(Part 3) Best christian ministry & leadership books according to redditors

Short Answer: Truthfully, we are not sure at all. We are actually pretty unsure of where/how the historical Jesus was executed and what happened after his death.

Long answer: In order to answer your specific question, we need to ask, if Jesus was crucified, what happened to his body? And, what do we historically know about the sequence of events that happened after his death.

This has been the subject of historiographical debates over the last two decades. Consensus wise, most Early Christian historians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was most likely executed by the state, and because the Roman state's typical form for punishment was crucifixion, this is most likely what happened to him. The area near Golgotha is a place known to have done execution, but so were other areas around Jerusalem.

Many historians lean on the side of John Dominic Crossan who has argued that in all likelihood he was executed and thrown into a mass grave. This is outlined in Bart Ehrman's How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee and I think it was The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant John Dominic Crossan's “The Dogs Beneath the Cross,” chap. 6 in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. The reason for our uncertainty is that secondary characters of antiquity are increasingly difficult to find out key aspects of their life, especially when their biographers were not witnesses and lived decades after the character's death.

Your question about the Tomb is even more difficult because the story as described in the Gospels is troublesome. None of them pass our tests for historical certainty, including the Criterion of dissimilarity and Criterion of multiple attestation. What do I mean by this? The stories don't actually match up. This is a problem for historians since every single resurrection narrative are completely different. A good example can be found if you ask what did they find at the tomb the morning of the third day? In Mark 16:5 it's One Young Man in Matthew 28:5 it's One Angel, in Luke 24:4 it's Two men, in John 20:12 - they don't find anyone there the first time they visit the tomb. This goes for every other detail in these narratives. Historians like Crossan and Ehrman both have also argued that the purpose of Roman Execution was to desecrate the body of the person being punished, thus allowing it it a burial in a tomb is highly unlikely (but not implausible).

So about that church in particular, no, the likelihood that he was executed and buried near that church is unlikely because we know nothing reliable about his death. It was picked up as the cites of both places for non historical reasons in the 4th century.

Edit: corrected a book title.

At the risk of a flood of down votes... you're wrong. I can't defend any Christian who uses the Old Testament to condemn homosexuality, since OT references seem to be referring to laws of a theocratic Jewish state which are abrogated by Jesus' teaching (that's why Christians never worried about wearing mixed fabrics or killing sassy children, even in the early days of the Church). Shame on anyone who tries to resurrect these verses to condemn homosexuality now; the criticism they receive is just.

However, the New Testament rejection of homosexuality is direct, encompassing, and clear.

The three most important scholarly English-Language studies of Romans in the last century have been by Robert Jewett, CEB Cranfield (Volume 1), (Volume 2), and James D.G. Dunn (Volume 1), (Volume 2). Of these, Jewett probably writes from what could be considered to be a "secular" perspective, the other two are objectively worded, but are more religiously oriented. None of these studies minces any words about Paul's intent in condemning homosexuality.

Commenting on Paul's inclusion of lesbians in the condemnation of homosexuality, Jewett writes that the verses in Romans 1 are "a negative judgement" on "women's homoeroticism... [not] women engaging in oral or anal intercourse with males" (176). While Jewett clearly frowns on such an "old fashioned" idea, he writes "there is no mistaking that... Paul... is convinced that heterosexuality was part of the divinely created order for human kind.. the evidence in this verse is particularly damaging to the hypothesis that the critique of homosexuality in this periscope aims solely to attack pederasty and thus has no bearing on homo erotic relationships between adults." (pp. 177). Of verse 1:27, he writes (again with a disproving tone towards Paul's old-fashioned morals), "Paul simply follows the line of his Jewish cultural tradition by construing the entire realm of homosexual relations as evidence that the divine wrath was active therein" (pp. 179). So Jewett, in the most important single work on Romans in the 21st century, sees Paul's morality as antiquated, old fashioned, and of little value, but has no doubt that he is talking about real homosexual relationships, not rape.

I won't waste space quoting the other two, but they both follow suit on this verse: there is no way Paul could be talking about pederasts, rapists, or anything other than consensual adult homosexuals.

As to Paul's condemnation of homosexuality in 1st Corinthians, Hans Conzelmann, a German scholar who is very liberal, writes "[Paul is talking here about]... both passive and active homosexuality. The Jewish [=Paul's] view on the latter is unequivocal: Do not have illicit intercourse or arouse passion for another male, a quote from an extra-biblical Jewish author (pp. 106)."

Also, the BDAG Lexicon, which is the official, alpha-and-omega of New Testament Greek, has this to say about the translation of the world usually rendered "homosexuals:" "'Male prostitutes' (New Revised Standard Version) is too narrow a rendering; 'sexual pervert' is too broad." (BDAG, pp. 631)

TL;DR: The belief that Paul is talking about anything other than adult-adult consensual homosexual relationships is the New Testament scholarship equivalent of Young Earth Creationism. Writers like Bart Ehrman, though widely read in pop-media, are regarded as clowns by professional societies like SBL.

Mormonism and Islam claim to have the authentic teaching of Jesus, but only ours can be traced back to Jesus in history. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the late 2nd Century, considers the public succession of bishops going back to Jesus to be the guarantee of authentic Christian doctrine:

> 1. It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries, which they were in the habit of imparting to the perfect apart and privily from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the Churches themselves. For they were desirous that these men should be very perfect and blameless in all things, whom also they were leaving behind as their successors, delivering up their own place of government to these men; which men, if they discharged their functions honestly, would be a great boon [to the Church], but if they should fall away, the direst calamity.

In brief, one of the most persuasive arguments to me for Catholicism over other forms of Christianity, or over non-Christian religions which claim to be the heirs to Christ's teaching, is that when you read the writings of those closest to Christ in history, they sound like Catholics; certainly more like Catholics than like members of any Protestant denomination. Protestant polemicists may charge that this or that doctrine which is Catholic dogma today is not explicitly attested until such and such a century, and it's true you don't find every last Catholic doctrine fully developed right away, but even just reading the very earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament itself, you find Catholic doctrines difficult to reconcile with Protestantism. They say that the bishop, with his priests and deacons, represents the authority of God, because of the succession of clergy instituted by Christ, and all should be united with the bishop in the Eucharist, which is a sacrifice.

Even more importantly, the New Testament itself testifies to the visible unity Christ wanted for his Church. He prayed at the Last Supper that the apostles, and all who would believe in him through their word, might all be one, so that by their unity, the whole world might see that he was sent by the Father. Paul urges that there be no divisions among us, and that we not split into factions named after their founder. The visibly united Catholic Church looks more like the Church as described in the New Testament than the multitude of Protestant denominations, even if there are not 30,000 of them as frequently claimed.

To judge between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy in such a way is a little more difficult than between Catholicism and Protestantism. Some people here will openly tell a person thinking of converting to Catholicism or Orthodoxy that they think Orthodoxy is close enough. But, for one thing, I think it is important to maintain communion with the See of Rome, which was recognised from the first centuries as "preeminent in love" above all other sees. In the text already quoted above, Irenaeus of Lyons goes on:

> 2. Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere.

We should not necessarily draw extravagant conclusions about Irenaeus' faith in papal infallibility from this text. Irenaeus may only mean it is necessary to agree with Rome because it is necessary to agree with all of the apostolic sees, of which Rome is one. But his piling up of praises ("very great, very ancient, and universally known") and citation of Rome's double apostolic foundation do suggest he has chosen the most eminent example, and not merely an example. Theologians can argue about whether Scriptural and patristic evidence justifies the Catholic dogmas of today on the papacy, but at a basic level, it's clear Rome had an important role in the early Church, and that is more consistent with what is found today in the Catholic Church than in the Orthodox Church, which will not be associated with Rome at all.

Just an FYI that Ehrman has a new book out today: How Jesus Became God

Remember that one time that Notre Dame (Four Horseman included) had fought the KKK?

No? Here’s a book

If you want a book debunking the anti-Catholic myths about history of the Church. Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History is one for you. It's written by an agnostic who hates bad history. And also How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods, although he is Catholic, it's still informative. And there's The New Concise History of the Crusades (Critical Issues in World and International History) by Thomas Madden, again an agnostic who refutes the baseless claim against the Crusade.

You wanted to be part of the intelligentsia, but throughout your philosophical journey, you always based your convictions only on authority and tradition instead of on evidence and arguments. Don't you realize that this is the epitome of anti – intellectualism?

It is correct that the New Atheists aren't the pinnacle of atheistic thought and didn't contribute many new ideas to the academic debate of atheism vs. theism or religion. But this was never their goal, and it is also unnecessary, since the academic debate is already over for many decades. If you want to know why the arguments for theism are all complete nonsense and not taken seriously anymore, why Christianity is wrong just about everything and why apologists like Craig are dishonest charlatans who make a living out of fooling people, your reading list shouldn't be New Atheists, but rather something like this:

Colin Howson – Objecting to God

George H. Smith – Atheism: The Case Against God

Graham Oppy – Arguing about Gods

Graham Oppy – The Best Argument Against God

Herman Philipse – God in the Age of Science

J. L. Mackie – The Miracle of Theism

J. L. Schellenberg – The Wisdom to Doubt

Jordan Sobel – Logic and Theism

Nicholas Everitt – The Non-Existence of God

Richard Gale – On the Nature and Existence of God

Robin Le Poidevin – Arguing for Atheism

Stewart Elliott Guthrie – Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Theodore Drange – Nonbelief & Evil



[Avigor Shinan – From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609086)

Bart Ehrman – The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings

Bart Ehrman – Jesus, Interrupted

Bart Ehrman – Misquoting Jesus

Burton L. Mack – Who Wrote the New Testament?

Helmut Koester – Ancient Christian Gospels

John Barton, John Muddiman – The Oxford Bible Commentary

John Dominic Crossan – Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

Karen Armstrong – A History of God

Mark Smith – The Early History of God

Randel McCraw Helms – Who Wrote the Gospels?

Richard Elliott Friedman – Who Wrote the Bible?

Robert Bellah – Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

Robert Walter Funk – The Gospel of Jesus

Right Wing American Christianity is nothing about any ideals. It is dangerous xenophobia and jingoism, it is the hang-over from McCarthy and Reagan.

Look at the ethos of The Family.

Unfortunately, it is difficult for people with a Western Post-Enlightenment worldview to simply interpret what Pre-Modern Hellenistic Jews were writing, especially if unaware of the context.

I was supplying interpretations from biblical scholars and showing that there are multiple ways that people understand Jesus' divinity. I wasn't making any value statements that they are better or even exclusive of one another. These are just the ways that people read the text.

Edit: If you want to read some biblical scholars and their interpretations of what Jesus meant by claiming divinity.

[N.T. Wright- Jesus and the Victory of God] (http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Christian-Origins-Question-Volume/dp/0800626826)

[Marcus Borg- Jesus: A New Vision] (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Vision-Spirit-Culture-Discipleship/dp/0060608145)

[Richard Bauckham- Jesus and the God of Israel] (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-God-Israel-Testaments-Christology/dp/0802845592)

[John Dominic Crossan- Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography] (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Revolutionary-John-Dominic-Crossan/dp/006180035X)

[Reza Aslan- Zealot] (http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/0812981480) Edit 2: Apparently his credentials are in some dispute and this particular book is pretty "pop theology" but I found this [post] (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/08/two-scholars-respond-to-the-actual-content-of-reza-aslans-take-on-jesus/) by a theologian I respect that gives some insight into the whole thing.

[Thomas J.J. Altizer- Contemporary Jesus] (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1876258.Contemporary_Jesus)

The unfortunately-titled book, Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart, is a pretty direct refutation of some of the New Atheist tropes.

For a somewhat more difficult read, his latest book, The Experience of God, takes on some of the more metaphysical misunderstandings that New Atheists (and many theists) make about what God actually is.

For a much easier and shorter summary, in a sense, of The Experience of God, take a look at DBH's article in First Things, God, Gods, and Fairies which covers similar ground in a much more introductory way (and has the benefit of being freely available).

good book on "The Family"

http://www.amazon.com/The-Family-Secret-Fundamentalism-American/dp/0060559799

You ask excellent questions. Other excellent questions:

• Why do early Christian writings immediately after the NT not really look like Mormonism?
  
• If the church cannot apostatize now, why wasn't that true of the early Christian church? (Including the promise, "the gates of hell shall not prevail..., etc.)

May God bless you, brother. You are struggling! As such, you are an example to many around you.

There is a story in the Orthodox Christian tradition about a poor village, somewhere in the country in Russia - sometime long ago, in the time when the country was occupied by the Mongols. For years, the villagers struggled with poor crops, illness, Mongol raids, bad weather, etc. Then one year, there was a great crop, no one got sick, the Mongols stayed away, and the weather was pleasant, with just the right amount of rain and just the right amount of sunshine. All of the villagers were happy, except for some woman, who could be found in the Church crying. When they asked her what was wrong, she cried out, "God has abandoned us!"

Another story comes out of Greece, retold by a Greek monk from the island of Mt. Athos. Apparently there was one particular monk that had a drinking problem. He neglected all the work he was assigned, skipped going to church sometimes, and stayed in his cell and drank either wine he had stolen from the church or something stronger he had stolen from the mainland. He would get drunk in the afternoon, but in the morning he would arise with tears and beg forgiveness and try to stay sober that day ... and fail. Eventually this monk died and an elder elsewhere on the island who knew him heard about it. When the other monks brought him the news, tears of joy filled his eyes and a smile came over his face. Those around him were astonished and gently reprimanded him: "Elder, this man was a great sinner! Why are you happy for him?" The elder answered, "No, you don't understand. This brother struggled with his passion his entire life and never gave up struggling until the very end. The angels are receiving him with gladness today!"

I'm sorry if these stories seem kind of silly or disconnected to you. If so, I apologize. The point I was trying to make is that often trying to follow God calls our attention to things in ourself that we otherwise would give no care about. I can witness to this personally. Becoming a Christian (specifically, an Orthodox Christian) did not make me a better person nor take away all of my passions and temptations. On the contrary, in some cases the temptations grew stronger. But when I was a complete apostate, I gave no care at all to these things - I even was proud of them, and would try to outdo my sinfulness when the right opportunities arose, just to see how far into the dark I could go. But now you and I recognize our sinfulness, and we find it painful. We are finally putting it into the right context.

When we think badly of ourselves when we fall as you describe, sometimes there is a little bit of pride involved. We thought we were a better person than that, no? But actually, what we are learning - what God seems to be teaching us - is that we are weak, and that without Him we can do nothing (John 15:15).

Again, based on my own personal experience, when you get up after you fall, never assume that you will not fall again. Ask God for help and forgiveness, move forward, and don't look back on what just happened. Adopt an attitude of poverty of spirit (Matthew 5:3ff), and I think things may go better. And avoid asking God why these temptations come to you. Everything that happens in our life happens for a purpose. A sports athlete does not get stronger without gradually lifting more weight, and a spiritual athlete does not get stronger without struggling with obstacles that appear in his or her way. Another Orthodox story: Someone once asked a monk what they do in the monastery. He said, "We fall, we get up. We fall, we get up. We fall, we get up."

I think the other suggestions you've been given also make sense. Personally, I think my particular tradition is best equipped to handle struggling with the passions, but we do not deny that there is grace in other Christian faiths. I might recommend one book by an Australian layman, Breaking the Chains of Addiction: How to Use Ancient Eastern Orthodox Spirituality to Free Our Minds and Bodies From All Addictions, which writes in a pretty down to earth way of the Scriptures and teachings of the Church Fathers that relate to not only "hard" addictions, but also to dealing with everyday passions like anger, envy, etc. I think you might also find The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks helpful.

May God keep you! Christ is in our midst.

There are several very famous Catholic apologists who converted after reading about Church history and reading the works of the Church Fathers. Peter Kreeft is one such person. Scott Hahn is another (although his main impetus was finding Catholic doctrines in scripture rather than from reading the fathers).

There is a book called "Surprised by Truth" edited by Patrick Madrid which features the stories of 11 or so evangelicals who became Catholics and several of them had reading the fathers as a turning point.

Jimmy Akin has a book called The Fathers know best which could be a very good introduction (I haven't read but I very much appreciate Jimmy Akin's apologetic efforts, he has a very gentle and patient persona with a thorough and systematic approach).

Pope Benedict XVI spent a few years of his papacy talking about a different church father every Wednesday and he walked his way through all the major fathers from the late 1st century (Clement of Rome) to the 12th century (Peter Lombard). Ignatius Press has compiled all these talks into two volumes. Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to Augustine and Church Fathers and Teachers: From Saint Leo the Great to Peter Lombard.

I have read Benedict's introductions to the fathers and I enjoyed them immensely. He doesn't supply many quotations from them but he does give you an overview of their life and times, the focus of their theological works, and the significance of their works for us today. I profited a lot from reading them.

There is a work called The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the face of God by Robert Louis Wilken which is also a very useful overview of Christian theology in the first 7 centuries. His focus is less on the individual personalities of the fathers but more on the current of their thought and the intellectual climate that it was developing in. He covers liturgy, doctrinal development, Christology, faith and reason, interpretation of scripture, moral theology, arts and literature and a bunch of other stuff if I remember rightly. I profited from this book even more than the Pope Benedict ones I reckon.

Bruce Metzger's The Canon of the New Testament is a good summary and exhaustive description of the Apostolic Fathers and early development of the NT canon and bias free to boot.

Check out a book called The End of Biblical Studies. In it, the author suggest that biblical studies should largely be abandoned because the credibility of the Bible has been so thoroughly destroyed, and the only folks who are still arguing for the Bible's relevancy are the religious conservatives who really, really want it to be true.

> On a systemic level, in the USA, have white people experienced racism?

All white people are the same? Catholics, Muslims, or Jews? What about Poles, Irish, or Italians? Do you think all these differing groups were just collectively welcomed and embraced? That they didn't face similar issues that people of color face today? Are you that naive and ignorant? Hell it was a big deal that there were no Protestants on the Supreme Court recently or that Al Smith ran for President in the 20s. Go read some of the Founding Father's views on Catholics or "papists" as they were known as. Here is a book for you maybe to inform you a bit about discrimination and issues that whites had to deal with. Whites certainly faced plenty of issues and to gloss over it and ignore these differences is ignorance at it's finest. Plenty of 'white' people absolutely faced similar problems. Have those problems lessened over time as the 'melting pot' erased some of these differences, yes, but a statement like you made is wholly ignorant and offensive. I'm not here to compare who has had it worse the Irish or the Blacks. The whites or browns. But you demonstrate a complete lack of empathy and knowledge of history. If we're ever to overcome these differences (like many white immigrant ethnic groups somewhat have), then we need to stop arguing semantics and getting into a victim pissing contest and work towards treating all of our fellow humans equally and with respect.

Edit: syntax

> Besides, Christians in those places were actually pretty well tolerated by muslims, save for a religious tax on them.

This is not corroborated by primary sources.

Hey, /u/Eskoe. I'm no longer busy, for now.

To begin with Hinduism, /u/wza recommended me Shankara's Crest-Jewel of Discriminiation. I purchased it and have yet to read it, though I do recommend you read about Adi Shankara, as well as the school of Hindu philosophy he expounded, Advaita Vedanta. The three canonical texts of the school (and of all Hindu schools of philosophy) are available on Project Gutenberg: the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. Visit /r/hinduism if you have questions specific to Hinduism. In fact, two of the most recent posts are ascetic:

It is not the fulfillment of a desire that makes you happy it is only the contentment that makes you happy ~ Sri Swami Tattvavidananda

and

If you want to pursue yoga you must do away with all forms of indulgence ~ Sri Swami Tattvavidananda

Now, Buddhism. Of course, read about the Buddha, who lived a life of much asceticism, and read the Dhammapada, a short Buddhist text available on Project Gutenberg. This list of notable hermits includes numerous Buddhist ascetics you may enjoy reading about. Also read about Buddhist monasteries and monks. In terms of "warrior asceticism", you may like to read about Shaolin Monastery. I personally enjoy reading about Bodhidharma, the Buddhist monk credited for transmitting Ch'an (known in Japanese as Zen) to China. Legend has it that, "he also began the physical training of the Shaolin monks that led to the creation of Shaolinquan". Visit /r/Buddhism if you have questions specific to Buddhism.

Before I stray from Eastern philosophy, read about dousing:

> Some Japanese ascetic practices, as with Shinto misogi practices, include dousing. This is seen, for example, with some Aikido martialists. Morihei Ueshiba was known to practice cold water misogi.

> Kamakura, Japan has a temple whose Nichiren Buddhist priests in training practice a ritual of 100 days of fasting, meditation and walking which ends with stripping to loincloths and dousing with ice cold water.

If I recall correctly, I discovered the above through reading about samurai, which seems in line with your "warrior asceticism". (A personal anecdote: It wasn't long after reading that that I began having regular cold showers.)

Now, Western philosophy. Read about Cynicism and the Cynics. In particular, Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes. Chapters on each can be found in Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.

Read also about Stoicism and the Stoics. In particular, Seneca the Younger, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Texts by each can be found here. Epictetus' Enchiridion is a short Stoic text, similar to the Buddhist's Dhammapada. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is seemingly the most popular Stoic text, though. However, in comparison with Cynicism, Stoicism seems more like simple living than asceticism. In terms of "warrior asceticism", besides the article in my previous comment, read this, a list of books which seem to link Stoicism and the military. Visit /r/Stoicism for questions specific to Stoicism.

Stoicism is said to have inspired much of Christian literature. I recently read The Imitation of Christ and very much enjoyed it - it is very ascetic and is available on Project Gutenberg. Read about the Desert Fathers. In particular, Anthony the Great. I purchased The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks and have yet to read it in its entirely but have liked what I've read hitherto. Read also about Francis of Assisi. A biography of his is available on Project Gutenberg. Read about Leo Tolstoy (that's right, Tolstoy, an ascetic). This is where I recommend you his books, on the world's behalf. Read his books.

As you shall read, Leo Tolstoy is very much inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer is inspired by many of the above philosophies, in particular, the Eastern philosophies, though he is very much a Western philosopher. He is best known for his text, The World as Will and Representation. Arthur Schopenhauer is probably the name here most popular in this subreddit. So, ask here for questions specific to him.

I'd exclude the Transcendentalists this time around, as they seem less ascetic and more advocates of simple living. However, because another user recommended them in this post of yours, I shall include them. One Transcendentalist is Ralph Waldo Emerson, best known for his essay, Self-Reliance, which is available on Project Gutenberg. Another Transcendentalist is Henry David Thoreau, who is best known for his text, Walden, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, which are both available on Project Gutenberg, here and here.

That is the reading material I'd recommend you. I have video material, too.

I'd recommend you the series, Extreme Pilgrim. Part One: China can be seen here (which may feature your "warrior asceticism"), Part Two: India, here, and Part Three: Egypt, here. Part Three: Egypt features a man named Father Lazarus El Anthony, a former Marxist/atheist university lecturer who became a Christian hermit. You can watch a series about him here.

I apologise that my comment doesn't tackle much "warrior asceticism", but rather, asceticism generally. However, if you tackle the above, I expect you'll encounter much "warrior asceticism" where I have not. Good luck with your reading, /u/Eskoes. You have me drained.

This is the ultimate book of church history. I highly recommend it, it's lengthy but well worth the time investment.

I recommend Dr. Thomas Madden's Book.

[Amazon Link Here] (http://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Crusades-Critical-International/dp/0742538230)

He takes the Crusades and is able to explain the reasoning behind them, the faults that occurred and why, and makes it enjoyable to read.

I highly recommend reading the Apostolic Fathers. These were people who either knew the Apostles or were just a generation offset from them (abt 70AD - 150AD). The things they say are amazing and show the rich diversity of thought among some of the earliest Christians. Michael Holmes has a really nice, inexpensive translation into English with introductory notes on each book that explain the authors, dates, occasion for writing, etc.

Since I'm not taking classes this semester, I'm taking the time to read several books:

Reformation Theology: A Systematic Summary by Matthew Barrett

The Apostolic Fathers in English along with Reading the Apostolic Fathers

Dispensationalism by Charles Ryrie

Covenant Theology: A Reformed Baptist Perspective by Phillip Griffiths

Philosophy for Understanding Theology by Allen and Springsted

The Love of Wisdom: A Christian Introduction to Philosophy by Cowen and Spiegel

And Wheelock's Latin

I'm already into Reformation Theology and the Apostolic Fathers. I highly recommend both books, but I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the Apostolic Fathers. I've learned so much about the Early Church and its diversity of beliefs and practices. These were works by people who knew and studied under the Apostles themselves.

From what I've read the Crusades initially began as a delayed response to several centuries of Muslim conquest over Christian states. Unfortunately there is a knowledge gap between scholars and the everyday man-on-the-streets. The typical layperson sees the Crusades as an unprovoked response over peaceful Islam. This is a very uninformed view of the Crusades. The Muslim campaigns had been sacking Christians territories for hundreds of years, destroying many churches along the way (including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem). Many of the indigenous Christians in Muslim-conquered territories were subject to harsh harassment and persecution, constantly being pressured into conversion. Jews likewise suffered similar persecution.

Here are some resources to further your understanding on the Crusades:

http://www.catholic.com/blog/steve-weidenkopf/were-the-crusades-just-wars

https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Crusades-Critical-International/dp/0742538230
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Thomas F Madden is the leading scholar on the Crusades. He was contacted after 9/11 to address whether or not Islamic terrorism was historically connected to the Crusades. He dispels many of the "Crusade myths" that are shamelessly repeated in our society.

Not all, but many. Read Hector Avalos's The End of Biblical Studies. There are several who don't, but even among those who do start with that position their public beliefs are often quite different from their academic beliefs.

There is NO contemporary evidence (outside the bible) that this Jesus character even existed. Between the apparent "death" of Jesus until Saul of Tarsus' (aka Paul the apostle) Damascus road vision there is no record of Christianity at all. It was Paul that kicked off Christianity. Here is some recommended reading

http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330464426&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Nailed-Christian-Myths-Jesus-Existed/dp/0557709911/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408070120&sr=1-1&keywords=Nailed

http://www.amazon.com/How-Jesus-Became-God-Exaltation-ebook/dp/B00DB39V2Q/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1403984728

According to what Bush told Chirac we were hunting the devils Gog and Magog. Besides, the U.S. is not nor ever has been the Catholic Church.

If you want to keep telling yourself that religion is or ever has been a-political, that is your choice. Your beliefs affect your behavior, and that is still true for all politicians and generals.

Check out a book called The Family by Jeff Sharlet.

One of the first things I read when I was investigating Orthodoxy was the Apostolic Fathers. These were students of the Apostles themselves. Their letters give an accurate view toward early Church structure and doctrines. Their letters read similarly to the books of the NT.

The following book is by Penguin publishing, which isn't even a Christian publishing house:
https://smile.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Writings-Apostolic-Fathers/dp/0140444750/

> A High View of Scripture?: The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon is very much an apologetic work written for the evangelical community.

I agree with /u/Gadarn here and, to some extent (eliminating all bias is impossible), the alert about "bias-free position".

As far as NT canon, another suggestion would be The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance by Bruce M. Metzger.

There's a bunch of other gospels, including a Gospel of Jesus. This book explains them pretty well.

• Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F Madden - recognized as one of the top Crusade experts in the world
  
• Inquisition - by Edward Peters
  
• The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press -Paul F. Grendler
  
• God's Battalions - Rodney Stark
  
• The Bible - God

When it comes to the early Church fathers, reading the documents directly can be instructive. They are a pretty easy read (except Hermas...)

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0801031087/

Add that to the Apology of Justin Martyr, and you've got the most important documents from the first 150 years.

First of all, can I just say how much I love giving and receiving book recommendations? I was a religious studies major in college (and was even a T.A. in the World Religions class) so, this is right up my alley. So, I'm just going to take a seat in front of my book cases...

General:

1. A History of God by Karen Armstrong
   
   
2. The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong
   
   
3. Myths: gods, heroes, and saviors by Leonard Biallas (highly recommended)
   
   
4. Natural History of Religion by David Hume
   
   
5. Beyond Tolerance by Gustav Niebuhr
   
   
6. Acts of Faith by Eboo Patel (very highly recommended, completely shaped my view on pluralism and interfaith dialogue)
   
   
7. The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
   
   Christianity:
   
   
8. Tales of the End by David L. Barr
   
   
9. The Historical Jesus by John Dominic Crossan
   
   
10. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography by John Dominic Crossan
    
    
11. The Birth of Christianity by John Dominic Crossan
    
    
12. Who Wrote the New Testament? by Burton Mack
    
    
13. Jesus in America by Richard Wightman Fox
    
    
14. The Five Gospels by Robert Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar (highly recommended)
    
    
15. Remedial Christianity by Paul Alan Laughlin
    
    Judaism:
    
    
16. The Jewish Mystical Tradition by Ben Zion Bokser
    
    
17. Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman
    
    Islam:
    
    
18. Muhammad by Karen Armstrong
    
    
19. No God but God by Reza Aslan
    
    
20. Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations by Michael Sells
    
    Buddhism:
    
    
21. Buddha by Karen Armstrong
    
    
22. Entering the Stream ed. Samuel Bercholz & Sherab Chodzin Kohn
    
    
23. The Life of Milarepa translated by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa
    
    
24. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism by John Powers
    
    
25. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones compiled by Paul Reps (a classic in Western approached to Buddhism)
    
    
26. Buddhist Thought by Paul Williams (if you're at all interested in Buddhist doctrine and philosophy, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not reading this book)
    
    Taoism:
    
    
27. The Essential Chuang Tzu trans. by Sam Hamill & J.P. Seaton
    
    Atheism:
    
    
28. Atheism by Julian Baggini
    
    
29. The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud
    
    
30. Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht
    
    
31. When Atheism Becomes Religion by Chris Hedges
    
    
32. Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith

Their own writings: http://www.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Writings-Apostolic-Classics/dp/0140444750

This is a great book to start with. It covers the subapostolic era/authors, meaning the generation directly after the apostles, those who studied under them. It's amazing to see how Catholic we were from the very beginning, especially in the letters of St. Ignatius. https://www.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Writings-Apostolic-Fathers/dp/0140444750

Generally histories:

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

Chadwick - The Early Church

Retrieving Nicaea

Specific Important Authors

Apostolic Fathers

Origen Note: Not everything he said is orthodox, but he was an extremely important figure.

Desert Fathers

Athanasius - On the Incarnation

Basil - On the Holy Spirit

Gregory of Nazianzus

John Chrysostom

Augustine - Confessions

Rule of St. Benedict

Gregory the Great

Maximus the Confessor

John Damascus

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch.

Personal research, mostly. I'm a big history nerd with a slant toward religion and other macabre subject matter. I'm actually not as well read as I'd like to be on these subjects, and I basically blend different sources into a knowledge smoothie and pour it out onto a page and see what works for me and what doesn't.

I'll list a few books I've read that I enjoyed. There are certainly more here and there, but these are the "big ones" I was citing when writing all the comments in this thread. I typically know more about Christianity than the other major faiths because of the culture around me.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years - Diarmaid MacCulloch

A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Karen Armstrong

The next two balance each other out quite well. Hardline anti-theism contrasted with "You know, maybe we can make this work".

The Case for God - Karen Armstrong

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins



Lately, I have been reading the Stoics, which like Buddhism, I find to be one of the more personally palatable philosophies of mind I have come across, although I find rational contemplation a bit more accessible to my Westernized nature.

Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters - Translated by Moses Hadas

Discourses and Selected Writings (of Epictetus) - Translated by Robert Dobbin

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius - Translated by George Long

I'm still waiting on Fed Ex to deliver this one:

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine

Also, if you're into history in general, a nice primer for what sorts of things to dive into when poking around history is this fun series on YouTube. I usually watch a video then spend a while reading more in depth about whatever subject is covered that week in order to fill the gaps. Plus, John and Hank are super awesome. The writing is superb and I think, most importantly, he presents an overall argument for why studying history is so important because of its relevance to current events.

Crash Course: World History - John Green

Recommended Reading:

• The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land
  
  
• The First Crusade: A New History: The Roots of Conflict between Christianity and Islam
  
  
• The New Concise History of the Crusades: Critical Issues in World and International History
  
  
• God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades

The Apostolic Fathers by Michael Holmes is what you want. It contains all of the earliest extra-Biblical writings. The Didache, The Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas, etc. It's all in there. There are two versions. The one I have has Greek on one page with the English translation on the facing page. If you know (or have aspirations of learning) a little Greek, get that one. Otherwise there is also a English only version..

No Kindle edition that I can see. If "free on kindle" is important, you can get Lightfoot's translation for free from CCEL. PDF and plaintext only, but calibre can solve that. The Holmes edition is in my opinion much superior, but free is free.

CCEL also has Schaff's Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series. That will give you more than you'll ever want to read.

Paging /u/tbown for more recommendations.

Everyone wants to lay claim to the church fathers, no doubt. I absolutely love this question, as it was the one that I thought would solve my spiritual questions in college. I'm more qualified to comment on the development of theology, but i can at least get an answer started here.

​

> . Would they have done so in a manner similar to Catholicism or Protestantism? Or were they completely different from either group?

The biggest thing here to realize is that the church fathers didn't deal with the same questions later/modern roman Catholicism did/does, and definitely not with the issues of Protestantism. Most of the time, theology is a reflective practice, done when an issue arises. So if you really want to get a feel for the early fathers, it would be best to dig into their works. The earliest you could get in touch with is the apostolic fathers. Your statement above would lead me to believe you are at least familiar with this material, but you get a good sense of interpretation there. Most people would find the Apostolic fathers to be concerned with Christian living. The question at hand isn't doctrine but rather what makes Christians Christian?

​

The interpretative work of the apostolic fathers is different from even the early fathers. John Chrysostom is probably the most often referred to, as his sermons are written down and widely available on the internet in English even. And yet, it is easy to see how vastly different he is from Arius, Nestorius, Flavian or even Eusebius when you read their commentary. John is highly allegorical in his preaching and interpretation. You see all these mean starting to actually delve into what we would consider dogmatic principles. After all, Arius and Nestorius start to fool around with incarnational theology, and the christian churches finally realize that they need to think about what they actually believe, which affects interpretation of scripture, and lead to Nicaea.

​

In reality, all modern Christian interpretation builds on top of the foundational work of the fathers. It isn't until the counter and radical reformations that the fathers become obscured in mainline orthodoxy. The question of the day at the reformation is exactly how the atonement works in the life of the believer, and that is why it becomes a theological question. Really, before then, it isn't even questioned that baptism and participation are the keys to heaven. The simony prevalent at the time of the reformation is what thrusts the question into the discussion of the church.

​

This way of interpretation and doing theology haven't really changed either, we experience it in the present day, pondering the questions on ecumenism, women's ordination, and the wave of questions out of the gender/identity movement.

​

To sum up what I am driving at: no one interprets like the fathers did, because the questions are different. Many church bodies love to claim the fathers, but the fact of the matter is simply that each body has built on top of their work, in their own way.

​

The murderous inquisitions, according to David Bentley Hart in Atheist Delusions, are better understood as the State trying to usurp the Church. They are the first cries of secular Modernism, not the natural conclusion of the Papacy.

You might be interested to read this book as he goes through that history specifically. Ignore the title, his editors wanted an inflammatory one. You'll find lots of references to the Church questioning the actions of Catholics both inside and outside the Church, emperors, and more.

During the Ottoman siege of Malta the Knights of St John used both the early version of muskets and crossbows. The crossbows came in handy when rain made it impossible to use gunpowder. This was during the mid 16th century, however they were outdated at the time and used only in desperation.

Empires of the Seas is an excellent book on a transitional period between musket and older weapons. It was also during this time a lot of castles were being converted into more gunpowder defensive forts.

http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Sea-Battle-Lepanto-Contest/dp/0812977645

Absolutely. I say this because I made the same mistake as you did. I went to this website in the eighth grade curious about Christianity, and it among other things kept me an agnostic for four more years; thankfully, I met someone who corrected my misinformed views and then was confirmed into the Catholic Church my senior year of high school.

I would recommend a few books that ought to give you a better understanding of Christianity.

• Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart is a wonderful book that will correct everything you think you know about Christianity. This was the first book I read about the religion when I was an agnostic, and it completely changed my mindset regarding the religion. The thrust of the book is as a response to the New Atheist arguments for why Christianity is "poison." But this is not mere apologetics. It is a thorough and deep survey of why Christianity is not just a religion rich with moral, intellectual, and historical value, but how it completely changed the human condition. This book made me understand just how enormously important and significant Christianity's impact was on the world.
  
  
• The Light of Christ by Fr. Thomas Joseph White is a fantastic introduction to Christianity. Though it is in its essence Catholic, the book is a simple yet ingenious guide to Christianity and why it is important.
  
  
• God Is Not Nice by Ulrich Lehner is also fantastic. This book tears down the modern conception of God that has watered Him down to a cosmic guidance counsellor, and rebuilds him into what Christians in past Millennia understood Him as: the Creator of all, the infinite well of goodness, and a cosmic mystery. This is the shortest and simplest of the books, though I'll say it was not the most enjoyable for me personally. I much preferred Hart's witty and substantive take-down of the poor arguments of Christianity's adversaries.
  
  Whatever other specific questions about the faith, I would be more than happy to answer them. /r/catholicism is a great resource for a conservative and intellectually rigorous approach to the religion, but I do not want to demonstrate my biases too much.

Some great historical reading for those who may be interested: Notre Dame Vs. The Klan, by Todd Tucker.

Description:
>The riveting tale of the clash of two powerful institutions Notre Dame and the Klu Klux Klan that changed both institutions and America forever.
>In 1924, students of the University of Notre Dame and members of the Ku Klux Klan faced off in a violent confrontation in South Bend, Indiana. This shocking and true hidden chapter in Catholic and American history is recounted in Notre Dame vs. The Klan, the story of two uniquely American institutions that rose to power amdist rampant anti-Catholicism and collided druing a riotous weekend.

It's a cool story, it goes all the way back to the crusades. After the Ottomans finally destroyed the last remnants of the Roman empire in Constantinople, they set out to dominate what they considered the 'center of the world', the Mediterranean. Besides coastal nations like Italy and Spain, this meant a handful of islands protected by remnant knight orders from the crusades. They fought this war both by fleets constructed by the turks, and by funding north African corsairs to harangue the European shipping trade.

This culminated in a centuries long war. The remnants of that naval era were finally erradicated by the fledgling united states navy more than 200 years later.

Okay, this is still a very broad question, but one of the best experts to go to on this subject (in my opinion) is professor Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary. Dr. Wallace is currently heading up the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts where he and his team are compiling all known ancient manuscripts and digitally photographing and labeling them so that other scholars can study and read them online. In the process of doing this, he and his team are discovering a number of previously unknown manuscripts (for instance, a possible 1st century fragment of Mark that will be published in scholarly journals this year).

In this talk on the subject, Dr. Wallace mentions Metzger's thorough and extensive academic-leaning work Canon of the New Testament, and the cheaper, more popular level book Reinventing Jesus co-authored by Wallace, J. Ed Komoszewski, and M. James Sawyer. You might also be in interested in Dr. Wallace's New Testament: Introductions and Outlines where he goes into both critical and tradtional examinations of the NT and their inclusion into the canon.

For just a basic outline on canonicity of the NT, most of the books of the NT had to be early (so published in or around the 1st century), had to be authored by an Apostle or someone close to the Apostles. Early on there wasn't much concern for canonicity in the early church. Most of the early church used the Septuagint as their Bible, and just didn't think of the later writings in quite the same way as we do, but they recognized their inspirational nature and valued them. Then a heretic named Marcion came along and formed his own canon. He felt that the God of the Old Testament was evil, and so decided to remove anything pro-Jewish, he reworked Luke, and did a number of other things. The early church was pretty freaked out about this, and decided that they needed to compile an authoritative list of books/letters to ward off heretical manipulation of what had already been received as inspired and authoritative.

One of the early examples we have of the early canon can be found in the Muratorian fragment dating to approx. 170 AD. It includes most of the books of the NT excluding James, Hebrews, and 1 and 2 Peter. A number of the ECFs (early church fathers... important post-Apostolic Christian writers) mention the authoritative books of the NT by name. The Gospels are mostly anonymous (there are a few internal indicators in Luke and John about who authored them), but the ECFs handed down to us the authorship of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. No other authors in the ancient writings were substituted for the name of the traditional authors. By the time Constantine came into power, and made Christianity the state religion, the canon had been closed and pretty much all the major books accepted for a long time with a little bit of disagreement between books like Revelation and Hebrews and a couple of the Pastorals. A number of councils in the 4th century pretty much settled the matter. The earliest complete manuscript copies we have date from around this period as well, so Codex Vaticanus 325-350, Codex Sinaiticus in 330-360, Codex Alexandrinus 400-440, Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus 450.

Something else should be mentioned about the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke share many commonalities with one another. So much so, that most scholars believe these books depend on one another in some way. These Gospels are called "synoptic", that is syn-together, or same and opsis-view (like where we get the word "optic" for optic nerve). John is so unlike the synoptics that he's usually handled separately from them, and is also considered later than the others.
Now these similarities aren't so surprising with Luke, Luke tells us that his book is a compilation of testimony (Luke 1:1-4), but that doesn't really explain, for instance, how Matthew is so similar to Mark.

An early church father named Eusebius quotes from an earlier Bishop named Papias about the compilation of the Gospels. Papias lived in the 1st and early 2nd century, and was a student or a hearer of the Apostle John. Papias says,

>Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took special care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements. [This is what is related by Papias regarding Mark; but with regard to Matthew he has made the following statements]: Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could. [The same person uses proofs from the First Epistle of John, and from the Epistle of Peter in like manner. And he also gives another story of a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is to be found in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.]

Many modern scholars don't exactly agree with Papias' rendition of things though. The prevailing theory in academia today is the source theory, and in particular the source theory called Markan Priority. Basically its argued that Mark is the simplest, and thus earliest of the synoptics, and that Matthew and Luke knew of and borrowed from Mark as a source for their books. But there also commonalities in Luke and Matthew that are not found in Mark, so its theorized that along with Mark there was probably another book or at least a common tradition shared between them that has since been lost to history. This book or sayings have been labeled "Q", which comes from the German word "quelle", which means "source". ALSO, Matthew, Mark and Luke have completely original material that they share with no other books. Now, there are some scholars (currently in the minority) that buck against this source hypothesis, that reject Q, and suggest Matthean priority. Basically Matthew was first, and Mark borrowed from Matthew, and Luke borrowed from Mark and Matthew. This is called Augustinian Hypothesis.

As for the Old Testament, that's a whole nother story. The OT was compiled throughout centuries. It should probably be kept in mind that academia for the OT is very very secular compared to that of the NT. I'm not really sure what the poster US_Hiker was on about in his reply to you, but anyways, its theorized that the books of the OT weren't written and edited in the periods they claim to be written and edited. The prevailing theory for the OT is called the Documentary Hypothesis. For a long time, the accepted hypothesis was labeled JEPD, and this stands for the following sources: Yahwist (or Jawist), Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly. Its a pretty confusing theory that says that writers of the Old Testament regularly redacted and changed the order of the OT during different periods. And that the OT was compiled from approx. 950-500 BC. The theory has been manipulated and altered a number of times, especially when embarrassing archaeological finds like the silver scrolls found at Ketef Hinnom pushed some writings far further back than were expected by scholars. In my opinion, a great, very thorough, slightly academic book to read on modern theories about the Old Testament would be professor Richard S. Hess' Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey.

Concerning archaeological finds, or the lack thereof for say, the Exodus, I think one's presuppositions have a lot to do with what you accept or not. If you're an unbelieving archaeologist, you might expect to find some noticeable traces of an enormous group of people wandering the desert for 40 years. So far, we can't find any. But, if you're a believer who agrees with Genesis that God provided for these people with manna from heaven that rotted away if stored up, or of clothes that miraculously never wore out, then you're not going to find a whole lot in a desert. There are a handful of scholars that also believe the entire Egyptian dating system that scholars use as a measuring tool for the pre-Roman world is off by a few dynasties. One of the better known archaeologists known for his new chronology of the Egyptian period is egyptologist David Rohl. His ideas are currently on the fringe, but seem to be gaining some traction. His book Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest is a beautiful and very interesting book on the subject.

Ok, so, sorry that was so long, but like I said, this is a very very broad subject. If you have any questions, let me know.

Have a terrific day!

A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature

>how I could learn more about church tradition. About the patristic era and everything that was taught. I feel like if I learn about it, I'll be able to judge it for myself.

There are many excellent introductions to this era:

• Classical Christian Doctrine by Ronald Heine
  
  
• Learning Theology with the Church Fathers by Christopher Hall
  
  
• Life in the Trinity by Donald Fairbairn
  
  
• The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert Louis Wilken
  
  
• Beginning to Read the Fathers by Boniface Ramsey
  
  
• The Christian Fathers by Maurice Wiles
  
  I don't mean to overwhelm you with sources, but the point is that if you want to learn more there is a lot available to you!
  
  Maybe you could ask your clergy to dialogue with you and study as well.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch is a pretty good read (so far, about 1/3 of the way through). It's a recent work, covers a lot of aspects of church history, seems pretty balanced, and is giving me plenty of questions for further reflection and study.

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power i'm reading it right now. this guy can really write; it's very entertaining and informative. highly referenced with both good, clear notes and footnotes.

http://firedoglake.com/2008/05/25/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-jeff-sharlet-the-family-the-secret-fundamentalism-at-the-heart-of-american-power/

http://www.amazon.com/Family-Secret-Fundamentalism-Heart-American/dp/0060559799

For a first step into biblical study, I'm not sure I would only read Carrier's book. As I haven't read it fully, I can't really comment on it like /u/koine_lingua.

But if you want to get a broad spectrum, you can check out:

John Meier Marginal Jew - (maybe vol. 2 or 3)

NT Wright's How God Became King

John Dominic Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

Marcus Borg Jesus: An uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary

Craig Blomberg Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey

You can take a stab at Albert Schweitzer's The Quest for the Historical Jesus

or Raymond E. Brown's Death of the Messiah or Birth of the Messiah if you want. I found Schweitzer's book difficult to get through. And one Easter holiday my plans were to read Death of the Messiah. After page like 17, I quit and played WoW.

That will give you a healthy dose of different perspectives - and will not only give you a survey of the scholarship but also will argue for a model, as opposed to Luke Timothy Johnson's The Real Jesus which just criticizes one aspect of HJ studies.

Penguin Classics has a book called "Early Christian Writings" containing the epistles of St Ignatius of Antioch, epistles of St Barnabas, epistles of St Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, the Didache, and more. It's about $15 on amazon I think. Everything in it is from the 1st and 2nd century.

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Writings-Apostolic-Fathers/dp/0140444750

I think this is a good book to start with.

I always loved Sr Benedicta Ward's "Sayings of the Desert Fathers" https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0140447318?tag=amz-mkt-fox-uk-21&ascsubtag=1ba00-01000-org00-mac00-dsk00-nomod-uk000-pcomp-feature-scomp-wm-5&ref=aa_scomp

Elaine Pagels is a great contemporary scholar of Christian religion, and particularly textual and historical explication. Her The Origin of Satan is fascinating, and The Gnostic Gospels is a solid survey of some of the lost branches of early Christian tradition.

Gershom Scholem is one of the last century's great explicators of Judaism and mysticism, particularly the Kabbalah. I doubt there's a book he's written that isn't worth reading, but the best place to start may be his book On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, particularly the chapter on the relation of mystical experience to community norms.

Speaking of Kabbalah, it's recent popularity speaks poorly of what is an otherwise venerable and serious tradition of symbolism and ethical concern. If you're interested in spiritual literature, it's probably not a bad idea to take a stab at the Zohar. There's an abridged translation by Scholem out in paperback, but you're probably better off with this edition.

That comes, incidentally, from a series of books issued by a Catholic publisher, Paulist Press, under the name Classics of Western Spirituality, which is generally excellent. So far as I know, it's the only press currently printing some truly classic historical texts, so their catalog is worth browsing. They're particularly good, as you might suspect, on early Christian texts -- I don't know where else you'd go for something like Carthusian Spirituality -- but they also have Sufist, Judaic and non-mainline texts. In particular, I'd say pick up the Pseudo Dionysus.

While we're on the subject of early Christian writers, there's The Desert Fathers, The Cloud of Unknowing, Revelations of Divine Love -- the last of which is a notable early example of feminine Christian spirituality.

On the more modern end, there's Simone Weil, the tragic Marxist-cum-Catholic. I'd recommend either Waiting for God or Letters to a Priest]. While we're talking about modern Christian theology, we should note three of the most important names of the 20th century: Paul Tillich, Rudolf Otto, and Tielhard de Chardin. The books to start with, respectively, are Dynamics of Faith, The Idea of the Holy, and The Divine Milieu.

Shifting away from Christianity, another major name in 20th century theology is Martin Buber, the Jewish German mystic. His I and Thou is the most generally applicable and was widely influential in existential circles, but he also wrote widely on issues of Jewish identity.

More in the mainstream of Jewish tradition, there's the Talmud, although the sheer size of the writings that full under that name are the sort of thing that scholars give their lives over to. For our purposes, something like Abraham Cohen's Everyman's Talmud will generally suffice.

And finally, I just recently bought The Three Pillars of Zen, which is widely held to be the best practical introduction to the topic available in English. There are a bewildering amount of books on the subject, but without some sort of framework for understanding their relation to the historical traditions, it can be nearly impossible to sort out which are worth while.

EDIT: Forgot linking by reference isn't working; fixed with inline links.

This book is good too.

http://www.amazon.com/Desert-Fathers-Sayings-Christian-Classics/dp/0140447318/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450443958&sr=8-2&keywords=desert+fathers

Gregory of Nyssa's On Virginity is somewhat of a classic on asceticism. As are Cassian's Conferences and the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Peter Brown's Body and Society is an excellent secondary source on early Christian ascetic movements.

When I was studying this, the best sources I found were:

The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance by Bruce Metzger

https://www.amazon.com/Canon-New-Testament-Development-Significance/dp/0198269544/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497034222&sr=8-1&keywords=the+canon+of+the+new+testament

and

The Canon of Scripture, by F.F. Bruce

https://www.amazon.com/Canon-Scripture-F-Bruce/dp/083081258X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497034279&sr=8-1&keywords=the+canon+of+scripture

They are both Protestants but I didn't notice any particular theological bias. Both cover both the OT and NT but since we know a lot more about the formation of the NT, it gets a lot more coverage.

1. While aggelos is a fair transliteration of άγγελος I would opt for the phonetic pronunciation angelos; it's a bit more familiar to the English word and faithfully represents how it would have been spoken. Also, I'm not sure if this is possible on your blog but you should italicize Greek words written in the English alphabet. Also, you should make a standard, either write words in Greek or give a transliteration; don't do both. These are silly formatting issues that would make it more visually appealing.
   
   
2. If you could add a copy of BDAG that would be a great reference to talk about the nuance of Greek words. While wikitionary gives you a useful parse that you run with BDAG will explain how often that parse is used in the biblical text. Also, I think your analysis of the word in general needs some work. You appeal to a pericope from John that doesn't include genea at all. Also, you don't mention how in Matthew's gospel every other use of genea, excluding the genealogy prologue, is clearly a reference to the literal generations of people during Jesus' ministry (See Matt. 11:16; 12:39, 41, 42, 45; 16:4; 17:17). Your appeal to other biblical passages and theur use of genea is also difficult when you don't engage the issue of how the author consistently uses the word. While theologically we may believe the Bible to be inspired by God we should also recognize that it was penned by men who had their own nuanced writing style.
   
   

3. I somewhat like what you're saying and how you're taking a theological approach to interpretation. However, is there any evidence that directly links this passage to the theological concept of after-life and resurrection? Honestly, to use an analogy from Star Wars, your argument seems like Obi-Wan's arguement for misleading Luke about Darth Vader/Anakin, "It's true from a certain point of view." If you can you should make that point of view as explicit as possible. If such an explicit understanding can't be explained in the primary text than you should at least address what some critiques of your theory would be.
   
   
4. Another thing I appreciate is that you use some historic Christian scholars to emphasize your arguement, but it feels like cherry picking. I admit I honestly don't know the answer to this, but are commentators earlier than Chrysostom who provide a similar interpretation? How about between Chrysostom and Theophylact? You don't need to quote everyone but if you indirectly reference other sources as giving similar interpretations it would strengthen your arguement.
   
   
5. Similar idea as in number 3, if you think appealing to the Old Testament use of the word generation is important to understanding this passage is there textual support? You can say that Matthew is departing from his patterned use of genea and appealing to an understanding of 'generation' from the Hebrew Bible, but if you don't have evidence to back that claim it's hard to be convinced.
   
   Overall, I like what you have to say I just wish you were saying it better. There's a journal article coming out sometime either this year or next that is similar to yours. I believe it's the Journal of Biblical Literature, but I'm not certain. If you're interested I'll double check. The author has a similar dislike for N.T. Wright and R.T. France's understanding of the passage, but goes in a bit of a different direction. The biggest thing is that he appeals to the Hebrew Bible to explain 'generation', and uses solid evidence to link this passage to the Hebrew Bible.
   
   I'd just like to say, good job on dealing with a difficult passage. Have a good one.

My Logos Bible software gives καίπερ in the NT in 5 instances, namely Philippians 3:4, Hebrews 5:8, 7:5 and 12:17, and 2 Peter 1:12. All of the instances of καίπερ are translated with though or although. Especially 12:17 seems to indicate that you cannot translate it with "because":

> "17 For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears. "
>
>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 12:17.

It cannot be that he was rejected "because" he sought it with tears. Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with tears in 5:7, and he is not rejected because of it. Rather, his reverence gets noticed.

BDAG ( https://www.amazon.com/Greek-English-Lexicon-Testament-Christian-Literature/dp/0226039331/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=bdag&qid=1571748897&sr=8-1 ) only lists "although" as a translation, and has many verses to back it up

>καίπερ conj. (since Od. 7, 224; SIG 709, 18; 1108, 8; PGiss 47, 22; PSI 298, 17; LXX, TestJos, Joseph., Just.) although w. ptc. (so usu., also Diod S 8, 9, 2; 10, 19, 2; 17, 114, 1; Wsd 11:9; Jos., Ant. 1, 319; 3, 280; TestJos 10:5; w. finite verb Just., A I, 4, 4) Phil 3:4; Hb 5:8; 7:5; 12:17; 2 Pt 1:12. Also 1 Cl 7:7; 16:2; ISm 3:3; MPol 17:1; Hv 3, 2, 9; Hs 8, 6, 4; 8, 11, 1 (B-D-F §425, 1; Rob. 1129; FScheidweiler, καίπερ nebst e. Exkurs zum Hb: Her 83, ’55, 220–30).—M-M.

William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 497.

What may help in the interpretation is if you look at "son" as a spiritual being rather than as a literal child. I don't know if you're aware of Michael Heiser's work on spiritual beings (https://youtu.be/pKPid4i4SmI)(his book The Unseen Realm, his podcast or his videos) but according to him, sons (of God) are a type of spiritual being like angels, demons, God's heavenly host, etc.

The interpretation then becomes: "Even though Jesus was in a high position, maybe undeserving or generally unaffected by suffering because of him being a son of God, he learned obedience through what he suffered." Hebrews 1:2 tells us that God created the world through His Son, so it may be a little strange that this very son with God learns obedience by suffering.

This may fit because in the previous verse, 5:7, Hebrews talks about "in the days of his flesh". This is then contrasted with his spiritual status as son in verse 8 if you accept my speculation.

​

I think "because" is not a fitting translation. I understand why you're puzzled by the formulation and I find it a bit difficult to explain my ideas around Christ's sonship without me sounding a little wacky.

A bookstore owner who is Orthodox told someone I know this is a good book :https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Early-Christian-Thought-Seeking/dp/0300105983

I have not read the book, but a response was made particularly to this very book from Ehrman by some Christian scholars.

How God Became Jesus

Firstly, I wanted to thank you for your interest and hope that you find the answers to your questions. If not, there's plenty of people on this sub that would be happy to help.

In terms of shedding light, there are a number of non-canonical accounts of Jesus, even early ones that were not included into the canon. Many give vastly different accounts of Jesus' nature and teachings, which ultimately is one of the reasons they became rejected, along with dating of when they were written, who by, integrity of the teachings, etc. I think the Didache is a little misrepresented though, many of our early Church fathers were not only aware of it, but clearly reference it.

Ultimately, though our early accounts of Jesus do offer a divine incarnation from the get go, our earliest Gospel, Mark includes many such references as do our earliest writings, the epistles of Paul, hence why the notion of Jesus as merely a human is widely rejected (though there some who self-identify as Christian and might accept a human-only Jesus, this wouldn't be considered orthodox though).

If looking into the historical evidence and various accounts of Jesus as human as well as further reading material you might be better poking your head into /r/AcademicBiblical. You could also look into the companion books How Jesus became God and How God became Jesus to get a good grasp for arguments on both sides.

Peace be upon you!

If you just started, skip the "Tripartite Tractate". It's hard to understand even for someone who has read a lot of other Gnostic books. Some good places to start reading and realize just how different a picture is painted on the Apostles and Jesus, I recommend reading the Gospel of Thomas first.

Elane Pagel's "The Gnostic Gospels" is a wonderful primer to the NHL (and Gnostic Bible) and Gnostic thought altogether. Really easy to read, really well written. Here are some links:

https://www.amazon.com/Gnostic-Gospels-Elaine-Pagels/dp/0679724532

https://www.amazon.com/Gnostic-Bible-Revised-Expanded/dp/1590306317

studying Gnosticism reintroduced me to Jung and lead me to start reading his works. He was deeply interested in the Gnostics and was able to make an in-depth study of them WITHOUT the dead sea scrolls or the nag hamadi index! unbelievable. One of the enduring lessons I've kept from The Gnostic Gospels, however, is the idea that religions initially developed their rules because they were essential to the basic operation of society due to the fact that the people were relatively unevolved and thus needed to be told what was good for them by a higher being. One of her examples is a law in the Torah that requires you to sweep out your food storage shed twice a year. Seems kind of a weird law to the modern observer but then we notice that the jewish community was the only one to avoid the plague, and then we see that sweeping out your food storage prevents rats and rats are the main carrier of plague. Now modern man doesn't need to be told to clean his home because God told him to but rather he understands its in his own well being to do so. This idea leads into an idea I conceive of as moral power. I use this often in arguments where my opponent is decrying the proliferation of technology or the internet or porn; and the basic idea is that when you basically have access to anything you want at any point in the day in this modern age than it DOES require moral power to not sit around getting drunk all day or doing drugs all day or looking at porn all day or becoming ADDICTED to any of a hundred things that it would be IMPOSSIBLE to become addicted to in the time of jesus. We continue to Evolve! So to try to bring it around WHILE Jung appreciated the Gnostics it seems through his writings that it was because of what they were able to accomplish during THEIR time, just like he was impressed with the alchemists but he WOULD NOT recommend a modern person emulate them...we have moved past them although the study of them is infinitly fulfilling.

Books! Indeed.
The Concise History of the Crusades is a good place to start for the crusades. This covers the Crusades really well from a narrative standpoint, and is a good starting place.
Likewise, Riley-Smith's What Were the Crusades is a great book about the crusades in general. It covers some of the narrative and mostly talks about the mentality of crusading

Riley-Smith and Madden are very skilled writers and both are pretty easy to read academic texts, so that's a plus.


For general information I use A Short History of the Middle Ages by Rosenwein I personally find it dry but it is very informative and it covers a lot of material.

Now as for the Early Middle Ages...although it does qualify as pop history (audible gasp!) I enjoyed Barbarians, Marauders and Infidels..which while not academic writing (which is not always a bad thing ) it is still pretty good. It covers the fall of the Roman Empire up till the Renaissance and spends more time on the Early Middle Ages then most books like it.

In chronological order of my reading them:

1. The Apostolic Fathers
   
   
   
2. Paradise Restored
   
   
   
3. That You May Prosper
   
   
   
4. Kingdom, Grace & Judgment
   
   
   
5. Christ The Conqueror of Hell
   
   
   
   And for good measure, The Tao Te Ching (started reading it in high school...still reading it 37 years later), and The Open Society and It's Enemies.

You should check out this book. It addresses a lot of those things.

https://www.amazon.com/Pagan-Christianity-Exploring-Church-Practices/dp/1414364555

Ultimately Western science only operates within a very specific set of philosophical assumptions. An intentional narrowing of parameters for the sake of understanding a particular part of creation in a particular way. But those philosophical assumptions are only justifiable within a Christian framework, and historically speaking, they only came about in the first place because of that framework.

EDIT: I should be more specific - a Catholic framework. Read a real history book, people.

EDIT 2: I know I'm going to get called out on this, so here are some history books which deal with Catholic engagement in science:

http://www.amazon.com/Atheist-Delusions-Christian-Revolution-Fashinable-ebook/dp/B00D99NS4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415805107&sr=8-1&keywords=atheist+delusions

A little first-thingsy (actually a lot, come to think of it), but he's blatantly trying to mimic the bombast of Hitchens, Dawkins, et al.

http://www.amazon.com/Catholicism-Science-Greenwood-Guides-Religion-ebook/dp/B00352KPS2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415805209&sr=8-1&keywords=catholicism+and+science

http://www.amazon.com/History-Christianity-First-Three-Thousand-ebook/dp/B0030CVQ5I/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415805286&sr=1-1&keywords=christianity+the+first+three+thousand+years

http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Illustrated-History-Civilization-Architecture/dp/1844837173/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415805312&sr=1-11&keywords=christianity+illustrated+history

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Christianity-David-Bentley-Hart/dp/1435129636/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415805358&sr=1-1&keywords=christianity+david+bentley+hart

DBH dials down the bitch in this book. I just remembered I have his pipe.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006Y35NEK?btkr=1

http://www.amazon.com/History-Christianity-Reformation-Courses-Teaching/dp/B0016RNDC8/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415805470&sr=1-4&keywords=brad+gregory

There’s a decent book that was written if you’re interested in learning more. I read it a few years back. If I recall correctly, it started slow but was overall a good read. Apologize if this is mentioned in the podcast. At work and can’t listen at the moment. Not trying to be redundant.

Suns out, guns out!

1.

and 2.

Edit: also finished my own Summer reading list if anyone cares.

"Becoming a Supple Leopard", "Pagan Christianity", "Anatomy Without a Scalpel", and "The Official Truth: The Inside Story of Pantera"

Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0812977645/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469012691&sr=1-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=empires+of+the+sea&dpPl=1&dpID=51F8g7LmgBL&ref=plSrch

Read that book. The church saved Europe from Islam. Muslimes actually started what became the modern slave trade

Good pop history on the topic if anyone is interested.

I recommend reading Bart Ehrman's new book that is dedicated to a topic very similar to this.

The Psalms. Normally I pray the Divine Office and get most of them in a month, but lately I've been going at it 150 a week.

Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World Entertaining read. I was a little perturbed that I only knew sketchy details about these two events, and so I decided to dig a little deeper.

Sure. The first thing I did was read the primary sources and pretty much in chronological order. I began with the Apostolic Fathers (Michael Holmes has this edition with Greek and English). I then read some 2nd century stuff, especially Irenaeus. Cyprian, Tertullian, etc, were all important. The fourth century took me forever to read through. I probably stayed in the 4th century for a year.

For secondary literature, I'd recommend, in no particular order:

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition

J.N.D. Kelley, Early Christian Doctrines

Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Chadwick is my doctoral grandfather, so to speak)

Adrian Fortescue, The Early Papacy: To the Synod of Chalcedon

Benedicta Ward's translation of The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Less to do with Church history, but filling in some intellectual gaps:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Called to Communion

Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (This may shock people that I recommend it, but I do like the nouvelle théologie every now and again)

I also welcome /u/koine_lingua to offer some of his own recommendations to give some balance if he'd like.

>Do you still see the Bible as authoritative?

Oh, god, no. Not in any sense other than "tradition." It's an anonymously pseudopigraphic cobbled-together quilt of racism, sexism, bigotry, and hatred.

>Do you believe in Jesus?

In a historical Jesus, maybe. In a Jesus that never called himself God.

Here’s a book regarding the myth of the Islamic paradise of Iberia which a lot of people fall for: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Andalusian-Paradise-Christians-Medieval/dp/1610170954

A great book about a historical perspective of Jesus is How Jesus Became God by Bart D. Ehrman, if you have audible the book is on there too but I listened to his lectures of the same name from “The Great Courses” series Audible hosts and it was pretty amazing. Guy is a historian and does a great job of keeping it in that same perspective. Very enlightening.

It could be a fun discussion if we had the time. We could exchange books and papers to be read and talk for years. In the end I likely won't change your mind and you won't change mine. I'd say we leave it at that.

But just do adress a few points briefly:
Some of the Bible's content is factual, yes - but other parts are clearly not - including the gospels (to what extent is up for debate).
The gospel of John was written up to 90 years after the supposed events, the writer could not possibly have witnessed the supposed events himself.
Assuming the basic events described in the gospels actually happened, an empty tomb does not mean the body was resurrected. Many other explanations are more likely.
Just because you find accuracies in some parts of the Bible, that does not mean that every part is accurate. Let's assume there are 1000 accuracies, there are at least several hundred contradictions & "funny stuff" (demons, angels, talking animals) as well.


Anyway if you want to read about the opposite position:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591025362
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Neither-God-Case-Mythical/dp/0968925928/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371753883&sr=1-1&keywords=jesus+neither+god+nor+man

as well as any books and talks on the topic by Robert Price, he's a brilliant guy.

You apparently think the case for the gospel & bible truth is quite strong, so please link me what you consider the best arguments for them. Don't forget, if you make the claim that the truth of the Bible is pretty obvious, you have to support the claim.

You've got a lot going on here, but here's my tuppence...

Orthodoxy has spread through the use of the local language, and documents get translated into local languages. So, you don't need to learn another language to read Orthodox writings. If you don't already know the mother tongue of the tradition your church is in (I have no idea where you are), check that one out.

That said, OCA clergy learn Koine Greek in seminary (I have this by word of those who went to St. Vladimir and to St. Tikhon). ROCOR learn Church Slavonic and Russian. It's all kind of what you want to learn there.

The majority of things were written in Koine Greek. The Septuagint is Greek, and much of the New Testament (if not all of it... my coffee hasn't kicked in enough to remember) was originally in Greek. The book The Apostolic Fathers (I have an earlier edition), which has 2nd century Christian writings and letters is in Greek and English.

There are a lot of writings in Slavonic and Russian, though, as well, since the Slavs have had Christianity for over a millennium. Coptic, Ge'ez, or Amharic wouldn't be bad to learn, but most of the writings you'll find there are Oriental Orthodox (Coptic, Ethiopian, Eritrean). If you're looking for a challenge, there's Georgian (EO) or Armenian (OO).

Ranking language by importance is probably not a useful exercise, since different languages will be important to different people. Romanian is more important to Romanians than to the Arabs or Greeks, as a wild example.

I'm waiting on my order for "The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise" shill.


It's one of the more 'kosher' books on the topic, but it's pretty well regarded and the author researched the topic for years before writing it. The whole purpose of the book is to completely demolish the myth of 'Enlightened and tolerant Muslims in the middle ages'.

Not exactly what you're looking for but a hell of a lot more credible than a tumblr post.

• How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart Ehrman. He provides a much more plausible explanation of who Jesus actually was and who he was not than what you'll hear in chapels.
  
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. The same pattern of the "hero" story repeats itself countless times over thousands of years and through different cultures. The story of Jesus fits the pattern.
  
• And if you want your mind blown, Freedom from the Known. The most influential book I've ever read. It provided me courage to let my own ideas and perspectives guide my worldview. It teaches that it was OK to disagree with a perceived authority.

No problem. I find all of this very interesting.
I recommend reading How Jesus Became God .
Even if you only read the first chapter, I think it has a wealth of information concerning the history of Jesus. His other book "Misquoting Jesus" has some interesting facts, but it doesn't really address the question of "Who was this Jesus guy before they made up a bunch of stories about him" as much as this newer book.

David Bentley Hart is unparalleled in terms of knowledge, wit, imagination, eloquence, and is perhaps the greatest living Christian thinker today.

He just put out a translation of the New Testament through Yale University Press which is incredible.

His newest book is called The Experience of God and it is mind-boggling.

Atheist Delusions absolutely eviscerates pop atheism.

His theological magum opus, The Beauty of the Infinite has been called the greatest work of theology so far this century.

The Doors of the Sea is required reading for anyone who struggles with the issue of evil.

His work is sublime.

The blessings of the Lord.

This would be a good choice for the Apostolic Fathers.

http://www.amazon.com/Notre-Dame-Vs-Klan-Fighting/dp/0829417710

your right, in particular nd and the kkk have some famous history.

Empires of the Sea is a very interesting and easy to read book about the siege of Malta and the battle of Lepanto. Most people don't realize how close the Ottoman Empire was to making serious headway into Europe and how easily the world could have been different. The siege of Malta is an incredible display of bravery in the face of incredibly bad odds.

If you're interested in nerdy stuff like history check out the book Empires of the Sea. About a third of the book is dedicated to Siege of Malta and now I can't wait to visit next spring!

> Hey, there's more than one person who fits that description (i.e. it's not just me), glad to hear it LOL.

It's increasingly common. Especially among the more sincere (and arguably "true") believers.

NOTE: Below are not "endorsements" -- just more noting that this is a larger (and growing) "phenom" that's sort of happening "under the radar" -- arguably it's been going on all along.

Cf http://unchurching.com

• Unchurching: Christianity Without Churchianity
  
  And you might also find a similar book:
  
  
• Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices to be of interest.
  
  --
  Likewise, though coming at the issue -- people leaving "church" but NOT losing their faith -- from an entirely different (anecdote) side; if you can get your hands on a copy, a book from a couple decades ago (circa 1993), might be helpful to you as well.
  
  
• Exit Interviews: Revealing Stories of Why People are Leaving the Church
  
  --
  Chief point being, you are FAR from alone.

I completely agree. That is a phenomenal book. I've actually started re-reading it again just recently. This will be the 5th time I've read it in the last 5 years! The first time I read it, I immediately turned back to page 1 and started re-reading it! Some of the very best historical non-fiction I've ever encountered.

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Sea-Battle-Lepanto-Contest/dp/0812977645

Sorry to be late to the party OP, but I was actually sort of in her shoes (attended a conservative Christian school before I attended college).

At university, a peer I respected recommended reading Pagan Christianity by Viola & Barna. Essentially it is an incredibly well-researched explanation of why modern churches are arranged/presented the way they are, and how that presentation has no real biblical justification. For instance, the podium-before-audience setup of a typical sanctuary is found nowhere in the Christian bible, but it's so prevalent that the term "pulpit" has entered the secular lexicon.

Pagan Christianity is actually the first of two volumes, the first of which explains why church practices are what they are, and the second ("Reimagining Church") recommending how to change them to better align with scripture as Viola and Barna read it. I deconverted after reading the first book, which is exactly what the authors recommend you don't do, since it might make you reimagine your faith, instead of just reimagining church.

Edit: The copy I read was the 2008 printing, not the updated 2012 printing. I suspect more material from "Reimagining Church" has been added to the more recent printing to prevent Christians rethinking too much, or at least more encouragement that they buy the second book as well.

Well I just got and am reading Joy to the World and Apostolic Fathers

παιδοφθορησεις

Chapter 2, verse 2. Here's an interlinear you can look at online too: The-Interlinear-Didache.html

Edit: this site has it translated as (literally) "you will do child not sex", whereas other translations have it as "you shall not corrupt children" (such as in The Apostolic Fathers; Micheal W. Holmes ), and others still the more concise word of "pederasty".

The short answer is not much. What we know comes from critical analysis of the synoptic gospels, anthropological and archeological facts about the region that we can use to interpret those texts, and Roman writings from the time period, most importantly those of Jewish-Roman historian Josephus. There's a whole field of scholarship on the historical Jesus, and you should check out the work of the Jesus Seminar(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar).
I can recommend a couple books on the subject as well:
If you want the full monty, big ol' weighty tome, you need John Dominic Crossan's The Historical Jesus: The life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. -http://www.amazon.com/The-Historical-Jesus-Mediterranean-Peasant/dp/0060616296

For the shorter, more digestible version, see his book Jesus: A revolutionary Biography http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006180035X/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1535523722&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0060616296&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1QHBK1Y6G36CNGSTPAZ7

For a counterpoint to many of Crossan's arguments, see Dale Allison, Jesus of Nazareth http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Nazareth-Millenarian-Dale-Allison/dp/0800631447

New Testament Scholarship is a really interesting field and if you really want to answer the question you've asked here you should check out the work these historians/religious studies scholars have been doing in the last 20-30 years.

Do my research for me? I've already done my research, you should do yours.

Here's a good starting point.

https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Revolutionary-John-Dominic-Crossan/dp/006180035X/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EFZ7FB757V42YEK86HSA

Or if you're short on cash:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/historical-jesus/id384233911?mt=2

https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

First, remember that the time over which your dad can really force you to go isn't very long. It may seem long now, but really, it's not.

Religion is not about God... or at least, not only about God. Religion is a complex set of a variety of practices -- social structures, codes of behavior, rituals (personal and social), and others. Theology (including beliefs about God) is a way many participants think about these things, and many (in some religions, particularly Abrahamic religions), believe that that it is about, but I disagree.

These things (rituals etc.) can have profound psychological effects, both social and personal. They are neither inherently beneficial or destructive, but rather are tools that can be either depending on their use. Participation in such rituals as a child, or even young adult, lays a psychological foundation upon which later rutuals can work. Those old enough to understand what is going on (old enough to become an atheist by choice), can reframe them in your mind as you participate, and have some influence on how they influence you.

Just because you participate in a ritual doesn't mean you need to believe in the theology, any more than a musician needs to believe that scales and chords are fundamental theories of acoustics, or have supernatural powers, or were created by supernatural beings.

Consider Santa Claus, or the Easter bunny. The decorations, presents under a tree, baskets with brightly colored eggs, and other traditions are rituals, ostensibly about Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. Even as adults, though, long after we stop believing in either, these rituals are important to many of us. The ritual is the key; the supernatural beings are just a motif. Most of these traditions are descended from pagan traditions with either entirely different or barely recognizable assiciate supernatural beings anyway.

More formally Christian rituals, such as Sunday morning church attendance, mass, confession, marriages, funerals, are no different. They may be not be as entertaining, fun, and light-hearted as Easter baskets and stockings over a fire, and are sometimes aimed at far more painful parts of the human condition, but they can be meaningful none the less.

Stoicism and Christianity have similarities and differences. Due to the similarities, Christians have been finding value in using Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus as inspirational material for centuries, selective adopting, rejecting, and ignoring different elements according to their own beliefs. There is no reason, I think, why a Stoic can't do the same while participating in Christian rituals such as sunday morning Church attendance. Just look for what you find value in, what seems correct to you, and focus your attention on that, reinterpret the experience. There is no need to tell anyone that's what you're doing. For the rest, there is no need to argue about it: just be a respectful spectator, and go your own way when you leave home. In other words, exercise patience, for now.

Instead of resisting it, try to get the most out of it you can. It may be helpful to deliberately draw correspondences between elements in Christianity and Stoic exercises. Indeed, there are some that think some elements of Christian practice originated in ancient philosophical exercise.

For example, the Stoic reverence toward the natural universe corresponds directly to the Christian reverence toward God. Christian exhortations to obedience to God's will have strong similarities to acceptance of externals and viewing things from a 3rd party perspective. Various restrictions on behavior can be used as Stoic exercises concerning voluntary self-denial. Focus on these things, think of God as something of gimmick or artistic motif if you need to.

Similarly, you may think what they teach you about Jesus is pretty crazy, but it isn't that hard to interpret Jesus as having been a near-Cynic but entirely human sage -- a Jew who attended some lectures by Cynics (which is entirely possible -- remember that Jesus lived under the Roman empire during a time when Cynicism was widespread across the empire) and adopted some of the Cynic teachings without entirely letting go of his Jewish beliefs, and whose teachings then got exaggerated, reinterpreted, and/or outright corrupted in the following centuries, and elements of his biography got merged with other mythological stories. (Some scholars believe this -- see this book for example.) Personally, I don't think enough evidence has survived that any conclusions one way or another are anything other than wild speculation, but that doesn't matter; considering exemplars ("contemplation of the sage") is a perfectly good Stoic exercise, and minor details like historical accuracy are not relevant: this is self-improvement, not history. Regarding him in this fashion may make you more comfortable with celebrating his life.

Now, the Stoics were not Cynics, but the later had a lot of influence on the former, and some Stoics (particularly Epictetus) regarded them as good role models. Diogenes in particular was sometimes held up as an example of someone who actually managed to become a sage.

edit: typos

Caesar and Christ by Will Durant covers both Roman civilization and Christianity up until 325 AD. This is Vol. 3 in his acclaimed Story of Civilization series.

In terms of what people during the time period wrote about Christianity, I suggest reading the Apostolic Fathers, i.e. the influential church leaders between the apostles and the First Council of Nicea. Additionally, The History of the Church by Eusebius was written around 325 AD

Bless you, /u/luckysushi22! It is good and healthy to realise that emotional experiences (whether euphoric or calm) are not the sign of God's presence. "Good fruit" in our lives is (and these may come with or without pleasant emotions).

I wonder if you would find Dom John Main helpful? (The website is not trying to sell you anything, and has some nice short talks on Christian meditation.)

If you PM me your mailing address (and live somewhere I can ship to cheaply) I would happily buy you a used copy of The Desert Fathers. (Many bits and pieces are also findable free online.) It is a collection of sayings from ancient Christian men and women who retreated into the Egyptian desert in order to devote themselves to full-time contemplative prayer. Not all of the sayings are directly about prayer, but many are; others are about temptation, voluntary poverty, love of God and neighbour, etc. Some of it is pretty kooky, but some of it is really edifying (and some of it is kooky and edifying).

I read/re-read one of these books:

Everyday Saints and Other Stories

Mountain of Silence

Beginnings of a Life of Prayer

That is not to say that Scripture is not useful, but these books are about people struggling to live a Christian life in the modern context. For Scripture, when I am dejected I often turn to Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Sirach), but if you are from a Protestant tradition, the book has probably been taken out of your Bible.

You might also check out The Desert Fathers. Although it is a collection about 3rd century monks in Egypt, you would be amazed at how they struggled with the same things we do - especially dejection and self-doubt.

• F.F. Bruce's The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
  
  
• Richard Bauckman's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
  
  
• Bruce Metzger's The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
  
  
• Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration
  
  
• D.A. Carson and Douglass Moo's An Introduction to the New Testament
  
  
  
  (Note, these will probably go against or "provide a nice contrast with" captainhaddock's view --the current most popular post in the thread).

Sorry for the late reply, you caught me between class and teaching last night.

> I did not know that about Luther. Did he say why he removed those books?

His reasoning for removing those 7 books were that they weren't recognized by the Jews as canon (who themselves only "formalized' their Scripture sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries. There's no scholarly consensus on when it was exactly finalized or by whom). Part of his reasoning was that they weren't (debatably in some cases) written in Hebrew but instead in Greek, thus they weren't inspired texts like the rest of the Hebrew OT. The Council of Trent, a Catholic Ecumenical Council, defined the Catholic Bible as 73 books including the 7 removed by Luther and the Reformers as deuterocanon (or "secondary canon" though still full parts of Scripture).

> Also, was there ever some sort of original historical team that established a set of books that was later refined? Do we have a timeline where that occurred, and how the Canon shaped over time and research?

Wiki does a good job summarizing the major movements in the development. And as I said above, Trent was when the finalized Catholic bible was authoritatively declared, though it was basically a formal acknowledgement of what was already standard practice in the Church for about a thousand years.

>Is this what the "Magisterium's Team" is?

The Magisterium is the teaching body of the Catholic Church and they settle matters of doctrine, including what is contained in Holy Scripture. The Magisterium is what made up the various councils throughout the ages including Trent.

>Finally, is there any specific source you recommend where I can go to find out more about the history of the Canon of the Bible?

Like I said, wiki does quite a good job giving a summary level. If you want a more academic and in depth reading I recommend Metzger's The Canon of the New Testament as was already suggested (though it tends to be on the apologetic side, it is still quite reliable) or F F Bruce's The Canon of Scripture. Niel R Lightfoot's How We Got The Bible is also quite good.

I would also suggest the books The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance by Bruce Metzger

This is generally considered the best NT lexicon: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Greek-English-Lexicon-Testament-Christian-Literature/dp/0226039331&ved=2ahUKEwjg-rnhk5TkAhUQIKwKHWL4BioQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw2x1bV7P6oLho-Lu3Dn94Uv

It's pretty extensive. There is a shorter edition too if you're mostly wanting glosses, but if you're wanting to really dig in BDAG is the way to go.

I have seen people using the Brill dictionary lately too, but it's not specifically NT.

The grammar from what I can tell is really close but tends to be simpler in Koine so you probably wouldn't need a specifically NT grammar. Wallace's grammar would help with specific passages and constructions if you want one and his book is relatively inexpensive.

I didn't find exactly what I said in the previous comment, but here's the definitions of δικαιόω which I did find:

> 1. To take up a legal cause, show justice, do justice, take up a cause
2. To render a favorable verdict, vindicate
3. to cause someone to be released from personal or institutional claims that are no longer to be considered pretinent or valid, make free/pure
4. to demonstrate to be morally right, prove to be right

I think 3 and 4 are closest to what I was saying, but neither say exactly that.

Source, p249

The greek word is μοναὶ, which is the feminine plural nominative form of μονή, which is in turn the noun form of the verb "μένω" which means, "I dwell, remain, or abide"

So it just means "In my father's house, there are many dwellings/places to live."

The word mansion comes from the Latin word manere, which means "to remain or dwell", which borrows the term from the Greek.

So "mansions" is technically an accurate translation, but I don't think the word meant to evoke the idea that we get when we think of a mansion today.

Essentially Jesus is saying that there are many places for people to live in God's house, and Jesus is going to prepare places for them.

Sources: The BDAG (Offline Resource) for the Greek and Online Etymology Dictionary for the Latin.

I'm happy to interact with you about the Greek of this verse, as best I can. I am in my third semester of Greek studies for a Masters of Theology in seminary. As with most things, the more you study Greek the more you realize you don't know!

Fundamentally though, be aware that Christian scholarship works a lot like a hospital, in a sense. First, doctors, nurses, and technicians each have a core set of knowledge that they all share. Second, doctors have specialized knowledge that nurses and technicians lack, nurses have specialized knowledge that doctors and technicians lack, and so on and so on. Thirdly, the whole system relies on each person to trust in the specialized knowledge of the other people beside them.

In this way Christian scholarship is made up of many jobs, and for this topic we need a team of Language Experts, Theological Experts, and Exegetical Experts to form any serious conclusions! No one person can be an expert in all three, so we have to trust others to form a conclusion with any confidence.

Part of that means humbly admitting where we are unequipped and untrained to offer a dissenting opinion. You are very open with your lack of education in the Koine Greek, which is admirable! Please accept my loving challenge to rectify this situation over the next year of your life. You can buy Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek textbook and workbook for fairly cheap, and if you commit yourself to a chapter a week than you can acquire a surprisingly adequate understanding of the language in just 8 or 9 months! You obviously have a passion for the knowledge and the ability to pursue truth, so level-up your skills!

Back to Matthew 23:23...

>However, it appears that ἐκεῖνος is not exclusively reserved for what is far, the more distant object. All the examples I gave in my article (Matthew 15:18, Mark 12:4, John 7:29, Acts 5:37, 2 Timothy 2:12) use κἀκεῖνος (not ταῦτα) but they are clearly referring to what was near. I wonder why they did not use ταῦτα instead.

Let's look at each one of those examples, and I suspect we will see ways that English and Greek are similar, and also ways they differ. I'll be using ESV for english. But first!! Let's get some good lexicon information on εκεινος and τουτο. From BDAG

ἐκεῖνος, η, ο demonstr. pron. (Hom.+) pert. to an entity mentioned or understood and viewed as relatively remote in the discourse setting, that person, that thing, that (‘that over there’; opp. οὗτος ‘this’)

οὗτος, αὕτη, τοῦτο (Hom.+) demonstrative pron., used as adj. and subst. As subst., the person or thing comparatively near at hand in the discourse material, this, this one (contrast ἐκεῖνος referring to someth. comparatively farther away; cp. Lk 18:14; Js 4:15; Hm 3:5)

>Matt. 15:18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this [κακεινος] defiles a person.

κακεινος is actually a bit troublesome for me to research. Most lexicons have it thrown in with και which is a multi-function conjunction, so finding good information there is like finding a needle in a hay stack. The most helpful thing I've found is

>κἀκεῖνος (kakeinos), and. A compound of ἐκεῖ and καί. From The Lexham Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament (Logos Bible Software, 2011).

εκει is of course the shortened form of εκεινος, which gets us back to BDAG's lexical help which I already pasted.

So why does Matt 15:18 have κακεινος translated as "and this" instead of "and that?" BDAG tells us that εκεινος has a secondary usage, "referring back to and resuming a word immediately preceding. Often weakened to he/she/it" English actually works this way too, and you can see this by looking at Matt 15:18 and swapping out "this" for "that." It makes zero impact on the meaning of the verse because

>and this defiles a person

and

>and that defiles a person

mean the exact same thing, so using εκεινος vs τουτο is just a stylistic variance. You might be thinking, "aha, that's the same usage I was talking about in Matthew 23:23!" but remember that Mt. 23:23 has a clear "this ... that ..." structure, leaving no ambiguity as to the meaning of εκεινος in that context. In all these examples where it takes the secondary use, it is meaning "that one" like you might point to a donut in a donut shop and say, "give me that one." Greek uses this as a transition between clauses way more than English does. Back to the donut store analogy, they might often say, "I would like a chocolate donut, that one with the sprinkles." You see that it is still being demonstrative, but is not primarily communicating a distance.

>Mark 12:4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him [εκεινος] on the head and treated him shamefully.

This is another case where εκεινος is taking the secondary usage, and is also being weakened to a pronoun. The full literal translation would be:

>And again he sent to them another servant, and that one they beat over the head and dishonored.

This is awkward phrasing for English so the "and that one" gets weakened into "and ... him."

>John 7:29 I know him, for I come from him, and he [κακεινος] sent me.

This is similar to Mark 12:4 where the literal translation would end up "and that one sent me," which is awkward English phrasing, so it gets translated/weakened to "and he" because it makes more sense to the English reader.

>Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too [κακεινος] perished, and all who followed him were scattered.

This is, again, the same usage :) The literal translation for that would be, "and he withdrew people after himself; and that one was destroyed." Again, referring to someone as a "that one" is awkward in English, so it becomes "he" instead. I'm not sure where the "too" comes from, it might be from the context of the narrative, or it might be an implication of the εκεινος.

>2 Tim 2:12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he [κακεινος] also will deny us;

This whole verse is obscure when translated literally and carries a lot of implied subjects. It goes

>If we endure, then we will reign with; If we deny (future tense!), and that one will deny us.

Translators add in the implied "him" when it is needed, and turn the [κακεινος] into a pronoun once again, this time completely dropping the "and" that would naturally come out of the και in κακεινος.

So that's all of them! The demonstrative εκεινος can mean "that one" like "that one right there" or "that one we I just mentioned," and when it is used weakly it can even be interchangeable with τουτο (pointing and saying "I would like this donut" instead of "I would like that donut", means the same thing!).

I'll go ahead and submit this and reply to it in order to continue the Greek topic.

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought by Robert Louis Wilken

> In this eloquent introduction to early Christian thought, eminent religious historian Robert Louis Wilken examines the tradition that such figures as St. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and others set in place. These early thinkers constructed a new intellectual and spiritual world, Wilken shows, and they can still be heard as living voices in the modern world.

EDIT: this will go beyond the 1st and 2nd centuries, but might still be worth something to you.

Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church by Michael Haykin

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God by Robert Louis Wilken

The Early Church (The Penguin History of the Church) by Henry Chadwick

Early Christian Doctrines by J.N.D. Kelly

And of course, works such as On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius, and The Confessions by St. Augustine

Sure: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, Getting to Know the Church Fathers, Nicaea and Its Legacy Anything by John Zizioulas.

If Bart Ehrman is a Christian apologist, then I might as well be Jesus! Ehrman is an agnostic atheist, and about as far from being an apologist as you can get (you can tell because some Christians write books trying to refute him). He is a highly respected New Testament scholar and has written standard university textbooks in biblical studies. You can find a complete list of his books here. The formation of the biblical canon is a massive topic, but for the New Testament Ehrman has written something of a three-part series: Misquoting Jesus, Jesus, Interrupted, and Forged (which I'm reading right now and highly recommend). These are all books aimed at a general audience and are easier to grok than his academic texts.

This will probably start a flamewar, but I should also point out that Richard Carrier's views are pretty far off the beaten path. There's nothing wrong with that, but crucially, they seem to be motivated by his personal ideology as an atheist more than objective scholarship. (Yes, Jesus did exist, and no, you can't use Bayes' Theorem to prove he didn't).

As a side note, Yale has free online courses about the [Old Testament](http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145
) and [New Testament](http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152
), along with books to go with them. These lectures really are incredible in framing the history of the Bible within its ancient context. I finished watching them a few weeks ago, and they have completely changed my perspective on the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity. You can find content of a similar nature in r/AcademicBiblical, which is a sub devoted to biblical scholarship. Cheers!

How God Became Jesus was an evangelical critique of Ehrman's How Jesus Became God.

Christianity: I've heard that Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch is fantastic. I haven't read it. It's called "Christianity", not "Catholicism", but it might work for you given that Catholicism pretty much was Christianity until (relatively) recently.

French Revolution: Citizens by Simon Schama.

Can't help you with Zoroastrianism.

This was a huge point of discussion and contention in the early church. The Gnostic Gospels is a great book detailing some of the thoughts of groups who saw the two as pretty different, and their conflicts with those who saw the two as identical. It is well worth a read.

Elaine Pagel's "The Gnostic Gospels" would be a good place to start. Far from a complete analysis, doesn't really get into the "conspiracy" angle of things, BUT---if you're really interested in going down this path to learn, there is no better primer to understanding the content and background of the 1947 Dead Sea Scrolls discovery.

https://www.amazon.com/Gnostic-Gospels-Elaine-Pagels/dp/0679724532

> Robert Spencer

I'd personally look up early stuff by him, if that really.

I'd recommend something like this(By Thomas Madden).

Edit: added author's name

I read this collection as well as a few short letters that weren't included in it.

I had a separate collection as well but I can't remember that one, sorry!

If you want church fathers, The Apostolic Fathers in English is a good place to start. These would be the earliest writings aside from the New Testament. (1st/2nd century)

From there, the writings of individual fathers are more extant so you could pick a father at a time and go from there. Justin Martyr is great, as is Origen or Athanasius. A personal favorite is Gregory of Nyssa.

The family http://www.amazon.com/The-Family-Secret-Fundamentalism-American/dp/0060559799

scary as all hell

Sounds like these guys The family

The Family

This one not only makes you go "HOLY SHIT" at the end; it makes you start going "HOLY SHIT" from the very beginning.

This would be true and expected. The point is that those people could and would be held accountable to their own actions.

A lot of leaders are driven by their a divine right (e.g. read the Family http://www.amazon.com/Family-Secret-Fundamentalism-Heart-American/dp/0060559799). It would take some steam away from people who use religion for such purposes and maybe even prevent them from getting to such a position in the first place.

If you can expose those people to be greedy, immoral and merciless and if that is what's required for leadership then so be it. At least it would then be open and transparent.

>We do not stand alone. We have the shared and consistent apostolic confession as passed down through the generations.

- exactly what our Lutheran friend said. So look at the early church fathers and read what they said from their own mouths. Just follow it from the ground up through the 21st century.


I would start here: Early Church Writings - 2nd Century Church

Go mid-way here: Church Fathers 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Century,

6th century to 16th century here: Later Centuries / Renaissance + Not What Luther Thought of the Gospel

End here: Final Centuries - The Church's Designated Sr. Pastor Sums it Up for You

Just follow the Church's confessions, including its confessions through the Protestant heresies, and just make it to the end. Very simple. It's crisp when others don't throw in heresies in the middle to confuse you.

Sure. If you want scholarly resources on the resurrection, then I would suggest The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Licona. You can get it on Amazon for about $35 and it's a long read at 700+ pages.

https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UCOAX5QZYQUY&keywords=the+resurrection+of+jesus+mike+licona&qid=1570211397&sprefix=the+resurrection+of+Jesus%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1

Another good scholarly resource is The Case For the Resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona. You can get it for about $13 dollars on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Resurrection-Jesus-Gary-Habermas/dp/0825427886/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0825427886&pd_rd_r=decfba9d-109a-4324-99c9-ba4523d42796&pd_rd_w=TIA6v&pd_rd_wg=EeKYx&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=WW1HBRRY8K7JV6EPDW3P&psc=1&refRID=WW1HBRRY8K7JV6EPDW3P

I would also suggest getting a general overview of the New Testament. Bart Ehrman is probably the world's leading skeptical scholar of the New Testament. His book on the New Testament, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the New Testament Writings, is a great resource and can be bought on Amazon for around $6.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0195126394/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=introduction+to+new+testament+ehrman&qid=1570211027&sr=8-6

Other books that I would strongly recommend would be:

Early Christian Writings. A short read at 200 pages. A catalog of some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament. You can get it for $3 on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Writings-Apostolic-Fathers/dp/0140444750/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=early+christian+writings&qid=1570212985&s=books&sr=1-1

The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content Bruce Metzger was one of the leading New Testament scholars of the 20th century. You can get it for $20.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Background-Growth-Content/dp/1426772491/ref=pd_sbs_14_5/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1426772491&pd_rd_r=d83ca7e7-e9be-4da7-b3e8-3e5b6e143a27&pd_rd_w=AUNpT&pd_rd_wg=VLsLw&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7&psc=1&refRID=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7

The Fate of the Apostles, by McDowell. An in-depth study of how reliable the martyrdom accounts of the apostles are. A little bit pricey at $35-40.

https://www.amazon.com/Fate-Apostles-Sean-McDowell/dp/1138549134/ref=sr_1_1?crid=JBDB9MJMOVL8&keywords=the+fate+of+the+apostles&qid=1570212064&s=books&sprefix=the+fate+of+the+ap%2Cstripbooks%2C167&sr=1-1

Ecclesiastical History, by Eusebius, a 3rd century historian. Eusebius documents the history of Christianity from Jesus to about the 3rd century. You can get it for $10.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Background-Growth-Content/dp/1426772491/ref=pd_sbs_14_5/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1426772491&pd_rd_r=d83ca7e7-e9be-4da7-b3e8-3e5b6e143a27&pd_rd_w=AUNpT&pd_rd_wg=VLsLw&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7&psc=1&refRID=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7

He's so readable that I can definitely recommend skipping the books about St. Augustine and just going directly to the source. As others have mentioned, Confessions. Others you may be interested in are City of God and On Grace And Free Will.

Also, as /u/Philip_Schwartzerdt mentioned, John Calvin isn't typically considered one of the Church Fathers given that his time on earth came in the 16th century. In fact, as a Catholic, we would consider him a heretic, but that's neither here nor there. :)

For other early Church Fathers books, you may want to check out this collection of writings from the early church, Against Heresies by St. Iranaeus, countering heresy in the early Church, and The First And Second Apologies by St. Justin Martyr, a convert to the faith at about 130 A.D. and who was martyred (surprise) around 165 A.D.

As you may have guessed, with me being a Catholic in the Roman Rite, that's the perspective to which my study of the early Church Fathers led me, but if you wish to get a primer on St. Irenaeus before the books come, this is a worthwhile read.

I highly encourage the study of the fathers. The whole Christian world disagrees on many parts of of Sacred Scripture, and the testimony of the fathers, especially those who were direct disciples of the Apostles, should be one of our primary sources of discerning Christian truth amid the chaos. Plainly put, there are many interpretations of Scripture which "make sense" or are feasible outside of the tradition of the Apostles, but if said interpretation is true, it should be reflected in the doctrines, beliefs, and practices of those whom the Apostles taught.

I'll pray for you as you jump into this study. Please reach out if I can be of any help!

Peace,

DK

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Writings-Apostolic-Fathers/dp/0140444750

https://www.amazon.com/Desert-Fathers-Sayings-Christian-Classics/dp/0140447318

Suggestion for further reading: the chapter on humility from The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (Penguin Classics). You will find the other themes addressed there as well.

> You have literally no clue what your saying. Listen to your self.

Curious words coming from someone that does not use academic references.

> I gave you a reference on the origins of the Bible, and it says there it was written by fake prophets.

You gave websites. And, as I said, only a portion of the OT was written by prophets -- the Gospels were not, nor the Epistles, or the Sapiential writings...

> FF Bruce was a Christian, so obviously his works are heavily biased in favor of the Christian belief. It would be as if I gave you and article from the Friendly Atheist.

What matters is not who wrote, but the content. But, if you want another reference about canon development, I can point you to Metzger's [The Canon of the New Testament] (https://www.amazon.com.br/Canon-New-Testament-Development-Significance/dp/0198269544), but this one is much deeper.

> If you read such biased works, then yeah you are very clearly indoctrinated. Go pick up a science book and maybe you might actually learn something for once in your life

I am reading and quoting academic works... very funny that you rambles so much about science but can't quote academia.

I think it depends on the discipline (Thayer's NT specific, so less so in mine). Older LSJs have also hit public domain, hence Perseus having them. I'm sure one of our seminarians could do better on this, but it looks like a recent NT Lexicon is Bauer's. Looks pricey though, for non-professional use.

Well there's the Wikipedia of course. It uses several different (though some conflicting) sources.

But the one that I get the definition and the particular count from is actually Bauer's Lexicon that had its 3rd edition published in 2001. It's considered one of the bigger of the big boys when it comes to understanding the old terms.

Oh! The word I reference is "porneia" in Greek.

Edit: You can also use an Interlinear translation to count off the number of uses. Though that would take a lot of reading.

Which should be read in tandem with How God Became Jesus :)

>Which make you wrong. Yahweh does not mean "Lord."

Ha ha ha, No, it means you misunderstood Bowman's point!

> Read Ehrman's How Jesus Became God.

Been there, done that. Read How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature---A Response to Bart D. Ehrman to see what Erhman got wrong.

Or How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus '

or Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture's Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ

or Jesus the Son of God: A Christological Title Often Overlooked, Sometimes Misunderstood, and Currently Disputed

>Because the Bible often call things "God" figuratively that are not God, including kings (for example in Psalm 45:6-7 or the coronation song in Isaiah 9) and the Angel of the Lord in Exodus 3:2-4. In John 10:34, Jesus quotes Psalm 182:

And if you'd actually read Bowman you'd see these have been addressed.

Look into the Council of Nicea. I'm sure you can find some great books at the library as well. Not only did it lay down a lot of foundational doctrine and canon law that you say you're interested in, it was the first of several church councils that continued to occur largely under the auspices of the Byzantine government.

Also, this is a really good book on church history, which I think covers that period fairly well for a book so broad in scope.

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch (who is not himself Catholic, or even Christian)

This is a very good book on the history of christianity. It's long (just like it needs to, but good).

Yes, the humans that are Christians have a long history of fighting with each other over various intertwined religious and political points of view. Teasing apart the political from the religious is by no means a small task.

Many of the above and many more throughout history were in fact connected to church teachings. Well, I suppose that depends on how your tradition defines "church teachings", but it's often found in official church policy and the writings of many so called heroes of the faith. Remember, both the Catholics and the protestants in the 1600s were burning heretics at the stake. John Calvin, himself a reformer, wrote in favor of the death of Michael Servetus for taking reform too far, and embracing damnable heresies.

The platonic ideal of Christianity (if existent, no two groups of Christians can seem to agree on what that is) is of course not responsible for these behaviors of it's followers, but it's hard to deny that the history of Christianity from the first holy war, rise of orthodoxy and expulsions for heresy under Constantine until now is not littered with conflict. If you think I'm pulling your leg, go read "Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years". It's over a thousand pages of the history of Christianity. A large amount of those are about the many conflicts that have occurred, and their origins.


Sometimes the conflict is cerebral, sometimes political, occasionally descending into violence and very seldom even torture. It's true the conflicts have been varied, but denying the conflicts exist is simply untenable.

I read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels and it was quite good, it's also not super long. A great introductory book on the subject. I think she's written a few on Gnosticism and related subjects.

amazon link here!

Just curious, did you grow up in a religious household? Growing up in a Catholic household, I was constantly exposed to the religion but never asked questions. I went down this path of curiosity on Christianity a few years ago and read a few books and watched a few documentaries. The fact is, there is very little data on the historical Jesus, so you'll have to come to your own conclusions. A few things that helped me come to my conclusion:

An interesting free Yale open course that deals with the historical context of the New Testament -

http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

An introduction to the "banned" books of the bible. One could suggest that these were influenced by other religions of the east, and did not fit the narrative of the current version of the Bible -

http://www.amazon.com/The-Gnostic-Gospels-Elaine-Pagels/dp/0679724532

One authors interpretation of what Jesus probably was given the historical context and the political strife of that time -

http://www.amazon.com/Zealot-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/0812981480/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449711190&sr=1-1&keywords=zealot

Good luck!

"The Concise History of the Crusades" - Thomas F. Madden

Updated Student Edition

https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Crusades-Critical-International/dp/0742538230

Also a very good read

I found the following very interesting:

http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Sea-Battle-Lepanto-Contest/dp/0812977645/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1323325754&sr=8-3

You can also try:

http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Middle-Ages-Norman-Cantor/dp/0688123023/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323325834&sr=8-1

The Bible Unearthed shows that the O.T. stories are not based on fact, and were compiled/written with political bias.

Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman shows how early Christianity was split and how one strain became dominant

How Jesus became God also by Bart Ehrman, shows how the theology of the trinity evolved over Christianity's first few centuries.

I suspect this is something of a false understanding of history. I noticed in Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis mentions he doesn't believe in the dark ages and renaissance in the traditional sense, and that has sense got me wondering if there hasn't been some distortion of history to fit a cleaner narrative.

I just picked up this book by David Bentley Hart, which despite the inflammatory title, sets out to correct the common understanding of the last 2,000 years, the dark ages and renaissance included.

It's curious. I'm looking forward to learning other perspectives than what I was taught growing up, and suspect that the narrative your graph suggests is flawed.

I believe OP was referring to 1924 and this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Klan

It was the closest the clan ever had to controlling legitimately state government.

Also great read:

https://www.amazon.com/Notre-Dame-Vs-Klan-Fighting/dp/0829417710

You might want to check out this book. In parts, it explains that the Klan is weakened when ignored, and it demonstrates how the Klan grows when confronted. Plus, it's got some great history of Notre Dame football in it:

https://www.amazon.com/Notre-Dame-Vs-Klan-Fighting/dp/0829417710

https://www.amazon.com/Notre-Dame-Vs-Klan-Fighting/dp/0829417710

Richard Dawkins is hardly an authority on any subject, especially philosophy. It doesn't get much more contradictory than Dawkins. Through the Darwinian materialist's lens, the concept of love as our culture has understood it for the past two thousand years (thanks to Christianity) does not exist. "Love" can only be reduced to a meaningless impulse meant to lead to reproduction. All the virtue and high concepts that we typically ascribe to love have to be dismissed as delusional.

Taking Dawkin's worldview into consideration, his assertion that you don't need physical evidence to know that someone loves you; that you can deduce this merely from the way one looks at you or through their body language, becomes outright absurd. Not to mention it doesn't even take into consideration the very real possibility for ulterior motives, for the human tendency of feigning & lying. This is inconsistent skepticism in so many ways.

What if I told you: You don't need physical evidence to know that God is real. You can feel His presence in times of prayer and you can witness His sovereignty through incredible synchronicities and unlikely events which seem to occur solely as an answer to your prayers. Looking from the outside, through the materialist's lens, this as unverifiable a claim as Dawkin's, yet his you will assent to and mine you will dismiss.

You are correct in saying that evidence comes in different ways - experiential evidence is one of them. And I offered you a method to experientially test out our claims for yourself, but you have also dismissed that.

In fact, you will dismiss literally everything I say, regardless of how sensible it may be, as you have already dismissed me as an idiot who needs to grow up, because of your presuppositions regarding people who have faith.

So please, I beg you, for the sake of truth (or at least for the sake of mere knowledge), read some of Richard Dawkin's opponents before hastily making up your mind. You will be surprised to find that there are highly intelligent voices out there (surprised thanks to Dawkin's tendency to pick the lowest hanging fruits as far as choosing debate opponents goes) who, frankly, outright destroy his arguments. Start with David Bentley Hart (a man Richard Dawkins would never dare debate, with good reason). Please do this.

I also invite you to come converse (civilly) with us on our Christian discord channel if you ever feel inclined.

Amazon link to his book on the same subject:

The End of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos

In this radical critique of his own academic specialty, biblical scholar Hector Avalos calls for an end to biblical studies as we know them. He outlines two main arguments for this surprising conclusion. First, academic biblical scholarship has clearly succeeded in showing that the ancient civilization that produced the Bible held beliefs about the origin, nature, and purpose of the world and humanity that are fundamentally opposed to the views of modern society. The Bible is thus largely irrelevant to the needs and concerns of contemporary human beings. Second, Avalos criticizes his colleagues for applying a variety of flawed and specious techniques aimed at maintaining the illusion that the Bible is still relevant in today’s world. In effect, he accuses his profession of being more concerned about its self-preservation than about giving an honest account of its own findings to the general public and faith communities.

Dividing his study into two parts, Avalos first examines the principal subdisciplines of biblical studies (textual criticism, archaeology, historical criticism, literary criticism, biblical theology, and translations) in order to show how these fields are still influenced by religiously motivated agendas despite claims to independence from religious premises. In the second part, he focuses on the infrastructure that supports academic biblical studies to maintain the value of the profession and the Bible. This infrastructure includes academia (public and private universities and colleges), churches, the media-publishing complex, and professional organizations such as the Society of Biblical Literature.

In a controversial conclusion, Avalos argues that our world is best served by leaving the Bible as a relic of an ancient civilization instead of the "living" document most religionist scholars believe it should be. He urges his colleagues to concentrate on educating the broader society to recognize the irrelevance and even violent effects of the Bible in modern life.

The best book on the subject of Catholics and Christianity in general is "Pagan Christianity" by Frank Viola and George Barna, exposing the Roman Paganism that infiltrated the Church through the years.

It's a little hard to read, so I wouldn't recommend it to people new to the faith.

https://www.amazon.com/Pagan-Christianity-Exploring-Church-Practices/dp/1414364555

(It was written by Christians, not a Fedora tippers)

There's a follow up book called Reimagining Church that is also good.

H'm, Hector Avalos, who I didn't think was regarded as barking mad, calls himself an agnostic on the subject (this podcast starting at 47:30), and has a chapter "The Unhistorical Jesus" in his book "The End of Biblical Studies".

Here's a page that lists several scholarly theories of Jesus including some that suggest there was no flesh-and-blood person at the root of them.

As I mention below, I like Christopher Hitchens' point that the huge amount of fudging required to get Jesus of Nazareth born in Bethlehem to satisfy an OT prophesy suggests that whoever wrote it wasn't just making it up out of whole cloth, but had some awkward historical facts to explain away.

The real question is how much divergence from the gospels you are willing to accept in a "historical Jesus". That there was some dude wandering the area at that time preaching? I'll grant you that, simply because it doesn't matter.

> ask them to prove the existence of any particular person from the time of Jesus, who wasn't an Emperor or king.

The evidence for the existence of Pliny the Elder is pretty strong.

There are two different books that share a chapter title that speaks to this issue. Both are books I'd happily recommend, even if they have somewhat divergent emphases. The chapters are called 'Edifice Complex' and can be found in Rick Warren's seminal Purpose Driven Church and the second is Pagan Christianity although the latter seems to have changed the title of Chapter 2 to 'The Church Building'.

http://www.amazon.com/End-Biblical-Studies-Hector-Avalos/dp/1591025362/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2GRZ2I72J3D1B&colid=1TSEUWEURSQKF

Does anyone know anything more about Dario Fernandez-Morera's The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain? I saw it in my local bookshop in a hardback edition with a fairly impressive list of academic cover quotes. It purports to demolish the "coexistence"-thesis of medieval Andalusia, instead arguing that the Al-Andalus was governed like most territories occupied by a foreign power; that is to say, brutally. I didn't buy it, though, because it was expensive, and for the same price I could get Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself and a copy of The Good Soldier Svejk.

It seems to have a warm academic reception from the dustjacket quotations and this review by Laina Farhat-Holzman, but I don't know enough about the period or the state of the scholarship to evaluate it myself.

-----

Do any other British badhistorians think that the way British popular history and national historical sites focus on the garum wogs Romans to the exclusion of the native inhabitants of the isles at the time is annoying? It seems like a classic example of history being written by the literate. The Roman invasion of Caledonia was extremely bloody judging by the evidence of reforestation around the Black Loch in Fife, yet Scottish history as taught still focuses entirely on the Romans and their supposed technical achievements.

> was under Muslim control where Christians and Jews all lived peacefully together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_C%C3%B3rdoba

>With few exceptions, the Christians knowingly risked execution by making public statements proclaiming their Christianity in the presence of Muslims. Some of the martyrs were executed for blasphemy after they appeared before the Muslim authorities and denounced Muhammad, while others who were Christian children of Muslim-Christian marriages publicly proclaimed their Christianity and thus were executed as apostates. Still others who had previously converted to Islam denounced their new faith and returned to Christianity, and thus were also executed as apostates.


>The forty-eight Christians (mostly monks) were martyred in Córdoba, between the years 850 AD and 859 AD, being decapitated for publicly proclaiming their Christian beliefs. Dhimmis (non-Muslims living under Muslim rule) were not allowed to speak of their faith to Muslims under penalty of death.

>Mark Cohen, professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, in his Under Crescent and Cross, calls the "idealized" interfaith utopia a "myth" that was first promulgated by Jewish historians such as Heinrich Graetz in the 19th century as a rebuke to Christian countries for their treatment of Jews.[11] This myth was met with what Cohen calls the "counter-myth" of the "neo-lachrymose conception of Jewish-Arab history" by Bat Yeor and others,[11] which also "cannot be maintained in the light of historical reality

>The Spanish mediaevalist Eduardo Manzano Moreno wrote that the concept of convivencia has no support in the historical record [“el concepto de convivencia no tiene ninguna apoyatura histórica“].


>During the Muslim rule of much of the Iberian Peninsula, Jews were living in an uneasy coexistence with Muslims and Catholics, and the relationship between these groups was, more often than not, marked by segregation and mutual hostility.[13] In the 1066 Granada massacre of the entire Jewish population of the city, the Jewish death toll was higher than in the much publicized Christian pogroms in the Rhineland slightly later.[13] The Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) was forced to flee from Al-Andalus to avoid conversion by the Almohads, which may have prompted his bitter statement that Islam had inflicted more pain on the Jewish people than any other 'nation'.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Convivencia

https://www.amazon.ca/Myth-Andalusian-Paradise-Christians-Medieval/dp/1610170954


>AD 976 – Library of al-Hakam II : Córdoba, Al-Andalus – All books consisting of “ancient science” were destroyed by the order of Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir & religious scholars.

It seems we're of an identical view on this after all.

In many ways, the church has become the problem with the faith. I highly recommend a book called Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola. It covers this topic extensively. He also has a couple other books that go with it called Reimagining Church and Finding Organic Church. The general theme with these books is the effort to get involved in non-institutional churches. Ones where there is not this hierarchical structure other than the simple one the Bible set out, which is to elect elders from among the people who act more or less as guidance due to their wisdom. The very idea of a senior pastor isn't even found in scripture anywhere. When we stop and actually take stock of how far the church has strayed from God's word, we get a sense of disillusionment and don't feel quite so awkward looking for something else.

For a long time, I went to what could be described as a large home church which didn't meet in a home. It grew out of a home church and kept the decentralized non-institutional structure. Most of the focus was on family relationships and taking the Bible's teachings seriously. There were no tithes and no liturgy. It was not pre-planned week to week. Just a gathering of the saints for the purpose of expressing their faith and fellowship. Pretty much just like was done back in Acts 2.

But you're absolutely right in that the mistakes of the church are harming the public impression of the faith. When I see atheists explain what they don't like about Christianity, it's almost always reasons which are flaws in the church, not the faith itself.

Actually it wasn't that progressive, more then Europe I guess but not heaven on earth.

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Andalusian-Paradise-Christians-Medieval/dp/1610170954

> 1) Biblical. The Holy Bible speaks of the powers and dignities of Mary though in a muted and mystical manner

Nope. I've read em. Just refers to her as blessed.

>>2) Patristic. The Catholic Church Fathers speak of devotion to the Mary.

None speak of her as sinless, virgin born herself, perpetually a virgin, and building idols/praying to her. Even if there was, it wouldn't negate my belief that Roman paganism was influencing Catholic doctrinal development. Here's a great book about how Roman idolatry influenced the church Pagan Christianity

>>3) Archeological.

1 scroll from Egypt? I think there's also a broken piece of pottery from the 3rd century, too.

>Source and further reading

I read the blog and it's going to take more than 1 scroll from Egypt to convince me that Mary is the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race.

>The Bible says wide is the path to hell, narrow is the path to heaven.

If that's your criteria, then 1 billion Catholics is a pretty wide gate.

I sense that this conversation is departing from a friendly tone, probably more my fault than yours. I have to get to work and since I am the guest in this sub, I will let you have the last word. Blessings from one truth-seeker to another.

Edit: Also, on the blog about the scroll in Egypt, it isn't surprising considering this text from the wiki article on Isis as the "Queen of Heaven" ["Isis was venerated first in Egypt. As per the Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, Isis was the only goddess worshiped by all Egyptians alike,[1] and whose influence was so widespread by that point, that she had become completely syncretic with the Greek goddess Demeter.[2] It is after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, and the Hellenization of the Egyptian culture initiated by Ptolemy I Soter, that she eventually became known as 'Queen of Heaven'](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_heaven_(antiquity)

Oh man, never read up on Biblical history and its evolution over the course of time then! Every generation of believers has added, changed, and/or removed interpretation of "revealed doctrine" over time that largely reflect the current time they live in.

If you do want to read up on it, I'd suggest Pagan Christianity as a starting point. It's written at a pretty high level and from a more historian/anthropological view and less of a subjective/religious view.

In history, especially as it applies to the Christian tradition, you should never go with what the majority says for many good reasons. You should check every bit of work you find and read it for yourself. The majority of biblical studies is a cess-pool of preconceived notions and bad scholarship.

More:

The End of Biblical Studies, Hector Avalos

Online: Ignatian Vexation, Richard Carrier

Proving History, Richard Carrier

One of the first Great examples of using historical methods on theological issues: The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, David Friedrich Strauss (1860)

Oh, I didn't address the issue of Canonicity. And this is an area that even I have heated arguments with like-minded Christians about. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Salvationist (read: Methodist), but with a Southern Baptist/Pentecostal background. So my label reads "Arminian", but my heart is decidedly Calvinist...

I won't go all into the history of why we wound up with the books of the Bible that we have (Bruce Metzger did the best work IMO on the subject), except to say that the canon of the OT Scriptures was pretty much set in stone as early as 400 years before Jesus (around 400 AD). (There are liberal theologians who will debate this, and they are free to do so.)

As for the New Testament, because of the intense persecution of the early Christian church, it is nothing short of a miracle that we have ANY original writings of the apostles. But we have (as I understand it) about 23,000 mss copies extant, handwritten, from the original works.

Here's where it gets iffy, and forgive me for waffling just a bit...it just depends on what you believe.

I believe that God is fully capable of communicating with us in what ever form or fashion is necessary to get the message to us. Some of my more conservative friends believe that the canon of the NT was ordained, set in stone, and all revelation ceased after the writing of the Book of Revelation (~AD 90).

I'm not so sure. I believe God COULD have authored other works, and Paul PROBABLY wrote other letters that didn't make it into the New Testament (Ex. Paul's letter to the Laodiceans, see Col. 4:16). Why would that letter (if it was an original writing by Paul) not be included in the NT?

And I believe that there are people today who regularly speak with God, and hear from God. In fact, Jesus says,

> My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: (John 10:27, KJV)

(The NIV softens the language somewhat and says, "My sheep LISTEN to my voice..." which I am suspect of the change from active to passive voice...but that's just me. There is a substantive difference between 'hearing' and 'listening'. It shifts the focus from God to man.)

So as I understand it, one of the hallmarks of being one of "His sheep", is the ability to "hear His voice", i.e. discern His thoughts and attitudes above the din.

Does that ONLY include the written word? Or can it mean the spoken word, or any other mode of transmission?

If we expand the definition to include God's revelation PAST the New Testament, then what gauge should we use for reliability? I mean, what makes the Mormon Bible (for example) NOT inspired (when they clearly teach that it is), and other teachings possibly inspired?

I like what Walter Martin, in his "Kingdom of the Cults" says. He points out that we should always judge newer revelation in light of older revelation. And this is what was done throughout the New Testament as well. Paul and the other writers of the NT canon consistently leaned on the OT as proof of their inspiration.

So too, we should, if we feel we are "hearing from God", then that inspiration should be scrutinized by what we KNOW to be inspired (the Old and New Testaments). If the new revelation does not line up PERFECTLY with the older revelations, then we can be certain it was not inspired by God (because God cannot lie, and does not change His mind).

So here is where my Calvinism comes out. I think that God purposefully inspired the writing of the individual letters of the New Testament, but that He also guided the process of what letters to include, and which to exclude. Yes, He had to use flawed humans to do His work, as He always does. But I feel that the end product was exactly as he pre-ordained.

Are there other "inspired" non-canonical works? I'm almost certain of it. But the letters that we DO have we are certain ARE inspired, with no "wiggle-room" for doubt. And doubt is the enemy of faith. (Matt. 14:31, Heb. 10:38, others).

>If you haven't read the book, how do you know you've seen his arguments elsewhere?

As I said, I've seen parts of his book referenced, and read the title. I've heard others claim that Jesus did not believe Himself to be God, but I've seen just as many claims to the contrary.

>here may be some disagreement, but the basis of his argument is considered fact by scholars

Did or did not Jesus believe Himself to be divine? I would think if there was a wide a consensus on that question as you state, Wikipedia probably wouldn't say this. Here is one article that goes into depth debating one of the basis of Erhman's claims. There is an entire book devoted to rebutting Ehrman's claims. So, if one wants to claim Jesus did not believe Himself to be divine, you would not find a scholarly consensus.

>As for my argument, it was more than simply one sentence. I pointed out the reasoning for my argument, which is a historical argument. As I argue, Jesus is first seen as a religious leader, and eventually is said to be God. So Jesus eventually becomes God.

There are good reasons to believe this, but many other good reasons to not. You can not claim this definitively.

I believe Elaine Pagels was directly involved
with the study of these texts. She is an exceptional
and engaging writer.

https://www.amazon.com/Gnostic-Gospels-Elaine-Pagels/dp/0679724532

Coexisted" in spain? The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain https://www.amazon.com/dp/1610170954/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Jc.Uzb2K2SCER]

There have been various responses to 'How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee' by Bart Ehrman including two books published the same day! -

• How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature---A Response to Bart D. Ehrman, various authors
  
• Even before Ehrman’s book was issued ... Texas minister Mike Robinson rushed out his own, unauthorized counterattack: “How Jesus Became God in the Flesh: The Proper Exaltation of a Jewish Prophet from Nazareth; Bart Ehrman Refuted.” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/bart-ehrman-jesus-god_n_5029457.html
  
• WHY JESUS IS GOD: A Response to Bart Erhman by Bishop Robert Barron

I actually just read a book about how ND students successfuly ran the KKK out of South Bend in the 1920's. Great read about the time period and the history of the school.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0829417710