Best new testament interpretation books according to redditors
We found 178 Reddit comments discussing the best new testament interpretation books. We ranked the 78 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 178 Reddit comments discussing the best new testament interpretation books. We ranked the 78 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
The apocalyptic prophet model first came into vogue with Albert Schweitzer's seminal Quest for the Historical Jesus in 1906. It has become the majority view in modern critical scholarship (though not a universal one). basically it's the view that Jesus is best understood as a prophet who was predicting an imminent and radical intervention of God into the natural world. Jesus framed this intervention as a coming "kingdom" and believed (according to this theory) that basically God was going to come and smite the enemies of Israel, restore the Davidic monarchy and initiate the Messianic age. He thought this was literally going to happen within his own generation, so basically (to put it bluntly), the theory is that he was a failed apocalyptic prophet,
Some major scholars who defend this view include Bart Ehrman (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium) E. P. Sanders (The Historical Figure of Jesus, JP Meiers' massive Marginal Jew series, Dale Allison (Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet), and Paula Fredriksen (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity. There are many others.
There are some who propose other views, though, like the Zealot theory already mentioned, and the "Sapiential Kingdom" (basically Jesus as a wisdom teacher and social transformer) proposed by Crossan and Funk.
I can't say that I'm familiar with the writings about Romulus, Asclepius, or Hercules; however, the Gospels seem (at least in their final form) to be written and redacted by people who were trying to portray a somewhat historically accurate picture of Jesus of Nazareth. Whether they are wholly or in part actually historically accurate is a totally different question, which I won't delve into here. The genre of the Gospels is sometimes referred to as a subset of Greco-Roman Biography or of Ancient Biography or simply of ancient Lives (βίοι, bioi; vitae) writings.^1
Ancient Biography^2 | Gospels^2
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In ancient biographies, the subject’s name is listed at the very beginning of the text or immediately following the prologue. | All four Gospels mention the name of their subject (Jesus) in or directly after the prologue (though they lack a formal title signaling that they are ancient biographies).
Authors of ancient biographies could present the subject’s words either chronologically or topically. They could also highlight one time period of the subject’s life over and above others (e.g., a particular battle, time in office, death, etc.).| The Gospels aren't too concerned with the chronology of Jesus' life/teaching. Each of the Gospels devotes a considerable amount of attention to Jesus’ death, which aligns with ancient biographers’ tendency to devote more attention to the events or attributes that they believed best portrayed their subject.
Authors of ancient biographies maintained a singular focus on the subject (unlike ancient historiographers, who could offer treatments of several key characters). The individual focused on in the biography was the subject of the verb more than any other character. | Jesus is the subject of the verb in the Gospels far more often than any other individual.
Ancient biographies were typically written in narrative form and typically ranged from 5,000–25,000 words. | The Gospels were written in narrative form and fall within the 5,000–25,000 word count common to ancient biographies.
Ancient biographies were often framed by the birth and death of the individual (although some could start at adulthood) and then filled out with various stories, speeches, or actions from the life of the subject. | Two of the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) open with the narration of Jesus’ birth, while the other two begin in His adult ministry.
Authors of ancient biographies predominantly highlighted specific character traits of their subjects through the inclusion of a subject’s words and deeds, rather than direct analysis or commentary. | The bulk of the narrative is composed of miracle stories, discourses on various topics, sayings, and parables that contribute to the author’s portrayal of Jesus.
Authors of ancient biographies often used a wide variety of both oral and written sources and had greater freedom than historiographers in deciding which information to include or exclude. | The Gospel writers seem to have used a variety of sources in composing their Gospels.
The authors of ancient biographies deployed a range of styles in their writing—from formal to more popular literature—and wrote in both serious and light tones. | The Gospels have a serious tone, and the writers predominantly used a simplistic or popular writing style.
Most ancient biographies cast their subject in a positive light. In some cases the portrayals seem too positive, which makes the characterization seem contrived or stereotypical. | The writers of the four Gospels cast Jesus in a positive light and exhibit the same intentions or purposes for writing as other authors of ancient biographies.
If I understand the Greco-Roman Biography genre correctly, they were normally intended by their authors to be historically factual, but often integrated with ideology (or in the case of the Gospels, theology). The important thing to note is that they didn't pen history or biography in the same way moderns do. They took certain liberties in their telling of the story of someone's life. We wouldn't always see that as a responsible way to do history, but they didn't have the same concept of historiography as us moderns. Furthermore, I'd like to quote at length from Brant Pitre^3 regarding Jesus quotes and gospel/historical Jesus research:
> First, with reference in particular to the sayings of Jesus, it is important to be precise about what I mean when I speak about the "historicity" or "historical plausibility."
> On the one hand, there are some readers of the Gospels who come to them looking for the ipsissima verb Jesu (the "exact words of Jesus"). As contemporary scholarship rightly insists, rarely, if ever, is it possible for us to reconstruct the exact words of Jesus.^4 Indeed, as even a cursory comparison of the sayings of Jesus in a Gospel synopsis shows, on many occasions, the evangelists themselves do not seem bent on giving us anything like the exact words of Jesus.^5 ... On the other hand, it is much more popular in the scholarly realm to come to the Gospels seeking the ipsissima vox Jesu, an expression sometimes used to refer to "the basic message of Jesus" or "the 'kind of thing' he usually or typically said."^6 Although at first glance this may seem like a more helpful formulation, upon further reflection, there are several problems with it. For one thing, "the exact voice of Jesus" (ipsissima vox Jesu) reflects the peculiarly modern preoccupation with exactitude (ipse), and hence smacks both of historical positivism and philosophical foundationalism. Moreover, the emphasis on the exact "voice" (vox) of Jesus is precisely the wrong emphasis. The image of a "voice" lends itself to a focus on how someone sounds (form), rather than what someone says (content), for a "voice" can be completely without substance or meaning... However, for historical research, a case can be made that it is not so much the form of Jesus' teaching that is most important, but the content or substance... Once again, even a quick glance at any Synopsis of the Gospels should show us that a representation of the exact forms of Jesus' sayings does not seem to have been a primary goal of the evangelists.^7 ...
> In this study, I will be pursuing what I would like to refer to as the substantia verb Jesu—i.e., the substance of the words of Jesus. In other words, I am interested in what he said and did and what it might have meant in a first-century Jewish context. Hence, whenever I conclude that a particular saying or action is historical or historically plausible, I am not saying that Jesus said exactly these words (ipsissima verba), nor am I just saying the text "sounds exactly like Jesus" (ipsissima vox). Instead, I am claiming that the basic substance or content of the teaching or action can be reasonably concluded as having originated with him.^8 That is what I mean by historical — no more, and no less.^9
[Edit: I'd like to say that /u/Nadarama and /u/o_kosmos have great points against what I've presented here. I wish I had time to give each the response it deserves, but right now I don't, so I apologize. What I will say is this: the view I've presented is one popular theory among scholars, but is not without its problems. If I understand correctly, its something of a majority view, but I'm open to being corrected on that. Its certainly no "scholarly consensus," if such a thing can be found.]
***
You can't even get scholars to agree on if he was buried at all (Bart Ehrman is one who suggests the possibility). Their thinking, which I tend to agree with, is that Jesus was an enemy of the state who fomented an uprising and called himself a king. This was an assault on the Pax Romana. Enemies of the state were left for the vultures and dogs to pick over the bones after their dead bodies were tossed over a cliff. Those who support burial as a foregone conclusion will argue that if there were Jews with the money to have Jesus buried then the Romans would have allowed it.
There is some data in the historical record to support either position. See John Granger Cook's Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World for an exhaustive study of the history and practice of crucifixion, what kinds of people were crucified, and when known, what happened to the bodies. I've found this book to be an endless source of fascination. If you don't want to cough up the $80 for a copy (it was almost $200 when it came out so maybe it will come down further!) Google books has a lot of pages on preview.
> hard from an intellectual point of view
I'm sorry, I had to snicker when I read this. There is no other organization that has more intellectual underpinnings than the Catholic Church.
If you are having problems reconciling Scripture (exegetically or hermeneutically), you need to start reading academic books, such as those by Brown, Meier, Gonzalez, and Martos, just to name a few.
Helpful for me was Thomism and modern Thomists such as Feser.
> We're not altogether sure Jesus was historical...
Are you a mythicist? Who are the "We" you are referring to?
Furthermore, the most scholarly treatment of the historical Jesus that is available to date is written by John P. Meier and is entitled: A Marginal Jew.
What you have done here, essentially, is dehistoricize Jesus by making him out to be the timeless preacher of agreeable aphorisms. While Jesus certainly conveyed a message of love and solidarity, to reduce the teaching of the historical Jesus to this alone is to (1) divorce him from the Second-Temple Jewish context, rife with eschatological expectation, in which he lived and which you acknowledge in your first paragraph; and thereby to (2) deprive his message of its depth and historical resonance.
Most New Testament historians will agree that the concept most central to Jesus' preaching was the arrival of the 'kingdom of God,' which, if N. T. Wright is correct in his series Christian Origins and the Question of God, was associated with the fulfillment of Jewish eschatological expectation. You propose that "if you and the people in your community lived in fear of things like being killed for gathering firewood on the Sabbath or being forced to marry your rapist... a traveling young rabbi by the name of Jesus is anything but ordinary," and while I find nothing objectionable in this proposition, I think you have forgotten the larger crisis for which the Jews desired a resolution. Yes, individual persons might have desired redress from particularly burdensome provisions of the Mosaic Law; but the Jewish people, in the Second-Temple period, collectively longed for an end to exile consisting in the return of YHWH to Israel in the establishment of the 'kingdom of God' and the inauguration of a new creation.
The Jews, in the centuries prior to the life of Jesus of Nazareth, had faced a series of existential crises: the Northern Kingdom had fallen, which led to the subsequent dispersal of ten(?) of the original twelve Israelite tribes in a diaspora; the Babylonians had taken Israel captive, destroying the Temple in which God's shekinah, his presence, was thought to dwell; and Israel itself had fallen subject to foreign domination, having been conquered variously by regional superpowers and eventually by the Romans. What the Jews were expecting in the late Second-Temple period was the reversal of all of these misfortunes, a reversal that had been prophesied by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, among others. They were anticipating the overthrow of their pagan subjugators, the ingathering of the exiled members of their nation, the absolution of their sins, the extension of blessing to the Gentiles, and, finally, the return of YHWH to Israel in the capacity of a ruling king, and they were anticipating that these things would transpire through the agency of a messianic figure.
Jesus' message must be situated within this context. Yes, he preached peace, love, forgiveness, and compassion, but he preached those things with the explicit intention of inaugurating the kingdom of God. You mention that Jesus made a point of welcoming those of the "the poor, weak, marginalized, and female class"; I want to ask, to what greater purpose?
If you notice, Jesus' miracles are performed as restorative actions among communities who were previously thought ritually unclean and thus excluded from 'Israel.' Lepers are unclean and thus excluded from Israel; he heals them. The woman who discharged blood was ritually unclean (even more, by physically touching her it was thought that one would be ritually defiled oneself); yet when she touches Jesus, Jesus does not become impure but rather she becomes whole. The blind, who again are not incorporated as full members of the community on account of their disability, are healed. Yes, Jesus is healing these people (1) because healing is itself objectively good and (2) because he wants to express a special solidarity with marginalized persons by affirming their dignity. But he is also doing something beyond that: he is re-incorporating into Israel people who previously were, to some degree or other, excluded from it. He is making Israel complete, ingathering the excluded, even conferring blessing to people not traditionally considered part of 'Israel' (by, say, healing Samaritans and Gentiles), and so is fulfilling Jewish eschatological expectations.
It is also generally acknowledged among New Testament scholars that Jesus stood, in some way or other, against the 'Temple establishment' and even pronounced threats against the Second Temple itself (to which the shekinah of YHWH was thought not to have returned following the Babylonian exile). In some sense, Jesus' opposition to the Temple establishment can be interpreted as an act of resistance to calcified authority, as taking a stand against legalism for legalism's sake; but it is more comprehensively, again, to be interpreted as the fulfillment of eschatological expectation. Jesus is quoted as claiming to be the Temple himself (see John 2:19); the point is that he believes the presence, the shekinah, of God to be returning to Israel in and through his person, for which reason the physical Second Temple and its governing authorities are no longer relevant.
So again, we see that Jesus does admirable take moral stances, but he does so precisely because he believes himself to be the person who is effecting the arrival of the kingdom of God—to be, in other words, the Messiah. His moral teachings, his parables, his call to practice mercy and forgiveness are all inseparable from this notion of inaugurating the kingdom of God. Jesus instructs his disciples to forgive others not only because forgiveness is good in itself but because the forgiveness of sins is characteristic of the utopian kingdom of God and in conformity with eschatological prophecy. He reaches out to the marginalized not only because marginalizing people is wrong but also because the coming of the kingdom is prophesied as the time at which Israel is again made complete, in which all its members are restored to it. To ignore this is to fail to see how "Jesus was a Jew preaching Judaism to other Jews."
Finally, to the notion of resurrection: in the Second-Temple period, members of the Pharasaic movement had come to believe that, in the eschaton, those who belonged to faithful Israel would be physically resurrected. This was theologically justified with appeal to God's love of his covenant people: if God truly loved faithful Israel, he would not simply let its members perish, but would restore them to bodily life. Within the scriptural context, death is understood as a destructive, aberrant force that mars God's good creation, and thus the kingdom of God, if it is to be the realization of all of God's intentions for Israel and the creation, is to be characterized by an overthrow of death. The point of Jesus' resurrection is that he is inaugurating the eschaton, that he is reversing the corruption of death in creation and thus fulfilling, again, eschatological expectation (notwithstanding the fact that the resurrection was not expected to occur to one person in advance of everyone else; the Pharisees believed, and their rabbinic successors today believe, that the resurrection will be a general resurrection of all of faithful Israel at once). It is all about the kingdom of God, the fulfillment of God's promises to Israel, and the realization of God's purposes for creation.
>So to me, Jesus the man is just as worthy of following as Christ of faith.
>You're essentially saying that if Jesus was not resurrected then there's no point in trying anymore.
Morally good action would still be desirable, and Jesus' moral teachings would still possess independent truth-value, had he not been the Messiah. However, had Jesus had not been resurrected and his messianic claims not been vindicated through that event, it would have meant that he had failed in the essential task which he had set out to complete: he did not inaugurate the kingdom of God, and so is not to be recognized as Messiah. Perhaps it would be worth taking his moral advice, but it would not be worth placing one's faith in him as the person in whom God's promises to Israel and purposes for creation are realized. Contrary to your claim, then, taking the death-defying supernatural capabilities away from Jesus does, in fact, lessen his credibility.
For more information on the above-discussed subjects, I recommend N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God and his The Resurrection of the Son of God.
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)
I believe that the only inspired word of God is Rappin' With Jesus, the Ebonics Bible. All others be downright heretical, yo.
The Counterpoints series is good for seeing different perspective interact. You could check out Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond.
New Evidence that Demands a Verdict
More Than a Carpenter
Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels On my to read list.
Faith on Trial: An Attorney Analyzes the Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus
The Case for Christ
The Case for Faith
The Case for a Creator
The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus On my to read list.
The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ On my to read list.
Besides the apologetics books, you can watch John Lennox on YouTube. He is a very well-spoken and kind (doesn't attack the other debater) debater. Very well thought out responses. The Dawkins vs Lennox debate was awesome! Ditto Gary Habermas as well.
Alternatively,
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J0OPUZM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
To be honest -- and I promise that I'm making this as not-a-copout as I can -- my feeling is that if you're even taking the position that the entirety of the Bible is authentic and accurate, there's such a gulf of understanding between us that trying to bridge it would be well outside of the scope of a few posts.
I'll try to summarize as best I can, here.
Old Testament: The Torah was not given to Moses by God. Large portions of "God's laws" existed in other cultures before even the Jews claim that they were given to Moses. Like, word-for-word, verse for verse, verbatim. Sometimes with minor changes. The Law is clearly not entirely divine in origin, if any of it is (personally, I think I see the hand of God in places in Deuteronomy, but I'm not sure). Similarly, a great deal of the OT is founded upon pre-existing myths from other cultures in Mesopotamia. We're able to discern several different agents at work in the text, including people who clearly have very different conceptions of God, writing at different times, as well as any number of redactors. In some cases, it's pretty clear that the final version of the text was based upon a later writer completely failing to understand the original writer. In some cases, multiple incompatible versions of stories were combined into the text serially by redactors who clearly had no idea that the text was supposed to be "perfect". Check out the stories about how David met Saul, for example. Also, a lot of the traditional interpretations of things came about when the Jews noted the many flaws, inconsistencies, and absurdities in the Torah, and invented all sorts of amazing (and often ridiculous) explanations for them.
For more on this, I cannot recommend highly enough James Kugel's How to Read the Bible. It's written by a very intellectually honest orthodox Jew, which is very valuable to me because it's as unbiased as possible while still being sympathetic and open to the theist view. No joke, I will buy this for you in a heartbeat if you send me an address. It will radically transform and improve your understanding of these things.
As to the Gospels, you ought to be able to find any number of websites describing its inaccuracies and contradictions. Of course, there's a strain of fundamentalism that insists, through astounding intellectual dishonesty, that there are no contradictions. To assert this, one must use a definition of "contradiction" that would be prima facie absurd in any other context. The differing accounts of Jesus' birth, the date of the Last Supper, and so, so much more. Also, many of the accounts of Jesus' life are clearly, shall we say, modified to make the points that the authors cared about, such as Jesus's genealogy falling into nice round numbers that it actually didn't. Also, a lot of details seem to have been invented after the fact to give the impression that Jesus fulfilled prophecies that he likely didn't (As a Christian this doesn't bother me; I don't see the OT as inerrant, so it's not surprising to me that many of its prophecies were wrong). For example, the narrative wherein the family has to travel for a census (never happened) so that Jesus could be in the city that prophecy said the Messiah would be born in (he probably wasn't).
For more on this subject... I like Marcus Borg. Actually, this book by him and N.T. Wright does a great job examining such matters from multiple perspectives, as it's written in a format where they disagree with each other and give their own takes on things. Borg represents (IMO) rational but honest scholarship taken too far, whereas Wright represents a more traditional but still informed perspective. This book covers many important topics, such as many of the miracles, the nativity, the resurrection, and so on. If you want to be able to defend yourself against atheist attacks, buy this book if only for Wright's sections. But read Borg's, too. They'll open your eyes to so much.
Okay, now let's talk epistles. The wikipedia article on the subject of the Pauline Epistles is a great jumping-off point. For a more in-depth treatment, I really liked Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted though it definitely deals a lot with the gospels as well.
I'd like to make two more points in closing. The first is that there's just no reason at all to think that the Bible is accurate and authentic in its entirety. None. It doesn't even claim to be. It can't. It wasn't fully compiled until hundreds of years after its constituent parts were written, therefore it logically cannot be self-referential. When (not) Paul wrote that all scripture is God-breathed, he couldn't have been including the books that hadn't been written yet. Also, as you'll see if you read Kugel's book, much of scripture is clearly not inspired. Some would argue that it's still the book that God wanted us to end up with, but that raises the question of why there are so many different versions. Some bibles have books that others don't. Some translate things in contradictory ways to others. There is just no way to suggest that there's some kind of special force watching out for this book; we'd first have to posit that there's a single "right" version and then ask how we know which that is.
Secondly, consider so many of the things in the Bible that are, to put it mildly, inconvenient. Are iron chariots God's Achilles heel (Judges 1:19)? Why didn't any contemporary writers (including the other gospel authors) say anything about the zombie horde that broke loose in Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53)? Oh, and let me tell you a story:
God made the world and he saw that it was good. Except, it wasn't. So he decides that he's going to kill everyone except for one good guy and his family. So two (or seven) of every kind of animal gets crammed into -- well, we'll skip this part, you know it. But anyway, afterward, God realizes that he's made a huuuuuuge mistake and promises not to do it again.
And that is where rainbows come from.
Try this. Paul reworked the Shema so that Jesus received a place of mention beside the Father. Also note how Paul sometimes treats them as interchangeable.
For non-biblical sources, N. T. Wright has put out a couple books on the subject: Jesus and the Victor of God is perhaps the most relevant, but his recent monster of a book Paul and the Faithfulness of God dedicates a portion of the book to Monotheism in Paul's thought. If you're into academic stuff you could give PatFoG a try, as it goes over historical research in the time as well. It's 1700 pages though.
Oral cultures function differently from chirographic ones. Richard Bauckham has the dirty on that. As for 'memory' leaks, Jewish rabbinic tradition has long been known for it's exacting standards of memorization (my favourite modern example are the Shass Pollack). It would be unusual for that not to continue on into Christianity with the influx of Jewish believers.
For Jesus studies, Is This Not the Carpenter might be your best bet. It's a recent collection of peer-reviewed articles written by some fairly eminent scholars on both sides of the Jesus historicity issue, with editors who are agnostic on the matter.
Otherwise, you might be best off reading books from a variety of perspectives. There are, of course, many different (and incompatible) views about who the historical Jesus would have been.
Sure. That's very understandable. First I'd first like to say that God no longer acts through a nation-state as he did in Old Testament times. He chose Israel as a special people and used them in various ways from the repeated commandments to welcome the foreigner in their land (since they were once foreigners in Egypt) to the divine judgment I just described. But they were imperfect stewards and often faced the natural consequences of their poor diplomacy, decision-making, spirituality and morality.
You will see, looking at the Old Testament that Israel itself was not free from God's punishment. The Jewish prophets themselves called it judgment when they were faced with calamity.
That is no longer the case which puts some serious holes in any Hitlerian claim to divine command to commit genocide. It is wrong when we claim American exceptionalism and it is wrong when anyone does it-- God has no state on earth. Repeatedly Jesus declared to a Jewish people longing for the state of Israel to be independent again "The Kingdom of Heaven is not of this world".
Secondly, there's a Straight-Dope article which explores Hitler's religion and it's not so clear-cut he was even a theist. It's likely Hitler was just a sociopath and found religion useful.
It's also a bit of a "by their fruits you will know them" type thing. Were the Jewish people any more sinister or evil than any other? Probably not. Were the Amalekites? Well, it's hard to tell. But it's not as if one Amalekite did something which ticked God off and he said "That's it. Nuke 'em!"
Nope, even foreseeing that things would become intolerable, God promised to let the Amelekites live as Genesis 15:16 tells of God saying to Abraham: "In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit." Paul, much later, in Romans 9 says:
> "What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?"
>(Romans 9:22-24 ESV)
There's a bit of patience exhibited there toward a wicked people. The Jewish people on the other hand were NOT markedly wicked and killed by the command of a man whom invoked God's name, didn't really live as a follower of God, clearly had an economic-end in mind and lamented that many of Jesus' core teachings were "weak".
The message of the New Testament is that God is dealing out his judgment directly now (and his mercy-- I do NOT mean to under-emphasize that... it's easy to do when you're blabbering a response to someone's question about judgment).
In Romans 2 Paul reminds us not to think we're so important and judge others because that day of judgment--not when Christians will judge others but when Christ will judge everyone (including Christians) will come:
> Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
>(Romans 2:1-5 ESV)
Ultimately though, my view is based on a belief in Christ and the reliability of the New Testament. Believing the NT is reliable, and seeing how Jesus regarded the Old Testament as accurate and God-breathed-- I also accept it.
Richard Bauckman, professor of New Testament Studies at the Unversity of St. Andrews, makes the case for the Gospels as eye-witness testimony in "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses".
C.S. Lewis, literary critic primarily (many people just think of him as a Christian philosopher or essayist of sorts) said of the Gospels:
>“I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage — though it may no doubt contain errors — pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative.”
>(Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism, Christian Reflections)
There is something unique about these Gospels....
I mean, Mark 15:21, when talking about Jesus cruxifiction, mentions this:
"The Crucifixion of Jesus
21 A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross."
Who the HECK is Rufus?! He's COMPLETELY irrelevant to the stories. Well, okay, he's not irrelevant but why do we need to know who he is or who his Dad is especially!
In epics, myths and other ancient literature you didn't really mention irrelevant details for the sake of "realism".
Romans 16:13 also mentions Rufus (although this is a letter so it is less suspicious): "Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well."
I believe that these odd details were included in the Gospels of saying: "He was there, go ask them-- they're still alive!" There were eyewitnesses. And so that adds to the credibility of the NT for me, which if I accept as true I also accept the Amalekites were really wicked, God exists and is powerful and wise and that Moses was a legit prophet and not a tyrant (probably psychopath) like Hitler.
Jesus did not seem to have the same problem many have today. He preached his message of love and believed in that Old Testament God. I think it's because he had a clear idea of the separation of God and man's responsibilities in judgment. And it is BECAUSE God has the power that we are free to live and love one another. It is because he died that we can truly live. The seeming paradoxes really only work with the God-man of Jesus.
But I've spoken too much. I can't promise to have clarified everything but maybe it gave you a little idea of where I am coming from.
Thank you for asking in such a kind way. I've been asked a similar question in much more... threatening ways.
edit: Wrote "New Testament" instead of "Old Testament"-- fixed it.
The video provides a summary of a more detailed argument he gives in several of his books (two of which are linked below), but the gist of the argument is that, all factors considered, the claim that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead has more explanatory power than other hypotheses.
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1487186641&sr=8-10&keywords=nt+wright
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-Dominic-Crossan-Dialogue/dp/0800637852/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487186702&sr=8-1&keywords=nt+wright+crossan
> Christianity is not an evidence-based religion. It's like all other religions, which is faith-based.
While I agree that faith is a necessary component of Christianity, you seem to assert here that faith and evidence are mutually exclusive. I think this is a false dichotomy akin to the oft-repeated "science versus religion" debate topic of the last century.
Faith alone does not a Christian make. True faith always makes itself known (always "discovers itself" in the words of Edwards) in the life of the believer. In other words, faith produces evidence that demonstrates its efficacy. A love for God, a hatred for one's sin, and a spirit that strives to obey God's commands are some examples of this evidence that is apparent not only to the believer but to surrounding people. I certainly see this in my own life.
But this is not to say that one's faith cannot be bolstered by external evidence. In this category we have arguments for the existence of God and the historicity of the events described in the New Testament documents. Chief among these is the resurrection, which Paul identifies as the linchpin of the entire Christian faith.
> The resurrection of Jesus is not historical at all. The historicity of Jesus ends with his crucifixion.
As /u/RighteousDude has already pointed out, we "prove" facts of history not in a binary sense, but with degrees of confidence. Another way to put this is that given the body of evidence (documents, oral testimony, artifacts, and so on), we seek the explanation that can account for all the evidence and do so far better than any competing explanation.
The resurrection should be treated no differently. Given the evidence, virtually all scholars (to include skeptics) agree that 1) Jesus of Nazareth died in Jerusalem by crucifixion, 2) his disciples were transformed from cowards into men who boldly claimed that they saw Jesus after his death and who went on to become martyrs, 3) James (the brother of Jesus and a skeptic) was converted in the same manner, 4) Saul of Tarsus (initially an enemy of Christianity) was converted in the same manner, and 5) the tomb was discovered empty. There are many more facts that can be extracted from the available evidence, but these five are perhaps the most critical, and as mentioned, nearly everyone who studies this subject agrees on them.
So given these facts, what is the best explanation? Many have been proposed over the years, such as ideas that the someone stole the body, or that the disciples fabricated the story, or that Jesus never actually died, or that the disciples hallucinated, or even that this entire story is fiction. But each of these ideas completely fails to account for the whole body of evidence in some way or another. The best explanation that accounts for all the evidence is simply that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that the disciples, James, and Saul were all eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus.
The case I've summarized above is drawn from the work of Gary Habermas, whose Historical Jesus is an approachable introduction to the life of Jesus that pays special attention to the extra-Biblical sources. If you're interested in a more thorough treatment, N. T. Wright's Resurrection of the Son of God_ is a great choice.
This isn't a theory but my own collection of several independent sources. Books I would recommend include The Orthodox Corruption of Sciprture and various gnostic texts available online.
Not sure what sorts of perspectives you're looking for, but NT Wright is a top notch academic writing from a somewhat conservative Anglican perspective, and has written a ton on these two guys:
Jesus and the Victory of God
The Resurrection of the Son of God
Paul and the Faithfulness of God
And if ~3200 pages isn't quite enough to scare you out of attempting the project, you should also read the first volume in this series, The New Testament and the People of God.
The post was 14 hours old and had no comment so I just tried to help. I don’t believe my comment is out of line because (1.) the mods haven’t deleted it and (2.) it has a scholarly context and (3.) notes/codices were used in the transmission process (both pre-literal-oral and literary traditions.)
I’ve tried twice to post all the citations I have but I keep getting the error “this is too long (max 10,000)”.
So briefly, including the links in my first reply, here’s some more:
Richard Bauckham: “Such notebooks would not be a wholly new factor in the process of transmission through memorization …” and remarks that they were used only in the transmission process, both oral and literary (written) traditions. (Richard Bauckham – Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Eerdmans, 2006. (Richard Bauckham is Professor of New Testament Studies and Bishop Wardlow Professor at the University of St Andrews, Scotland; A Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh)
In Did Some Disciples Take Notes During Jesus’ Ministry? by James M. Arlandson (teaches World Religions, Humanities, Introduction to Philosophy, and Introduction to Ethics at various colleges. His Ph.D. is in Comparative Literature (ancient Greek literature, religious studies, and critical theory) he cites:
1.) Edgar J. Goodspeed writes that it would have been strange if Matthew the tax collector had not written down some of Jesus’ teachings. (Edgar J. Goodspeed. Matthew: Apostle and Evangelist. John C. Winston, 1959.)
2.) Saul Lieberman (Jewish scholar, expert in Talmudic literature) “Now the Jewish disciples of Jesus, in accordance with the general rabbinic practice, wrote the sayings which their master pronounced not in a form of a book to be published, but as notes in their . . . codices [plural of codex or early book], in their note-books (or in private small rolls). He writes notes and notebooks or codices (early forms of the book) for note-taking of the oral law were acceptable. (Saul Lieberman. Hellenism in Jewish Palestine. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962.)
(3) E. Earle Ellis, “It is more plausible [than just oral teaching] to suppose that at least some written paradigms of the Lord’s pronouncements would be left with those who received his message of the kingdom” (p. 245). (E. Earle Ellis. “New Directions in Form Criticism.” In Ellis, Prophecy and Hermeneutic in Early Christianity: New Testament Essays. Mohr, 1978. Pp. 237-53.)
(4) Werner Kelber, “The concept of a predominantly oral phase is not meant to dispense with the existence of notes and textual aids altogether. The Q tradition, other saying collections, anthologies of short stories, parables, miracles, and the like could well have existed in written form” (p. 23). (Werner Kelber. The Oral and the Written Gospel. Fortress, 1983.)
(5) Harry Y. Gamble, Christianity grew out of Judaism, and the earlier religion valued literacy and the Book. The earliest followers of Jesus were Jews, and his followers preached to their fellow Jews. So those “who sought to persuade fellow Jews to their faith necessarily developed scriptural arguments, and there is every reason to suppose that the primitive church turned immediately to the study and interpretation of scripture and began to adduce those texts” . . . (p. 23). Eventually, their skills made it into the written synoptic Gospels that we have now. (Harry Y. Gamble. Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. Yale, 1995.)
(6) James M. Robinson (one of the foremost scholars on the hypothetical Q source and the Gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi collection) says that the pre-Synoptic traditions were not entirely oral: “The history of the synoptic tradition is no longer dependent only on the forms of oral transmission, but now has a series of written texts bridging much of the gulf back from the canonical [Biblical] gospels to Jesus” (p. 61). (James M. Robinson. “A Written Greek Sayings Cluster Older than Q: A Vestige.” Harvard Theological Review 92 (1999) 61-67.)
(7) Samuel Byrskog says that oral and written traditions were important for the earliest followers of Jesus. Spoken or written traditions are not mutually exclusive. “Oral and written transmission are not mutually exclusive alternatives and do not follow the logic of first oral and then written.” (pp. 139-40) (Samuel Byrskog. Story as History – History as Story: the Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History. Brill, 2000.)
(8) Graham N. Stanton says the oral and written traditions were not like oil and water. They could exist side by side; orally transmitted traditions could be written down by the recipients – and written traditions could be memorized and passed on orally. (p. 189) (Graham N. Stanton. Jesus and Gospel. Cambridge, 2004.)
(9) Richard Bauckham, fter describing the notebooks that the rabbis used, he expands the cultural context to the ancient world. It seems more probable than not that early Christians used them” (p. 288). (Richard Bauckham. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Eerdmans, 2006.)
Explain to her that Lee Strobel is not an academic source and that he's loose and lazy with his research.
Suggest that she should get you some university level material. I wish I'd read university level material more recently so I could give you some authors who are better than Lee Strobel to cite to her.
Here's an article on Strobel sucking, though.
Apparently somebody wrote a book about how terrible he is.
If she wants to convert you to Christianity she should at least give Jesus a fighting chance.
/s
On the subject of textual criticism, he has some interesting looking dialogues with John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, but I haven't read them:
The Resurrection of Jesus
and
The Meaning of Jesus
I wish I could meet you all in person to have this discussion. My answer is yes, he existed and was crucified, but because I don't have resources in front of me at the moment, I'll just simply point you to a scholar.
Dr. Gary Habermas is a great scholar on this topic. He wrote this book called The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ. In the book he argues for the existence of Jesus and the crucifixion from a historical perspective. Some of his lectures are on youtube.
Dr. Beale's A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New is wonderful.
You can read a direct critique of the doc here:
https://gilgamesh42.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-star-of-bethlehem-documentary-a-critiical-view-index/
And you can check out this book on the subject from a skeptic here:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Bethlehem-Skeptical-View-ebook/dp/B00FH46NC8
>If you aren't arguing for the sake of arguing you could simply concede on it since while I can give references, you can not.
What? Specifically, I was laughing at you for claiming the Trinity had been named before Tertullian. I figured this must be a wikipedia thing and I was right, lol. Theophilus did not use the Trinity to refer to God; you're just arguing to argue and your "source" is a wiki. Pick up a book or two
>I demonstrate it within a century (withing 50 years by some accounts) and now you retreat
No, you didn't demonstrate this. At all. Not even close.
No goalpost has been moved, the concept of the Trinity did not exist in Jesus' time, and it wasn't considered orthodox until hundreds of years after Jesus' death. These are demonstrable facts regardless of the proto-orthodox theologians you dredge up.
>It shows itself in the baptismal formula in Matthew which is arguably the lowest Christology of the 4 gospels
lol, congratulations, you've just displayed your ignorance; the correct answer is "Mark". This is a no-brainer, you'd learn this in your first year in seminary school. Now I feel a little bad for picking on you.
Besides, any student would know the end of Matthew is a later [addition]. Just like the end of Mark, people liked to add things.
>Your argument is worthless and void of all but hand-waving which is a frequent hallmark of those who derive their arguments from the Watchtower.
Dude, what is it with this weird fascination with the watchtower. That would be like me saying you were getting your information from the Qu'ran. I told you, I'm an atheist and what I'm talking about is based on scholarly consensus.
You don't even know enough to be in this discussion, so as I said I feel kinda bad. I made the assumption that you knew the context of what I was saying but had chosen to disagree with it. Now I know you simply aren't following at all.
Here's a decent book to get your started. It's got great sections on higher criticism and touches on some Christology, so it might get you pointed in the right direction:
http://www.amazon.com/Marginal-Jew-Rethinking-Historical-Problem/dp/0385264259
John P. Meier is a Catholic scholar, btw...
Except there are better ones out there.
When I say Aslan's scholarship isn't there, the issue is he uses flawed scholarship and presents it as fact. Some of this scholarship has actively been discredited, others are widely criticized for methodological issues (using circular logic to back up their conclusions), and is very contentious on some fundamental problems. Aslan makes a lot of claims as if they're truth but which cannot be proven because we lack the evidence to make such conclusions.
I'll be upfront on my bias here: Aslan relies on 19th century German scholarship and the Jesus Seminar and I simply think these sources of the historical Jesus are not sound. I contend that the streams of scholarship he relies upon tends to present speculation as fact (and a lot of the speculation has been treated as fact). The Jesus Seminar in particular is roundly criticized for using circular logic to make conclusions. I think these critiques are fair and do suggest that the conclusions of the wider Jesus Seminar should be handled as suspect. I believe archeological evidence disproves assumptions made by the Jesus Seminar when it comes to aging texts. This matters because the Jesus Seminar went through texts and voted on each one's authenticity based on their unproven assumptions -- deeming passages inauthentic (and thus later additions) based on criteria that were unproven and perhaps even disproven.
Aslan is a bad starting point because he uses questionable scholarship, doesn't question it, and then presents this "historical" portrait of Jesus based on his reading of this scholarship. Scholarship which archeological evidence actively contradicts at times.
I haven't read this book, but I've read some of his articles, and E.P. Sanders is commonly seen as a good starting point who makes good use of archeological evidence to draw conclusions.
N.T. Wright and Marcus Borg co-author a book which goes through various aspects of the search for the historical Jesus. Wright and Borg are friends (and I think went to school together? They both had the same mentor, anyhow) but have very different views. Wright is highly critical of the Jesus Seminar, Borg was part of the Jesus Seminar but is also a bit of an outlier due to his more mystical understanding.
The point is that there's much better starting points. I think any of the links I've provided are good ones. But Aslan simply because if Aslan is your jumping off point, you're mostly going to get scholarship that he agreed with to make his point.
No, we can't. Even Bart Ehrman, who passionately believes there was a Jesus, admits that. The earliest surviving documents are from the fourth century. What the originals may have said we can not know. Read "Misquoting Jesus or The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
>I came away with the idea that his version of Christianity was simply one of the losing sides
I didn't realize that you would find that explantion fulfilling.
>I have to ask though, how do we know that the current version hasn't been severely edited as well?
For starters, Marcion threw out all of Matthew, Mark and John. We still have those in today's NT. So right off the bat any editing the orthodoxy did was not going to be as severe as what Marcion did. On the other hand, some scholars, such as Bart Ehrman, do argue that the NT we have has been purposely edited for ideological reasons.
Rappin' With Jesus: The Good News According to the Four Brothers
Your ‘friend’ is waging a war for your soul - decide whether you wish to engage or disengage? If you do continue to have these conversations and specifically with regards Stobel’s book, ask him:
Was it the content of this book that made you believe the Roman Catholic Religion?
If it wasn’t what convinced him, why should you find it convincing?
But if he claims the book as his reason, only agree to read it if you both read it in conjunction with Price’s book.
The Case Against the Case for Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes Lee Strobel
>Dec 30, 2012 · The Case Against The Case For Christ: A New Testament Scholar Refutes the Reverend Lee Strobel. ... Leading New Testament scholar Robert M. Price has taken umbrage at the cavalier manner in which Rev. Lee Strobel has misrepresented the field of Bible scholarship in his book The Case ...
I’m sure you’ll be able to find a cheap copy on the internet. I believe there is also a YouTube interview with the author and also search YouTube for Street Epistemology videos.
I recommend the book Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond in Zondervan's Counterpoints series. You get a presentation of each of the three views, followed by a response by proponents of the other two views, all focused on key passages.
Zondervan's Counterpoints series might be a good start: Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond
Also, the four main groups as I know them:
Within each group there are different views and camps.
Are you referring to Lee Strobel's "A Case for Christ"? There was a rebuttal book called "The Case Against the Case for Christ", but it's super heavy handed, and the author is one the fringe of scholarship, so probably a turn off to your friend.
I agree with the other's who have recommended Ehrman's books. His newest one 'How Jesus Became God" would probably be an eye-opener. I really don't think modern Christians have a clue how diverse beliefs were in the earliest years of the church.
In chronological order of my reading them:
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.
I have read most of Bart Ehrman's books, which are very good. I missed this one but I think it probably includes what you're looking for:
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament
He also wrote a book called Lost Christianities, which is about early splinter groups. That's a fascinating book too.
http://www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Corruption-Scripture-Christological-Controversies/dp/0199739781
http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060859512
I have a book recommendation for you. It’s a bit of an older book, but it is beyond excellent: The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions..
Maybe it can bring you and your husband closer together :)
G.K. Beale's work in A New Testament Biblical Theology shows the exegetical reasons to see Adam having a glorified state being held out as the reward for obedience. Upon this foundation, it is supposed that if Adam had obeyed, the Son of God would not have become incarnate. That is to say, glorification is exegetically (not just theologically) a part of the original design. Eschatology precedes soteriology.
>It is the only faith that can provide salvation.
Because the name Yeshua means "salvation".
>I do not preach, but teach those that wish to hear.
What you've been doing is preaching here to someone who understands the point of the religion and its soteriological release.
>Next you'll say Yeshua was a Zen Master!
I wouldn't be the first, actually.
https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Teachings-Jesus-Kenneth-Leong/dp/0824518837
>Zen Masters live in Hell.
What is more hellacious than being crucified for being the embodiment of loving-kindness, compassion and charity?
I recommend Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
You ever read Robert Farrar Capon? You might find him interesting. I got a lot out of his three books on the Parables, published together in one volume as Kingdom, Grace, Judgment. Here's a representative quote from his Wikipedia page:
> I am and I am not a universalist. I am one if you are talking about what God in Christ has done to save the world. The Lamb of God has not taken away the sins of some — of only the good, or the cooperative, or the select few who can manage to get their act together and die as perfect peaches. He has taken away the sins of the world — of every last being in it — and he has dropped them down the black hole of Jesus’ death. On the cross, he has shut up forever on the subject of guilt: "There is therefore now no condemnation. . . ." All human beings, at all times and places, are home free whether they know it or not, feel it or not, believe it or not.
> But I am not a universalist if you are talking about what people may do about accepting that happy-go-lucky gift of God’s grace. I take with utter seriousness everything that Jesus had to say about hell, including the eternal torment that such a foolish non-acceptance of his already-given acceptance must entail. All theologians who hold Scripture to be the Word of God must inevitably include in their work a tractate on hell. But I will not — because Jesus did not — locate hell outside the realm of grace. Grace is forever sovereign, even in Jesus' parables of judgment. No one is ever kicked out at the end of those parables who wasn’t included in at the beginning.
See also a recent book called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that argues mostly for the second thing.. that the gospels are based on eyewitness accounts.
Fortunately, Bart Ehrman isn't the only source or final say of bible scholarship.
Maybe Rappin' With Jesus: The Good News According to the Four Brothers
I will have to add this one to my set. I saw this on reddit a couple years ago and bought it. It's pretty dope cause Jesus is one down dude.
You might want to read this.
Not sure about videos online, you might have to read some books. I haven't read this, but I'm a fan of N.T. Wright, and John Dominic Crossan is the most popular scholar in the 'Jesus Seminar' (secular research into the life of Jesus).
The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue
I really like this trilogy of books about Jesus for the history
and I like this trilogy about him theologically
Yes, there are definitely features to the Memra tradition that don't neatly fit the typical analytic, Athanasian trinitarian formulations, especially with the subtle relationship to formulations of a Philonic and even a Gnostic demiurge.
Boyarin's is definitely one of the most well thought out proposals, but Alan Segal also pointed out similarities. What's really interesting to me, though, is that the Memra connection is making inroads in an otherwise conservative, Evangelical context:
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Targums-Johns-Logos-Theology/dp/0801047595
What sorts of things specifically are you interested in? I'm just throwing out most of the stuff that isn't C.S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga or Francis Collins.
He quotes this guy Lamin Sanneh, and his book Whose religion is Christianity. Now I look at it, that looks really interesting.
For The Glory of God, By Rodney Stark
Jesus and The Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham
'Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights'
Um, I was expecting for the chapters where he talks about the historical basis of the Gospels to be full of sources, but his only sources seems to be Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and The Resurrection of The Son of God, by N.T. Wright. This book is turning out to be more disappointing than I thought was possible. I was actually going to investigate some of his historical conclusions a bit more.
This post led me to this examination of the resurrection, written by Crossan and Wright together. Very much looking forward to reading it!
He probably did
He probably didn't
>Please cite one source which validates the claim that Christianity isn't just another pagan influenced Roman blood cult.
I understand the popular idea is that Christianity borrowed form ancient pagan myths. But that idea is the myth.
Christian terms are used to describe pagan beliefs, and then it is concluded that there are parallel origins and meanings. Although the terms used are the same, however, there are big differences between Christian and pagan practices and definitions
Supporters of the theory incorrectly assume that Christianity borrowed many of its ideas from the mystery religions, but the evidence reveals it was actually the other way around. There is no archaeological evidence that mystery religions were in Palestine in the first century A.D. Jews. Additionally early Christians loathed syncretism with other religions.
Historical research indicates that it was not until the third century A.D. that Christianity and the mystery religions came into real contact with one another.
Christianity gains its source from Judaism, not Greek mythology. Jesus, Paul, and the apostles appeal to the Old Testament, and you find direct teachings and fulfillments in the New Testament. Teachings such as one God, blood atonement for sin, salvation by grace, sinfulness of mankind, bodily resurrection, are sourced in Judaism and foreign to Greek mythology.
A popular myth that some believe parallels the resurrection of Christ is the story of Osiris. The cult of the gods Osiris and his wife Isis originated in Egypt. According to the legend, Osiris' wicked brother Set murdered him and sank his coffin to the bottom of the Nile. Isis recovered the coffin and returned it to Egypt. However, Set discovered the body, cut it into fourteen pieces, and threw the pieces into the Nile. Isis collected thirteen of the body parts and bandaged the body, making the first mummy. Osiris was transformed and became the ruler of the underworld, and exists in a state of semi-consciousness.
This legend hardly parallels the resurrection of Christ. Osiris is not resurrected from death to life. Instead he is changed into another form and lives in the underworld in a zombie state. Christ rose physically from the grave, conquering sin and death. The body that was on the cross was raised in glory.
There is a belief that the story of Mithras contains a death and resurrection. However, there is no teaching in early Mithraism of neither his death nor his resurrection. Ron Nash stated, "Mithraism had no concept of the death and resurrection of its god and no place for any concept of rebirth — at least during its early stages. . . . Moreover, Mithraism was basically a military cult. Therefore, one must be skeptical about suggestions that it appealed to nonmilitary people like the early Christians."
Moreover, Mithraism flowered after Christianity, not before, so Christianity could not have copied from it. The timing is incorrect to have influenced the development of first-century Christianity. It is most likely the reverse: Christianity influenced Mithraism. Edwin Yamauchi, one of the foremost scholars on ancient Persia and Mithraism states, "The earnest mithraea are dated to the early second century. There are a handful of inscriptions that date to the early second century, but the vast majority of texts are dated after A.D. 140. Most of what we have as evidence of Mithraism comes in the second, third, and fourth centuries AD. That's basically what's wrong with the theories about Mithraism influencing the beginnings of Christianity."
The legend of Attis was popular in the Hellenistic world. According to this legend, Cybele, also known as the mother goddess, fell in love with a young Phrygian shepherd named Attis. However, he was unfaithful to her so she caused him to go mad. In his insanity, he castrated himself and died. Cybele mourned greatly (which caused death to enter into the world). She preserved Attis' dead body, allowing his hair to grow and little finger to move. In some versions, Attis returns to life in the form of an evergreen tree. However, there is no bodily resurrection to life. All versions teach that Attis remained dead. Any account of a resurrection of Attis does not appear till a hundred and fifty years after Christ.
To sum up, the claim that Christianity adopted its resurrection account from the pagan mystery religions is false. There are very few parallels to the resurrection of Christ. The idea of a physical resurrection to glory is foreign to these religions, and the stories of dying a rising gods do not appear till well after Christianity.
One of the popular cults of the later Roman Empire was the cult of Mithra which originated in Persia. Mithra was supposedly born when he emerged from a rock; he was carrying a knife and torch and wearing a Phrygian cap. He battled first with the sun and then with a primeval bull, thought to be the first act of creation. Mithra slew the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race.{16} The birth of Mithra from a rock, born fully grown, hardly parallels the virgin birth of Christ.
New Testament scholar. Raymond Brown states that alleged virgin parallels "consistently involve a type of hieros gamos where a divine male, in human or other form, impregnates a woman, either through normal sexual intercourse or through some substitute form of penetration. They are not really similar to non-sexual virginal conception that is at the core of the infancy narratives, a conception where there is no male deity or element to impregnate Mary."
The Gospel of Luke teaches that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and through the power of the Most High she became pregnant. Mary had no physical relationship with a man or a deity who became a man.
Our study of the mystery religions reveals very few parallels with Christianity. For this reason, the theory that Christianity copied its major tenets from the mystery religions should be rejected.
source
Chapther 16 in Reinventing Jesus
The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought?
Professor Sharp's "Is The Story of Christ a Copy of the Pagan Myths?" lecture
Areopagus Journal - 2009 back issue
I would look at the work done by Ronald Nash on the subject. His book The Gospel and the Greeks he shows that the case for a pagan influence on Christianity is overstated.
Well technically those records from the mid 100s are saying that christians exist, and they did. The epistles of Paul were written in the 50s, the gospel of Mark written in the 70s, Matthew and Luke written in the 80s or 90s, and John, the revelation of another John, the revelation of Peter, and the ascension of Isaiah and many other Christian stories written in the 100s to the 300s before the ecumenical councils were started in 325 when they decided to narrow down Jesus eventually settling on the trinity by the fourth ecumenical council pushing out Gnosticism like the gospel of Thomas, Marcion, and Origen as well as Aryanism, Nestorianism and other "heresies" leading to the church of the East, Coptics and other early schisms. After the next four councils they came to the idea about iconoclasm where the Eastern Orthodoxy was against the use of iconography and the Catholics stuck with icons such as the crucifix, statues of Mary, and other icons. This was all by the time of the 600s.
Soon after this time the orthodox christians, Coptics, Islam and other sects went their own ways. In Islam Jesus is the chosen human messiah but not the son of God nor was he crucified before his ascension. In some Eastern religions Jesus is sometimes seen as another transcendent beings like the Buddha and Buddha is sometimes seen as a reincarnation of Vishnu in some forms of Hinduism.
Zoroastrianism heavily influenced monotheism and the traits of the supreme god found in most abrahamic religions. It added the concept of heaven and hell. It added armageddon. Many forms of Christianity didn't start out believing in an afterlife but the Catholic concept of heaven, hell, and purgatory was under question by Martin Luther especially the concepts of the church selling something that allows them to skip purgatory and changing the message of the bible from the originally intended meaning. As a result most protestant religions don't have a complicated hierarchy with bishops, archbishops, popes, and such but they'll have a pastor and perhaps deacons and that's about it. The eastern orthodoxy has a few of their ecumenical decisions but the Catholics kept it going up until they went from 7 to 21 with 15 or 16 being related to the protestants being excommunicated and doomed to hell. In the first Vatican council (ecumenical council decision #20) the church rejects rationalism, materialism, and atheism and anything that could cause problems with the church doctrines. More recently (since the 1960s) they have gradually adjusted to science and with the removal of hell and the acceptance of evolution and the ongoing pedophilia the church is falling apart and might again break into multiple denominations.
The protestants went on another path and in the 1900s the rise of fundamental literalism led to a resurgence of young earth creationism and flat earthers while just a few decades earlier the seventh day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah witnesses and Baha'i came out of the various religions holding fast to creationism and the existence of Jesus.
While these beliefs account for the majority of held religious beliefs (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism) only the abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Baha'i rely on Jesus being historical. Scholars who hold these beliefs will claim they have evidence that Jesus matches their religious idea such as an empty tomb pointing to a resurrection. The scholars who try to establish historicity on either side will fall back to some random Jewish rabbi, perhaps Jesus ben Annanias or Yeshua ben Yosef who was a preacher mulch life the more established John the Baptist and like John was killed and remained dead while his followers shared their memory of him by word of mouth so that he gradually gets more and more absurd and magical by the time the gospels were written. Others will point out that Jesus was a spiritual being probably hundreds of years before the first century when Paul, Peter, Timothy, and others spoke of their visions (related to gnostic Christianity) and it was another couple decades before a Greek speaker unfamiliar with Judaism and the geography of the region wrote the gospel of Mark. Other stories were also in circulation in the following decades such as the Q document so the authors of Matthew and Luke took the various gospels at the time like Mark, Q, and possibly a couple others and combined them with the contradictory birth narratives I pointed out previously. The kept the same crucifixion but added a resurrection which was later added to mark and gave Judas different reasons for betraying Jesus. Then in the next five decades wildly different concepts of Jesus arose such as an attempt to state he was just an ordinary person that was possessed by the son of God. The gospel of John, using gospels like the gospel of Thomas and a sayings gospel was written so that he became more of a superman character. He left off the birth narrative starting with the popular baptism cult of John the Baptist and this time he wasn't turned in by Judas at all but instead told Judas and his army that he is the one they seek. After this there were various acts of the apostles and revelations about Armageddon and various apocrypha that the early church leaders decided to leave out so that they could say Jesus was born to a virgin, died by crucifixion, and had a bodily resurrection from the dead. They left behind just enough contradictions that they decided upon the trinity so that he could be an eternal being equal to the father and spirit and after the death of the son the holy spirit is released to the apostles to spread to the early church.
Basically by the 300s there was a dominant sect holding to a divine human Jesus and that was the sect that set up the early church considering everything else to be a heresy including Islam when it rose up out of Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity. Throughout the middle ages they produced a lot of hoaxes like cups, foreskins, pieces of petrified wood, and a shroud. As time went on it was just assumed that Jesus was a historical figure and it was the consensus about 100 years ago. Since then the consensus has come under scrutiny so that Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier are at the head of each side of the debate and neither of them hold fast to the gospels being reliable depictions of Jesus nor are the documents that came 100 years later saying that christians exist. There are many people holding many different religions. It doesn't automatically make their beliefs true. Josephus was tampered with by Eusebius and the rest don't really make any claims about a Jesus being real but only relaying what the christians had said about their beliefs such as a messiah who was crucified by Pontius Pilate 100 years ago. By this time everyone who could corroborate his existence had died and while he would have been still alive Philo of Alexandria wouldn't be wondering where he was and Justin Martyr wouldn't be saying that he predated the demigods that were being worshipped by at least 1500 years before Jesus was supposed to have lived.
Here are some books from both sides of the debate:
Richard Carrier: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Jesus was probably a spiritual mythical being first and a man later)
Bart Erhman: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053K28TS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Jesus was probably an ordinary man but we can figure out more about the historical Jesus)
Robert Price: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J0OPUZM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Debunking the religious apologetics put forth by Lee Strobel)
Lee Strobel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01863JLK2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Defending the divine human Jesus of Christianity)
I'll let you decide.
Sorry, I don't know about anything specific, but this page has a list of some relevant journals:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=7342
And this book, Is This Not The Carpenter? looks like it might be decent. Maybe some of the articles in the book will also be in a journal somewhere, this amazon review lists the articles in the book, I think.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XRQYGBV/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
If you want to get beyond deferring to experts and are interested in applying reason to the evidence, you could check out something like https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Mything-Complete-Heretics-Religion-ebook/dp/B06XRQYGBV/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1521863689&sr=8-2&keywords=jesus+myth or the few other Jesus myth books.
re: logos and John 1, I have read that, even some of it in Greek. I plan on soon purchasing a book just on this, The Jewish Targums and John's Logos Theology, which, if I'm not mistaken, shows relations between logos and Hebrew theology, rather than Greek philosophy - keeping a little more with tradition. Not that I can speak on this, but the ideal for me is always to draw back to the Hebrew tradition - after all, such is the roots of Messiah.
re: OT God not being God the Father, might you call this modern day Marcionism? I mean no offense, just it's only been gnostics I've encountered who espouse such a notion, whereas NT Christians claim there was no change in God's eternity in incarnating as Jesus, but I guess moreso the needs of the world changed, hence his coming.
Also, if Jesus The Son = God the Father, how do you explain Mark 13:32, "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father"?
Good comments. I have only this in return. The Judaic nationalism was pervasive, even beyond Palestinian borders. How each self-identified sect interacted with "gentiles" varied, but the degree of retention of religious and national identity was well maintained. That maintenance varied in idea but not really to the degree that you ever came out the other side doing anything other than concentrating your exclusivity. I think the evidence for this is quite strong. Jewish nationals were quite persecuted, even in Alexandria (see the Book of Wisdom e.g.) which is sometimes held out as the embodiment of Greco-Roman inclusion and was home to Philo). In the end the Jews were "put down" so to speak.
Actually, the volume by Wright prior to the one mentioned above (here ) is cover to cover about how Jesus was constantly only condemning nationalism.
Edit: and the volume after is about Paul taking up the same dispute.
Here are a few of the resources that have helped me:
https://biologos.org/
https://www.amazon.com/Creation-Evolution-Do-Have-Choose/dp/0857215787
https://www.amazon.com/Gunning-God-Atheists-Missing-Target/dp/0745953220/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=gunning+for+god&qid=1555348576&s=books&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Undertaker-Has-Science-Buried/dp/0745953719/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=gunning+for+god&qid=1555348605&s=books&sr=1-2
https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802831621
Also, I've visited a lot of different churches and have plenty of friends that are Christians. Seeing that Christians are so very different from JW's- many are well educated, intelligent, thinking people- with a faith that is extremely different from the JW belief system. They have this passion, sincerity and relationship with God that is the opposite of the legalistic JW cult.
For starters, I'd recommend the following to get a taste of the issues we have to wrestle with when thinking about resurrection:
Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes - here is an author who is almost immediately dismissed by the status quo of Christianity as being a crazy man. But in this book, he has been incredibly thorough in presenting evidence for his thesis. I know he writes other books where he speaks more generally, and I think that conservatives tend to seize this as an opportunity to attack without actually addressing the things he brings up in books like this one. Also by the same author, and related to this topic, you should check out:
The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic
Resurrection: Myth or Reality?
Related to Paul, you should read:
The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon
There are three books by this duo, and they are all fantastic - very thorough, meticulous, and yet easy to read and understand. Related to this topic, you'd want to read:
The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem
Another great book to understand where the debates lie in Jesus scholarship would be:
The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions
These are really "get your feet wet" books. But really, one of the biggest problems with theology these days, I feel, is that it is all too often done without even an attempt to connect with science. We think we can argue "the Bible says" and stop there - as if that implies "so therefore this is what we have to believe". This is generally how scholars like N.T. Wright operate - they spend all kinds of effort laying out what the language says, but never really get into the questions of whether these things are tenable with today's knowledge of science, whether or not Paul actually might not have been the author of such things, whether there are contradictions between the gospels (or some of the writings attributed to Paul), etc. With scholars like Wright, it's just assumed that everything which was said was reliable and came from the actual people we have long said it came from - we never have to think about problems like science and historical methodology.
But if you really want to understand the problems surrounding resurrection, I think you need to study what science has to say about consciousness. A few books that come to mind off the top of my head:
The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness
And if you're really up for some fun with science and the question of eternity:
Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
The Self-Aware Universe
Please note: I don't think any of these books close the questions. They provide possibilities, for sure, and do so in a way that thoroughly wrestles with the evidence, logical problems, etc. But no one can prove or disprove afterlife, it seems. However, there are certainly many afterlife theories which simply do not work with modern science - literal bodily resurrection being one of them (if we're all going to be resurrected into physical bodies, how is our limited earth that is already stretched to the point of breaking going to support all those resurrected beings?).
I've already presented evidence in this thread. But here are 2 things you can look at -
Short read: http://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-metaxas-science-increasingly-makes-the-case-for-god-1419544568 Long read: http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Christian-Origins-Question-Volume/dp/0800626826