Best christian bible history & culture books according to redditors
We found 89 Reddit comments discussing the best christian bible history & culture books. We ranked the 38 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
I have a B.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, so this is a question I can finally answer.
As you suspect, the process of forming a sedentary society takes many, many generations. The agricultural "revolution" is much less of a "revolution" than a long process of selective advantageous decisions that gradually amounted to large cities, hierarchical states, and fixed agricultural economies.
This long history is well documented in Mesopotamia. The earliest known semi-sedentary population within the Levent were likely the Natufians, concentrating around the Dead Sea, and the earliest larger settled communities included sites such as Çatalhöyük in Eastern Anatolia. These cultures date back some 3000-7000 years before the rise of what is known as the "Sumerian" culture, and while neither were in Southern Mesopotamia proper, neither of which also developed into larger states as we associate with the Sumerians. Why they never developed massive cities like Ur, Uruk, or Eridu is still a matter of debate, although many arguments simply boil down to that they rose at the wrong places and at the wrong times (alternatively, early cities kind of sucked, so a large school or thought simply argues that they dispersed and became more reliant upon animal husbandry and pastoral nomadism).
Now, the reason we pay attention to the Natufians and the culture of Çatalhöyük isn't because they were the only people living in the area, but rather that they were the only sedentary populations, meaning that they accumulate a lot of trash in one permanent spot, which we archaeologists like to refer to as a "complex and rich site." While both of these examples buried their dead, other cultures were likely contemporaneously practicing excarnation or depositing their dead at sea. One preserves, one doesn't, and archaeology is very prone to these types of biases.
Within Southern Mespotamia, the earliest pre-Sumerian culture is referred to as the Ubaid, named after the site Tell al-'Ubaid although largely associated with the site of Eridu, which the Sumerian King List referred to as the oldest city in the world. These sites have a very long history of occupation, which make them great for studying the gradual emergence of the Sumerian Civilization. Dating from at least 5500, they produced distinctive ceramics, and through time, their level of statehood and sedentism gradually increases, first with building canals during the "Ubaid 2" period, then building much larger houses and spreading their ceramic style elsewhere in the region in the "Ubaid 3" period. By this point, houses were becoming increasingly larger, and specialized ceramic-production facilities began to emerge. By 4000 BC, the "economic center" of Sumerian culture shifted over to from Eridu to Uruk, which produced a ton of ceramics that you can find all over 4th Millennium Mesopotamia.
This is a complicated answer, I understand, but to tie it together, I'll reference your OP:
>So that all goes back to my question: at what point do we definitively say that one civilization existed? What is the archaeological evidence we require? What's the standard where we say "okay, the Sumerians were a thing, but anything before that was nomads." Or is that even what we say?
So, just think for a minute here. Most sites have a layer where the great city was a small village if you dig deep enough. You look at its early ceramics, burial practices, architecture, and overall economy and make a judgment as to where its people came from and who they could be related to. If the similarities aren't sufficient enough to merit a direct movement of people into the area which founded the original city, then you can make an argument that a local population decided to attempt a sedentary lifestyle as a result of environmental decisions or as a result of imitating a nearby established sedentary society. At the end of the day, it all comes back to a timeless debate in archaeology - we're mostly looking at pots and rocks here to try and determine how past people lived and where they came from. You try your best, but at the end of the day, pots aren't people, and they can only tell you so much.
Further reading:
Richard, Suzanne. Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader
Hodder, Ian. The Archaeological Process: An Introduction <-- Hodder is the former excavator of Çatalhöyük and one of my favorite authors on archaeological theory.
La faccio molto breve.
Penso che la Chiesa cattolica sia la società più oscurantista e anti progresso che abbiamo la sfortuna di avere avuto negli ultimi 2000 anni.
Penso che siano palesemente opportunisti e approfittatori dell'ignoranza della gente.
Penso che ogni anno costano allo stato italiano circa 6MILIARDI di euro. Un terzo del reddito di cittadinanza per paragonarlo a qualcosa di attuale.
http://www.icostidellachiesa.it
Penso che al giorno d'oggi con tutte le possibilità di informazione che ci sono una persona mediamente intelligente si renderebbe conto che non si può essere cristiani MENO CHE MAI CATTOLICI.
consiglio la lettura, libricino veloce, se lo leggi non torni indietro. Perché non possiamo essere cristiani (e meno che mai cattolici) https://www.amazon.it/dp/8850233043/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Cgw5Bb0921QK7
The Nephilim Chronicles: Fallen Angels in the Ohio Valley https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451581262/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_HqGYDbSGCPTZW
Also a guide by county. Purchased when we first moved to Ohio. Stumbled down the nephilim rabbit hole with this guy!
I learned it in a history class at uni that govered the trade and exploration exploits of ancient Greeks. My lecturer wrote a book about it (we didn't have to buy it, he directly provided us with the sources).
Caveat: It's German
https://www.amazon.de/Abenteurer-Ferne-gro%C3%9Fen-Entdeckungsfahrten-Weltwissen/dp/3608948465/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=raimund+schulz+seefahrt&amp;qid=1557675753&amp;s=gateway&amp;sr=8-1-fkmrnull
I think you need to do some more reading before you claim there is "no evidence".
Some suggested (non religious) reading:
There are older jokes in Sumerian. See Ben Foster's Anthology
Ayyyyy, now that’s what I’m talking about. This is the kind of academic studying we need more of.
Edit: Check out Alan Segal’s book Two Powers in Heaven which kicked this whole thing off, followed by Michael Heiser’s work which you can find some of at https://twopowersinheaven.com.
I think the explanation is much more prosaic. No need to invoke the sea peoples or climate change or attachment to the magical properties of bronze. It’s a matter of technology.
Contrary to what many people think, iron is a very poor substitute for bronze. It’s much more difficult to produce, requiring an order of magnitude more labor. It requires much more fuel because of its higher melting point, which also makes it impossible to cast until you first invent higher temperature furnaces. And if you manage to do all that, then what? You end up with a metal that is softer than bronze, won’t hold an edge as well as bronze, and will rust and become useless in a few years anyway.
In short, there was absolutely no advantage to iron. It was worse than bronze in every way that mattered to ancient people. People have known about iron since prehistoric times, and in fact long before they learned iron metallurgy they were already making stuff out of meteoric iron. But all these items were expensive curiosities, they were of no practical use.
In terms of the practical use of iron, the “iron age” is really the “steel age”. It was not until steel was invented that iron became practical. This is when iron (in the form of steel) actually became better than bronze. This happened during the period 1300 BC – 1200 BC, which is when iron took off in a big way all across a belt from the near east to India.
The theories of economic and demographic collapse and climate change and the scarcity of tin due to disrupted trade routes don’t make much sense to me. As a matter of fact, I have never seen any evidence that tin was actually scarce in the near east after these catastrophes. There are lots of bronze objects from this period still found in the near east, they remain abundant throughout, and none of them show any diminution in the amount of tin to reflect any scarcity.
What we do have from this period is strong evidence of the invention of carburization to produce steel. There is the knife from Tomb 562 at Tell el-Farah, bracelets from a burial in the Baqa Valley of Jordan. There is a steel pick from Har Addir in Galilee. In fact, there are a whole bunch of artifacts from the 12th to 10th centuries BC that indicate that humans learned how to carburize iron to produce steel. And steel is far superior to bronze in making tools and weapons.
Some references:
Additionally, this book contains a lot of information about the history of iron metallurgy: Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader, edited by Suzzane Richards. Specially the chapter “Matalworking/Mining in the Levant” by James D. Mulhy.
Prof. George Menachery is one of the most prolific writers on Christianity in Kerala, so his books are a good start. His newest book, 'Facets of India's Christian Legacy' is free on Kindle (Edit: UK Store).
The church was more or less premil until the fourth century, and there was nothing quite like dispensationalism until the early 19th century. The idea of premillennialism is drawn from Revelation 20 which describes a period of 1000 years after the return of Jesus at the in of chapter 19 and the final judgment (the Great White Throne judgment). The first four centuries of the church are often described as "historic premilennialism" to distinguish it from the more modern form promoted by dispensationalists.
Two positions developed after the church began to dominate the Empire, what we typically call a-millennialism today is the view that the church age is the millennium; Revelation 20 refers to the cross as the binding of Satan. Christ will return in the future and usher in the eternal state (New Jerusalem, etc.)
Post-millennialism sees the church as becoming increasingly dominant until the whole world is Christian (the church builds the kingdom and then Jesus comes and takes possession of it).
Any of the three millennial positions are possible for scholars, but they majority would lean toward a-mil, although there is a sizable minority outside of dispensationalism who would support a historic premillennialism.
In my experience, scholars outside of dispensational circles have a low view of the modern state of Israel.
An exception is Gerald McDermontt, Israel Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently about the People and the Land and another volume he edited, The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel and the Land. I reviewed Israel Matters here.
As far as the teachings of Jesus, for a lay audience, I'd recommend Meet the Rabbis: Rabbinic Thought and the Teachings of Jesus by Brad H. Young.
EDIT: A good read about what daily life would have been like for Jesus see Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus by Jodi Magness
The Loeb Classical Library mentioned already is ideal for the Greco-Roman world.
Literature from Ancient Mesopotamia is, for the most part, a bit older than you are looking for since the conventional date for the composition of the Iliad is 725 BCE and most Mesopotamian stuff was well before that date, but there is much, much more stuff in cuneiform sources than in other ancient languages.
For Akkadian literature see Foster, Before the Muses.
For the even older, Sumerian literature, see Black, The Literature of Ancient Sumer, most of which is available online on the authors' website: ETCSL.
For a broad survey of all the materials, in various languages, from all periods of the Ancient Near East (including Egypt) see Hallo, The Context of Scripture - 3 vols.
For China see De Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition - volume 1.
Perhaps an example will help.
>Yet problems arise and persist in the making of books. In modern books it is not unusual to see glaring mistakes. Some of the greatest mistakes in the history of the Bible have occurred since the invention of printing. More than four hundred errors in the first edition of the King James Bible were corrected in a subsequent edition two years later. In our own time, despite all concentrated efforts to the contrary, translations such as the Revised Standard Version and the New International Version have not been exempt from the plague of misprints.
>
>If in modern times errors somehow appear in printed copies of the Bible, it is not difficult to see how mistakes slipped unnoticed into the New Testament manuscripts long ago. All ancient books had to be produced by hand, and no human hand is so exact or eye so sharp as to preclude the possibility of error. So errors were made, errors were copied, and errors were mixed in with the pure text.
>
>...
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>A scribe especially might try to remove any difficulty in the texts of the Gospels. If he found a statement of Jesus in one Gospel similar to a statement in another, he might modify one to make it in perfect agreement with the other. This may explain a variant found in two verses of Matthew and Luke. The King James Version of Matthew 11:19 reads, "But wisdom is justified of her children," an exact parallel of Luke 7:25. However, the more recent translations have "works" instead of "children" in agreement with our earliest manuscript authorities. We surmise that at some early date "works" was changed to "children" by a copyist to bring the phrase in harmony with Luke's Gospel. Thus we are practically certain that originally the two records of Jesus' saying were not the same. This, to be sure, is what one frequently finds in the Gospels, for in quoting Jesus, the Gospel writers often do not give his words verbatim.
How We Got the Bible by Neil R. Lightfoot, third edition pages 88-91
Another example from the same book on pages 99-100:
>Another passage of interest is found in Acts 8:37. The King James translation of this verse reads, "And Phillip said, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." These words are represented as part of a conversation between Philip the Evangelist and the eunuch at the time of the eunuch's baptism. These are familiar words, stressing the importance of faith in Jesus Christ. Yet the words are not found in the American Standard Version or the Revised Standard Version. These and other recent translations, on the basis of the evidence, are compelled to omit this verse from the Book of Acts. It is true that a sixth-century uncial, some good minuscule manuscripts, and the Old Latin Version support the verse, but practically all the other manuscripts and versions stand opposed to it. Because no Greek manuscript earlier than the sixth century knows of this reading, beyond doubt it could not have formed a part of the original account of Acts.
The book I referenced covers some of the difficulties in translation and goes into the history of different ancient versions of the Bible, and causes for differences between versions. The author, at least as of the time the book was written, was the Frank Pack Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Abilene Christian University in Abilene Texas.
I recommend that you read through each section of the Wikipedia article about the King James Only movement.
That should help toward what you're asking.
That article mentions this ebook by a KJV-only proponent, and this review lists some of the content of that ebook.
If you haven't already seen them, there are quite a few recommendations in the Wiki. If you've been lurking here for any length of time, you've probably already come across these, but just in case: James Kugel's How to read the Bible and Richard Friedman's "Who wrote the Bible are classic introductary texts. They are fantastically expensive, but I've also enjoyed an number of the Great Courses lectures.
As for your specific focus, I obviously don't have the background of the scholars here, but of the books I've read, [Thomas Romer's Invention of God*](https://www.amazon.com/Invention-God-Thomas-R%C3%B6mer/dp/0674504976/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1541389004&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=invention+of+god) (IIRC it's a summary of these lectures) might scratch the early formation itch, and I have just a few days ago added van der Toorn's Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible to my reading list.
For my own focus, I kind of jump around, but pretty much stick to the OT. What really draws me, and I don't even know how to articulate this in academic terms, is trying to figure out what your average Israelite actually believed and how they practiced, which doesn't exactly line up with biblical precepts. In that vein, I really enjoyed William Dever's The Lives of Ordinary People, Kugel's The Great Shift, and Jodi Magness's Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus. A book I bought but haven't read yet is A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible, and I just got a whim to study the military outpost in Elephantine.
I stay away from NT study for the most part, as I feel it either veers into theological discussion, which I don't have any interest in, or it get bogged down in the minutiae of translation, which I don't have any patience for.
So, yeah, you'll find a number of members here who approach the bible from a non-devotional perspective. In the years I've been lurking it is becoming a bit less rigid in that respect; there a couple of users in particular I used to rely on to call out comments that were theologically motivated (/u/brojangles, where are you?!?), but with time you just learn to recognize the red flags.
> Why isn't there any archeological evidence for the Exodus
Actually there is some palatable evidence for an exodus. Whether its " the " exodus is a different story.
http://www.hakirah.org/Vol14Landa.pdf
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Israelites-in-and-out-of-Egypt
http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2015/03/was-there-an-exodus/
https://kickass.to/barbara-j-sivertsen-the-parting-of-the-sea-2009-a-t9235433.html
Personal belief ? I believe that current scholarly agreement is that the Exodus, as described in the Bible is not historically accurate for the following reasons:
It would logistically impossible to support 600k men plus their wives and children as described in [Exodus 12:37-38]. The number is most likely symbolic or a gematria.
The route described in the account is full of anachronisms, naming places and people that did not exist until the 1st millennium BCE when the story is presented as occurring in the 2nd.
Probably the most damning evidence is the lack of archeological evidence, both for the mass enslavement of semitic people in Egypt during either the 1st or 2nd millennium BCE and for their supposed journey out of Africa into Canaan. Furthermore such a mass migration would have devastated the Egyptian demographics and economy and would likely have been noted in their history. The first extra-Biblical source of the Exodus story doesn't appear until about 300 BCE and was thus influenced by the Israelite telling of the story
Finally the exodus account that we have from written tradition isn't firmly established until the post-exilic period sometime around 500-300 BCE.
What this leads to is a de-literalization of the exodus event. The story is likely a conglomeration or fabrication of Israelite folk stories and millennia of smaller mass migrations. What it signifies however is important as the Exodus is the central point of the OT narrative. It provides not only a foundational myth for Israelite self definitions at a theosophical level but also serves to legitimize and validate the Israelite nation post-exile. Much of the covenantal language used in the Mosaic account matches Hittite vassal/master treaties, thus God's covenant with Israel ensures the latter's legitimacy as a sovereign state. Moses may have been a historical figure that became a mythic folk hero to which the establishment of Israel is ascribed.
Some suggested (non religious) reading:
Digging through the bible, Richard Freund amazon (one of my personal favorites. He has a whole chapter dedicated to this very question that I highly recommend anyone interested in the subject read).
https://www.amazon.com/Digging-Through-Bible-Archaeology-Ancient/dp/0742546454
Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus from the Biblical Archaeology Society. (Free ebook)
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/free-ebooks/ancient-israel-in-egypt-and-the-exodus/
Where Is Mount Sinai?, Biblical Archaeology Review, march 2014.
http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&amp;Volume=40&amp;Issue=2&amp;ArticleID=2
Has the Exodus Really Been Disproven?, Lawrence Shiffman.
http://www.dovidgottlieb.com/comments/Exodus.htm
Some of these are Jewish and Christian sources. Mostly because the exodus is a Jewish and Christian thing. The Qur'an mentions it in passing.
> some of the events detailed in hadiths (Banu Qurayza)?
You think there is no proof that Banu Qurayza existed or that the events surrounding them in hadith happened ?
On both accounts, we have Muslim and Jewish sources stating a similar version of events. In Arabic oratory tradition, this is sufficient.
> Why does the Quran reflect the scientific understandings of a 7th century Arab rather than the creator of all existence?
This is a far larger question than possible. I really don't know what to say here, since I don't really know what you're trying to ask.
> How can just two people populate the earth when science says that is impossible?
I don't understand this as well. This is totally plausible. Two people can easily repopulate or create a species. When a bacterium develops a mutation, it splits into two, creating a partner, from there it continues to give birth, each one doing so as well, until there is an incalculable number.
More Adam/Eve related problems are discussed pretty well in this article. Its from a Christian perspective though, since I study all religions.
http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/creation-evolution-and-christian-laypeople-part-1?p=1
The observed mitochondrial DNA mutation rate indicates that all living humans descended from one female who lived around 6000 years ago, or about 9000 years if you also include neanderthals, both plus or minus a few thousand years. Anyone who tells you otherwise is citing studies that multiply the mutation rate by a large fudge factor that has to be applied in order to get the rates to line up with humans and chimps diverging 6m years ago.
To make up for this, a Y-Chromosome Adam was conjectured. The problem is were they alive at the same time ? A question that has yet been unanswered. Religious people say yes. Not-so-sure people say they can't say for sure.
Also I have to add, no Muslim really disbelieves in evolution. Evolution is the internal change in a species due to external factors. The Qu'ran and hadith talk about changing humanity and developing them at stages. However, no Muslim believes in one species changing into another.
> Why does the Quran mention magic, sooothsayers, and evil eye when there is no evidence none of those exist?
Again, I suppose this is all to do with personal experience. I did see a jinn extraction on two separate occasions. When I holidayed in South Africa on a Christian guy, and on holiday in Pakistan when a Muslim girl was possessed. On both occasions the only feeling I had was " what the fuck ".
I personally do believe in magic, since I've witnessed it before. But I suppose using myself and my personal experiences as proof wouldn't count for much.
There's a book called Two Powers in Heaven by Alan F. Segal. "Alan F. Segal (1945-2001) was Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies at Barnard College". The book goes through the historical record to show that 2nd Temple Judaism had a strain which believed in something we might call "Binitarianism" because of what they saw in the Scriptures.
Dr Michael Heiser has this video discussing it here. Christianity is monotheistic. Marcion was an ignorant heretic.
EDIT: The idea is that the Bible, starting with the book of Genesis teaches one God in more than one person, such as when the Lord ate with Abraham as would a man before the Lord walked over and rained fire on Sodom from the Lord in heaven.
He might actually be right about the two powers though?
Here's the book he's talking about.
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Powers-Heaven-Christianity-Christology/dp/1602585490
> books outside the Bible that compliment the bible
I found books on geography and archaeology of the bible lands to be helpful and enriching. My copies are still packed away so can't recall exact titles, but The Holy Land by Michael Avi-Yonah and The Land Of The Bible by Yohanan Aharoni are well-reviewed, if that interests you.
You might also enhoy Who Wrote The Bible? by Richard Friedman
I was super into Caribbean history for awhile. I gotta defend Vodou's honor here.
I have a huge amount of respect for Hatian Vodou. It's a monotheistic religion with a super long tradition stretching into antiquity. The lwa that the clergy propitiate are in a similar position to Christian angels.
It was already monotheistic before Xtians ever showed up and enslaved everybody (which made hiding it behind Christian imagery much easier).
People make a big deal out of the animal sacrifice and there is animal sacrifice in Vodou on special occasions but it's nothing like the animal sacrifice at the Temple at Jerusalem which was literally like lamb slaughtering from morning until night (source).
There's not really any "magic" in Vodou strictly speaking, just normal prayers and offerings and intercessions.
The possessions are where stuff gets unique. The lwa come down and walk among their followers and carry on conversations -- which is a lot more impressive than someone falling on the floor thrashing around speaking in "tongues."
If we're looking for an explanation for either phenomenon it may be rooted in the same thing, but Vodou has class and Pentecostals...well, they just thrash around on the floor.
Louisiana "voodoo" is from the hoodoo/conjure/rootwork tradition and is pretty much totally separate. That's witchcraft/sorcery stuff, and they may call on the lwa sometimes...but then Western occultists call on the angels and God in Western ceremonial magic, so, nothing new there. :p
Santeria is related to Vodou but I don't know much about it tbh. It's from the adjacent region of Africa and the "angels" are called orishas.
The moral of the story is don't believe what conservative Christians tell you about anything, including voodoo evil magic and santeria.
Sorry for the late reply, you caught me between class and teaching last night.
> I did not know that about Luther. Did he say why he removed those books?
His reasoning for removing those 7 books were that they weren't recognized by the Jews as canon (who themselves only "formalized' their Scripture sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries. There's no scholarly consensus on when it was exactly finalized or by whom). Part of his reasoning was that they weren't (debatably in some cases) written in Hebrew but instead in Greek, thus they weren't inspired texts like the rest of the Hebrew OT. The Council of Trent, a Catholic Ecumenical Council, defined the Catholic Bible as 73 books including the 7 removed by Luther and the Reformers as deuterocanon (or "secondary canon" though still full parts of Scripture).
> Also, was there ever some sort of original historical team that established a set of books that was later refined? Do we have a timeline where that occurred, and how the Canon shaped over time and research?
Wiki does a good job summarizing the major movements in the development. And as I said above, Trent was when the finalized Catholic bible was authoritatively declared, though it was basically a formal acknowledgement of what was already standard practice in the Church for about a thousand years.
>Is this what the "Magisterium's Team" is?
The Magisterium is the teaching body of the Catholic Church and they settle matters of doctrine, including what is contained in Holy Scripture. The Magisterium is what made up the various councils throughout the ages including Trent.
>Finally, is there any specific source you recommend where I can go to find out more about the history of the Canon of the Bible?
Like I said, wiki does quite a good job giving a summary level. If you want a more academic and in depth reading I recommend Metzger's The Canon of the New Testament as was already suggested (though it tends to be on the apologetic side, it is still quite reliable) or F F Bruce's The Canon of Scripture. Niel R Lightfoot's How We Got The Bible is also quite good.
This might be a stupid question, because I am sure you would have thought of it, but your family doctor or the general practitioner you see can't help you out? Mine back home could (he was more help than my psychiatrist there actually), and my family doctor here in the US was also able to help me out in a pinch in December.
I'm somewhat interested in the same thing as you lately... sort of. I used to be very interested in gnosticism and hermeticism, and it has come back lately as I've been doing some research on theology for school, and starting to get interested in demonology/magic and the way the Christian tradition kind of policed knowledge and divinity and it's weird intersections with the belief that there were in deed demons in the world. I was at Barnes and Nobles last week and they had this really cool book. It was a Penguins Classics -- you know that series with the black books of important historical books in philosophy in literature? -- called The Book of Magic from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, and it just had passages from thinkers throughout the ages on the topic of magic. Going all the way back to the Old Testament and Homer up to the Renaissance. https://www.amazon.com/Book-Magic-Antiquity-Enlightenment-Classics-ebook/dp/B00WYGH4RK
I want to buy it. Really bad. But I need to be more frugal with my money. I've gone over budget this month so far (like in terms of how much I want to have spent each day, not my overall budget of how much I can spend this month), and I also may have to buy bedroom furniture for my new place.
It's included in Benjamin Foster's superb Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. It's far and away the best resource for Babylonian and Assyrian literature.
His chapter on Akkadian literature in From an Antique Land: An Introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Literature edited by Carl Ehrlich is a good companion to his translations.
"Messianic Jewish" stuff? Really?
Orthodox Jew Daniel Boyarin and Conservative Jew Benjamin Sommer made more palatable references from the Rabbinic, Judaic side. Heck, there's this article by Yishai Kiel!
Highly recommend this book:
Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Library of Early Christology) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1602585490/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_WudIDbJFHAYD8
An interview with a Polish priest, It's not great, it's cancer.
Are you referring to
The Ancient Near East by John McLaughlin
or
A History of the Ancient Near East ca 3000 - 323 BC by Marc Van De Mieroop
It's funny how your fist post accuses people of not doing research when your second post clearly demonstrates your lack of own research. This is the person I studied under (among other professors of history and theology, who actually go through the efforts of the overlapping disciplines of history and religion to make our religious understanding as concise and in agreement with what historians have to say.) If you ACTUALLY want to study biblical history and analysis, start with this book, and for further context, look at the sources he sources and dig into those. This professor particularly studies the wisdom traditions (so books like Job and the Psalms) and explores where stories like that probably came from, how Jews put their own spin on them and how they ended up in the bible at all.
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Near-East-Essential-Guide/dp/1426753276/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1521400501&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+ancient+near+east+john
If you want new testament scholarship, I can direct you there as well. Here's the thing you don't understand, the research for this has been done, and continues to be done, you just never heard of it yet claim to be an expert in it. And that's just so incredibly naive and undeservingly cocky.
I've come across many instances where some knowledge of Greek or Hebrew would be helpful to me. As just one example that comes immediately to mind, I've come across a number of articles regarding the meaning of pais in discussions regarding whether there is some indication in the New Testament that Jesus was not condemnatory of homosexuals.
And I've also encountered quite a number of instances, sometimes regarding Genesis, but sometimes with other parts of the Old Testament where someone will contest the interpretation of a passage indicating a translation in a particular version of the Bible may not convey the original intent of the passage to modern readers or comparing an Old Testament passage to other Jewish writings. E.g,, I've seen suggestions that the word translated as "rib" in the story of Adam and Eve could refer instead to the baculum found in males of many nonhuman mammals. Since I don't know Hebrew, it is sometimes difficult for me to judge alternative translations.
I've read Neil Lightfoot''s How We Got the Bible, which discusses various early Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and addresses some discrepancies in translation and I know from personal experience that attempting a word-by-word translation from one language to another or just plugging a sentence into an online translator, such as Google Translate or Yahoo! Babelfish, though it can be helpful for rough translations in many instances, is more useful to me when I know at least a few rudiments of the language.
I'm hoping there will be people participating in /r/BibleCoverToCover who do have some understanding of Greek and Hebrew who can contribute to the discussions.
Have you considered finding an Italian translation of one of his, or another author's, books? I'm sure something like "The God Delusion" won't be too hard to find.
Actually, I went on Italian amazon and found it:
http://www.amazon.it/Lillusione-Dio-ragioni-non-credere/dp/8804581646/ref=pd_cp_14_1?ie=UTF8&amp;refRID=1X3MDT83DAMPGVH823RH
And the recommendations have these:
http://www.amazon.it/Perch%C3%A9-possiamo-essere-cristiani-cattolici/dp/8850233043/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=51enXTff8AL&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR101%2C160_&amp;refRID=0E83996FP69CDRENMREV
http://www.amazon.it/Vangelo-secondo-scienza-religioni-prova/dp/8806191527/ref=pd_sim_14_9?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=51D-5L0%2BEQL&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR102%2C160_&amp;refRID=0E83996FP69CDRENMREV
http://www.amazon.it/Breve-storia-delle-religioni-integrale/dp/8854121894/ref=pd_sim_14_32?ie=UTF8&amp;dpID=31oEkj5Za7L&amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR100%2C160_&amp;refRID=0E83996FP69CDRENMREV (maybe?? I'm, like, B1 at Italian so I can't really make determinations)
So it looks like this is probably the guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piergiorgio_Odifreddi
His books seem available on kindle, too.
>Books
You mean this?
The only book that I seem to be able to find that even talks about it.
>Videos
I'm not going to take this video seriously
Nor This
Hell, infact, why not you give me a couple of sources? You seem to know a lot about these mythical giants. Let me see what convinced you that they're real. I would like to see how someone uses critical thinking and observation when trying to find new information.
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.
Ti basta questa come fonte? https://www.amazon.it/nazisti-Gerarchie-cattoliche-nazionalsocialisti-complicit%C3%A0/dp/8856503697/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?__mk_it_IT=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=i+nazisti+e+la+chiesa&qid=1558185434&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
E poi, i patti lateranensi tra chi sono stati firmati? Te lo ricordi?
Yeah, that's pretty much what I ended up discovering :)
The NASB is a daily bible with all that implies (slight bias), the NRSV is more of a study/academic bible (Though a slightly modified version of it is authorized for daily use by the various church authorities).
I ended up going with the The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, which uses the NRSV and has a LOT of commentary from experts from various faith, as well as from atheists.
It's very well-made and compiled, and is a pretty nice read where you'll learn quite a lot.
I also ended up adding How We Got The Bible to my reading list, in order to learn about where these texts came from and how they were passed from generation to generation.