Reddit reviews The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus

If this is something you're interested in, I strongly recommend the book The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus by Robert Funk.

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

General:

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

It's disheartening that you've delved into name-calling here. If it continues, I will not respond.

Historical Jesus shows up in the Bible (though he is also occluded by ahistorical narrativization and theology - I suggest the Jesus Seminar's The Five Gospels if you want an introduction to the topic; I still refer to it frequently.) and thus your juxtaposition of "historical Jesus" and "Biblical Jesus" was laughable. Hence "lol."

I was certainly not "trying to instigate a fight" by pointing out that Jesus was far more radical than he is given credit for, being that this is a subreddit for other radicals who would be generally predisposed to agree with me/ enjoy the description. The one "instigating the fight" here is you, but nice attempt to gaslight.

The Five Gospels from the Jesus Seminar is a convenient way to get all of the sayings of Jesus in one place, removed from much of the religious narrative which has been built up around them.

The Unique and His Property by Max Stirner. I doubt Saint Max would appreciate the "exclusively christian" category, but I'm going to allow it.

Edit: Oh, and The Kingdom of God is Within You by Tolstoy!

I'm a little surprised that no one has recommended reading the Gospels yet. I'm an agnostic, but Jesus is still a phenomenally challenging and poetic thinker and teacher, and it's an essential work of literature and philosophy, especially if you take the time to separate the core of its message from its subsequent alterations. The Five Gospels, which is an ambitious—if controversial—attempt to pull the original teachings from the later material, would be a good place to start.

> Wait, there's a historical Jesus?

My impression is that there's a historical Jesus in the sense that there's a historical Robin Hood or King Arthur. What we see in the Gospels are re-tellings of the life of Jesus, heavily interspersed with embellishments and re-toolings (especially the Gospel of John). So to me it's plausible that there was a Jesus or a Jesus-like figure who existed and was executed, even if the details are quite a bit different from what we see in the New Testament. Robert Funk has some very interesting research on the topic.

In contrast, the whole Moses story is contingent on the idea that Egypt kept Jewish slaves, for which there is scant historical evidence. So I'm more likely to believe in a "historical" Jesus than a "historical" Moses.

Maybe? I dunno, I'm not a biblical scholar, I know what I know from a historical perspective. That sounds Old-Testamenty, anyway, which largely only pertains to pre-Rabbinic Jewish tradition/Judaism of Antiquity, and trying to literally interpret the Bible, especially the Old Testament, without context can basically be used to justify anything.

tl;dr fucking house motherfucking rapists, this isn't hard. You're protecting life.

If you want a really studied interpretation of the New Testament, check out The Five Gospels. It's what happens when you get a hundred historians and religious authorities and skeptics, Christian and Jewish, to dissect the teachings of Jesus, or rather, what was written of the teachings.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but Robert Funk and a group of scholars called "The Jesus Seminar" wrote a book called The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? that attempts to deconstruct the gospels using historical/critical analysis.

I think Jesus said some profound shit. I think if you look at the red letters, parse out the stuff that is known to be interpolated by scribes and the church, you come out with some great guidelines for how to judge the morality of your own actions. Jesus didn't give a lot of moral absolutes, or rules, and he challenged people to go always go beyond what is considered moral. most of the things to disagree with in Christianity are the old testament and the Pauline letters. This book has all the quotes attributed to Jesus and the probability that he said them. If you're looking for Christianity that doesn't require super-jesus and doesn't require you to check science and your brain at the door I'd recommend this book.

The Five Gospels.

Yep. Here are my sources:

1. Jesus Reconsidered
   
2. The Five Gospels
   
3. The Writings of the New Testament
   
4. [The Inculturation of the Jesus Tradition]
   (http://www.amazon.com/Inculturation-Jesus-Tradition-Impact-Cultures/dp/1563382954/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)
   
5. Over ten years of study of the origins of Christianity, many of those seeks new and clever ways for me to debunk theists.