Reddit reviews Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
We found 20 Reddit comments about Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
HarperOne
Romans is considered a genuine work from Paul. For more information concerning forged documents in antiquity see Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.
It seems likely that the original authors were recording the existing mythos of their people, and the myths were used in their society like myths are used in every society: to explain and give meaning to a world they didn't understand, to provide a cohesive narrative for the group, to pass along and reinforce values. I have found learning just a little about the common mythologies of the world extremely interesting and helpful in putting the bible into correct perspective. Like, how many times a flood myth pops up and the different interactions between the diving and humanity in those stories.
You might enjoy Bart Ehrman's writing on the new testament and Jesus as he explores the story of Jesus, who wrote, changed and codified it and why, and how it became a religion.
Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
The simple answer is Skeptics Annotated Bible as far as spotting contradictions to know beyond any doubts that the Bible is one giant fairy tale.
If you want to go further, also recommend:
Aron Ra Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism For a preview of Aron Ra Biblical Absurdity
Bart Ehrman Forged: Writing in the name of God
There's also this fabulous presentation by Richard Carrier: Did Jesus Even Exist?
No answers yet?
Many of the atheists here agree on Bart Ehrman as a good source. He's a Bible scholar who used to be Christian but whose studies have left him an atheist. He's written a whole series of books about how the Bible was cobbled together and, self-plagiarized, forged and fiddled, and so on. There's a field or method of study called critical analysis that makes the Bible's authenticity problems apparent, and Ehrman writes that stuff into popular books.
Two of his hits have been Misquoting Jesus, Jesus, Interrupted and Forged. The latter is perhaps his most explicit indictment of the intellectual crimes behind the Bible. Lost Christianities and other books talk about the many gospels and other writings that never made it into or were excised from what's known as the Bible today.
Ehrman also has a bunch of talks on YouTube where he engagingly presents those same ideas.
There are alternatives, of course, and it could be argued whether Ehrman is "the best." But he certainly knows what he's talking about (mostly), is a recognized authority on this kind of stuff, and presents it well. Best of all (from our point of view) he doesn't Lie For Jesus.
This should do the trick: https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622/
> Citation needed.
The Bible Unearthed
> I have studied both Acts, and the Pauline Epistles very deeply
You haven't looked hard enough. Forged goes into more detail on it.
> What exactly is it that you think the Bible is, specifically the gospels.
> How was it written? Is it a pure fabrication? A lie? Is it fiction? A myth? Based on a true story?
> Who was it written by? Devious men trying to deceive people into being good? Schizophrenics? A fiction novelist?
It is a collection of books compiled into one big book. It's a stretch to say it's pure fabrication or a lie by devious people. I'd say it's just a collection of literary writings, that express the beliefs of some groups of people from that time. Because people didn't know how the world works but they still had to live in it, they invented stories that they thought best explain the world. And they explained natural events and phenomena through magic and deities and demons and other supernatural beings and influences. It's no different than other writings and beliefs of those times.
Some of it may be written by devious people, of course. Bart Ehrman, academic religious scholar, posits in his book Forged, that some New Testament books are literary forgeries and shows how widely forgery was practiced by early Christian writers—and how it was condemned in the ancient world as fraudulent and illicit. His scholarly book, Forgery and Counterforgery, is an advanced look at the practice of forgery in the New Testament and early Christian literature. It makes a case for considering falsely attributed or pseudepigraphic books in the New Testament and early Christian literature "forgery", looks at why certain New Testament and early Christian works are considered forged, and the broader phenomenon in the Greco-Roman world.
> Something that the detective pointed out, is that if people are going to fabricate a story to deceive people with, when confronted with the penalty of a gruesome death if they continue believing their lie, they would most likely give in and admit that they made it up. That didn't happen to the apostles.
The premise that people would never "die for a lie" is demonstrably false. People throughout history have, in fact, died for beliefs which turned out to be false, deceptive, poorly understood, and even mutually exclusive. At Jonestown, over 900 people committed mass suicide while under the influence of the cult leader Jim Jones. In 1993, 76 people died at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas because they believed their leader, David Koresh was a prophet of god. In 1997, 39 members of Heaven's Gate committed suicide in the belief that a UFO following the comet Hale-Bopp would transport them to "Their World". Many Muslim martyrs have died for their beliefs in the face of persecution. Tibetan Buddhist monks have lit themselves on fire and let themselves burn to death in public squares as a form of protest towards the Chinese government and as an affirmation of their own faith.
The Apostles may well have had first hand knowledge but that doesn't lend any credibility to the claim because we don't have first hand knowledge about them or of their claims. We also have only vague accounts of the death of the apostles, which are generally known by "tradition" or biased sources, rather than primary sources.
Many people who have personally witnessed a seemingly paranormal phenomenon, and genuinely believe that what they saw was a supernatural element, only for them to discover after a meticulous analysis that what they witnessed was actually a regular incident with a logical and natural explanation (Will-O-Wisps were thought to be ghostly apparitions before being identified as the manifestation of chemical reactions).
There's a lot more to be written on this subject, but I think that for a Reddit comment I have provided enough.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/2thessalonians.html.
Also, while not a scholarly work, this might satisfy your budgetary requirements https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
In addition, you might be interested in the "biblical forgeries" videos on this man's website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQb22imbIqKKWOC98C8Rm2A
The videos are short segments highlighting portions of Bart Ehrman's book, Forged:
https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
No, what I'm telling you is that your assumption that Jesus' death was necessarily a penal substitutionary atonement indicates a lack of knowledge on the subject.
Regardless of whether or Christ was divine, no one in academia is taken seriously if they deny that Jesus the person existed:
"He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees" - Bart Ehrman
"In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." - Michael Grant
"There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more." - Richard A. Burridge
If you're denying that Jesus was a real person... well, you're ignorant. Unless you happen to have some new evidence to bring to light. Do you?
If you're denying that Jesus is who the Gospels says that he is, you're a skeptic, and that's fine. You're in the majority, quite obviously. But you seem to be hung up on the idea that Jesus had to die for our sins, because God required some sort of sacrifice to cancel out the sins of man. This is penal substitutionary atonement, and it's just one theory of atonement. There are others, some of which don't require anything of God or even require a statement on the divinity of Jesus. Believing that Jesus was who the Gospels say he was doesn't require believing that he was a "literal human sacrifice", as you have repeated several times in this thread.
Specifically, I'd recommend Forged as a good place to start.
>Honestly, I'm just looking to be better informed about the manipulation of the Bible.
This is a very interesting topic of discussion.
> I've always heard "Either the Bible is the word of God or it's not"... My gut tells me it's not that black and white.
You are absolutely right to smell BS with this claim, because it is false. It is logically flawed to conclude that because the Bible is not the 'word' of god then it does not contain anything true about god. You just have to read, discuss and form your own judgments.
> I also would like to know why some people believe the KJV is the best and others believe the older Latin Vulgate translations are more accurate.
Well, KJV preference can be based on a few positions. It could simply mean, one prefers the style and the idioms, over the others. It could mean one is committed to the view that the manuscript collection that the KJV is based on, textus-receptus, is more accurate, or it can be purely a religious commitment.
>I feel like the Bible has been corrupted and the current Christian view of salvation is flawed.
The bible has been corrupted, but I can't really comment on salvation. I can recommend two more books for you to pursue. One is concerning the KJV.
https://www.amazon.com/Textual-History-King-James-Bible/dp/0521771005/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499021787&sr=8-2&keywords=textual+criticism+of+king+james
The second is
https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499022518&sr=8-1&keywords=forged+ehrman
Or you can bite the bullet and read the scholarly version of the one above:
https://www.amazon.com/Forgery-Counterforgery-Literary-Christian-Polemics/dp/0199928037/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499022579&sr=8-1&keywords=forgery+and+counterforgery
I would like to know as well. So far I've only read Bart Ehrman who has many great books on the history of Christianity, but mostly focuses on the first centuries of early Christianity. Still very good if you're interested on that time period and how Christianity came together in its beginning.
http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622#
The books mentioned. Amazon Zombie bot should be around to reply shortly.
"The Bible Unearthed" by Israel Finkelstein.
"Jesus, Interrupted" by Bart Ehrman
"Forged" by Bart Ehrman
> You’ve asserted that three times now and still won’t back it up with anything more than an online encyclopedia where the whole of epistemology can change at the click of a mouse.
I recommend Forged by Bart Ehrman. If you don't want to spend money and would like a quick version, here's a lecture he gives at Cambridge on the subject. Ehrman's not only a distinguished scholar in the field, but he's just a great character -- he was a fundamentalist Christian (like I was!) who became an agnostic atheist through intense, obsessive study of the Bible, while still retaining an incredible enthusiasm for and appreciation of Christianity and its history.
I honestly get into just as many debates with atheists who subscribe to the Jesus Myth hypothesis, a fringe concept that Ehrman vehemently opposes. He even wrote a book defending the historicity of Jesus. The state of Bible scholarship is really interesting, and Ehrman does a great job of relating it to casual readers, e.g. people who don't speak ancient Hebrew.
Bart Ehrman literally wrote an entire book promoting the view that many of the New Testament books are outright forgeries. Nearly all of his works are attacks on the Bible. He's not just a skeptic, he's vehemntly opposed to any veneration of the Bible as authentic, reliable literature, and has a million reasons why. Do you have a family history of schizophrenia by any chance?
A tough view. The use of pop, and children's, culture icon cartoon figures, the distracting background noise, and the really slow presentation of actual information/argument make the first vid hard to watch and really dilutes any message. Though I did like the cameo from the Little Caesars Pizza-Pizza guy. From watching the first vid, there is no topic argument/position statement explicitly made/presented, though if I had to guess as to the final topic position/argument, based upon the way the very sparse information is presented, that an argument will be made that supports the listed or attributed authors of the various books of the NT - this is just a guess, the presentation of introductory material was really incoherent.
> "One of the things I have noticed about critics who say that this or that book in the NT is bogus is that they seldom seem to explain in any detail how we decide who wrote a document."
Say what? I smell a strawman argument.
The above quote was made whilst a slide show of books that discuss the New Testament was shown. Some of these books are recognizable as titles containing literary criticism of the New Testament, many are not. I could not get a good look at the "examples" presented as the screen time was very short (compared to the relatively long time given to worthless animations of smurfs or topic transition special effects), too short to get a good look at the sources that I assume supports the above statement was quoted; I had to do a frame by frame advance to see/read the titles presented.
Let's look at the first few "references" presented:
Just between the book title and lack of authorship identification, without even reading the book description, is enough for anyone discussing NT literary criticism to reject the book as a credible source.Does not seem to be a reference to literary criticism and authorship of the New Testament books. Nope.
A book containing the personal journey of one man losing Religious Faith. Does not seem to be a reference to literary criticism and authorship of the New Testament books.
Examines the documentary hypothesis and other possible sources of much of the narrative of the Bible. Does not seem to be a reference to literary criticism and authorship of the New Testament books.
Look, another Dan Baker book already. A book against the reasonableness and rationality of Christian belief. Does not seem to be a reference to literary criticism and authorship of the New Testament books.
Finally, a book that appears to have sections that may address the authorship of selected New Testament writings (I say appears as I have not read it and am relying upon the publisher description, the TOC, and reviews) - though the book appears to be more directed towards the content of the NT rather than attributed source critism.
Bummer. Out of the first 5 potential references which one would reasonably consider as being presented on the authorship of the NT (you know, the topic/vid title), none (0 for 5) of them seem to be a reference to literary criticism of the authorship of the New Testament books. And I wanted to use the very references presented above to refute the strawman argument presented in the above quote that books/references that perform a literary criticism of the NT authorship (or the Bible in general) "seldom seem to explain in any detail how we decide who wrote a document."
Let's look at a popular writer on the New Testament, Bart D. Ehrman. An example, Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. And look at that, Ehrman does indeed present extensive detail, on the how's of literary criticism and attributed authorship. Granted one example does not a strawman break, however, I have found that references literary criticism, Biblical or other, almost always include a review of the methods used.
If you want something related, but not JW specific, these might interest you:
"The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679731180/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_WJCDDbMAJFDPK
And
"Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062012622/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_KMCDDbAAJ0GGN
I found them interesting and they do tie indoctrination, particularly since JW are big on the Satan Concept and Paul's teachings, most of Paul's books of the bible were not written by Paul. I might be biased in my enjoyment of these books. I do not believe in Satan, I think it is just a boogeyman concept to instill fear. I also think Paul/Simon was a sack of shit, but it seems as though most of the books attributed to him were written in his name well after his death. None of this is groundbreaking, it is pretty well established and accepted biblical history, but it is well written and easy to follow.
Worth reading: Forged, by Bart Ehrman
The Bible IS corrupted. Not said by me, but by Christian scripture scholars.
TL;DR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy
TooLong;See you next month: http://smile.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622?sa-no-redirect=1