Reddit Reddit reviews Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

We found 14 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.

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Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
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14 Reddit comments about Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are:

u/sleepygeeks · 9 pointsr/exmormon

Most of it came from classes and lectures. I don't have the class book list and sources anymore. I do hope you really, really like reading!

Forged writingss

Misquoting Jesus A well known book.

Introduction to the new testiment

The new testament: a historical intoduction

Revelation and the End of All Things Also a somewhat popular book

You can also do some Wikipedia reading on Gnosticism and other early Christen sects to get an idea of just how many groups their were and how differing their beliefs could be. Also look for things on the Q, M and L source.

Edit

You can likely find a number of online pod-casts (or whatever you call them) and lectures on these things.

I am not a historian so my access to books and memorized sources is very limited, I am a student and have been accused of reading serial boxes at least once when I accidentally quoted the wrong book name, It was too much fun to make the correction as no one had ever said that too me before and I felt special, like I had hit an academic milestone.

Also, Don't feel bad about asking for sources.

u/BillDaCatt · 4 pointsr/TrueAtheism

I find the books written by Bart D. Ehrman to be both informative and interesting. I have read three of them: Forged: Writing in the Name of God - Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Misquoting Jesus

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)
All three of them are solid reads.

Online Bible Links:
http://www.blueletterbible.org/
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
https://www.biblegateway.com/ (over 100 versions and 50 translations of the bible, including audio.)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (with Cross-References) [Kindle Edition] [free]

(edit:formatting to make it easier to read)

u/Paxalot · 3 pointsr/atheism

Both Timothy verses are considered forgeries by most Biblical scholars.

Briefly this is the argument:

  1. Paul clearly taught that men and women were equal in Christ
  2. In the early church of Paul's day the end times were believed to have already started or to be imminent. There were no priests or bishops and church members were required to act as a unit with all members being equal.

    The writing style of the 'Timothy's' has nothing in common with Paul's. After Paul's death there were in circulation the 'Acts of Paul' which are a fantastic set of yarns about a superhero-like Paul and a feisty female companion/sidekick (non-sexual relationship) that keeps getting in trouble because she insists on being chaste. These tall tales were very popular. It is believed that the 'Timothy's' were written in the second century to undercut the popularity of the 'Acts of Paul' and Paul's original and radical idea that men, women, slaves and masters were all 'equal in Christ'.

    It is estimated that somewhere between 40 and 60% of Paul's New Testament writings are forgeries.
u/mavnorman · 3 pointsr/TrueAtheism

Because it's essentially advertising for his book 'Forged'.

u/vibrunazo · 2 pointsr/atheism

The New Testament was written by several different authors who had different ideas that conflicted with each other. In many cases we can prove some of the authors are specifically lying to try to disprove either one of the other New Testament writers, or lying to try to disprove the Old Testament.

Quick answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdWCdbJ_Sw4

If you're interested in looking deeper into the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/B006QS02F8

u/honestblackman · 2 pointsr/IAmA

Start here.

Erhman is a smart, (brutally) honest, reputable theologian

http://www.amazon.ca/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/B006QS02F8

u/wolffml · 2 pointsr/atheism

>support everything in the Holy Bible

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. NT scholars do not accept everything in the Holy Bible. Scholars do not even accept the authenticity of I & II Timothy as having been written by Paul.

Check out Forged by NT Scholar Bart Ehrman

>According to the biblical scholar, at least 11 of the 27 New Testament books are forgeries, while only seven of the 13 epistles attributed to Paul were probably written by him.

>"Virtually all scholars agree that seven of the Pauline letters are authentic: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon," says Ehrman.

>Individuals claiming to be Paul wrote 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians and Colossians, he adds.
Other book, including the Gospels, are mis-attributed to Jesus' disciples. (Pseudepigrapha)

Not only are there discrepancies and errors in the Bible, some of the authors have lied about who they are.

u/TooManyInLitter · 2 pointsr/ReasonableFaith

I have read some of Bart Ehrman's work, and transcripts of a number of interviews, where he states he is agnostic. I don't recall seeing Ehrman provide a definition of what he means by 'agnostic' or 'agnosticism.' Is anyone aware of what Ehrman meaning of 'agnosticism'?

After watching part of the vid; yep, when talking/debating/arguing with someone knowledgeable/subject matter expert, it is not a good idea to go into the talk/discussion/debate unprepared. The Dunning–Kruger effect haunts us all! A better approach would have been to ask Ehrman to explain/present his position concerning a historical Jesus using from Biblical sources, and then from extra-Biblical sources, discuss the issues/debate surrounding the extra-Biblical sources (e.g., late additions to the text, do the citations reference the same "Jesus" as the Gospels?). Finally, discuss the case for the Christian claim of the Divinity of Jesus as The Christ; does the Jewish belief/prophecies require or identify that the Messiah/Mashiach be Divine/God (Yahweh) in man form/literally the Son of God?; do the Gospel narratives support (1) the claim of being the Jewish Messiah/Mashiach? (2) the claim of Divinity? As an atheist, the issue of the historical Jesus is interesting in that it establishes a foundation that the person existed and gives a basis for the morality presented in the narratives related to Jesus, but, more relevant are the claims made that Jesus is Divine, a supernatural Deity, a God in man form, fully human/fully Yahweh.

Since this subreddit address Christian beliefs, while Ehrman does conclude that the evidence very strongly supports a historical Jesus, Ehrman raises questions concerning the Divinity of Jesus, as the Christ.

From Jesus, Interrupted, by Bart Ehrman...

  • Doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and heaven and hell are not based on anything Jesus or his earlier followers said.

    From my understanding of the Gospels, a strong argument can be made that Jesus does present himself as a claimant to be the Jewish Messiah/Mashiach can be made; but showing that Jesus claimed to be, literally, the Son of God, or Divine, is not supported.

  • At least 19 of the 27 books in the New Testament are forgeries.

    In this case, the label "forgeries" applies to narratives which were likely not written by the person to which they are associated/claimed authorship, e.g., (simplistically) people writing in the name of other people and trying to pass their work off as genuinely by some other person. See Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, by Bart Ehrman (review).

  • Believing the Bible is infallible is not a condition for being a Christian.

  • "Christianity has never been about the Bible being the inerrant word of God," Ehrman says. "Christianity is about the belief in Christ."

    In my experience, not all Christians would agree with this statement; while belief/Religious Faith in The Christ is foundational to the overwhelming majority of Christians, many also hold that the Bible being is the inerrant word of God.
u/tuffbot324 · 1 pointr/exchristian

A friend actually bought me the book, and I did end up reading it. I ended up giving him Forged by Bart Ehrman, as I thought the arguments were fairly strong and had more of an academic feel compared to some of his more popular works, but my friend never bothered to read it. I have also given away The Historical Figure of Jesus by EP Sanders, who is a respectable and honest NT scholar. I've even seen the book on some bookshelves belonging to Christians, even though Sanders argues how some stories in the NT aren't historical and even at times contradictory.

When reading IDHEFTBAA, I ended up taking notes with points I disagreed with or found problematic and noted the page number. I personally found the book weak. It tries to cover so many topics ranging from philosophy, morality, evolution, and history all crammed into 400 pages, and the authors don't specialize in any of those topics. The authors say that evidence is provided "every step of the way", yet make a lot assertions. For example, they claim that 11 out of the 12 disciples died for their beliefs, yet don't cite a single source. Also, semantics are also played throughout the book and over simplifies or misrepresents issues. I actually did find the book somewhat enjoyable to read though.

u/arachnophilia · 1 pointr/DebateAnAtheist

> The method doesn’t and can’t prove Paul wrote any of them.

i think you've missed the argument. someone wrote them, and literary criticism points to an ex-pharisee living around ~50 CE, an outsider to the early christian church who converted and began running gentile churches away from jerusalem. that person calls himself "paul", so we call him "paul" as well, because it's as good a name as any. even if he wasn't paul, he may as well be because all of the facts we can ascertain from critical readings of his texts basically match the description of the apostle paul. the author of these works is paul, by definition.

> Robert Price does and goes through them line by line showing how they suffer from a lot of the same problems as the forgeries do.

robert price isn't exactly a peer reviewed scholar here. he's a former theologian who went on a mythicist bent. he has some qualification, but it's not like he's submitting papers on why the pauline epistles are forgeries to biblical criticism journals.

> One example is Romans where “Paul” is writing to Rome, having not been there yet, and presuming anachronistically that there’s already an established church there.

corinthians is also sent to corinth, and indicates that there was already a church there. we know that christianity spread before paul. he was persecuting christians in damascus, 134 miles from jerusalem, more or less just prior to his conversion, which he places around the time others witnessed the resurrection. in fact, this itself might be a good argument in favor of mythicism. how is christianity spreading, when the historical jesus was one guy with a minor ministry in jerusalem?

> There were obviously different Christian sects floating around with different views

yes, and one of the reasons we think the early pauline letters are legitimate is because they are a different sect from the mainstream christians of the day. paul is an outsider, who disagrees with peter/cephas and james on some pretty important topics. the later works seek to harmonize their disputes into an orthodoxy, whereas the early texts show this dispute more clearly.

> but if Paul’s letters were before the gospels it wouldn’t make them “early” or force them into the first century necessarily. The gospels themselves were probably written in the second century themselves.

negative, the gospel of mark is written about 70 CE by all accounts. it is unquestionably first century; the other gospels less so. FWIW, i take a later date for luke than standard convention, because i think it's dependent on antiquities, ~93 CE. john may well be early second century. there's a problem with dating them much later, though. we know the contents of marcion's canon, ~130-140 CE. he had a modified version of luke as his gospel (there is debate over whether it reflects a revision of luke, or an earlier state), and the pauline epistles except the ones scholars universally agree are pseudepigraphical, and none of the pseudepigraphical catholic epistles. in any case, we know that mark was earlier than luke, because luke is based on mark and Q, and other minor sources.

> All the dating is based on taking elements of these letters and gospels at face value and that’s the problem.

it really is not. scholars do not think that paul is totally honest, particularly about his statements regarding the source of his gospel as revelation. rather, there are certain facts that paul has to make apologetics for, notably his late arrival to the church (not called by jesus during his lifetime), his prior persecution of christians, his low standing in the church, etc. we think these aspects are probably correct because why would you invent damning criticism for yourself? indeed, we think he is probably lying to some degree to downplay those things, claiming personal revelation rather than being taught by other christians. claiming he was called by the resurrected jesus, because he wasn't called by the living one. to say that scholars are "just taking these letters and gospels at face value" is to be hilariously ignorant of what scholarship is and does. like, it's the same argument that creationists make about biologists.

> Bible studies is a field dominated by Christians. Yeah there’s a handful of atheists/agnostics consisting of the Christians that went into the field and lost their faith.

there certainly are lots of christians, sure. but there's more than a handful of atheist/agnostic biblical scholars, not to mention jewish, muslim, hindu biblical scholars. people frequently are motivated to get into because of faith, but that doesn't mean it's a devotional field. it's not theology or apologetics. it's critical scholarship, literary and linguistic studies, and historical studies. same as any other academic field.

> In Galatians Paul says he met Peter and identifies him as an apostle.

three years after his revelation/conversion, and after preaching the gospel for three years in damascus. the whole point of that passage is that he didn't learn the gospel from human beings -- a claim which is obviously a lie. from there (see galatians 2) he claims it was 14 years before he actually met the twelve.

> You seem uninformed yet so valiantly want to rush out and defend Christianity and Ehrman’s unfounded claims for some reason.

oh yeah, i'm just another atheist biased by my christian faith.

> Paul doesn’t mention Pilate, or John the Baptist, or Herod or any other dating mechanism for the life of Jesus.

yes, that's correct. likely because paul doesn't really know these things.

> So how do they think Paul wrote in the 50s?

aside for relatively subtle/subject literary critical reasons involving stylistics, they, for instance, have exactly zero knowledge of the fall of the temple, outlawing of judaism, and the events of 66-70 CE. those would have been great arguments against the judaizers of the early church, but since they weren't around after 70 CE, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to argue against them.

> It’s by assuming the gospel narratives are true and putting Jesus into the typical window of time under Pilate and having Jesus die around 30ad. That’s not based on Paul now is it?

no, it's not. though it is compatible what paul says. we can extrapolate a timeline from his epistles. it's 17 years after his conversion before he claims he met the twelve, and the epistles are written after that event. corinthians seems to imply that his revelation happened shortly following the execution of jesus. so around 20 years prior to the epistles puts us around the mid 30s CE.

now, from non-christian sources, we have jesus's execution placed during the reign of tiberius (14-37 CE) under pontius pilate (26-36 CE). so it's a decent ballpark.

> Ehrman isn’t. He just takes the Christian fundamentalist view of Paul at face value and arrogantly dismisses anyone else that doesn’t. Robert Price on the other hand offers true critical scholarship and goes through these “7 undisputed Paul letters” line by line offering critical analysis.

uh, ehrman absolutely is a critical scholar. he literally wrote a booked "forged" on why the like half the epistles are forgeries and not just pseudepigraphical. like, claiming that the author of a book on why most of the new testament is a forgery is "just taking paul at face value" is patently ridiculous.

u/TruthWinsInTheEnd · 1 pointr/Christianity

Bart Ehrman has a number of good books on this subject. I just finished Misquoting Jesus and am in the middle of Forged. Ehrman has a nice writing style that is easy to read.

u/Ibrey · 1 pointr/atheism

There has been a great deal of study devoted to when and why the books of the Bible were originally written. A good introductory work on the field is How to Read the Jewish Bible by Marc Zvi Brettler. For more comprehensive references, the HarperCollins Study Bible and New Oxford Annotated Bible are packed with the best available research. Further useful reading would be The Ancient Mediterranean World: From the Stone Age to A.D. 600, People of the Covenant: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, and Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.