 75% of the most frequent words. The Mounce materials have accompanying flash cards.
I'd see if any churches in your area have any classes or search YouTube for some grammar videos (I know of at least one series that does a fairly decent job).
All that being said, I'd caution you against any preconceived notions that you will obtain some esoteric hidden knowledge by learning this magical language. It's not necessary at all to understand the Bible. I enjoyed the language and in reading Homer, the plays, and some other documents. I also enjoy the knowledge base I have to better understand textual criticism, but it's not like I possess some mystical insight into God's revelation. That's Gnosticism.
Edit: I can't spell in English.
>Mostly what u/koine_lingua said. I think a lot of people have recommended this book and the accompanying materials. I minored in Ancient Greek, so my preference is to study Attic Greek.
Since you will be on your own, I would recommend this vocab book. It will break vocab up into manageable sections and if you learn all the words in the book, BOOM, you know like 75% of the most frequent words. The Mounce materials have accompanying flash cards.
I'd see if any churches in your area have any classes or search YouTube for some grammar videos (I know of at least one series that does a fairly decen job).
All that being said, I'd caution you against any preconceived notions that you will obtain some esoteric hidden knowledge by learning this magical language. It's not necessary at all to understand the Bible. I enjoyed the language and in reading Homer, the plays, and some other documents. I also enjoy the knowledge base I have to better understand textual criticism, but it's not like I possess some mystical insight into God's revelation. That's Gnosticism.
FTFY
I read Don't Know Much About the Bible: Everything You Need to Know About the Good Book but Never Learned
I highly recommend it.
i enjoyed this and it also has an audio book.
It isn't for everybody -- it discusses the history behind the the stories, possible errors in translation, etc.
Man Seeks God: Flirtations with the Divine
It goes into Abrahamic religions, and then goes outside of them too. For a broader perspective.
*Edited to add - Don't Know Much About the Bible I was taking several undergraduate classes about the bible, and was listening to this at the same time. Its not as in depth, but it was really good, and pretty accurate to what I was hearing in class. I found it really interesting, and the book on tape is really good!
Don't Know Much About The Bible - http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0380728397/
Skeptics Annotated Bible - http://skepticsannotatedbible.com
> IMO, statements like this could be used in a politically inappropriate manner.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? (Certainly, I see how it could be abused, but what are you suggesting practically? Many comments, even many biblical ones, are often applied inappropriately in a political setting, so I don't understand the point of your comment.)
> Also, there is a very interesting and well-informed earlier thread concerning this subject matter here.
>
> Furthermore, some may be interested in checking out Dale Allison's collection of essays entitled: Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation.
Thank you for the referrals. Out of curiosity, though, did you mean them as a response to my comment or as general recommendations for all readers of the thread?
"Reading The Old Testament" by Lawrence Boadt. It's a textbook that I read for a Judaic Studies class a few years back and it gets into detail on the various texts that were put together, what was added and omitted, translations and interpretations, etc.
https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Old-Testament-Introduction-Second/dp/0809147807/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499619958&sr=8-1&keywords=reading+the+old+testament
I've been dealing with this user and was braced to deal with further hostility. Seriously bro, I'm sorry. That was bad on me.
Supernatural events...oh boy. I'll ELI5 for you at the end.
This is coming from my memory of studying Lawrence Boadt's books. This is the second edition of the book I went through
I subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis, but there is some debate on that apparently.
The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, had four sources that wrote them. Genesis started as oral tradition passed down through the tribes as a creation myth (similar to Native Americans' and other tribal societies) that was eventually written down. By the time it was written down (Before 1000 BCE if I remember right) there were two versions of it. Both were kept. I think Genesis is a moral and historical lesson rather than something to be taken literally.
The three sources I remember in Genesis are the two tribal creation myths and then one from the priesthood. The priests were from around 600-ish BCE if I remember correctly and they went back and added ritualistic numbers all over the Pentateuch ranging from 7 days of creation to 40 days and nights. They're also responsible for Leviticus as well as all of the various lineages.
So in the first five books of the Bible/Torah you have four different sources of authorship. You have some stories that are meant to be divine comedies (like Jonah, which was essentially a religious comedy for children. Ancient Veggie Tales) and many of the others that are just full of politics.
 
In the New Testament you get more of the same. Mark was written when the Romans were majorly pissed at Christians to say that people of the time were complete idiots. Matthew was written awhile later and used Mark and another document that we no longer have (the Q source) as material, Luke was written WAY later - possibly by a woman - and used Mark and Q and themselves as a source. John was written in a monastic-ish community and has its own interesting history.
The apostles in the gospels likely didn't literally exist, going back to ritualistic numbers there's 1 apostle for each tribe of Israel if I'm remembering correctly. The books in the Bible were not all written immediately around the time of Jesus Christ. Revelations' modern interpretation is particularly silly because it was a coded message to evade Roman persecution...not a doomsday prophecy.
Paul, a tax collector that fell over in the street and went out one day then woke up a changed man who stated he'd come in touch with the divine and knew he had to get up and be a different person, wrote several letters to ancient Christians as an advisor. To my understanding, Paul's letters didn't claim any supernatural events other than "something knocked me on my butt and I woke up and knew it was good and that I had to serve it."
The Pastorals were written by someone other than Paul and falsely attributed to him and there's an insertion in Corinthians that is widely regarded to not be Paul himself.
ELI5
My focus on Paul is because his letters are the only thing in the entire Bible that I accept as the author being literally truthful to their own experiences. "I was knocked on my ass one day. I saw something. I thought it was good. So I decided to stop being a dishonest asshole and serve it." It may have just been a seizure that scared the crap out of him, but regardless he's honest about it. Every other part of the Bible fails to live up to a modern standard of literal truth.
In my opinion, the rest of the Bible is a history/sociology lesson veiled in supernatural events that we've no proof or evidence of. There's a continuous hope that there's something bigger than humanity out there that cares about us, and that hope is worth taking.
There are other hypotheses out there about how things fit together, but my final judgement when I studied the Bible was that it was an honest book in sociopolitical context, dishonest in our modern context, and a preoccupation with it is unhealthy.
So you shouldn't believe in religious dogma. Any all-powerful being interested in your well-being will do what it's going to do regardless of if you believe in it or not, or if you get dunked in a bathtub and then eat toast and drink wine on Sundays.
Being an asshole to people that do though, that robs them of their ability to grow.
I'd be interested in hearing your opinion about Richmond Lattimore's translation
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Richmond-Lattimore/dp/0865475245
The New English Bible (1961, 1970) because it flows very well and handles some difficult or awkward phrases well. Plus it keeps index numbers out of the way.
The RSV because it's plain and straightforward.
Richmond Lattimore's NT because it too is plain and straightforward.
This is a good abridged little guide with symbols for such categories: http://www.amazon.com/Kens-Guide-Bible-Ken-Smith/dp/0922233179
Take a look at Ken's Guide to the Bible, which is along these same lines. It's divided into what, in Ken's view, are the 3 books of the bible: Old Testament, New Testament, and Jesus Hangover.
You should get Ken's Guide to the Bible
>The colloquial usage of semantics, is when someone is needlessly pedantic over words.
In any philosophical or theological discussion, "colloquial usage" is simply an unsuitable tool for the job at hand.
>Why do no Jewish scholars,
Because this is a Christian argument concerning the Trinity and its presence in the Old Testament. The theology of the Trinity is developed from numerous OT sources which, as I indicated in my OP, I'll not go into here. The reason for this is that I am describing one, specific test of a theory in which Unitarian statements have latent (i.e. non-obvious) Trinitarian semantics.
>not one
Clearly our disagreement over the meaning of "one" goes deeper than I thought. Here is one: Dr. Benjamin Sommer (professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary), in his book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel comes to the conclusion that doctrine of the Trinity is compatible with monotheism and that it does not provide a theological basis for Jewish objection to Christianity (thought, obviously, he believes there are others). I've not yet read the book, but he gives a talk about it here. You'll want to skip to around the 34 minute mark to hear him on this subject.
i would recommend Dr Robert Price's book, The Incredible Shrinking Son Of Man some will find it a bit tedious but i am absolutely in awe of how much evidence and reasoning go into Dr. Price's arguments that Jesus may never have existed at all or if he did that it was just a coincidence that the name was a common name at the time.
This guy wrote a book about spending a year following biblical laws.
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEPAYO
the book for you. a demonstration of how divorced from their original form are modern mainstream Christianity and Judaism.
https://www.amazon.com/Year-Living-Biblically-Literally-Possible-ebook/dp/B000SEPAYO
Oh boy the shit that's in the bible that doesn't make sense...
This book is a fantastic read. It's not at all political or anti-religious and doesn't go into the Christian message at all. It's just a guy who tries to live an entire year as close as possible to all the rules the Bible has. For example: you're not allowed to wear clothes with mixed fibers, you have to tell the literal and complete truth all the time, There's a description of some kind of hut you have to build for some festival that isn't even recognized anymore.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Edition/dp/158834312X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375154191&sr=8-1&keywords=jefferson+bible
Buy one of these. It's the important parts of the new testament's morals, with the miracles taken out, and with the old testament never mentioned. Which basically sums up the "ideology" of christianity somewhat, without the dubious parts.
Yes. I read Asad's translation spot-checking remarkable passages with ... I think it was Khan's translation. By comparison, Asad white-washes various passages that Khan appears to give a more literal rendering.
It was the most disturbing read I've ever had. Those who think the Bible is like the Quran either haven't read both or don't understand either. For examples: The Bible is a collection of books; the Quran a disarray of sayings. The Bible's threats of damnation and punishment are specific to crimes and relatively sparse; the Quran's threats of damnation and punishment are specific to groups of people and disbelief specifically and are repeated ad nausea. It felt like the Quran was trying to bully me into believing it.
Actually this historian says jesus was not real
https://www.amazon.com/Incredible-Shrinking-Son-Man-Tradition/dp/1591021219
Eye opening read.
Like... the jewish council could not have convened on the sabbath to decide jesus fate because it was forbidden to do it on that day.
And we have roman court records and no jesus.
The book has over 400 examples of where the scripture was just wrong with the historical period.
So ... the bible is wrong about the setting of the plot.. but we are still supposed to believe the man character was real?
Considering the new testament was written 400 years later.
It's a fucking joke.
Caesar existed.
Jesus even if he existed is more legend than man.
The Christ Myth theory is alive and well. There is always room to expand your knowledge. A couple places to start:
Are you referring to the one mentioned by /u/Doctor_Yi?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Message-Quran-Muhammad-Asad/dp/1904510000
I have this one by Jonathan Star and thought he did a great job at translating. Though it's the only one I've read so I guess I have no basis of comparison. But still. I enjoy every page of that book...
Recommended:
MAS Abdel Haleem
Mohammad Asad
Bewley & Bewley
Robert M. Price's The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man might be subtle enough.
When asked by Brian Flemming if it's possible to be an atheist and a Christian at the same time, Price replied, "Sure, and I like to think that I am one."
>>If you want to insist that historians do not know how to do history I never said that. Yet another logical fallacy to add to your pile.
That wouldn't be a logical fallacy. Also, I've actually studied logical fallacies, I do not believe at any point in this entire discussion I have been guilty of one. Quite a lot of people though if they try to be 1) unpleasant, 2) give the illusion of appearing to have the upper-hand in a dispute will charge their interlocutor with falling fowl of logical fallacies when none have occurred.
Anyway, if you want to hold the evidence of early Christianity to a different standard to other periods of history, or different topics. That is your choice, but that is not how scholarship or history works. Historians don't retrospectively decide that since the story of Jesus became important to world history that he should be held to different standards of historicity than anyone else in antiquity. If you are consistent you will believe pretty much everything and everyone from ancient history didn't exist, (and likely all historians are all half-assed liars.)
>>What I actually made clear is that a half-assed "historical-critical" methodology is INSUFFICIENT to establish anything to a level of hard scientific certainty. Which any legitimate historian (without an agenda) would and should absolutely agree with. Historians should not and cannot claim to be scientists. Which you tacitly acknowledge with your comment about working "to formulate the historical-critical method".
I never said history can reach the same validity as, say, proving gravity or the hard sciences. I, literally, never argued that. I have no dispute with you about that. If you want to know, I think history gives scant reason to believe in a miraculous Jesus and if people are building their faith on that, they are wrong. But, as every historian will tell you, the only theory that makes sense of the evidence is a historical, but human, Jesus.
I cannot begin to understand why you think that I reference the historical-critical method you believe that is me tactically positioning the scholarly study of history to equate to a hard science. I can only believe you don't know what "historical-critical method" is. Google it.
If you want to read about the shift in archaeologists opinion regarding the Exodus, please see, e.g. http://exodus.calit2.net/ or https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319047676 or https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0062565249 or https://www.academia.edu/12144234/Egyptologists_and_the_Israelite_Exodus_from_Egypt
It is now the acknowledged consensus among archaeologists and Egyptologists (not Biblical historians, although them too) that there is a historical basis for the Exodus, but it is smaller than the Bible stated.
Professor Friedman by the way is a favourite of Bible skeptics, mainly as his book "Who Wrote the Bible" shows the layers of human scribal activity in the Torah (just in case you want, although I suppose you will do it anyway) to try to suggest he, and pretty much all other historians are wrong and all faith-based.
As, again, you should see, despite your emotional reaction, I was telling the truth, and the amateur websites you've obtained your information from (or just what you presumed) is in error.
Yeah, but make sure it has literary footnotes - lots of them - they clear up a lot of stuff theists and atheists alike miss.
Also, I really recommend this book
May I also recommend The Dark Side of Christian History, Losing Faith in Faith and Ken's Guide to the Bible. It doesn't hurt to get some more objective sources of information on your religion's history.
>How can God be made Lord by God?
By the fact that God exists in multiple hypostasis and can exalt one back to full divinity after its subsequent descension into humanity.
> What is clear is that God gave Jesus His name when He exalted Jesus. You said only God’s name can save... Well here God gives His name to Jesus at a particular point in history...
Yeah so? This was fortold as far back as Daniel 7.
> So then why does the Bible describe Yahweh as changing? Is it all anthropomorphic terminology? How do you know that?
How do I know it's anthropormphic terminology? Seriously? There have been entire academic books published on the thorough anthropomorphism of the OT, especially the Pentateuch. Here's a very prominent such academic book:
https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264
Here's another written just this year:
https://www.amazon.ca/Gods-Body-Anthropomorphic-God-Testament/dp/0567655989
There's so much literature on this topic that the only explanation for your lack of familiarity with it is that you don't read any scholarship on the meaning of the biblical texts yet comfortably feel yourself an authority to make declarative statements like "There is no justification for ... anthropomorphization [in the bible]" and "The only possible justification is [insert simplistic development model here]".
>Yahweh knew the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah was great and their sin was grievous. Obviously he didn't know quite how grievous, which is why he came down to check it out.
Did he hear the outcry from heaven or something? Were they that loud? And how did he know it was "grievous sin"? Were the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah having extremely loud conversations about how particularly sinful they were that day that intruded on Yahweh's clouds?
>Furthermore, the whole of the Bible is an argument against Yahweh's omnipotence.
Matthew 19:26: Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
So the Bible says God is omnipotent. Revelation 19:6 calls God the "Almighty".
>It's the story of people defying his will again and again and again and again and again forever.
Yeah , and God letting it happen. That's the part you conveniently leave out.
If you're at all interested in the bible, or dismantling the bible, you should read up on some christian theology ... your argument stems from certain preconceptions of Christianity which don't hold true for a majority of denominations. I mean really, you expect to Bible to be literal truth after being written by man and re-organized a bunch of times over thousands of years?
A good book is Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. It's a solid epistemological approach to understanding how and who the bible was written for. note: i'm not a christian.
Don't hate on Jesus, even Jefferson so potential in a person with good intentions: https://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Morals-Nazareth/dp/158834312X/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/137-8229286-4014834?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=158834312X&pd_rd_r=026db146-55ee-4501-afda-bb9c85c7cf81&pd_rd_w=2P2nc&pd_rd_wg=rMtNZ&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=A0ZWKTDSZ77J7CP4R6HB&psc=1&refRID=A0ZWKTDSZ77J7CP4R6HB