Best new testament bible study books according to redditors
We found 1,580 Reddit comments discussing the best new testament bible study books. We ranked the 446 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
1. The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3)
54 mentions
Yes! I own it. Unfortunately, it is as boring as it sounds. The New Testament without miracles is just Jesus wandering around telling people not to be dicks.
The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth https://www.amazon.com/dp/1604591285/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_QTsSzbXQYPQTB
the long answer is 700 pages long
I recently read the books on this topic by Ehrman, Doherty, and Carrier.
I found Carrier's case for a Mythical Jesus to be compelling, even though I found him to be annoying as a writer. He is rude to people who disagree with him and chooses language designed to offend. His writing is shrill and stiff. That said, his book is scholarly and well documented.
Ehrman argues for a historical Jesus. His book was almost the opposite of Carrier's. His tone was friendly and approachable. He seemed calm and reassuring. I kind of wanted him to prove his case. But his arguments sucked.
Doherty dissected Ehrman's case paragraph by paragraph. (I read Carrier first, then Ehrman, then Doherty.) Doherty raised many of the concerns I noticed myself. Ehrman's arguments just didn't make sense. Never mind the history or the evidence — I'm no scholar — his arguments didn't make logical sense.
I wouldn't say it's proven either way. Given the scarcity of evidence, it may never be. That said, Carrier made a surprisingly strong case against a historical Jesus. If Ehrman's defense of Jesus is the best that academia can do, I'd say Jesus is pretty much dead.
But I would love to see a serious and scholarly attempt to refute Carrier's work. Ehrman's work didn't cut it.
Free PDF here: http://uuhouston.org/files/The_Jefferson_Bible.pdf
Or the big evil Amazon option: http://www.amazon.com/The-Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Edition/dp/158834312X
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.
> Where is a good place to find the true history of the Bible?
I'd recommend this, it what I read as part of a class at a Christian University (I'm now agnostic fwiw), so you can be assured it won't be a liberally or atheistically biased book if you're concerned about that sort of thing. It's also a rather pleasant read!
Good luck to you.
PS: I used "speak in tongues" but I was just faking it at first, and then somehow convinced myself that it was genuine. Now, after becoming an agnostic, Its almost laughably fake.
I. Sure, some forms of theism are coherent (Christianity is not one of those forms, for what it's worth; the Problem of Natural Evil and Euthyphro's Dilemma being a couple of big problems), but not all coherent ideas are true representations of the world; any introductory course in logic will demonstrate that.
II. The cosmological argument is a deductive argument. Deductive arguments are only as strong as their premises. The premises of the cosmological argument are not known to be true. Therefore, the cosmological argument should not be considered true. If you think you know a specific formulation of the cosmological argument that has true premises, please present it. I'm fully confident I can explain how we know such premises are not true.
III. There is no doubt that the teleological argument has strong persuasive force, but that's a very different thing than "being real evidence" or "something that should have strong persuasive force." I explain apparent cosmological fine-tuning as an entirely anthropic effect: if the constants were different, we wouldn't be here to observe them, therefore we observe them as they are.
IV. This statement is just false on its face. Lawrence Krauss has a whole book about the potential ex nihilo mechanisms (plural!) for the creation of the universe that are entirely consistent with the known laws of physics. (Note that the idea of God is not consistent with the known laws of physics, since he, by definition, supersedes them.)
V. This is just a worse version of argument III. Naturalistic evolution has far, far more explanatory power than theism. To name my favorite examples: the human blind spot is inexplicable from the standpoint of top-down design, but it makes perfect sense in the context of evolution; likewise, the path of the mammalian nerves for the tongue traveling below the heart makes no sense from the standpoint of top-down design, but it makes perfect sense in the context of evolution. Evolution routinely makes predictions that are tested to be true, whether it means predicting where fossils with specific characteristics will be found or how fruit fly mating behavior changes after populations have been separated and exposed to different environments for 30+ generations. It's worth emphasizing that it is totally normal to look at the complexity of the world and assume that it must have a designer...but it's also totally normal to think that electrons aren't waves. Intuition isn't a reliable way to discern truth. We must not be seduced by comfortable patterns of thought. We must think more carefully. When we think more carefully, it turns out that evolution is true and evolution requires no god.
VI. There are two points here: 1) the universe follows rules, and 2) humans can understand those rules. Point (1) is easily answered with the anthropic argument: rules are required for complex organization, humans are an example of complex organization, therefore humans can only exist in a physical reality that is governed by rules. Point (2) might not even be true. Wigner's argument is fun and interesting, but it's actually wrong! Mathematics are not able to describe the fundamental behavior of the physical world. As far as we know, Quantum Field Theory is the best possible representation of the fundamental physical world, and it is known to be an approximation, because, mathematically, it leads to an infinite regress. For a more concrete example, there is no analytic solution for the orbital path of the earth around the sun! (This is because it is subject to the gravitational attraction of more than one other object; its solution is calculated numerically, i.e. by sophisticated guess-and-check.)
VII. This is just baldly false. I recommend Dan Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" and Stanislas Dehaene's "Consciousness and the Brain" for a coherent model of a materialist mind and a wealth of evidence in support of the materialist mind.
VIII. First of all, the idea that morality comes from god runs into the Problem of Natural Evil and Euthyphro's Dilemma pretty hard. And the convergence of all cultures to universal ideas of right and wrong (murder is bad, stealing is bad, etc.) are rather easily explained by anthropology and evolutionary psychology. Anthropology and evolutionary psychology also predict that there would be cultural divergence on more subtle moral questions (like the Trolley Problem, for example)...and there is! I think that makes those theories better explanations for moral sentiments than theism.
IX. I'm a secular Buddhist. Through meditation, I transcend the mundane even though I deny the existence of any deity. Also, given the diversity of religious experience, it's insane to suggest that religious experience argues for the existence of the God of Catholicism.
X. Oh, boy. I'm trying to think of the best way to persuade you of all the problems with your argument, here. So, here's an exercise for you: take the argument you have written in the linked posts and reformat them into a sequence of syllogisms. Having done that, highlight each premise that is not a conclusion of a previous syllogism. Notice the large number of highlighted premises and ask yourself for each, "What is the proof for this premise?" I am confident that you will find the answer is almost always, "There is no proof for this premise."
XI. "...three days after his death, and against every predisposition to the contrary, individuals and groups had experiences that completely convinced them that they had met a physically resurrected Jesus." There is literally no evidence for this at all (keeping in mind that Christian sacred texts are not evidence for the same reason that Hindu sacred texts are not evidence). Hell, Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Christ" even has a strong argument that Jesus didn't exist! (I don't agree with the conclusion of the argument, though I found his methods and the evidence he gathered along the way to be worthy of consideration.)
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I don't think that I can dissuade you of your belief. But, I do hope to explain to you why, even if you find your arguments intuitively appealing, they do not conclusively demonstrate that your belief is true.
You are correct, your professor is a fundamentalist. Check out The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings by Bart D. Ehrman and An Introduction to the New Testament by Raymond E. Brown.
Hmm. I would love for Sam to interview Richard Carrier next to see if he convinces Sam that the historicity of Jesus, like many 'fringe' historians believe, is in doubt.
edit: his book, On the Historicity of Jesus, was peer reviewed and published by a major academic press, and is the first book on the subject to do so. That was in 2014. Carrier and other mythicists believe there is not enough historical evidence to say 'Jesus, the man, probably existed,' and if you read his arguments, they're compelling. Notice, he doesn't say 'Jesus definitely never existed,' just that the other side hasn't met their burden of proof.
His earlier book, Proving History, outlines many of the problems in the field of Jesus studies, namely, that no historical criteria has led any two scholars to the same conclusion about the actual life of Jesus the man. To quote:
>“I won't recount the whole history of historical Jesus research here, as that has been done to death already. Indeed, accounts of the many “quests” for the historical Jesus and their failure are legion, each with their own extensive bibliography. Just to pick one out of a hat, Mark Strauss summarizes, in despair, the many Jesuses different scholars have “discovered” in the evidence recently. Jesus the Jewish Cynic Sage. Jesus the Rabbinical Holy Man (or Devoted Pharisee, or Heretical Essene, or any of a dozen other contradictory things). Jesus the Political Revolutionary or Zealot Activist. Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet. And Jesus the Messianic Pretender (or even, as some still argue, Actual Messiah). And that's not even a complete list. We also have Jesus the Folk Wizard (championed most famously by Morton Smith in Jesus the Magician, and most recently by Robert Conner in Magic in the New Testament). Jesus the Mystic and “Child of Sophia” (championed by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and John Shelby Spong). Jesus the Nonviolent Social Reformer (championed by Bruce Malina and others).
>Excerpt From: Carrier, Richard C. “Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.”
(It goes on from there.)
I'm no historian, but have been interested in the Jesus myth question since I lost my faith a few years ago. I am a fan of Richard Carrier, to reveal my own bias.
A few thoughts that I think are fair:
You wanted to be part of the intelligentsia, but throughout your philosophical journey, you always based your convictions only on authority and tradition instead of on evidence and arguments. Don't you realize that this is the epitome of anti – intellectualism?
It is correct that the New Atheists aren't the pinnacle of atheistic thought and didn't contribute many new ideas to the academic debate of atheism vs. theism or religion. But this was never their goal, and it is also unnecessary, since the academic debate is already over for many decades. If you want to know why the arguments for theism are all complete nonsense and not taken seriously anymore, why Christianity is wrong just about everything and why apologists like Craig are dishonest charlatans who make a living out of fooling people, your reading list shouldn't be New Atheists, but rather something like this:
Colin Howson – Objecting to God
George H. Smith – Atheism: The Case Against God
Graham Oppy – Arguing about Gods
Graham Oppy – The Best Argument Against God
Herman Philipse – God in the Age of Science
J. L. Mackie – The Miracle of Theism
J. L. Schellenberg – The Wisdom to Doubt
Jordan Sobel – Logic and Theism
Nicholas Everitt – The Non-Existence of God
Richard Gale – On the Nature and Existence of God
Robin Le Poidevin – Arguing for Atheism
Stewart Elliott Guthrie – Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion
Theodore Drange – Nonbelief & Evil
[Avigor Shinan – From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609086)
Bart Ehrman – The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
Bart Ehrman – Jesus, Interrupted
Bart Ehrman – Misquoting Jesus
Burton L. Mack – Who Wrote the New Testament?
Helmut Koester – Ancient Christian Gospels
John Barton, John Muddiman – The Oxford Bible Commentary
John Dominic Crossan – Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
Karen Armstrong – A History of God
Mark Smith – The Early History of God
Randel McCraw Helms – Who Wrote the Gospels?
Richard Elliott Friedman – Who Wrote the Bible?
Robert Bellah – Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
Robert Walter Funk – The Gospel of Jesus
Richard Carrier has explored this issue recently in a two-book series (Proving History, and On the Historicity of Jesus. Here is a lecture he gave while the second book was in progress, if you want an overview of the arguments. He's the most prominent historian I know of who considers a mythical Jesus most plausible.
Sort of indirectly related to SneerClub subjects, I hope that's ok. Apparently this guy Richard Carrier - of course not himself a New Testament specialist at all - tried to show that Jesus did not exist by waving the Bayes wand. Needless to say, it got rather bad reviews in professional journals. It seems a pretty astonishing example though of the belief that by applying Bayes' formula to any subject, you don't need to actually know anything about it...
I've seen people bash him as biased, which basically translates to 'expressing an opinion that isn't mine', but his textbook is used by Yale.
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Historical-Introduction/dp/0199757534/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=0Q6BZ93J12DD40QV0N3R
I've also never seen him engage in polemic ... the guy maintains an even tone in the face of retards, and acts like a teacher should.
> Redditepsilon, 2 day old account. While a very young account is usually indicative of some sort of got'ca or make-a-claim hit and run account - Redditepsilon, your post history provides some evidence that you will actually discuss/debate against your topic post, so some short answers (mostly copy and paste from previous debates) to these common claims.
> If we look at the background historical data on the resurrection of Jesus, which is the empty tomb,
Let's look at what is arguably the most important narrative related to Jesus in Christianity, the Resurrection narratives. Ignoring the completely inaccurate portrayal of the Roman trial law and procedures in the Trial of Jesus, and the historically unsupportable removal of the body of the decessed Jesus from the crufix and tomb burial - which presumes that the body was actually placed in the tomb (link - warning a HUGH wall of text), let's look at the consistency and accuracy of the various canon Gospel narratives related to the resurrection. The much studied, and selected, Gospel canon narratives, canon selected by learned men who had both (1) strong motivation to select narratives that supported their worldview and confirmation bias and (2) demonstrated rejection of dogma/narratives that did not fit their self-selected criteria, results in a series of Resurrection narratives that are highly non-internally consistent.
Before the Christian Apologist kicks in and claims that these narratives are all essentially the same (somehow), consider the narratives from the claim that there is a truth position in Christianity/Yahweh's existence that results from the argument of internal consistency and historical fact. Given the widely different versions of the Resurrection narrative, for what is arguably the most important and essential event/tenet of Christianity, the argument from internal consistency of it's own historical fact fails to be credible.
> the post-mortem apparances of Jesus to different people and groups of people
Besides the claim of the apostles that they saw Jesus post-resurrection, who were these other people?
> the origin of the disciples faith that Jesus rose from the dead
But speaking of the appearance of post-resurrection Jesus - Jesus purposefully provided empirical physical, and falsifiable, evidence that he (Jesus) was alive and in natural physical human body form (Doubting Thomas, John 20:24-29) following the Resurrection. 1. Why does Jesus fail to provide such evidence now? and 2. In light of the actions of Jesus, why is Religious Faith considered such a virtue?
> the willingness of Jesus' disciples to go to their deaths for that faith
Fallacy of argumentum ad martyrium (argument from martyrdom). While the argument from martyrdom, an appeal to emotion, produces an emotional response, the act of martyrdom/suicide in no way provides, or supports, a truth position against the belief that is used to support the label of martyr. People voluntarily die for all sorts of beliefs that have no truth value.
For a detailed assessment see: March to Martyrdom! (Down the Yellow Brick Road…)
> is that a convincing evidence on a balance of probability, that Jesus was raised from the dead?
No. The claim/assertions of resurrection is, at best, highly questionable.
> And doesn't that suggest he was raised by God from the dead?
Again no.
> it's almost certain he [Jesus] existed.
Did Jesus the man exist as depicted in the New Testament of the Bible?
Given the contradictions internally within in the narratives and the contradictions in events/dates between the narratives and events/dates presented in contemporary histories, I would say that it is unlikely that, presuming existence of a historical figure, the depiction of Jesus the man in the Gospels is accurate.
I will concede that there was a man, a Jewish man, that acted as a Rabbi, and that preached a form of divergent Judaism, and that lived around 4 BCE'ish till around 29 BCE'ish (when this man is said to have died). I concede that a historical Jesus existed, where Jesus is the name given to the archetype of the person upon which the Jesus narrative in the New Testament is based. Yĕhōšuă‘, Joshua, Jesus, יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, was not an uncommon name within the Hebrew community and may represent the actual name of this archetypal person. This Jesus character is also attributed with what can arguably be described as a lite version of the morality of Buddhism, and this Jesus was a decent, though with a rather shallow philosophy, fellow. This Jesus was also atypical of the contemporary Jews as he was in his 30's and had not married.
The Divine narrative attributed to the Jesus character, however, is a different issue.
If you are interested in a mythist position concerning the historical Jesus, check out:
Summary: The assumption that Jesus existed as a historical person has occasionally been questioned in the course of the last hundred years or so, but any doubts that have been raised have usually been put to rest in favor of imagining a blend of the historical, the mythical and the theological in the surviving records of Jesus. Carrier re-examines the whole question and finds compelling reasons to suspect the more daring assumption is correct. He lays out extensive research on the evidence for Jesus and the origins of Christianity and poses the key questions that must now be answered if the historicity of Jesus is to survive as a dominant paradigm. Carrier contrasts the most credible reconstruction of a historical Jesus with the most credible theory of Christian origins if a historical Jesus did not exist. Such a theory would posit that the Jesus figure was originally conceived of as a celestial being known only through private revelations and hidden messages in scripture; then stories placing this being in earth history were crafted to communicate the claims of the gospel allegorically; such stories eventually came to be believed or promoted in the struggle for control of the Christian churches that survived the tribulations of the first century. Carrier finds the latter theory more credible than has been previously imagined. He explains why it offers a better explanation for all the disparate evidence surviving from the first two centuries of the Christian era. He argues that we need a more careful and robust theory of cultural syncretism between Jewish theology and politics of the second-temple period and the most popular features of pagan religion and philosophy of the time. For anyone intent on defending a historical Jesus, this is the book to challenge.
OP, if you wish to have a more indepth discussion/debate, a suggestion... Pick just one claim/assertion, start a new topic (here in /r/debateanatheist or /r/DebateReligion), present your claim and supporting argument/position, and then defend that claim and argument. When you post as many claims as you did in this topic post (and presented without actual credible evidence or supporting argument), the length of a full and detailed response becomes silly.
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EDIT: Going back to the empty tomb argument....
OP, here are some previous discussions concerning the claims made around the empty tomb that came up in /r/AcademicBiblical.
/r/AcademicBiblical is a fairly active subreddit that discusses early Judaism and Christianity—with a focus on Biblical texts, but also related noncanonical literature (1 Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.)—in a scholarly context. A highly recommended subreddit for all those interested in studies of Judaism and Christianity.
If you want a Conservative Scholarly treatment of the problem of the Canon, I'd suggest reading Canon Revisited by Michael Kruger. He also has a series of lectures on the Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) mobile app called "The Origin and Authority of the New Testament Canon" that are really good (here is the course syllabus: PDF warning. This is a tough subject, but if you really want to dig deep into it Michael Kruger is the go-to scholar for a Conservative Reformed approach to the Canon of scripture.
I bought the Jefferson Bible about two months ago. I went for the nicer "Smithsonian Edition". So worth it. Each page is a high resolution scan of Jefferson's handwritten notes, and annotations. And you can see how Jefferson literally cut paragraphs and sentences out form the King James bible and pasted it into his own "bible".
Example of the differences between the traditional King James Version, and Jefferson's Bible: The Story of Finding Young Jesus in the Market Preaching to the to the old Scholars.
KJV/NIV Version: The story goes that Joseph and Mary left the city of Bethleham, and realize they left Jesus behind (people in those days travelled in caravans and kids were running around everywhere I guess). So they travel back to the city and search for young Jesus. They find him in the Temple preaching to the old Scholars, who were blown away by Jesus's teachings. Mary goes up to young Jesus and says, "why'd you leave us? Don't you know how worried we were?". Young Jesus famously responds: "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"
Jefferson's Version: Same as above...Mary goes into the Temple, finds young Jesus talking to the old Scholars of the city, who all seem blown away by how smart Jesus is. . Mary goes "don't you know you worried us?" ...No response from Jesus. Jefferson cut out the God-like sounding "Don't you know you were in my Father's house?", but left the fact that Jesus was in fact found in the the Temple and that the old smart guys were blown away by the intellect of Young Jesus.
The Jefferson Bible is fascinating. I recommend everyone get a copy if they have the slightest interest/background in Catholicism/Christianity.
Btw, Jefferson didn't call it his "Bible". He called it "The Morals of Jesus Christ".
Fun trivia fact: Jefferson thought Paul the Apostle was a quack.
Source: I'm more or less an Atheist, and think Jesus was an insanely smart prodigy for his time who was very wise and said peaceful nice things that made good/common sense. I believe all the miracles/magic were added to the Bible by later people to make it seem more inspiring and awesome. All that stuff is bullshit. (I heard Jefferson thought that too, so I bought his compiled book, aka: The Jefferson Bible.)
EDIT: The version I bought: http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Morals-Nazareth/dp/158834312X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1449859239&sr=8-2&keywords=jefferson+bible
There is also a Kindle Version that is super cheap (99 cents I think). Pretty sure you can just google it and find PDF versions.
Other scholars think the ratio is more likely to be 0%. Source: Richard Carrier.
To answer these types of questions, your best bet is to read just about anything by Bart Ehrman, for example you could try Forged: Writing in the Name of God. Ehrman is a very distinguished Biblical scholar and religious studies Prof at UNC-Chapel Hill, and knows his stuff, plus his works are generally accessible.
Ok, so first things first, stop saying it in the plural - Its the Revelation to St. John, so "The Book of Revelation."
Secondly, some fun tidbits.
FOr a good lay treatment of the text by a scholar, try pagels - https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
> By the methods and standards of the historical community writ large, a historical Jesus existed.
I'm curious if you have any material to back this up. The most (only?) interesting part of the debate to me is whether historical Jesus studies actually uses good historical methods, and it's the topic of the book Carrier just wrote(which i haven't read yet, but have listened to an interview about).
I'm also not a historian, and really haven't looked into this issue, so I'm interested if you have any insights.
(FWIW, I couldn't care less if there was a historical, non-creedal Jesus or not. I'm really quite puzzled why people seem to care so much. But if everyone's gonna talk about it, I might as well learn something. ;-)
Read Robert M. Price's (whom Fitzgerald mentions 2 minutes into his talk) The Incredible Shrinking Son of man
Very interesting stuff and a very entertaining read.
Yes. His book On the Historicity of Jesus is published by an academic house and passed peer review.
He's also previously published scholarly articles, but I don't have any handy.
>start with one lie that, if true, is sufficient, but then pepper in like two or three other things that are progressively less relevant
Bingo. And it's also the mark of a truly stupid liar, because each successive addition to the excuse chain brings down the mathematical probability that the core statement is true.
(Disclaimer: considering that I'm almost 40 but I only learned about this last year from this excellent book by Richard Carrier I think it's fair to say I'm a pretty dumb motherfucker myself, but I'll try to make sense.)
Take any statement A. You don't know whether it's true or not, but you can assign it a probability of being true. Let's say that the probability is 0.5 (50%) - a coin toss is worth your best guess at this point.
Then, imagine that there are more statements like that, let's call them B, C, and D. Again, you know nothing about the truth behind them, either, but you can again estimate that each of them has a 0.5 probability of being true.
Now, take three people:
Person 1 tells you "A".
Person 2 tells you "A and B".
Person 3 tells you "A, B, C, and also D, believe me, believe me".
At this point you still don't know anything about any of those four statements, but you can calculate the probability for each person of being full of shit.
Person 1 only claimed one statement, A, so the likelihood he's full of shit is 0.5 (50%).
Person 2 went further and claimed A and B. The probability that both are true is 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25.
Person 3 is the bigliest guy with the best words, believe me. The probability of his four-part statement chain is 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.0625 - that's 6.25%.
Because person 3 is a fucking moron he went and stacked multiple statements on top of one another, thereby bringing his full-of-shitness from a 50% likelihood to a whopping 93.75%. Just like that, what a fucking clown.
PS: You can of course have different probabilities for each statement, and they can differ from one another, too. But by definition if you don't know the truth for sure then it logically follows none of the statements can ever achieve a probability of 1. The conclusion is that every additional statement will always reduce the overall likelihood.
The historical Jesus is there. Certainly Jesus of Nazareth existed. Josephus, Tacitus, and I think the Talmud, and maybe Suetonius all have info about Him although scant.
For reading (not light) about evidence for the resurrection, I would suggest:
The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham
The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple by Richard Bauckham
An old standard is St. Augustine's Confessions. A new one is N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God.
I find both authors compelling for different reasons. I think Augustine is great at just writing about what it's like to be human. He knew what psychology was before it was invented, and it takes a great deal of honesty and self-reflection and humility to write about what goes on in your head, rather than what you wish went on in your head.
As for Wright, I really like The Resurrection of the Son of God because I think apologetics need to start with the cross.
He's written a number of books on the subject. The Resurrection of the Son of God is a big one.
I agree with /u/robsc_16. People are very uncomfortable with what may be perceived as a challenge to their beliefs, and our society (wrongly) sees religious belief and academic study as somehow opposed to each other.
But that view isn't wholly without reason. When you have people, say, denying evolution on the one hand, and others (such as Tyson or Hitchens) telling religious people that they're deluded and stupid, it's small wonder that everyone's a little nervous about that kind of conversation. That we can only communicate these days by yelling at each other just makes it that much worse.
Bart Ehrman's a good example. He's done a lot for the study of Christian literature, and I have the book he and Bruce Metzger wrote/updated on how the New Testament in its current form came to be. But some of the lectures he's given really seem like he has rather a chip on his shoulder about at least some Christian views, and beyond that, it's hard for all involved to separate authority from arrogance. He's also gotten some stuff wrong: for example, he said in one lecture that the "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" story didn't show up until like the 10th century, which is wrong (it's in one manuscript that's a good 500 years older). Maybe a quibble, but when this is your job...
I think the problem ultimately boils down to why people go into it. Folks who do it to get ammunition then use it as such, and so tend to turn off everyone else. But beyond that, I'm not really sure...maybe it's just something that's taken for granted? Like, how many Christians really stop and think about it?
All of these things are majority mainstream views. This is what I was taught a state university.
Bart Ehrman's textbook on the New Testament goes over this exact material.
I would recommend the work of Michael
Kruger like Canon Revisited or The Question of Canon.
Beyond that, a classic is Warfield's The Authority and Inspiration of the Bible. Maybe even Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.
> I believe that if Jesus was a real person, he taught love and forgiveness...He just wasn't the son of a god
Have you ever read the Jefferson Bible? It is a compilation of the King James Bible, with all supernatural events cut out, only leaving the teachings and morals of Christianity; made by Thomas Jefferson himself.
EDIT: You can buy a copy here
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users.
I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
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^Please ^PM ^/u/eganwall ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^Delete
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
If it's textual criticism you're interested in and you're just starting out, I'd recommend the following two books to wet your appetite. They both will have bibliographies to get you deeper into the study as you wish.
David C. Parker. An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts. (ISBN: 978-0521719896)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521719895/
Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. Fourth Edition. (ISBN: 978-0195161229)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/019516122X/
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.
Here is the Amazon link! Like I said, this is the best comprehensive New Testament text book I have come across in my study and research as a budding scholar of religion.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534
If you're wondering what makes Catholicism true among other religions, consider that Christianity is rather unique among religions for its truth value being directly tied to an historical event: Christ's Resurrection. If Jesus did rise from the dead, Christianity is decisively vindicated, regardless of the other religions' claims (which is not to say other religions may not have insights or elements of the truth, just that they are not the full truth in the way Christianity is). For that reason I advise looking into apologetics defending the resurrection. Here's a short reading list to get you started:
Aside from Finklestein's book, there is Robert Price's Holy Fable: The Old Testament Unencumbered by Faith. Robert Price is a former evangelical minister-turned-atheist, but with a deep understanding of the bible. It is maybe a bit too skeptical, but it's still got a lot of good info.
In general:
The Torah / Pentateuch was written by (at least) 4 different sources, and compiled (much?) later. There's the Elohist, the Yahweist, the Deutoronomist, and the Priestly source. This explains why there are 2 different versions of a number of stories - for example, there are 2 creation stories; Noah is simultaneously the "only righteous man" God could find, and also a lazy drunk; there are two full sets of 10 commandments, only 3 of which overlap (so there are actually 17 commandments) etc. Someone (likely the Deutoronomist) compiled the book, and not wanting to risk being wrong, included multiple stories and tried to make them jive with one another.
Generally speaking, Moses is nearly universally agreed to have been a myth, along with Joshua. There is no archeological evidence that ancient Hebrews were ever in Egypt, or ever wandered in the desert for 40 years, although stories of Pharaoh may have come from a time when Egypt ruled the Levant (Moses is an Egyptian name, from the same root as Tutmose or Ramses).
The ancient Hebrews were, most evidence supports now, one of many Canaanite tribes, and happened to be the one that managed to stick around. They were also polytheistic for a very long time into their existence - a number of stories have been altered to whitewash this out. The 12 (13? 11 plus grandsons? sources are all over the place on this one) sons of Judah/Israel heading the 12 tribes of Israel are likely figureheads that were ret-conned into existence as more tribes joined with the Hebrews through conquest. Kind of like "Oh, well, we'll join you, we're probably related somewhere way back anyway!". There is also little to no evidence of an epic conquest of the holy land, a. la. Joshua, and many of the vast cities and huge fortresses referenced in the book of Joshua were, archaeology says, minor hamlets with hundreds or thousands of people at most.
There is very little evidence for the existence of David. There is an inscription on a very old (non-Israelite) stone tablet that may reference the "House of David" from several hundred years after David was supposed to have been around. I'm willing to concede that he may have existed, but he was likely a "chieftain" rather than a king. Almost all scholars agree that there was never a united kingdom of Israel and Judah. Jerusalem, at the time of David (10th century BCE), was a very small village or outpost, and there is also no evidence of a first (or Solomon's) temple. There is, however, ample evidence of a 2nd temple (which was greatly expanded by Herod near the BCE/CE switch).
1,2 Kings was written either during the Babylonian exile, or shortly after it. There are just too many anachronisms (bronze weapons, camels, etc) for it to have been written during the time of its subjects, and its subject matter (continued allegiance to Yahweh will bring you victory, breaking Yahweh's commandments will bring you strife) is clearly aimed at explaining circumstances to an Israelite population that has experienced lots of strife.*
1,2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah (originally all one work) looks to be a redaction and rewrite of 1,2 Kings in large part, but by the priestly source - who is working hard to clean up the image of certain people (David had Uriah killed? Nah, let's skip that. David's sons did bad things? Nix it. etc) at the same time that he's working to ret-con a place of prominence for priests of his tribe.
Anyway, skipping ahead to the New Testament, I would also recommend another extreme skeptic's book: Dr. Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus. Dr. Carrier's position is well outside the mainstream consensus, but there's no denying that A.) He is extremely well versed in his subject area, and B.) the mainstream consensus is very conservative, as it is made up of largely religious institutions and believers who all have a vested interest. So his book is good for contrast, and the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
For starters, the earliest parts of the New Testament are the letters of Paul. Paul, for sure, wrote 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, and Romans 1-8. The rest are kind of up for grabs, with some possibly by Paul, and some certainly being forgeries and written as late as the 2nd or possibly even 3rd century. Paul's Jesus is very vague (as in, celestial, not earthly, and working through revelation), and Paul nearly goes out of his way to not talk about Jesus' earthly life - even in places where Jesus ostensibly talked about specific topics that would indisputably bolster Paul's arguments.
Next, we have Mark. Mark's gospel was written first, and Mark's Jesus is somewhat timid and understated. Mark also has little understanding of Galilean geography (the vast "Sea of Galilee" that witnesses such horrible storms is, in reality, a pond that you could kayak across in an hour, for example). Then, Matthew wrote his gospel, using Mark as a source, along with possibly the "Q" source, or possibly just adding things that he had heard or liked. Matthew's Jesus is a scholarly rabbi, and he talks of how Christians should keep the Jewish customs along with the new customs of Christ. Matthew also corrects Mark - a lot. Then, we have Luke, who uses Mark and possibly "Q" or possibly Matthew as his source. Luke's Jesus is the Gentile Jesus, who brings new rules and is for everyone, not just Jews. Those are the Synoptic gospels; then we get to John.
Oh, boy. John... is nuts. John's Jesus is large, in charge, and slinging miracles and witticisms in every direction. There's nothing about helping the poor or healing the sick, but there's a huge serving of hating the Jews. John also contains a number of Gnostic themes that have likely been toned down over the years - John's gospel is the one that is most obviously cut up and rearranged and altered. There's a lot of things like "And then Jesus did his first miracle. And then he did many other miracles. And then he did his second miracle", or Jesus teleporting, popping up all over Galilee, one place after another. But anyway, it’s likely that John’s gospel was so popular that it couldn’t be kept out of the New Testament, once the Council of Nicaea got around to picking which books got in, so it had to be altered in order to tone it down a bit.
The contents of Acts are impossible to square with the letters of Paul - Acts tells a story of the early church, huddled together, building outward, ministering to Galilee, growing larger in harmony. But Paul - Paul does not get along with the so-called fathers of the church in Jerusalem. We also know, partly from other sources, that the early church was very fractured, and only now looks harmonious because the winning faction got to poke and rewrite a lot of the history.
The rest of the New Testament was largely written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and can't have any relevant information to share about the life and times of Jesus, having been written several generations at least after the last person that could have ever met him had died.
Anyway, that's a more-or-less short version of some of the ins-and-outs of some major episodes of the Bible.
* Totally my aside: the concept of religious guilt, IMO, stems from here. In olden times, gods were like mascots - you moved to a new place, you adopt the local gods -
or, you get conquered, it must have been that their god was stronger, so why not jump on the winning bandwagon. The Deutoronomist, the likely source of the idea of the "covenant with god", introduces the idea that believing in a god is a two-way street. Believe enough, and do what he wants, and good things will happen -- but don't believe, or don't do what he wants, and now bad things happen, and it's kinda your fault. The aim was to keep the Hebrews from converting to Babylonian or other Canaanite gods.
Cue thousands of years of catholic guilt, etc.
If you want, you can get a Jefferson for a Hamilton.
>It's not like in Mark's "lost" ending Jesus stayed dead
Right. That was The Gospel according to Thomas Jefferson.
>or came back as a zombie and terrorized Judea
Not sure who that's "the Gospel according to", but I'm interested.
> Why, Christianity as opposed to atheism or other religions?
Hey man, I can't help you much with the questions about the specifics of creation and the role death plays in it, that has never bothered me a lot and I came to Christianity already believing that evolution is true. But I can help you with this question, I hope.
If you really want to find out you will have to do your own research on Christianity and other religions and on atheism and make up your mind. That said I think the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is very strong. I'd encourage you, if you have the time and money, to read the following two books: The Jesus Legend by Boyd & Eddy, and The Resurrection of Jesus by Licona. Both are very thorough and scholarly, the first dealing with the reliability of the gospels in general and the latter dealing with Jesus' resurrection in particular.
If you want a well grounded faith, you need to have a solid foundation. So many people believe in Jesus because they think the Bible is inerrant and when they discover that it isn't so, their faith quickly falls away. When our faith depends on the inerrancy of the Bible, our faith depends on our ability to resolve any and all of the apparent (and real) contradictions, both internal to the Bible and between Bible and external reality (like with young earth creationism and science). When we come across a contradiction that we can't resolve, our faith then will quickly come crashing down.
It should be the other way around: Jesus should be our foundation, and because Jesus is God and He held Scripture in high regard, we should have a healthy respect for Scripture as well. Perhaps then we won't tie ourselves in knots in trying to come up with tortured interpretations whenever the house of cards of inerrancy threatens to come crashing down. Look to Jesus when something in Scripture doesn't make sense; Jesus is the full revelation of God, the clearest picture (or icon if you like) of God that we will ever get in this earthly life.
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.
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?
How much have you actually looked? No one wants you to pretend to believe when you don't actually believe, but reading standard atheist talking points isn't exactly strong research. Have you looked at, for example, anything like N. T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God?
The similarities of the crucifixion and resurrection to pagan stories are usually overstated.
Richard Carrier has one book out and another on the way addressing the issue from a more scholarly direction. Proving History is the first book. The second is due out in a few months if I remember correctly.
Robert M. Price also has a good work on the subject. The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems
Start with those two. They both have talks on YouTube about the historicity of the gospels. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm utterly convinced, but they are pretty compelling. Carrier and Eherman have had a bit of a feud over the issue and again, Carrier seems to have the better argument.
>The stumbling blocks I now face in terms of figuring out what I believe mostly revolve around the question of the historicity of miraculous claims in the New Testament.
There are a couple good books on the Resurrection by N.T. Wright and William Lane Craig. Inspiring Philosophy has some good videos on it, too. If you are looking for an overall study on the historical Christ, Dr. Brant Pitre's The Case for Jesus helped me a lot, too.
Edit: Found [this] (https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0830827196&pd_rd_r=SJ4TFXY6VPE6WWN54P2K&pd_rd_w=rp8N4&pd_rd_wg=hhCdC&psc=1&refRID=SJ4TFXY6VPE6WWN54P2K). Looks to me to be less apologetic-y and more based on the historical facts, but comes to a similar conclusion.
Try the Jefferson Bible. Good writer and he did very similar to what you suggest.
http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Morals-Nazareth/dp/158834312X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1317942974&sr=8-2
This book was required reading at my Christian seminary.
Two other relevant, interesting and easy-to-read texts from my M.Div. program were Denzey’s Intro to “Gnosticism” and Ehrmam’s The New Testament
NT Wright
The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0800626796/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_29m8CbB0JJ9TY
This is a voluminous exploration. Wright is not perfect but this is a good tome.
I have not read it, but I have been told repeatedly that NT Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God is an excellent discussion of the historical evidence for the Resurrection. It’s 740 pages long, so I imagine that he gets into the questions you’re asking.
I might also suggest Fr. Robert Spitzer from the Magis Center who has a 26 page overview of scholarship on this issue on his site. He includes references to other works you might find interesting in his footnotes. Section IV of that article addresses another of NT Wright’s works, Jesus and the Victory of God which also speaks to the witness of the early Church.
I'll start with theology (broadly construed) first. There's no particular order, but I've separated them into "lighter" and "heavier" categories. I'm happy to talk about why I think each book is a "must read" you want. I'll try to come back later and give some fiction recommendations.
Lighter theology:
Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition by Jamie Smith (top recommendation if you haven't read it).
Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport: Making Connections in Today's World by Richard Mouw.
Knowing God by J.I. Packer.
Chosen by God by R.C. Sproul
Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin by Cornelius Plantinga.
Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality by Wesley Hill.
[Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ] (http://www.amazon.com/Rejoicing-Lament-Wrestling-Incurable-Cancer/dp/1587433583) by J. Todd Billings
Christ, Baptism and the Lord's Supper: Recovering the Sacraments for Evangelical Worship
When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham.
The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John Walton
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis Collins.
Literally everything by CS Lewis
Any of Zondervan's Counterpoints series. My current favorite in the series is Five Views On Biblical Inerrancy by Al Mohler, Kevin Vanhoozer, Michael Bird, Peter Enns, and John Franke
Heavier Theology
The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics by Robert A. J. Gagnon
Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church's Debate on Same-Sex Relationships by James Brownson.
Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation by R. Michael Allen and Scott Swain
Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics: An Introduction and Reader by Allen
The abridged version of Reformed Dogmatics by Herman Bavink.
Systematic Theology
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Baucham might be a good place to look at. His argument is that the gospels could only have been written by eyewitnesses.
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.
> Paul is a Stoic through and through
I really hate to nitpick, and I know of at least one scholar who agrees with you, but I think Paul wasn't as much of a stoic as some think. N.T. Wright (in his latest gargantuan work on Paul) argues expertly against Troels Endberg-Pedersen, effectively demonstrating that Paul has some very important (almost irreconcilable) differences from stoicism.
***
> Neoplatonism is an incredibly obvious influence, especially on the Gospel of John
Interesting... How so? Are you referring to the hellenistic idea of the λόγος? I didn't know that was neoplatonistic. I knew it was hellenistic, but I'm not all that familiar with neoplatonism.
I cannot encourage you ENOUGH to read "Miracles" by Craig Keener. http://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-Testament-Accounts-Volume/dp/0801039525 It also goes into the accounts of modern healers, and he interviews those who were supposedly healed by known healing giants, such as Kathryn Kuhlman and John Wimber, and from churches like Bethel.
When folks discuss the gospels as eyewitness testimony, they're not saying that they were written by eyewitnesses, merely that eyewitnesses were the sources of the information (rather than a game of telephone.)
Have you read Jesus and the Eyewitnesses?
Thanks for your nice message.
These arguments made a big difference in my life and if they make a difference in someone else’s life (or at the very least challenged them to give serious consideration to the evidence of natural theology) I am very happy to hear it.
I understand your reservations about the argument from desire. I think I mention in my discussion of it that it has only moderate force but has an important place in the cumulative case.
I would highly recommend some further reading because my posts are all capsule versions of arguments that are presented and defended with much greater rigour in my sources. If you only ever read two books on this subject let them be The Existence of God by Richard Swinburne and The Resurrection of the Son of God by N. T. Wright. If you have an iPad or Kindle both are obtainable in a matter of seconds online.
And regarding your question, I recommend this video: The whole thing or from around 6:00 if you’re short on time. In short: Aquinas suggested that wealth and poverty can each be either a blessing or a curse. Much more would need to be said to give a satisfactory answer but I think that is a good starting point. And of course if third world poverty is something that could be ended if first world countries were totally committed to ending it, then ultimately it is a consequence of moral evil.
All the best :)
Or this book.
Tanhan, seriously?
There was no council that decided it. Hippo simply affirmed what was already in use. Kruger is literally the guy on the canon right now. He has written several books on the subject.
> but a historical Jesus isn’t a point of contention for historical/biblical scholars.
Also existence of Bigfoot is not a point of contention for lifelong believers. I don't understand why you appeal to a source with such a conflict of interest.
Point of Contention
>
actuallyprobably*
That's the best we can do, since the evidence is suspiciously lacking and internally contradictory.
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Happy Ēostre, and happy reading!
> people who believe that Jesus never existed despite historical data
please enlighten us and share just one contemporary historical evidence of Jesus' existence
for those new to this topic: there are none - every single piece of evidence comes much later, the earliest several decades after the death of Jesus. The more detailed and dependable "historical evidence" even later, at times hundreds of years later. None are contemporary.
for those curious to learn more via an PhD academic treatise on the topic:
http://www.amazon.com/On-Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason/dp/1909697494
You really can't go that far. There's plenty of debate on that subject. The problem is nearly all Jesus scholars are Christians, who clearly have a vested interested in Jesus actually having existed.
Here's a an example of two articles from reputable sources that disputes historical Jesus's existence.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/18/did-historical-jesus-exist-the-traditional-evidence-doesnt-hold-up/?utm_term=.e4d85d9499a1
https://www.livescience.com/13711-jesus-christ-man-physical-evidence-hold.html
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Remember, there is not one single mentioning of Jesus that was written during his supposed life. Such a thing just does not exist. 2,000 years of people wanting it to be true have planted many many fakes (Shroud of Turin, for example). But that's not even the real problem with finding out if a particular person existed such a long time ago. Physical evidence decays, gets translated improperly, gets lost or destroyed.
I'm not saying he did, or did not live. I'm saying that your original statement "that virtually all scholars agree existed" is not true. These events happened too long ago to verify 100% that any of it happened at all. Combine that with 2,000 years of mistranslations, faked artifacts and most scholars having preconceived notions, it's just not possible to verify these things.
I understand you will disagree. But consider this: Nearly all active Mormons scholars believe the golden plates really existed. And that only supposedly happened in 1823. Time muddles the true events of everything. 2,000 of time muddles the true events a lot.
Edit: a few words
No, not that likely at all: On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
Reposting my comment from earlier in the month:
Non-religious academics
Religious academics
At the more apologetic end, there's the recent book by Brant Pitre: The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ.
At the "rejecting the idea of Jesus" end there's:
Neither of which have found wide favor among either religious or non-religious academics (Ehrman and Casey's work being direct rebuttals for many of the arguments).
Dr. Richard Carrier's new book further cements the Mythicist view as very plausible.
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:
Christianity:
Judaism:
Islam:
Buddhism:
Taoism:
Atheism:
The wiki for this sub suggests the following:
If any moderators are reading I personally propose adding this to the Wiki, it's excellent:
On 1 Corinthians 14.34-35, see this paper for a good start: "the hallmarks of interpolation are exemplified" in these two verses (inconsistent placement in the text, textual variations, atypical vocab for the author, disruptive to the otherwise natural flow of the text, and early awareness in manuscripts that something was "off" about the passage).
On the pastoral letters, see this book, chapter 24, by Ehrman. Despite some of the sensationalism of his popular level books, his academic books really are well received among scholars, and this book is representative of the cumulative efforts of the field, not just himself.
> Most scholars are reasonably convinced that all three Pastoral epistles were written by the same author. . . . was that [author] the apostle Paul? . . . we do find an inordinate number of non-Pauline words, most of which occur in later Christian writings. Sophisticated studies of the Greek text of these books have come up with with the following data: . . . 848 different words found in the Pastorals; of these, 306 occur nowhere else in the Pauline corpus of the New Testament . . . This means that over one-third of the vocabulary is not Pauline.
Of the vocabulary in common with Paul's authentic letters (faith, righteous, etc.), several are now used with very different definitions. There's more than just vocabulary and style, though, so I recommend reading the full chapter on the issue.
I don't know of any great online sources that directly answer "did Jesus exist?", but if you are interested check out The New Testament by Ehrman. It is a great introduction to "historical Jesus" studies and the origins of the New Testament documents. Also check out this Open Yale course. They both explain the historical tools used to answer these kinds of questions.
>Does anybody here have any insight? Suggestions on where I should start? I want to believe in Christ but I don't know how, and I'd very greatly appreciate any insight I could get.
Yes. Read The Resurrection of the Son of God by historian and New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, or watch this lecture summarizing the book's contents. In short: the basic historical facts which justify the inference to the Resurrection are all established by critical historical scholarship, and, in an attempt to explain the emergence of those historical events, the 'Resurrection hypothesis' has, by far, the greatest explanatory power.
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.
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.
If you're looking for something from the Christian perspective, but also properly historically researched, I have been told that the finest book on the subject is The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N.T. Wright.
I have not personally read it, although I do own it and will hopefully get around to it some day. I have read some of his less scholarly works, which, amusingly, often reference this and the other two enormous books in his "Christian Origins" series.
>many (most) of us could not give specific details about events that happened just 50 years ago
My wife can tell me about life in communist Poland during the eighties--including many specific details. Her stories can be verified by other people I know who had the same direct experiences.
Do you think Jesse Jackson is a trustworthy source for information about the assassination of MLK? He was there when it happened. It happened almost fifty years ago. Do you think he could still give a trustworthy account?
The various documents that make up the New Testament were written by and in collaboration with the people who were directly involved in the events recorded in the New Testament. This is, of course, disputable/debatable, and I'm not going to debate it. But if it is true that the New Testament documents were written by, under the direction of, or with the assistance of the people who were directly involved in the events they record, what justification do we have for doubting whether they're trustworthy? Unless, that is, we start with doubt or have some defeater for their claims.
Monotheist arguments
*
Christian specific arguments**
I do not find any of these convincing, but they are the arguments I've found so far.
Hill makes a pretty good argument for the early establishment of the original canonical gospels from the forensic evidence of Egyptian papyri: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199551235/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I believe that Bauckham makes the case that the names recorded in the gospels statistically match with the general proportion of those names in the period, something that anyone inventing the gospels much later would have had a very hard time doing: https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906
I’m not sure how Bauckham is received. Can anyone chime in with how his work has been reacted to?
The Canon of Scripture by F.F. Bruce. Can't go wrong with anything by F.F. Bruce imo hahah.
Metzger has a book on the subject that I haven't read yet but what to. He's one of the best scholars of the last 50 years.
Kruger is a prof at RTS so this is one that probably has a reformed bent to it. Haven't read this one yet either, but it is suppose to be good.
A lot of good comments here. I suggest you read a good book on the history of the canon, though. You’re operating with a few misconceptions.
Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books https://www.amazon.com/dp/1433505002/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_b8YnDbAKH12AB
Good books on the development of NT canon:
The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate
Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books
An interesting program refuting common objections to Sola Scriptura: Dr. Michael Kruger on the Dividing Line
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/158834312X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511497080&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=smithsonian+jefferson+bible&dpPl=1&dpID=51ynes2125L&ref=plSrch
:)
You'd enjoy this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Incredible-Shrinking-Son-Man-Tradition/dp/1591021219
That is a complete misunderstanding of the Council of Nicea and completely ignores the 300 years of other councils and scribal history before it.
EDIT: If anyone actually wants to understand the history of the collation of ancient manuscripts into the New Testament as it was and is currently done for translation, I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Text-New-Testament-Transmission-Restoration/dp/019516122X
I particularly recommend it because of Ehrman's involvement as co-author (even if I don't always agree with him) because as a strongly expressed atheist he is most interested in Historical accuracy as it applies to the transmission of the text.
People here will find a lot of answers as to how Gnostic texts are understood by historians as they relate to "mainstream" Christian development.
Came here to recommend the same Yale course, and combine that with Bart Erhman's book Introduction to the new testament.
I'm slowly working through NT Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God
Also, this book.
You should read N.T. Wright's Resurrection of the Son of God as it changed my mind about whether the resurrection could be established on historical grounds.
That's a good book, but I was talking about his scholarly work, The Resurrection of the Son of God. It's a 740 page dissection into it. It's on my to read list, but I haven't read it yet.
http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796
For anyone interested, there is a great talk from David Fitzgerald about the evidence of Jesus. And then there is a talk by Richard Carrier about the Jesus myth theory. Then there is also great deal of debates where Richard debates opponents of the myth theory. You can look and see, if their arguments seem valid. Lastly, Richard Carrier wrote a book which should be his complete case for the Jesus myth theory along with apologists arguments (didn't read it but I'm going to).
As far as forgeries go, Bart Ehrman has a good book about forgeries in the NT called Forged. This isn't just his view, but the view of many other scholars as well. The arguments are quite convincing, which involve dating, differences in theology, and differences in writing style. He also discusses counter arguments and the use of secretaries.
Another potential good read for those interested:
Paul and the Faithfulness of God https://www.amazon.com/dp/0800626834/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_4-wJAbN6F1NS6
I'm a big N.T. Wright fan for the perspective he gives on the context and world of 2nd Temple Judaism and Jews in the Grecko-Roman world.
For more academic and lengthy reading, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. For more casual and accessible reading, Paul: A Biography
I think the best thing to do here (especially if you enjoy reading) is to do some study into the good reasons why Christianity is believed to be correct. William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith is one of the best, most cohesive defenses of the reasonability of the Christian faith I've ever read but there are plenty of other good sources too (Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God and The Coherence of Theism, J.P. Moreland and Bill Craig's Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview, Paul Copan and Bill Craig's Come Let Us Reason, Craig Keener's Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, and Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief just to name a few).
According to the patristic canon, Jesus rebuked Peter exactly because it's bad to hurt people, even when it comes to self-defense. Moreover, according to the eyewitness hypothesis, the name of the slave whose ear was cut (Malchus) is given in the Gospel (of John) because he survived the events, and thus could have been used as an eyewitness (there would be people reading the Gospels who would have known Malchus and his story, or at least would be able in principle to verity it). Which kind of changes the whole narrative: it is the fact that he was spared that allowed him to, indirectly, help to spread the Gospel.
Not to mention the fact that Jesus explicitly undid the harm Peter did. In other words, I don't think it sounds like a good argument.
Do you mind terribly if I copy and paste something I wrote in a similar thread? It might help you make up your mind. Represents my many years of study as a believer. It is:
Science cannot help us answer the question, "Is there a God?" because it is not testable or subject to the scientific method.
Philosophy can help, and the arguments for or against the existence of God are called ontological arguments. There are several good ones: some of the strongest seems to be the Argument from Morality, the Argument from Beauty, and the Original Cause. Not sure if I can summarize all of them but maybe this is a start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument
The Argument from Morality is what really ensnared former atheist turned Christian C.S. Lewis. He believed that while we do have man made rules we also have rules about fairness and justice that seem to come from nowhere, and point to the idea that there is an ultimate giver of this morality, God.
Regardless, if you examine the question of God's existence from philosophy you can re-examine whether you want to be an atheist. I think most philosophers find agnosticism more defensible. Philosophy never gives us a slam dunk answer, only a preference or something we can "defend."
All right. So what if there is a God? Then which religion, if any, is correct is the next question. Christians believe there is a God because they believe in what Jesus said. You might find the Jesus stuff hard to believe. Here's what we know, and the logic behind my belief:
-Jesus lived, preached, was crucified - this is pretty much historical fact.
-What's in dispute is whether he rose from the dead.
-His early followers sure believed he did. Even accounting for their ancient world writings, which were subject to literary problems not found in the modern world (i.e. moving dates or changing the order in which things happened) we can be pretty sure this Jesus fellow sparked a movement of believers that really believed he was raised from the dead and revealed God.
-Therefore, either Jesus really did this, or some mistake was maid. A third hypothesis - they made Jesus up - is just silly.
From here you can examine the Christian claims for truth and compare them to those of other religions. So, in sum: study some of the basic philosophical arguments for God, study the historical Jesus and the historical Resurrection, compare to other religions, and make your own decisions. Some other links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-evidence-for-jesus
http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/crj_explainingaway/crj_explainingaway.htm
http://www.amazon.com/The-Resurrection-Jesus-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196
N.T. Wright is generally considered to be the current expert on Paul.
A really great and short book, adapted from a lecture series: Paul in Fresh Perspective.
An exhaustive 1700 page monster: Paul and the Faithfulness of God. I'm working through this one now. It's very informative and a good read, but it really does engage with pretty much every academic writer of any substance from the past hundred years, so sometimes it feels like you're listening in on the middle of a conversation. The earlier books in this series, particularly The New Testament and the People of God (which is volume 1, and has much of the background material) covers the political and religious situation during the Second Temple period. It has a lot of great discussion about the Pharisees (a very complex group of people) and their opponents, Roman and Greek stuff, and so on.
Here are a few of my favorite theologians, Bible scholars, and books
For Biblical exegesis
Inductive Bible Study by Robert Traina and David Bauer
For Systematic Theology
Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology by Thomas C. Oden (Almost anything by Oden is good really)
For Pauline Studies
Paul and the Faithfulness of God by NT Wright
The Theology of Paul by James D. G. Dunn
For Cultural Background in New Testament
Craig S. Keener (his commentary on John's Gospel is phenomenal, as is the IVP Background commentary by him)
Ben Witherington III (his commentaries are generally good)
For Christian ethics
Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays
For Old Testament
Walter Brueggeman (pretty much anything by this guy)
Terrence Fretheim (I especially like his commentary on Exodus)
Sandra Richter (Epic of Eden, a good primer on ancient Israelite and Canaanite culture and how it shaped the OT)
Philosophy of Religion
Soren Kierkegaard (my absolute favorite philosopher, I especially recommend Fear and Trembling)
Thomas Aquinas
St. Augustine
Alvin Plantiga (I personally dislike Plantiga's philosophy, but he's become a big name in philosophy of Religion so not someone to be ignorant of)
William Hasker
William Abraham
Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes by Charles Hartshorne (I'm not a process theologian, but this book in particular is highly important in modern theology, definitely worth a read)
Edit:
If you wanted a broad, general sweep of theology, I'd recommend The Modern Theologians by David F. Ford. It's a good overview of various theological movements since the start of the 20th century and covers theology from many different perspectives.
> It's been a rough few years for me spiritually. I've gone through a "deconstruction" where I don't know if I agree with the typical Christian theology anymore. I took a lot for granted growing up in the church. Losing all of that assumed theology has been hard. It really forced me to question everything. And I don't have a lot of answers.
It seems like you're speaking of what's going on in my mind. Last year i even questioned God's existence; I desperately looked everywhere, because all of my foundations were failing and what i was teached since a kid could, after all, not be the exact truth. Why would God remain silent in so many situations or let the innocent suffer is just beyond me. Many things will remain unknown, but to this day i still want to believe in a God so powerful that there's nothing he cannot heal or do. This book helped me going through the doubt of His existence, perhaps it can help someone else: Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig Keener. My post was more in the sense that i don't know what else to do. God exists, sure, but He seems absent of our(my) suffering.
Miracles by Craig Keener... https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525
Also, Sam Storms writes a ton on spiritual gifts... has a decent book on 'em too!
> Okay, and there's people much smarter than you or I who, after years of research, disagree with you. This shouldn't surprise you. Saying "Gospels are a complete mess" tells me you don't really know the other side very well. Probably still asking questions like "Well then who was at the tomb? One woman or three", yeah?
And there are a lot of smart people, smarter than you or I who say that the gospels have lots of historical problems for instance...
> A great recent addition to this discussion is Bauckman's "Jesus and the Eye Witnesses" - https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906
There were no eye witnesses to Jesus. The gospels were written at least two generations after his death and the verification for the life of Jesus is pitiful. Meanwhile, some of the verifiable events (earthquake, eclipse, Harod's actions, etc.) are shown to have not occurred.
Anyway, good luck with your appeals to authority.
I'm not aware of a religion, but there is a book written by Thomas Jefferson that just includes what Jesus taught and tosses out the claims to divinity. It's called The Jefferson Bible or The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Yes, plenty. The Jefferson Bible is excellent - it's the New Testament minus the inanity. I highly recommend it.
The new testament still scores pretty good compared to other ancient writings/writers.
Most of the items he listed as discrepancies between the gospels fall in the category of "an omission by one author isn't a contradiction". The timing issues have been explained by the gospel writers using different calendars and methods of measuring time, and multiple sabbaths (Therefore multiple days of preparation) during the passover week.
He touts Mark as an example of fine Greek written by a very educated man, but it's written in a Greek spoken by commoners and slaves; even approaching the ungrammatical at times.
In short, it seems that he quickly goes through a list of one-line statements that represent his side of the argument and never touches on the opposing view; when entire books have been written on many of these topics.
These resources will help answer your questions:
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.
This should do the trick: https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622/
> Aune suggests the book was written in two stages, with the first stage being in the late 60s, and the second stage (that resulted in the current text) in the 90s.
Elaine Pagels also agrees with this assessment. She paints a a fascinating portrait of John of Patmos in her book, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
>Well as a Christian if you don't think it's a lake of fire he throws people in, you're wrong.
You're claiming that the Eastern Orthodox Churches (and Oriental Orthodox maybe?) aren't Christian? That's a bold statement, Cotton.
Besides that, Revelation is about the persecution that the author's readers were going through. A pretty accessible book on that would be Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels. Even if you don't accept that view, apocalypses and visions are known to use metaphors and allegories.
Now, in regards to other ideas of the "fate of the damned", there's multiple words that are used: Gehenna, Hades, Sheol and one instance of Tartarus (in Petrine letters). Gehenna is a literal physical place of burning, Hades is the Greek underworld and Sheol was just your grave, nothing else (later it picked up a connotation of an afterlife "realm" where all souls went after death). Once we understand that, it's not too hard to see that they're all being used as metaphor - this shouldn't surprise you because Jesus is presented as using that literary device as well as parables throughout his life. Understood as such, it's quite easy to see that the wicked/damned/whatever experience a sense of lostness, burning (like desire but the opposite?) Etc. In this case, they could be in the same "realm" as the sanctified, but experience it differently.
But that also neglects what the Greek (in the New Testament) actually says about those descriptions. For instance, the words for "eternal punishment" could be (and most likey should be) translated as "ages/age of discipline". So not only is it not "forever", it's a discipline not a punishment. And I'm perfectly inline with early Christian thinkers on this. Here's an Academic Book and a more accessible book outlining people throughout history with that interpretation. I have PDFs of the academic books, if you want to read them. A good translation with all this is mind would be this one by David Bentley Hart.
Once again, even knowing all of the above and still believing what you said , you haven't explained how people get there. Rejecting God? How could one do that? People can only reject an "idea of God". But, your view on this "lake of fire" is just one big misunderstanding.
>their "loving" God.
Just a nitpick: God is not "loving". To say God is loving is to say that there is a metaphysical order (Love) above God, which is absurd. God "is" Love, in the sense that to be "loving" one participates in the Divine.
Any typos and weird phrasings are because I'm typing on mobile at work.
That's a nice theory, but it has no basis on fact, no evidence for it, and the oldest manuscripts do not contain any indication of any of those heresies.
In reality, the range of locations for the oldest manuscripts varies widely, while the range of locations for the older manuscripts centers in the Catholic church. Again - the only reason you might affirm Textus Receptus is if you are Catholic.
If you'd really like to dig in, the best book I've found on the subject of manuscripts is Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament.
If you read the original intro for the KJV translation it gives one of the best defenses of using the best and oldest sources for material.
Lastly, there are no differences in primary or secondary doctrine between the TR and the Critical Texts (NA28 or UBS). The ESV and NASB still agree with the KJV about practically all doctrine.
The standard works are these:
Aland: http://www.amazon.com/The-Text-New-Testament-Introduction/dp/0802840981
Metzger: http://www.amazon.com/Text-New-Testament-Transmission-Restoration/dp/019516122X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416273935&sr=1-1&keywords=metzger+text+of+the+new+testament
Greenlee: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-New-Testament-Textual-Criticism/dp/0801046440/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416274042&sr=1-1&keywords=greenlee+introduction
----
I should say, agenda shouldn't really be too much of a problem. Textual critics share broad agreement. Opposite sides like Wallace and Ehrman will actually agree for the most part. The disagreement will be more in the framing or the language (and in a handful of texts), but the facts are mostly agreed upon.
> Therefore, I want to learn about the Bible; not what it says but rather how it was written, received (and translated), preserved, and most importantly: how we can be sure we know these things (how studying the Bible works).
Then you want to read this. There is a bibliography if you're interested in delving deeper into the textual criticism arena.
Also, these IVP dictionaries are a go-to for any reference topic you are curios about. You can get on Amazon for cheaper, FYI, but that link lists all the books in the series. There is a bibliography after each article for further study if needed.
The Bible.
For a detailed look at exactly which manuscripts we have, and how they have been discussed and used overtime, see Bruce Metzger's "The Text of the New Testament": http://amzn.com/019516122X
IMO, MacCulloch's book is quite a commitment, and, I suppose, it would depend on what time frame you are seeking the history of. If you are looking for an in-depth history of the biblical era, this isn't the book for you - only the first few chapters are devoted to anything pre-Jesus, and the life and times of Jesus get another few dozen pages. Perhaps I'm biased as post-biblical era Christianity doesn't interest me, but I view it as more a book of theology rather than history. Make sure you explore the table of contents to make sure you know what you are getting into.
If you are not seeking something devotional, I recommend these Yale Religious Studies courses every chance I get. They will give you the background you need to tackle more specialized books in areas of interest.
If you are looking for books, I'd recommend Kugel's How to Read the Bible or Coogan's Intro for Old Testament, and Ehrman is the standard academic introduction to New Testament.
"History of Christianity" is a pretty broad topic. If there is something specific that interests you, I'll try to come up with more recommendations.
The search for the historical Jesus is a futile endevor. If he existed at all, he certainly doesn't resemble anything that we would recognize as Jesus. All we know is a a spruced up ancient Greco-Roman biography that was synthesized to transmit a new theology by playing on existing tropes.
You would enjoy reading The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings to get some more context for what was going on then and how Christianity formed.
>certainly the Romans killed a lot of Christians back then
Not anywhere as much as martyrdom theology has led you to believe.
You guys could read this.
Haha. That's kind of a joke (since it's almost 750 pages long). But seriously, I've been wanting to read this for a while now.
The resource I hear most recommended is N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God:
http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796
This might be a helpful book for you to check out if you can find it in a library.
■Posteriori Evidence
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796
■A priori probabilistic evidence
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/pdf_files/Papers%20from%20Philosophical%20Journals/Swinburne_2013-resurrection.pdf
■But didn't David Hume debunk miracles?
http://pitt.edu/~jearman/Earman2000HumeAbjectFailure.pdf
The heavily upvoted assertions in this thread simply tell us what we want to hear. Hence there are so few requests for citations and sources for these statements.
For those genuinely interested in reading research from both sides (rather than simply the flavour of the month sensation 'the real Jesus is this' author), why not check out a source such as NT Wright's 'The Resurrection of the Son of God', a 700 page work by a man who is arguably one of the best historical researchers and lexicographers of the period and its surrounding times.
Surely either people are genuinely interested in an issue, or they're merely genuinely interested in having their own preferences confirmed.
Wonder if the downmods will flow in...sometimes it seems the wonderful Redditors who I've enjoyed good honest discussion with are being replaced with diggbots who simply downmod anything that disagrees with their own view. Reddiquette people...this contributes to the discussion by offering a well-researched alternative viewpoint.
N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God (https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796) provides a readable and well sourced summary in the first several chapters. The discussion is of course directed to the central theme of the book -- the bodily resurrection of Jesus -- but that provides a useful counterpoint to Jewish ideas of the 'afterlife'.
Surprised by Hope by NT Wright.
Along with his scholarly work on the Resurrection, The Resurrection of the Son of God, quite literally changed the way I looks at my faith.
I love Micheal Kruger's books Canon revisited and The question of Canon. If you really want to dive into the subject D.A. Carson's The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures is an amazing resource.
That's a lot of questions! I'll try to provide some answers, but obviously they will be brief and just starting points. I'll point you to resources/books that will answer your questions more exhaustively when I can, since some of your questions have been answered in many books.
First, I would expand a little bit on your definition of Sola Scriptura. It means that Scripture and Scripture alone is our final authority in the church. (Note: it is not the only authority. We value tradition, experience and reason as well, but they are not the final authority.)
>What is the historic evidence of Sola Scriptura?
Not sure what you mean by historic evidence, but I would take the writings of the early church fathers, where they would appeal to the Scriptures as final authority. It's very hard to answer such a broad question on a medium like this. Now, if you want an early church father explicitly defending this doctrine, then there is none, as far as I know. This is simply because it was not a doctrine that was fought over, hence not a lot of the early church fathers wrote explicitly on this. (This applies to heaps of other doctrines.)
>How do advocates of Sola Scriptura answer the charge of knowing the canon of Scripture while the canon not being listed (explicitly) in Scripture?
See Michael Kruger's book, Canon Revisited.
>Does the Bible say that it is sufficient to be the rule of Christian faith and practice? It seems that the verses: 1 Timothy 3:15, 2 Timothy 3:16–17, 2 Thessalonians 2:15 and many others seem to indicate that not only does Scripture not mention self sufficiency but rather as a practical guide, with Tradition being on equal par as an inspired pair with Scripture.
In these passages, why would you take the word "tradition" as how the Roman Catholic church would define it? I would read "tradition" as Paul's teaching as passed on to them, which is then enscripturated in the Bible. There's nothing in those passages that requires Tradition being on equal par with Scripture. It is only that if you have already assumed the meaning of the word "Tradition" as only how the RC church would define it.
>How do advocates of Sola Scriptura answer Cardinal Newman's argument against Sola Scriptura on the basis that pulling from some of the Pauline Epistles proves to much: "Now, a good part of the New Testament was not written in his boyhood: Some of the Catholic epistles were not written even when Paul wrote this, and none of the books of the New Testament were then placed on the canon of the Scripture books. He refers, then, to the scriptures of the Old Testament, and, if the argument from this passage proved anything, it would prove too much, viz., that the scriptures of the New Testament were not necessary for a rule of faith."
I'm not exactly sure what he means. If you would rephrase it, it would be helpful. But if I'm reading him correct, he seems to say that it's too much to base our doctrine of Sola Scriptura on the writings of Paul. Well, we don't just rely on Paul's writings to defend the doctrine. In fact, I would argue that if properly defended, Sola Scriptura can be defended from the whole Old Testament all the way to the New.
Penal Substitution
>If Christ's death was efficacious for the removal of the punishment of sin of human beings, being fully of God, why wouldn't everyone be saved?
Good question! That's why Calvinist do not believe that Christ death was efficacious for the removal of the punishment of all human beings, but only for the elect. This is the "L" (Limited Atonement) in TULIP, although I prefer the term "Particular/Definite Redemption". To sum that doctrine up - "Sufficient for all, efficient for the elect."
>Why should we think that it is even possible for Christ to take on moral responsibility for our current and past sins?
On the one hand, why is it up to us? We believe Scripture says so, and thus we believe it. On the other hand, you can point to the doctrine of union with Christ - we become one with Christ, or united with Christ when we believe in him. Because of that, he is able to take on moral responsibility for our sins. What is ours are his, and what is his is ours. It's like in a marriage. When you marry someone, everything that he/she has is yours, and everything that is yours is hers/his, and that include things like debt.
Justification by Faith
>What Biblical basis is there that it is only by faith we are justified?
Heaps. Romans 3:21ff, Romans 4 (where Abraham is used as an OT example), Ephesians 2:1-11, Galatians, etc. Now, just in case you don't know, the RC notion of justification is different from the Protestant doctrine of justification. So, before you go any further, I think it's best that you know that first.
>Does the act of believing, or baptism, show a correspondence of works and faith?
Not sure what you mean by this. Please elaborate.
>What is the historic evidence of Sola Fide?
See answer above on historic evidence of Sola Scriptura. It's there in the writings of the early church fathers, but it is not explicit, since it was not something the church fought over. The early church fought over other things (Trinity, Christology), and that's why you see their writings focusing so much on those things. Sola fide was really only seriously fought over during the Reformation, that's why there are numerous writings on this during that time. This doesn't mean that it's not there in the early church, it definitely is. But it is inchoate.
Look into Robert M. Price, particularly The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man. A taste of the subject matter is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzOrc_kwcU4
The Jefferson Bible.
bad methodology
http://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Historical/dp/1616145595
edit: to be fair, you can use the same Bayes analysis the other way - http://www.amazon.com/The-Probability-God-Calculation-Ultimate/dp/1400054788/
One definition of religion is "pretending to know things you don't know." By that definition, Ehrman is religious. The evidence for Jesus' existence is so poor that Ehrman cannot honestly claim to be sure Jesus existed.
Worse, he's lying like a motherfucker. In the interview, he claims there's no serious Bible scholar who doesn't believe Jesus existed; Richard Carrier points out Dr. Thomas Thompson, a "myther" professor of Jewish studies, who is well enough known that Ehrman is sure to know of him. Later on, Ehrman comes along with the old saw about how we don't have convincing evidence for Julius Caesar either. This is a really, really poor ploy, as Caesar is richly documented by his own writings, those of his contemporaries, by monuments, by coins bearing his name and image, by the events that necessarily followed his crossing of the Rubicon, and so on.
Carrier's book Proving History compares "traditional" methods of historical verification against Bayes' Theorem and demonstrates that most of the methods most often used in support of Jesus' historicity are lacking. Obviously, the jury is still out on whether Carrier is right about this, but I've heard inklings of a small flurry of historians eager to adopt BT to improve the quality of their work. If Carrier is right, the consensus Ehrman is confidently bracing himself on (and this interview is full of arguments from authority and simple intellectual browbeating and bullying on Ehrman's part) is as fragile as the Bible's story line, and a whole bunch of historians are/were mistaken.
Even regardless of Carrier's work (soon to birth another book, The Quest for Historical Jesus), sufficient serious scholars have raised sufficient doubts that, in a field that's more aligned with the Scientific Method, researchers would have to come clean and honestly admit "we don't know," as they do about the origin of the universe or the mechanism of abiogenesis.
When he claims the historicity of Jesus is a done deal, Ehrman is dishonest.
By way of thanks for suffering through all this text, I invite you to enjoy this informative video: So…if Jesus Didn’t Exist, Where Did He Come from Then?. In this video and elsewhere, Carrier is "doing it right:" nowhere does he boldly claim one way or the other, he simply shows us the reasons that exist for doubting a flesh-and-blood Jesus.
EDIT: Here's a takedown of Ehrman's latest book. To be fair, this is a popular book Ehrman apparently rushed to slap together; his other, more scholarly works (e.g. Misquoting Jesus) are held in much higher regard in the community.
I saw a lecture Richard Carrier gave where he gives out about jesus myth authors like this, because although Carrier himself is a notable Jesus myth hypothesis espouser, he finds the nonsense that is published saying Jesus is a myth is so flawed that it damages serious scholarly work which examines the historicity or not of Christ.
His book Proving History is an interesting book. It's more about rigor and methodology in history but he does touch on the historicity of Christ throughout. Worth a read nyway.
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1616145595
Please have a look at Richard Carrier's great book that questions the historicity of Jesus. Richard is an athiest scholar who doesn't take it as granted that Jesus was a real person.
This is a better investment than the lot of them, from an honest learning perspective, even if you don't agree with the conclusion. Ehrman is a seriously flawed source where, while you're still going to get exposed to some objectively true information that will be new to you, the logical fallacies and assumptions can do as much harm to developing a realistic understanding of the subject matter as it can be of benefit.
I'm very sorry to hear this, but it is natural for people to waver & wobble a bit.
When one looks at the behavior of natural systems, it's never a straight line from being (say) a desert to a green plain - or vice versa. There are always upticks and down-dips in the graph.
>He asked me again if I was going to stop going to meetings. I said "I wish I could tbh, but I'm gonna have to......................" (I paused just to make sure how he would react). He replied with "Good. As long you keep going", and he also says "if we don't have this then what do we have? Being out there in the world??"
If there was a tactful way to ask him whether your attendance made him look or feel better, I would have asked him about that.
I'm NOT tactful.
I would suggest several avenues of approach, but you'll have to consider very carefully what the effects of these suggestions might be, before you do anything:
The lack of affection in the congregation makes you feel like you're attending due to obligation, not because of any love amongst the brothers. If you can come close to stating his feelings about being "[made to] feel guilty for not being at meetings and he reluctantly goes because he feels pressured" without obviously mimicking his comments, you might be able to get a kindred feeling about how both of you really view the constant demands to attend the meetings.
What if he'd been born somewhere else? Afghanistan? Amish country? Mennonites? He wouldn't know about the Jehovah's Witnesses - but would STILL have the same attitude about being "no part of this world".
>He also said he doesn't like to talk about not going to meetings and I said if I can't talk to him about it then who would I talk to?
DON'T talk about it. Let it slide. True apathy is one of the biggest enemies the Watchtower Society has. Whenever you talk about attending the meetings, you are reinforcing the guilt he's feeling, even (especially!!!) if you're talking about the meetings in a negative way.
On the other hand, real apathy just ignores things, wishing they'd go away. Real apathy seeks out excuses to avoid attending meetings. If he's having a spurt of spirituality right now, but his past behaviors show that he really doesn't want to do it, then your best response would be to show up at some meetings with him, but fake a headache for others. When you do go to meetings with him, keep your responses flat. No response afterwards. Just so bored with it, you can't even be bothered to react negatively. If you've got an electronic tablet, then read something else while you're at the meetings.
Have you ever done a first-aid class where they teach the students how to pick up a fully-relaxed, unconscious person? That lesson amazed me; if a person goes completely limp it is VERY difficult to pick them up. A small person of around 100 pounds is harder to lift if they're as limp as a cooked noodle.
If you feel you need to attend any more meetings with him, then just go completely limp [so to speak]. NO negative resistance, but also absolutely no interest whatsoever.
Personally I'd pull up some of the books written by authentic bible scholars & read them during meetings, like "The Early History of God - Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel" or "Did God Have a Wife?", or
https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X
https://www.amazon.com/Did-God-Have-Wife-Archaeology/dp/0802863949
https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Biblical-Monotheism-Polytheistic-Background/dp/0195167686
Whether or not Jesus existed:
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494
There's a whole world of research out there, that the Watchtower Society absolutely doesn't want their members to have a clue about. You could gain far more knowledge about the real (man-made) origins of the bible while you're sitting there in the meetings. You could be sitting there, cool as a cucumber, learning more about the bible than any male leader of the Watchtower Society knows, even the 7 men on the Governing Body.
That would keep your mind occupied while your husband struggles with the guilt & obligation of an unloving, manipulative cult.
For that matter, you could also read about how cults manipulate people, while you're at the meetings. Anything to feed your mind while he loses his - er, while he gets a belly-full of the banality, hypocrisy & idiocy of the WT meetings & literature.
You might want to pick up Richard Carrier's latest work.
I suggest moving the Lataster (Washington Post) and Tarico (Alternet) to the top of the list. These are concise well written articles that serve as a good introduction, and are more authoritative (reviewed and edited by the publisher) than the many personal blogs on the list.
There's a few duplicates as well.
One link to add - Richard Carrier's book:
https://www.amazon.ca/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494
If you want to read about Jesus mythicism, Richard Carrier's book On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt is a far better place to start.
If you want to learn more I would suggest reading:
historicity of Jesus - Richard Carrier.
Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All - David Fitzgerald.
Thanks, just checking whether there was something new.
Carrier talks about this in his "On the Historicity of Jesus". His claim about Tacitus is that he was probably quoting the Gospels indirectly through Pliny, so Carrier claims it might not be an independent source.
He reviews a bunch more, including Josephus, in his chapter 8 "Extrabiblical Evidence".
If I wanted to fact-check Carrier, I would start by reading both his and Ehrman's blogs when they argue with each other, and both Carrier's and Ehrman's books on the topic.
I don't have a personal opinion on the existence of Jesus either. I asked only because it would be interesting if there were an easy way to poke holes in Carrier's work, since Carrier is so thorough.
You might want to read this book. Even reading the reviews might be helpful.
http://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418932301&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=david+carrier+jesus&pebp=1418932362622
>Du greifst nur die Talpioth Särge heraus.
Du kannst also nicht bestreiten das in deiner Liste Mist steht. Was sagt das über die Verlässlichkeit der Endaussage?
>Wieso sollten die anderen Argumente nur schlecht und nicht belastend sein?
Weil sie dem Schluss, der daraus gezogen wird, nicht entsprechen.
>Hast du belastende Argumente für diese Sichtweise oder ist es mehr ein Glaube?
Die Historisierung von mythischen Gestalten kommen in der Antike andauernd vor, siehe Äneis oder Gilgamesh. Zudem ist es aus der historischen Abfolge der NT Schriften ersichtlich das eine Historisierung erst im Verlauf der Ausbildung des Christentums zustande kam. Zudem fehlen Hinweise, die man bei einer tatsächlichen historischen Existenz Jesus erwarten würde, vollständig, währen die Hinweise, die wir haben, bestens durch die Existenz einer Gottesgestalt die historisiert wurde erklären lassen ( "Argument der besten Erklärung")
Ich würde dir ja Richard Carrier und als Gegenposition Bart Ehrmann zum Lesen empfehlen, allerdings scheint es mir dass du nichtmal das kritisch gelesen und beurteilt hast was du selbst postest.
> Und eine Abhandlung über die Augenzeugenfrage.
Was als Augenzuegenbreichte in deinen Quellen gelten, wird unter historischen Methoden als "Gerüchte" abgetan.
>Auf Wikipedia heißt es:
Ein Konsens von Forschermeinungen dient dem wissenschaftlichen Prozess, nicht als endgültige Wahrheit. Der Konsens ist in diesem Falle geprägt von nicht belastbaren Argumenten.
>There is no evidence today that the existence of Jesus was ever denied in antiquity by those who opposed Christianity
Wenn man da die Bedeutung hineinliest du du wahrscheinlich darin siehst, versteht man den Kontext von Religionen der Antike nicht. Das ist kein üblicher Kritikpunkt und ist daher auch nicht zu erwarten.
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494
As I said it is generally accepted but still debated.
Generally accepted does not mean it is a fact.
A concern: is it reasonable though to compare what are ultimately highly dissimilar entities? The stock market always retains some fundamental partial real-world value. With the stock market, even in '29 style crash, there is always some universally accepted residual physical value.
With the church there is NEVER a universally accepted physical value in the theology of any kind, only a vaguely individually determined emotional one, sometimes called 'spiritual', but it's emotion all the way. Personally, I would have difficulty relating the two.
One book I'd recommend that might appeal to your approach is Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt.
Carrier uses Baye's Theorem to analyze the probability of Jesus' existence. As one reviewer noted:
"Carrier rigidly applies the logic of Bayes' Theorem to the evidence for the historicity of Jesus -- and finds no reason to conclude he actually existed. While the author's rigorous use of Bayesian method makes this book a tough slog at times, it is difficult to imagine how it might be refuted. . . . Put together, our prior knowledge and the subsequent evidence shows that is far more probable that Jesus was a mythical figure who was later given a historical-sounding life story than it is that he was a historical figure even remotely resembling the figure in the Gospels."
If one comes to a logically, even mathematically, based conclusion that Christ never existed then the question of the church being 'true' is moot.
Yea. Check out On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
>new source that disputes the existence of Jesus.
There are no sources which dispute the existence of Moses or Romulus but that doesn't mean we should start accepting them as real historical figures.
>Jesus and other similarly or worse attested characters like Hannibal and Alexander the Great.
Alexander is way better attested than Jesus, we even have more evidence of Pontius Pilate than Historical Jesus.
>no respected expert in the field believe in it.
There are several, most prominent ones are Robert M. Price who holds double doctorate in NT studies and Thomas L Broody who's also a biblical scholar.
>Neither Koresh or Jim Jones had a large following
At its peak Peoples temple had a following in upward of 20,000 so i don't think its a right comparison but yeah Koresh or Marshal Applewhite kinda fits the bill.
>but is more rickety than any of them. It doesn't explain why or how. There are no sources supporting it.
I suggest you read some works on Christ Myth theory because all those point were covered by many authors, here's a good introductory article and as for books, Richard Carrier's On the historicity of Jesus is pretty comprehensive and there's also The Christ Myth by Arthur Drews which you can download freely.
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt by Richard Carrier
Faith On The March by A. H. Macmillan
It only covers the sayings of Jesus, but I consult The Five Gospels whenever I am puzzled by something Jesus said. It is often interesting, and sometimes helpful!
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.
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
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#
>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
Specifically, I'd recommend Forged as a good place to start.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
As it turns out, I just finished reading the book Relevations by Princeton professor Elaine Pagels. It's a fun read, and it tells all about what we know about the book's origin and why it was included in the New Testament canon. Highly recommended!
Also, one more really great book. Elaine Pagels: Revelation: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
I recommend Elaine Pagels, Princeton. u/zacharmstrong9
Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, Politics
Read Brojangles' reply, which is more accurate than mine. In this case, the KJV does have the line, but it's translated differently. There are many cases where the KJV includes or excludes lines that appear in modern translations, but this isn't one of those cases.
But to answer your question, this is the book you want.
http://www.amazon.com/Text-New-Testament-Transmission-Restoration/dp/019516122X/
Hard to say why. It answers a lot of questions lots of people have, and lots of questions people didn't think to ask.
One of the top remarks theology students get is the old canard that the bible has been copied and translated so many times that we simply cannot know what it originally said. That is not so. Yes there are countless errors in extant manuscripts. But what kinds of errors? And what counts as an error? This book addresses these and many other salient issues in good prose.
You should try to be more condescending in your replies. It really helps make your point.
This author seems to think Greek was the original language
[And another one] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Text-New-Testament-Introduction/dp/0802840981)
>"For seminary students, the goal of studying Greek grammar is the accurate exegesis of biblical texts."
Why would accurate exegesis of biblical texts be related to studying greek if the majority view held that aramaic was the original language?
>"The only complete English translation of the Peshitta is by G. Lamsa. This is unfortunately not always very accurate, and his claims that the Peshitta Gospels represent the Aramaic original underlying the Greek Gospels are entirely without foundation; such views, which are not infrequently found in more popular literature, are rejected by all serious scholars.
Brock, Sebastian P, The Bible in the Syriac tradition
>Indeed, the Greek Matthew throughout bears the impress of being not a translation at all, but as having been originally written in Greek
From the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
>Mark employs the common coloquial Greek of the day, understood everywhere throughout the Greek-Roman world.
Same Source for Mark
>that many Aramaic idioms are preserved in the Greek
Of course they are. That's the language that Jesus and everyone around him spoke. If there are actual quotes of Jesus in the gospels, they are in Aramaic and translated to Greek. But that doesn't mean the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic any more than bits of text in elvish in the Lord of the Rings proves that the original text of Lord of the Rings is elvish.
I could write a story right now about experiences I've had in Mexico. I could include quotes by people that spoke to me in Spanish. But I would be composing the story in English and that would be evident to someone who had a copy of my story in English and a Spanish translation and spoke both languages. The New Testament is written in Greek about people who spoke Aramaic.
>Adolf Deissmann(who would actually argue many of the instances are more international phrases than isolated hebrew-isms).
So one of the sources you cite disagrees with you?
Speaking of sources, you haven't cited any scholarly works that actually support your crazy idea, much less that it's the slightly majority view.
Just looked it up:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019516122X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Unfortunately we recently moved and all my books are in storage, so I can't get the page reference.
Thanks. I have his book The New Testament which is excellent if you want to see all the early strains of "Christianity" and the way they all had differing versions and how that came to eventually be unified and people who didn't hold to the adopted version were persecuted:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534/ref=asap_B001I9RR7G_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414348600&sr=1-3
I don't think there's such a thing as a "Christian scholar" or a "Muslim scholar". That's an oxymoron, really. Faith has no place in the methodology of science.
Now, one can be a scholar of Christianity or a scholar of Islam. And indeed, there are many of these. Although some of them are religious, most are atheists and agnostics. This should not be surprising, it's my experience that studying religion makes one give up their faith.
So I repeat, wide scholarly consensus is that Mark was in some form composed either late in The Great Revolt. Soon after at the latest. If you're interested in why you could start here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Historical-Introduction/dp/0199757534
It's written biblical scholar who used to be a Christian but is now an atheist/agnostic. He's writing for a low level college class, and is careful to only include content with wide consensus around it.
Now, of course they could be wrong. And history is a soft science at that. This point is, you shouldn't deny the results just because you don't like them. That is something a "Christian scholar", "diaper scholar", or even an "atheist scholar" might do.
N.T. Wright wrote a quite lengthy book about it.
>our religion, ie: for Judaism
I was under the impression that you didn't believe the Torah. Do you?
>Put up or shut up.
I'm not sure how you would like me to, but I'll list some resources below. If you would rather delve into it by having a strict dialogue between the two of us, that's cool too. I may not be able to respond quickly every time, depending on how this carries forth, but I'll do what I can. As you mentioned, your soul is "at stake and all that."
Gary Habermas and N.T. Wright are the top two resurrection scholars. Michael Licona is also a leading scholar on the resurrection debate. Philosophers such as Richard Swinburne and Antony Flew have even shown their faces on the scene as well.
Books
Presentations
Debates
Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, and Michael Licona are the most frequent debaters on the Christian side, and Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier are the most frequent debaters on the non-Christian side. Habermas, Craig, and/or Licona have debated the following (possibly) recognizable names on this issue: Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier, Antony Flew, John Shelby Spong, Gerd Ludemann, Shabir Ally, Arif Ahmed, John Dominic Crossan, Robert M. Price, and Dan Barker.
YouTube is great for finding those debates. There are also, of course, dialogues in book form.
>if you don't like my tone
I'm actually enjoying your tone, haha
http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796
http://www.amazon.com/The-Resurrection-Jesus-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196
http://www.amazon.com/The-resurrection-factor-Josh-McDowell/dp/0918956722
For Christianity? What about the case for the resurrection? Or if you have the time you could check out N.T. Wright's Resurrection for the Son of God which I hear is excellent and is also widely regarded to be the best book on evidence for the resurrection of Christ. Besides that, you also have the lives and religious experiences of countless Catholic saints like Padre Pio, Teresa of Ávila, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis of Assisi, Catherine Emmerich, Joan of Arc, John Vianney, Anna Maria Taigi and Therese Neumann. Then you also have Catholic miracles like Fatima, Lourdes, Lanciano, Guadalupe tilma and (although not exclusively Catholic but Christian) the Shroud of Turin.
Sorry it has taken me a little while to respond. It seems that in many of my discussions with people over evidences for Christianity, we disagree strongly on what counts as evidence. I am curious, do you think that evidence is subjective? Can something be evidence for me and not for you?
Thanks for responding to my points. Let me give some responses to your pushback
As to your statement,
> accuracy is no measure of truth
I am not really sure what you mean by this statement. If you mean that the gospels accuracy is representing the life and words of Jesus does not mean that what Jesus says and later interpretations of his acts and words were true, then I agree. However, if the gospels are accurate in representing Jesus life and death, then the empty tomb and reported resurrection must be accounted for.
> Why does that rise to the standard of evidence? That would mean there is no other possible > explanation of events, other than his actual resurrection, right?
I have yet to hear another explanation of the empty tomb, the reported sightings by the disciples and followers of Jesus and the uniform pronouncement of the early church as to the bodily resurrection of Jesus which is a alternate viable alternative. I would recommend The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright if you are interested in further reading in this area.
Beyond that point, the existence of a category which we call evil demands an external standard by which good and evil can be measured. A moral law demands a moral law giver. See Mere Christianity by CS Lewis.
I hope this provides some clarifications. Also, I am listed many books as references. I would be happy to read (or at least skim) anything which you would recommend in this area.
> The fundamental difference is we aren't just believing women who were sexually abused because she said so.
That's not a fundamental difference. You seem to be mistaken here. If you subscribe to the traditional authors of the Gospels, both Mark and Luke were corroborating outsiders. If you do not subscribe to the traditional authors, all four were outsiders, corroborating the events.
> If their testimony was the only evidence, it wouldn't hold much weight.
You seem to be claiming that the testimony of eyewitnesses is not valid.
> Biblical scholars disagree with you.
Biblical scholars also agree with me. I've examined the cases for the authorship of the Gospels in quite a bit of depth. There are a lot of biblical scholars who subscribe to the traditional authors, and for substantial reasons. I consider the cases for traditional authorship to be stronger than the cases against, but we can discuss this if you wish.
> You're the one claiming they still happen, show me a case of a human resurrecting after being clinically dead for several days that hasn't been debunked.
If you are serious about researching this, the two-volume set by Dr. Craig Keener, "Miracles" (https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3AAZ16M5WZVWE&keywords=craig+keener+miracles&qid=1567000719&s=gateway&sprefix=Keener+miracle%2Caps%2C252&sr=8-1) should be useful. He researched not only the NT miracles but also modern miracles including resurrections.
> The source of the claim is not all that is used as the evidence in any of those cases. If that were true, then the entire community of historians would agree across the board that the resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact. But that isn't the case, is it? Why do you think that might be?
Neither is the source of the claim the only evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, for instance. There was some material evidence (the empty tomb), there was consequential evidence (the birth of the Church), and there was logical evidence (the preaching of the apostles). But I'm well aware that many people still deny the resurrection. There are also scientists who deny global warming. People see the same data and arrive at different conclusions.
Has anyone read Craig Keener's Miracles? I am considering purchasing it, because I have heard it referenced in arguments by some Christians (The argument is usually something like, "You don't believe in miracles, but Craig Keener wrote a book documenting over 1,000 pages of miracles. Have you looked at all of them?).
After this beautiful exhaustive book i cannot understand how could someone NOT believe: https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525
That's a very tortured reading of just one of the stories of a post-resurrection appearance.
I was thinking about what you said about us deserving more proof. Frankly, I think we've got far more than we have any right to when compared to previous generations.
In Jesus' day, only a few thousand people saw him work a miracle. Only a thousand at most saw him after the resurrection. In all of human history, seeing the supernatural has been confined to a relative handful of people.
Today, though, every single person in the developed world has access to
No, we don't get to see Jesus in the flesh -- walking on water or otherwise -- but we've got more than any generation since his has had. Far more. And we're going to be held responsible for what we did with that privilege.
There’s a lot of good responses here already but I wanted to offer some resources and ideas that have helped me.
First of all, despite what the new atheists say, you don’t need faith to believe in God, which is why there are so many deists in academia. The weight of the scientific evidence alone is enough to conclude that there must be some kind of intelligence behind reality. This includes the fine-tuning argument, a variation of which convinced Antony Flew, a life long atheist academic and strong critic of religion to change his mind about God and embrace deism, and quantum mechanics, which doesn’t prove God’s existence but rather undermines materialist assumptions about the fundamental nature of reality. These findings have convinced others in the scientific community such as lifelong atheist, Richard Conn Henry, a professor of theoretical physics at MIT to embrace deism.
So just based on what’s happening with physics, it’s reasonable to believe that there’s some kind of intelligence behind reality. However, this in no way proves the existence of the God of the Bible.
To support the Christian view of God you can look at the evidence for the reliability of New Testament accounts. This is where faith comes in. You have to decide whether or not you believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead. Obviously, there isn’t a scientific way to definitively prove whether or not an historical event happened. But if you want support for the idea that miracles happen and are relatively common, even today, I’d recommend Craig S Keeners magisterial 2 volume work “Miracles” which details hundreds of modern day miracle accounts.
Other reading:
The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard who was a professor of philosophy for many years at USC, helped me to understand my faith at a deeper level, which has helped immensely. It turns out it’s much easier to believe in something when it actually makes sense to you.
On Guard by William Lane Craig explains many of the logical proofs that other commenters have offered here, which are great but can be really difficult to understand without spending a good amount of time with them.
Atheist Delusions by David Bentley Hart: Hart is a leading Orthodox theologian and philosopher who spends a lot of time talking about the logical incoherence of materialism. All his stuff is great but it’s difficult.
This is just a small sample of what’s out there in terms of apologetics but it’s a start. There’s enough that you could spend your entire life reading compelling arguments for the God’s existence. However, the most effective way to strengthen your faith, in my opinion, is to see how effective the teachings of Jesus are for yourself, to ACTUALLY DO what he says and see how it transforms your life first hand. This is how you make your faith unshakable. Nothing beats personal experience.
Dr. Craig Keener has a good book on this. He is a highly respected biblical scholar who has taught at several different seminaries of different traditions and is widely published. This is a large book, but it looks at both the biblical miracle accounts and historical accounts, including contemporary accounts. I think his second volume that he's currently working on will have more contemporary accounts, and I heard he is sharing all types of documentation from personal accounts throughout the world, lots from Africa but also Asia and the United States too.
Sorry for the late reply; been off reddit for a while.
http://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-Testament-Accounts-Volume/dp/0801039525
I'm not sure I agree with your definitions fully first off:
>Religious Faith asks you to, absent compelling evidence, believe in what it asserts to be factual statements regarding not just past events -but past events that would compromise the totality of compiled empirical data (I'm speaking about miracles).
Areas in italics probably should be removed from your definition. A staggering number of people in the past and today claim they have witnessed a miracle, so many that it seems to me like they can't all be explained away. Gary Habermas and Craig Keener do good work on trying to document these miracles, many happen in hospitals where there is documentation (see Miracles by Craig Keener) In fact 73% of doctors believe in the US believe in miracles, many of whom say they've seen them. 73% of Meidcal Doctors is a lot, more than enough to throw your "totality of compiled empirical data" claim into question.
So if you want to pedantically scrum over definitions I guess we can, though it seems a bit silly.
Here is an extensively sourced 2-volume work on Miracles:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801039525/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I have it on my bookshelf, ready to start reading after my current book. But I came across it as a reference in another book I read recently, and it looks very worthwhile--and on your exact topic!
As far as knowing what you can trust, I prefer a book like the above precisely because it details its sources. Other website testimonies may be useful, but probably need to be taken with a grain of salt.
>For those of you who have looked in to biblical historicity, on any level,
I guess this technically qualifies me?
>how do you reconcile potential errors and inconsistencies
Such as?
>as well as the concepts that stories of YHWH and Jesus could have been co-opted from other faiths
By asking for primary source evidence for these claims.
>Are there any books or websites you could recommend?
Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth Bailey
Evidence for Christianity by John McDowell
The King Jams Only Controversy by James White (this is actually a book about textual criticism and manuscript transmission).
Jesus and the Eye-Witnesses by Richard Baukham.
The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Mike Licona.
This book series by NT Wright.
I don't think these things can be asserted so confidently as what "we know" from the research of modern historians. It is true that there are many historians who see the gospels as deriving mainly from oral traditions several decades removed from the original events (not as legends, which is the view Lewis is attacking), many excellent historians who do think the gospel authors were or spoke with eyewitnesses, like Richard Bauckham, who makes the case in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that the synoptics all derive closely from the testimony of both major and minor eyewitnesses, and that the author of the Gospel of John was himself an eyewitness. Lewis' assessment of the gospels as history, which he sees as falling within his own professional expertise ("I have read a great deal of legend" doesn't just refer to how he liked to spend his free time), remains perfectly defensible today. In fact, the 20th Century largely saw a move in biblical studies away from the hyper-critical views of the late 19th Century.
There is one Anglican scholar who is well-versed in biblical historical studies: Richard Bauckham.
He has one book which challenges the consensus of the academia that the gospels are a redaction based on witnesses only in a derivative way.
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
This is not just a popular book. This is an academic book, targeted not only towards the populace but the academia as well.
>Wikipedia does not seem to agree with your authoritative stance on these issues.
When wikipedia becomes the goto for scholarship, let me know.
>Why wouldn't you mention this evidence, or give the sources about it?
Because the evidence is in entire books that you have to read through in order to understand it. Look into the authorship of the gospels and the research that various scholars have done... a lot of it is available online, I am sure, but I am not interested in doing the research for you. There are all sorts of things in the gospels that raise huge red flags as to who actually wrote them, like geographical errors, the fact that Jesus and his disciples spoke aramaic and not greek, errors in jewish custom, etc.
>Many first hand accounts are not written in the first person, and many first hand account include parts that the author was not present, but was informed about later. You are jumping to conclusion in the extreme.
I'm jumping to conclusions? You have a piece of writing that is completely anonymous. It doesn't claim to be an eye witness account. It has numerous scenes that could not have been witnessed by anyone, and numerous other scenes that when considered together make it obvious that no one person could have been the source. That doesn't even take into account the other research I am talking about. Even based on just this, the most obvious conclusion is that it was not written by an eye witness. There is literally no evidence that points to that conclusion. Yet you say I am the one jumping to conclusions? Right.
>A few, but one of the main reasons many weren't added, was because they doubted the authorship. It's good to know that they were vetting out the letters for authenticity, even in the very early church, wasn't it?
Actually there were dozens. And the way they determined if something was authentic was basically whether the writings matched their current beliefs or not. For example, at the council of Nicea, any gospels that portrayed Jesus as being more divine than human were left out. It wasn't about determining which document had the most credibility. They didn't have forensic investigatory methods to determine that stuff. It was almost exclusively about whether the document was heretic or not. The only reason that the gospels even have the names they do is because Papias gave them those names to make them more credible (things were seen as more credible if they had an apostle's name on it... such was the state of their credibility checks). The claim at that time was that Mark was a follower of Peter, not Jesus, and that he was not an eyewitness. Iraneus was the first to suggest that more than one gospel should be followed... before him, it would have been very unusual to follow the teachings of more than one.
>To say that the apostle John did not write John, simply because it was not written in the first person, and he probably didn't see absolutely everything he wrote about personally, is ludicrous.
I'm sorry, but we know with almost absolute certainty that none of the disciples wrote John. The vast majority of modern scholars believe (and teach in schools all across the world) that John was written later having been passed orally to different communities.
Here is a book by Christian scholar Richard Bauckham that tries to make the case that the gospels are based on eye witness testimony.
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1295405950&sr=8-3
In fact, he only asserts that a single one of the Gospels was written direct by an eyewitness: the Gospel of John. However, he does not think he was a disciple, but instead just an unnamed follower. Credibility kind of goes out the window when you've narrowed it down to "an unnamed follower." As I said, he doesn't actually argue that the other three gospels are based on first or even second hand eye witness testimony, and he admits that most scholars won't agree with his view on John.
I can assure you that this is taught in seminaries around the world, and is accepted by scholars all over the world, christian or not.
Nein das habe ich nicht geschrieben. Mir gefällt die Idee aber gut und ich kann nur jedem empfehlen dem historischen Gehalt der entsprechenden Quellen mal gründlich auf den Zahn zu fühlen und sich nicht allein von populären, auf den ersten Blick überzeugenden Meinungen leiten zu lassen (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
Brant is outstanding. I was able to take his class one summer when he was just a young professor visiting Notre Dame (Indiana). One of the books we used in his class was "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" by Richard Bauckham. Another outstanding book on this topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906
It's interesting to me because when I talk to people and how they come to their faith, it's all kinds of different stuff that actually ends up being the "straw that breaks the camels back." Why don't I tell you what convinces me and then give you some recommendations in various directions.
Now, I was raised a Christian. That's important because I'm not sure that I would be a Christian now if I wasn't raised as one. I make that admission not because I think it's a weakness to my case, but because I want you to understand that I understand the difficulty in believing something like this seemingly ridiculous story.
Many of my friends, very few of whom are Christians, actually call me the "most open-minded person" they know or at least one of the most. One of my best friends (an agnostic Jewish girl) says that I would make a terrific atheist if it weren't for that whole "believing in God thing."
Though I have always identified as a Christian, I did go through a time when I decided to weigh the evidence.
I'll consider any evidence and look for its flaws. I like science, but I don't like the double standard that exists between science and faith. In the opinion of many atheists, if ANYTHING appears to be incompatible with their perception of faith, it's automatically proved incorrect and any effort of a person of faith to answer why it may not be incompatible is met with deaf ears. Conversely, if ANYTHING appears to be incompatible with science, that's "fascinating!" or "interesting!" or "a great opportunity to arrive at a greater truth."
With that being said, I think there are quite a few things that we (as a society) take for granted that may or may not be true. For example, we all believe that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around. But the reason we arrived at that conclusion was not because it was the only possible answer, but because it was the simplest answer. (By the way, I believe that the earth revolves around the sun, this is just an example). Another example is gravity. It behaves so steadily that we even label it with a gravitational constant. But we know it does funky things at the quantum level and at the cosmological level (like near the event horizon of a black hole). We have no idea why.
This thinking brought me to the realization that I might not understand nearly as much as I thought I did. It felt lacking and EVERYTHING felt like faith at that time. Because of that, I decided that I would look for internal consistencies or inconsistencies in the Bible. The one that really stood out to me was Noah's flood. I had always heard that there was varying evidence for or against a global flood, but the vast majority of the arguments didn't seem to be asking the right questions. IF there WAS a global flood, it would certainly be an unprecedented event-- something that we had never observed in our time... so how would we know what to look for? The Bible itself records that water came up out of the earth-- that's not indicative of most floods.
But even that wasn't the most interesting part of that story to me. The Bible is actually a very valuable historical resource. Archaeologists rely on many of its dates and locations to find out more about sites in the middle east. That's why the flood account is so fascinating to me. No one believes that the flood account was written down for HUNDREDS of years after it is supposed to have happened. Yet, according to that account people before the flood were living for hundreds of years (up to 969). Then, for seemingly no reason, the author of the account picks the flood as the dividing point where lives are considerably shortened. I have yet to hear a good explanation for why someone over 1000 years later, yet still over 3000 years ago, would randomly decide to put that kind of change in there. Because of that, I thought, "Hm, maybe the earth drastically changed at that point." I can't prove that, just so you know. It's just an interesting thought that I had.
Now, beyond all that, I look at the historical record of the gospels and the few hundred years of church tradition immediately after that. The thing that always stands out to me there is that, regardless of the evidence of Jesus' resurrection, we do have pretty reliable reasons to believe that prominent apostles chose to die rather than go back on their claims that Christ raised from the dead. I just couldn't wrap my head around why 12 prominent guys, plus Paul, would choose to die for something they would have known to be a lie. I could understand people today who died for blind faith, but this isn't blind faith. It's not cultish (doesn't fit the psychology). It doesn't appear to be hallucinatory (doesn't fit the current medical understanding). The only thing that I could think is that it was either an incredibly elaborate lie that hundreds of people were willing to die for, or it was the truth.
When you take that into consideration with the actual gospel accounts of the resurrection, things get really interesting. I think a lot of people read those accounts (or, trust people who have read them) without considering that they may have actually happened exactly as recorded. They're certainly not written as ridiculous accounts of mad men. They don't protect the reputations of those surrounding the events. If the gospels claimed Jesus had made a roast beef sandwich rather than resurrecting, I'd bet that most people would arrive at the conclusion that they actually happened.
That's just a few reasons in addition to the ideas that resurrection was not exactly smiled upon in that culture, that the church had to survive persecution from the very beginning that the odds of Christianity actually taking hold was so unlikely it might as well have been impossible, etc. etc. As I said, none of these thoughts are exactly original.
Now as to why you should believe, I don't know what it would take to convince you. If you're wondering why I believe in Christianity over a multitude of religions, it's actually extremely original (yes, even in light of the Horus myth). No other surviving system says, "Humanity is despicable, wicked, and evil. There is literally nothing you can do to save yourselves." Yet Christianity is viewed primarily as a religion of hope and redemption. And it has convinced millions of people.
As for your comment about "superstitious goat herders" the book I like best to explain that these guys and their accounts are actually a lot more reliable than they seem is Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. It's not perfect, but it's very very thought provoking and fairly readable.
As I alluded to a number of times, I think most people tend to just treat the stories in the Bible as "impossible" without actually reading them and considering them. To a point, I don't blame them. It does seem unbelievable. But some really rational and reasonable people have looked at the evidence and come to the conclusion that it might not be as totally crazy as they once thought. Will it convince you? I don't know, I pray that it would, but ultimately that's up to you. If there's ever any question you have, I encourage you to come to me with it. I do this kind of thing a lot, speaking of which, here's another conversation I had with some other people on this subreddit. That conversation even caused /u/superwinner, a pretty frequent regular on this part of the site (this very thread, no less), to say, "Thats it, I'm friending the shit out of you." That's pretty much my crowning achievement on this subreddit.
I have much compassion for other members of this human race regardless of religious stance, and the same goes for you. I'm quite pleased that you seem willing to at least engage me on this issue and I thank you for doing it so honestly and respectfully. I hope that you find my response at least considerate and worth YOUR consideration. One final thought though-- it's not going to be ME or anything I say that convinces you one way or another. It'll be your own decision, perhaps in tandem with God, perhaps not (depending on what you choose). Either way, feel free to always consider me as a resource, even if you don't end up believing and you just want to understand why a Christian might believe something-- like why they choose one God over all the others. Good question, OP.
I suggest you have a look at the book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. There might be a little more evidence of the Resurrection than previously thought.
Nice! Just picked up another on my wish list, Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
I agree with you, but I think you misunderstood what I was inquiring. There are many atheists or members of other religions that would agree with you that the bible contains a lot of sensible moral teachings (not referring the old testament here); more along the lines of those of Jesus. That being said, why take stock in things like organized religion, belief in eternal salvation/damnation et cetera; rather than just simply appreciating the moral teachings for what they are? Thomas Jefferson did just that when he wrote this.
Jefferson edited the bible to take out all of the supernatural aspects and just left the teachings of Jesus.
You should really look into the Jefferson Bible.. Thomas Jefferson was a religious scholar who was EXTREMELY open minded about religion, surprising for someone of his time. He even owned a Koran! He ended up writing this book, his version of the bible without all that stupid mythology and slavery crap.. It's actually a pretty good read!
Here is the Amazon link if anyone is interested in having a physical copy.
Reading back, I do not interpret my comments as you've narrated. Can you show an explicit example that shows why you do?
A second reading does not show me that I'm not telling you why I think that way. I guess I'll just try to be more explicit.
Here's how I think. I'm a person who, in their natural state, isn't very reasonable and isn't very logical, like every other human being on the planet (whether they want to admit it or not). I don't think I or anyone else has the cognizance to look at a set of beliefs as broad as Christianity or any other religion and say that it makes completely unfalsifiable claims, especially when there's things like this and this and this and this. I'm not going to go into those books individually and say why I think they're right or wrong. I'm just going to say they offer big boy arguments, believe in something falsifiable, and make arguments towards it. Saying that Descartes or C.S. Lewis had unfalsfiable beliefs is plainly and undeniably false, and worse, is unfair to the fact that they support these arguments with carefully planned logic.
Saying Fred Phelps or the average Bible Belt fundamentalist has unfalsifiable beliefs isn't. So saying the whole kitten kaboodle is unfalsifiable is a sweeping generalization of a broad range of beliefs under the term "religion."
It's just not fair to the people who wrestle with their beliefs and really try to give solid reasons for believing. It puts them in the same category as buck-tooth fundamentalists.
If you want this conversation to continue, I'm going to ask you apologize for attacking my character over something as inconsequential as an internet discussion, and I'm going to further ask you not to do shit like that again. I don't know what kind of filter makes you think any of those statements are "insulting" unless you think it's an insult for someone to say your thinking isn't fair/logical. So far the first and only insults and attacks on character have been made by you. Unless you consider "I guess you don't hear a whole lot of profound statements" a pretty big insult. I agree that it was nasty & mean to say and I've apologized to the person affected.
Yea I'm in the same boat, not a scholar but I've educated myself through Bart Erhman and Mike Licona. Ill go through your list with the knowledge I have.
>As already pointed out by /u/AdultSoccer, none of the gospel authors name themselves in the text.
This is not "evidence to the contrary" as you said, but only absent evidence.
>•The Gospel of Mark is heavily borrowed from in Luke. The author of Luke-Acts makes note of John Mark in Acts 12:25, but does not identify him as the author of the Gospel of Mark.
•The Gospel of Matthew borrows even more from the Gospel of Mark than Luke. Yet, according to tradition, the disciple Matthew is an eyewitness, whereas John Mark is recording what he has learned from Peter.
Yes, the gospel writings most likely used each other as sources, but that does not discredit who they are or there story on that basis alone. For example, if you were going to write a biography of your mom, in order to get an accurate portrait of your mom, could you not ask your siblings, her friends, her relatives, etc., what she was like, to have a more complete portrayal?
>•Mark 7:31 states Jesus went from Tyre through Sidon, to the Sea of Galilee, and finally into the re. . .
I appreciate the map! But Jesus was not in a race or anything, and, if I had to guess, chose that route to show himself to as many people as possible.
>•John Mark was Jewish, yet the author of the Gospel. . .
for the Malachi prophecy, the writer only mentions Isiah, but then quotes both Malachi and Isaiah. It should be noted, though, that both Malachi and Isaiah were referring to the same event, and Isaiah would be the "greater" of the two prophets. As far as contributing the ten commandments to Moses, I'm sure you know the story. God gave Moses the commandments, and Moses then gave them to his people. The verse you gave reads, "For Moses said. . ." and Moses did indeed say these things. As far as Joseph buying the shroud on the Sabbath, the writer was just saying what happened. Yes, that would be against the law, but Jesus also worked on the Sabbath for the Kingdom of God. It appears that work for the kingdom of God on the Sabbath was acceptable, but I'm no scholar here.
I would also like to say that Plutarch's biographies don't have his named attached to them either, similarly as to the gospel's biographies of Jesus. So it is not atypical that the "by: ____" does not appear. No one denies Plutarch wrote his though. I see you called into question Papias's attributions. For Mark; Papias says, "no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord" meaning that the accuracy of sequence of events was not taken into account. Yes, Mark begins with John the Baptist preparing the way, and ends with Jesus's death, but the order of his parables and teachings, according to Papias, may not be in a chronological order. Mark just goes from one parable to the next, many times. For Matthew writing in Hebrew according to Papias; We dont have any of the original manuscripts so we dont know what the original language was. I dont see why Papias would care to lie about this, so I would say that the original language as probably Hebrew.
I appreciate your comments though!
Also, Papias was the first, but Justin the martyr also cites Mark around 150 CE. For the other gospels, all the early church fathers had one voice in who wrote the gospels, and no one else was challenging this. So the only evidence available points to their traditional authorship. The church father were not always accurate though, so, again, we cannot say with 100% certainty, but this is history 2000 years ago, and, relative to other events of the era, the available evidence is pretty good.
Lastly, if something like this is holding you back from believing (that is, "academically, we dont know who, for certain, wrote the gospels"), know that nearly 100% of new testament scholars will admit that there are at least 2 different independent sources in the gospels, and the majority of scholars say there are 4-5 independent sources. So, if you are weighing the evidence for Jesus's resurrection, know that, regardless of who wrote what, there are still several eyewitness accounts as to what happen. Check out Licona's book on this, which has over 700 pages and 2000 footnotes. He has also debated Erhman several times, you can find it on youtube
Interesting article. I appreciate his points. I may have fallen into the error that he describes of quoting people when I haven't taken the time to checkout their sources (or else misquoting them).
I disagree with your first paragraph.
I disagree with his dismissal of "Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Author of Hebrews, James, Peter, and Jude." with the exception of Paul. When he starts to dismiss Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian, then I think that it doesn't pass the smell test. I suspect that he will dismiss anyone, no matter what. A priori.
And then of course, there are counter references: http://www.bethinking.org/jesus/ancient-evidence-for-jesus-from-non-christian-sources
As far as I can tell, the historical reliability of the gospels is well established. There are a number of books, articles, etc, etc. that are convincing enough for me. (I've just put a random one below). If the gospels are reliable historically, then there are 4 more witnesses for Jesus' life.
https://www.amazon.ca/Historical-Reliability-Gospels-Craig-Blomberg/dp/0830828079
but I have to get back to my real job now and do some work ...
> How do you know? A plausible reading of Paul's epistles point to Jesus being a celestial deity whom was crucified in the firmament.
Huh? What does this even mean? No credible historian denies that Jesus was a human being. I'd love to see the sources you have for that
> That relies on the gospels, which are rejected as historical sources by historians.
Highly false. There are a lot of Christian Historians with PhD's from Harvard, Yale, Oxford etc. that do not reject the gospels as historical sources....in fact, there are only a select few Historians in general, Christian and non-, that would say the gospels are not accurate as historical literature, one example: The Historical Reliability of the Gospels
> Unless the body was stolen, lost, or Jesus was a mythological character.
valid points, and common counters to the resurrection. But again, there are numerous studies on the resurrection from PhD scholars, e.g. The Evidence for the Resurrection by JND Anderson
> What'd you find on NT?
Unfortunately, almost all that I have read has been from books that I have in person but I'll link some of them:
The Historical Reliability of the Gospels - Craig L. Blomberg
The Reason for God - Timothy Keller
Making the Case for Christianity - Korey Maas, Adam Francisco
The Resurrection Fact - John Bombaro, Adam Francisco
I've also had Dr. Daniel Wallace recommended to me, although I haven't gotten to look into his work much. I know he has some videos scattered on YouTube that can be watched, here is one.
I'd also recommend anything by John Warwick Montgomery!
> Yeah, sure thing. Really, the most damning thing to me is that he only interviewed apologists; the skeptics that he mentions in the book did not have the opportunity to defend themselves there. But here are some sources that I found interesting:
Thank you!
EDIT: Formatting
I've heard good things about Michael Kruger, you should check him out. You can try the OPC Q&A if you want a short treatment of the topic, to begin with. They answer a lot of questions like this one about canonicity, in that Q&A section.
Grace and peace.
I think there is a vast difference between claiming someone has a view you disagree with and claiming someone is being purposely and nefariously dishonest. I've read and interacted with Kruger's writings, namely (as it is related to this issue) his book Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Book. Kruger does a great job fairly presenting and countering some of the contemporary claims presented by critical scholars regarding canonicity and the first two centuries of the church. For what it's worth, I don't at all get the impression that he is lying. He believes what he is saying.
I like the method presented in Michael Kruger's book Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. He calls it the self-authenticating method (by listening to some of what you mentioned you might have heard of it). It is essentially this: canonical books must meet four criteria – 1. Providntial Exposer 2. Divine Qualities 3. Corporate Reception and 4. Apostolic Origins.
There is a ton of nuance there, but I think that the method he presents is the best considering the alternatives. This method makes a case for Revelation as canon and perhaps Enoch as scripture (again, a lot of nuance, and in his book he talks about books that were Scripture but are not canon, such as Paul's lost letters).
Overall, the canon must be self auhthenticating, and a lot of methods we use to argue for canonical books rely on authority that rests outside of God and his Word. I highly suggest reading his book. If you want a free .mobi or .epub copy direct message me.
You could probably get a copy from the Library. Otherwise, they're not that terribly expensive depending on how you go.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Jefferson+Bible
This is the one I have, and it's a scanned copy of the original with notes, and other documents. Well worth the extra investment.
http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Morals-Nazareth/dp/158834312X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450106577&sr=8-2&keywords=Jefferson+Bible
>How are VOSLs of different faiths redundant
If you had actually read the Holy Bible, the Thomas Jefferson Bible, and the Tanakh ...you might know.
I was a Christian since the fifth grade. I went to church at least once a week for years. Then, I went to college and took a history of Christianity course. Specifically "How reliable is the Gospel Tradition?". After that class, I realized that nothing is the way it is taught in church. Absolutely nothing that you are told in church is reliable and that everything you are told was probably created hundreds of years after Jesus supposedly died.
The main reason I am no longer a Christian is because I took it seriously enough to investigate it. I am glad that I did.
If you don't have the opportunity to take a course like this, this book is very useful in learning what we actually know about Jesus.
Also, another thing to look into is the dates the gospels were written, and the purposes they were written for.
84 cents on Amazon.
But the best deal is the $4.99 paperback. The perfect Christmas gift for all your rabid right wing Christian relatives and co-workers.
Introduce her to the concept of reality starting with subjective perspective.
Introduce her to the Jefferson Bible - http://www.amazon.com/The-Jefferson-Bible-Morals-Nazareth/dp/1604591285
The philosophy of liberty (originally a flash animation but now found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I ) is a good starting point (a fundamental) for understanding humanist morality and rules of subjective perception.
Introduction to the concept of falsification is a dangerous but necessary thing - ultimately, falsification and collaboration are important methods by which subjective perception becomes objective observation.
I am sure that other Redditors could contribute to this in a much more creative way, but this is what I think of when this subject comes up.
>You seem to lean quite heavily on Bayesian Methodology. If you're interested, I'd like to discuss this a little bit more. You seem to be willing to apply probabilities to historic events.
Here is an outline of Bayes Theorem and its relevance to Histoical analysis.
http://www.richardcarrier.info/CarrierDec08.pdf
I recommend anything Richard Carrier.
Here is a book with the methodology in action.
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1616145595
I probably suffer from some extreme confirmation bias as I was completely sold on this method before I ever heard of Richard Carrier. The New Testament was the first book in the canon that are started looking at using bayesian reasoning and it was a result of that analysis that I left Mormonism. I had stopped believing in Jesus before I began examining Mormon unique topics.
When I found Richard Carrier it was simply a validation on the way I aproached the question, he just did it way better than myself.
But I guess you can thank my BYU professors for my atheism. They sold me on statistics (although I was already taking statistics courses in highschool). Statistics has always been very intuitive for me. Learning it formally was such a delight.
If you are new to Bayes Theorem I would say start here. Best explanation I have found online for beginners.
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes
Good to hear there are still open-minded people out there. I think Richard Carrier is closer to the truth though 1, 2.
I personally don't know much about the subject, but I do know that Richard Carrier has written a book about using Bayes' Theorem for examining the historicity of Jesus. I haven't read it, though.
edit: However, a review on amazon states that "Dr. Carrier is writing a second book to follow up this one called "On the Historicity of Jesus Christ" that will address that question. He does touch on the subject somewhat in this book, but the purpose of this book is to lay the theoretical groundwork for the next volume."
Absolutely, Komponisto is the man too! Also, Richard Carrier's video on youtube is fantastic, and his new book Proving History has helped me to organize and answer epistemic worries that I have been struggling with for years. More and more I'm coming to understand why it truly is a revolution for rationality.
Additionally, you may be interested in Richard Carrier's discussion of the topic, and his new book Proving History and the upcoming On the Historicity of Jesus Christ.
I recall Richard Carrier wrote a book precisely about that matter.
Proving History: Bayes' Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.
Are there any subjects you're particularly interested in? I'll link a few below that I found very helpful, but I know everyone has different sorts of interests and stumbling blocks, so if there's something more specific you're looking for (or if you want more resources on a particular topic), let me know.
Anyway, that ended up being way longer than I intended, but hopefully some of the sources help you. At the very least, it should give you something to think about and some possible topics to consider when evaluating your religious beliefs.
I personally think the historical Jesus did exist, however, you keep pestering for a solid work claiming otherwise so I recommend you read this
As a side note - you have been very rude, dogmatic and unyielding. Its neither necessary nor polite.
Just butting in here to recommend On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
Carrier has stated he was firmly in the historical Jesus camp until he was introduced to Earl Doherty's hypothesis in The Jesus Puzzle.
I would also highly Highly recommend reading some criticisms of the myth theory, just to sharpen and refine your thoughts on the subject. Start here with reddit's (or rather /r/badhistory 's) own Tim O'Neill: http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2014_01_01_archive.html
Give her Richard Carrier's new book, it's all about how Jesus probably never existed at all.
ME First the above quote is out of context. It is common apologist argument that is cherry picked. I can go through and show the real facts of every one of those "proofs". Whether you are a believer or not evolution is a solidified fact, one that even that catholic church is is agreement with. I can deal with almost any religious stuff but the denial of scientific fact, proven theories, I cannot abide by. That article is full of misinformation and misconstruing of documentation and facts. If you want to believe in god that is fine, but don't pretend to know science and biology when over the past 150 years more and more evidence has come to light proving the theory of evolution. And don't say "it's just a theory" when a theory in the scientific discord is of the highest caliber of proofs so to say. Whatever you wanna believe is fine, but proven fact denial is ignorant.
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ME I'll even give you a compromise, god used evolution to create the world we live in. It is a proven concept and you can see it in action if you would like sources. It is a well researched, conclusive theory that explains all the life that has occurred on this planet, including you and me, and the evidence for it grows and grows all the time.
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DBAG , that RawStory "Did Jesus Exist?" article is ridiculous propaganda peddled out to credulous suckers. It doesn't speak well for their case that the "scholar" they hang their hat on- David Fitzgerald- isn't a scholar at all, but a self-publis...See More
Did Jesus Exist?
One may well choose to resonate with the concerns of our post-modern despisers of established religion. But...
HUFFINGTONPOST.COM
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DBAG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlp63Lxrxi0
The Extra Biblical Evidence for the Historicity of Jesus Christ.
Documentary: Evidence for the historical existence of...
YOUTUBE.COM
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ME Religion is ridiculous propaganda peddled out to credulous suckers. Was there a hippy running around at the time pissing people off? Maybe, but all the supernatural bullshit did not happen. So it doesn't matter either way.
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ME Either way this was about evolution, which if you don't think makes sense you aren't worth bothering with anyway. The Jesus thing is whatever, evolution is facts. End of story.
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DBAG Actually, this did start out as a discussion about Jesus. And your assertion that "all the supernatural bullshit did not happen" has not been demonstrated to be true.
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ME Demonstrate me some supernatural stuff then.
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DBAG Well YOU asserted that the supernatural stuff didn't happen, so the burden of proof is properly on you to prove it DIDN'T happen, but in fact there is a pretty solid historiographical case for the Resurrection.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Resurrection.../dp/0830827196
The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach
The question of the historicity of Jesus' resurrection has...
AMAZON.COM
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ME Your reasoning is wrong, I have nothing to prove to you. I am done with this conversation, it is boring me and is the same apologetic garbage. Talking snakes, resurrection, people turning to salt, whatever makes you sleep better at night. If you wanna believe in a genocidal egotistical maniac that wipes whole races of people out for no reason, lets people starve and die every day for no reason, and wants you to be ashamed of what you are on your basic human level then good for you. I will live my fulfilling life without the necessity to believe in fairy tales.Good day sir.
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DBAG So basically, your mind has been closed from the beginning, and you're unwilling to consider any evidence that might challenge your pre-formed conclusion, since that would involve opening yourself up to possibilities you've already decided were wrong before the discussion began. Do I have that right? Great "rational", "evidence-based" reasoning, bro!
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ME I have done more reading on this stuff and grew up a staunch believer, I know what they have to say and I keep up with it bro. I've read my bible cover to cover, I've read all these apologist arguments, circular reasoning. everything. I keep up with it. And my conclusion still comes to hogwash. Like I said before :
Joshua Hege's photo.
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DBAG You obviously know jack-shit about what you're talking about if you uncritically believe an internet puff piece hawking a book by a vanity-press kook, and are completely oblivious to the historical consensus on Jesus. Like most atheists promulgating the Christ-myth garbage on the internet, you've never read a single book on the subject (Whenever I encounter an atheist posing as an expert on the historicity of Jesus, the question "Name a single book you've read on the subject" always stops them dead in their tracks,) and I'm guessing you've cobbled together your information from things you saw in facebook graphics and YouTube videos. Basically, you make a mockery of the evidence-based worldviews you claim to have. Not everything you read on the internet is true, bro. Read a book for once in your life, something that actually gives sources for its claims, it won't kill you!
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ME No Meek Messiah: Michael Paulkovich, there's a book I read. I read consistently. I never said he didn't exist, I said it is unlikely, and very unlikely he existed as he is portrayed today. As for your typical rude Christian attitude when someone questions your beliefs, loving as it may be, go fuck yourself. I'm done arguing with you.
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DBAG Ah yes, "No Meek Messiah", published on that prestigious "Spillix, LLC" imprint. As I said, if a vanity press publication by an author with ZERO academic qualifications is the first and only book you've read on the subject, you obviously chose a book that you felt was going to reinforce your pre-formed judgements on the matter. You're starting with your conclusion, and then choosing your evidence to fit your conclusion. Basically, you're doing exactly what atheists always accuse Christians of doing.
Look, I get it. You're an atheist. You like pretending you're smart. It's kinda your thing. You like looking haughtily down on the views of the great masses and clucking "herp derp fairy tales derp derp santa claus herp derp." Unfortunately, as with all edumacated-by-teh-intarwebz atheists, there's really no substance behind the superior posturing.
Well you've run into at least one guy here you can't bullshit. You know it too— if you were really pleased with your performance, you wouldn't keep responding to my posts after saying you're done.
All I'm asking is that you proceed with a little more humility. You're an atheist!?! Hey, more power to you! Here's the cookie you've always wanted! You believe it's "unlikely" Jesus existed!?! Well you have as much right to your opinion as the people who think it's "unlikely" we landed on the moon, or it's "unlikely" 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust! We're all special flowers, unique in our own way! Just realize that there are people VASTLY more knowledgable and intelligent than you who have arrived at different conclusions than you have, that you're dealing with a 2000-year-old intellectual tradition you can't even begin to grapple with, and that if you go posing as an expert on the interwebz, you're bound to get checked by people who ACTUALLY know what they're talking about.
Depends on what your gonna take as evidence. If you want unanimous, written records that Jesus the son of Joseph was resurrected, there is none(well, Gospels, but you're not Christian, so yeah). That being said here's a [debate from my favorite agnostic-atheist scholar, Bart Erhman, about the historicity of Jesus' ressurection ] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhT4IENSwac) and here's a book. Here's another video too, but I'm really not too fond of it.
Disclaimer, I haven't read the book, the Priest at my local Catholic church recommended it however.
Sure. If you want scholarly resources on the resurrection, then I would suggest The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Licona. You can get it on Amazon for about $35 and it's a long read at 700+ pages.
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UCOAX5QZYQUY&keywords=the+resurrection+of+jesus+mike+licona&qid=1570211397&sprefix=the+resurrection+of+Jesus%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1
Another good scholarly resource is The Case For the Resurrection of Jesus by Habermas and Licona. You can get it for about $13 dollars on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-Resurrection-Jesus-Gary-Habermas/dp/0825427886/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0825427886&pd_rd_r=decfba9d-109a-4324-99c9-ba4523d42796&pd_rd_w=TIA6v&pd_rd_wg=EeKYx&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=WW1HBRRY8K7JV6EPDW3P&psc=1&refRID=WW1HBRRY8K7JV6EPDW3P
I would also suggest getting a general overview of the New Testament. Bart Ehrman is probably the world's leading skeptical scholar of the New Testament. His book on the New Testament, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the New Testament Writings, is a great resource and can be bought on Amazon for around $6.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0195126394/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=introduction+to+new+testament+ehrman&qid=1570211027&sr=8-6
Other books that I would strongly recommend would be:
Early Christian Writings. A short read at 200 pages. A catalog of some of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament. You can get it for $3 on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Writings-Apostolic-Fathers/dp/0140444750/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=early+christian+writings&qid=1570212985&s=books&sr=1-1
The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content Bruce Metzger was one of the leading New Testament scholars of the 20th century. You can get it for $20.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Background-Growth-Content/dp/1426772491/ref=pd_sbs_14_5/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1426772491&pd_rd_r=d83ca7e7-e9be-4da7-b3e8-3e5b6e143a27&pd_rd_w=AUNpT&pd_rd_wg=VLsLw&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7&psc=1&refRID=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7
The Fate of the Apostles, by McDowell. An in-depth study of how reliable the martyrdom accounts of the apostles are. A little bit pricey at $35-40.
https://www.amazon.com/Fate-Apostles-Sean-McDowell/dp/1138549134/ref=sr_1_1?crid=JBDB9MJMOVL8&keywords=the+fate+of+the+apostles&qid=1570212064&s=books&sprefix=the+fate+of+the+ap%2Cstripbooks%2C167&sr=1-1
Ecclesiastical History, by Eusebius, a 3rd century historian. Eusebius documents the history of Christianity from Jesus to about the 3rd century. You can get it for $10.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Background-Growth-Content/dp/1426772491/ref=pd_sbs_14_5/140-8576167-7556334?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1426772491&pd_rd_r=d83ca7e7-e9be-4da7-b3e8-3e5b6e143a27&pd_rd_w=AUNpT&pd_rd_wg=VLsLw&pf_rd_p=d66372fe-68a6-48a3-90ec-41d7f64212be&pf_rd_r=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7&psc=1&refRID=RESQKSAY5XYMKZ939JS7
> Historians look to other forms of evidence than written sources to support or deny historical assertions, and in the case of the Bible, these other forms of evidence don't always match up with the Biblical account.
One can look at K. A. Kitchens On the Reliability of the OT or Walter Kaiser's The OT Documents - Are They Reliable and Relevant? or Craig Bloomberg's The Historical Reliabilitiy of the Gospels or F.F, Bruce's The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? or Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
>...the Bible itself is sufficient proof of the claims made within it.
No one I know makes that claim, except for atheists who think that is the position of Christians. See the above works for details.
That being said if Stephen Ambrose quotes Max Hastings or John Toland and it would taken as a valid reference. So one biblical author can cite another.
There are a ton of great books on this, but the landmark scholarly book is Blomberg's on the Gospel accounts. A really good overview of history of translation is Journey From Text to Translation. These two books are basically the best you can get in terms of thoroughness and research.
Let me know if you want smaller or cheaper alternatives and I can get them to you, a really good intro "fun" style book is TPJ's How we Got the Bible. I personally can't stand that "fluffy and fun" tone, but some people really like it and grooves well for them.
Don't be afraid to bring this up to your pastor or community group and do a study together if they don't know the answer.
Hey there brother, I would encourage you to do a little more research into how canon was established.
A few points:
Further light reading:
More reading:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Edition/dp/158834312X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375154191&sr=8-1&keywords=jefferson+bible
Buy one of these. It's the important parts of the new testament's morals, with the miracles taken out, and with the old testament never mentioned. Which basically sums up the "ideology" of christianity somewhat, without the dubious parts.
Actually this historian says jesus was not real
https://www.amazon.com/Incredible-Shrinking-Son-Man-Tradition/dp/1591021219
Eye opening read.
Like... the jewish council could not have convened on the sabbath to decide jesus fate because it was forbidden to do it on that day.
And we have roman court records and no jesus.
The book has over 400 examples of where the scripture was just wrong with the historical period.
So ... the bible is wrong about the setting of the plot.. but we are still supposed to believe the man character was real?
Considering the new testament was written 400 years later.
It's a fucking joke.
Caesar existed.
Jesus even if he existed is more legend than man.
The Christ Myth theory is alive and well. There is always room to expand your knowledge. A couple places to start:
i would recommend Dr Robert Price's book, The Incredible Shrinking Son Of Man some will find it a bit tedious but i am absolutely in awe of how much evidence and reasoning go into Dr. Price's arguments that Jesus may never have existed at all or if he did that it was just a coincidence that the name was a common name at the time.
Robert M. Price's The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man might be subtle enough.
When asked by Brian Flemming if it's possible to be an atheist and a Christian at the same time, Price replied, "Sure, and I like to think that I am one."
The Jefferson Bible
> Do you think a book written today, about someone living today [etc]
Yeah this makes me think you think there was an actual fellow named Jesus who preached in Judea about 2000 years ago. Which considering the evidence is very unlikely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The first two sources being the best scholarly work on the historicity of "Jesus" reviewing and coming to the conclusion that any positive belief is unwarranted. The other three giving a very detailed description of how the jesus story contains elements from various pagan mythologies popular around that time in the region of wider Judea, concluding that it is likely that the jesus story is a fictional account consisting of a Hebrew substrate overlain with pagan motives.
Right away, a curious observer would find themselves wondering how, if this Theorem is the wonderful instrument of historical objectivity both Craig and Carrier claim it to be, two people can apply it and come to two completely contradictory historical conclusions. Yet they both use Bayes Theorem to attempt to "prove" historical things. Something does not make sense here.
Then if we turn to who doesn't use Bayes Theorem to analyse history we find this category includes ... pretty much every single historian on the planet. Again, this should strike the objective observer as distinctly odd. After all, if Bayes Theorem can genuinely be applied to determine the truth or otherwise of a historical event or proposition, it's exceedingly strange that thousands of historians all over the world are not applying this remarkable tool all the time. Richard Carrier maintains that this is because every historian on earth, except him, is too ignorant and mathematically illiterate to understand the wonders of this remarkable tool and only he has been clever enough to realise that it can be applied to history. Given that Thomas Bayes ' theorem was first published in 1763, our objective observer would be forgiven for finding it remarkable that no-one noticed that it could be used in this way until Richard Carrier, an unemployed blogger (and a person who isn't taken seriously by most scholars), came along.
​
There are two problems here when it comes to trying to apply Bayes Theorem to history: (i) Carrier and Craig need to treat questions of what happened in the past as the same species of uncertainty as what may happen in the future and (ii) historical questions are uncertain precisely because we don't have defined and certain data to feed into the equation.
Bayes Theorem only works in cases where we can apply known information. So, in the example above, we know how often it rains in a year and we know when the weather forecast is and isn't correct. So by inputing this meaningful data, we can get a meaningful result out the other end of the equation.
This is not the case with history.
Bayes Theorem's application depends entirely on how precisely the parameters and values of our theoretical reconstruction of a real world approximate reality. With a historical question, Carrier is forced to think up probabilities for each parameter he put into the equation. This is a purely subjective process - he determines how likely or unlikely a parameter in the question is and then decides what value to give that parameter. So the result he gets at the end is purely a function of these subjective choices.
In other words: garbage in/garbage out.
So it's not surprising that Carrier comes up with a result on the question of whether Jesus existed that conforms to his belief that Jesus didn't - he came up with the values that were inevitably going to come up with that result. If someone who believed Jesus did exist did the same thing, the values they inputted would be different and they would come up with the opposite result. This is why historians don't bother using Bayes Theorem.
So what exactly is Carrier doing by applying this Theorem in a way that it can't be applied? Apart from being incompetent, he seems to be doing little more than putting a veneer of statistics over a subjective evaluation and pretending he's getting greater precision.
Not surprisingly, despite his usual grandiose claims that his use of Bayes Theorem is some kind of revolution in historiography, his book Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (2012) has pretty much sunk without trace and been generally ignored by historical Jesus scholars and historians alike. His failure to convince anyone except a gaggle of historically clueless online atheist fanboys of his vast genius means that Carrier is most likely to remain what he is: an unemployed blogger and general nobody with a fringe thesis.
Richard Carrier's book addresses this very point. https://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Historical/dp/1616145595/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=proving%20history%20carrier&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&qid=1491575037&ref_=mp_s_a_1_1&sr=8-1
I would recommend Nailed by David Fitzgerald, Proving History by Dr. Richard Carrier, and On the Historicity of Jesus, also by Dr. Carrier
And I’ve perused Nailed, and have read both of the books I recommended by Dr. Carrier
I'm mostly on your side, but I'd like to oppose your recommendation of Ten Beautiful Lies.
Fitzgerald (of Ten beautiful lies, published as the book Nailed) is a poor representative of Jesus mythicism. He's no scholar, just an author hanging on the coat tails of real scholars, and some of the inaccuracies in his book show it.
Nailed was my first introduction to Jesus Mythicism and Fitzgerald's video about it is compellingly fun, but the material at the beginning about similarities (born on Dec 25, etc) between Jesus and other deities parallels Zeitgeist in being incorrect. I was sadly disappointed when I later discovered this.
Reputable names in the Jesus Myther field are: Earl Doherty, Robert Price, Thomas L. Thompson and Richard Carrier.
On the subject of Josephus and his Testimonium, I enjoyed what this guy had to say on the subject. He's arguing against well known "traditional" Bible historian Bart Ehrman, whose arguments for the historicity of Jesus often devolve into appeals to authority and chest thumping.
Personally, I think the guy to watch is Richard Carrier, whose recent book Proving History proposes using Bayes' Theorem to evaluate the validity of historical claims, and demonstrates that many of the methods used in "traditional" history, especially on the topic of Jesus, are inadequate. I'm looking forward to book 2 in this series, which specifically looks at the Jesus story.
You may enjoy Carrier's video talk, So…if Jesus Didn’t Exist, Where Did He Come from Then? , which summarizes his more important findings.
You can't cite the non-existence of a source, unless you sit down and read every book that's ever been written.
The most popular "source" that Christians cite for the historicity of Jesus is Josephus. However a number of historians have shown that those passages in Josephus (along with some others) were inserted after the fact.
Ultimately, though, the argument from skeptics and atheists is this: There is no historical evidence to back up the claims made in the Bible about Jesus. Being such extraordinary claims, one would expect these startling events to have been recorded by contemporary historians, but they were not. Therefore, until better evidence comes along, we are forced to conclude that Jesus -- at least, the Jesus of the Bible -- did not exist.
Here's a couple of good skeptical sources on the historicity of Jesus:
(Disclaimer: I haven't done much research into the question of the historicity of Jesus because I think the nonexistence of deities is so obvious that the question is pointless. So Fitzgerald and Carrier are the only resources I'm familiar with; Loftus, I think, is also good, but I'm not familiar with him.)
No we shouldn't.
The controversy is that the evidence for Jesus is from Christian sources, and none of the evidence is from a time when he was said to have lived. There's also no record that he was mentioned in Roman Court, which is very very strange because 1.) Paul was tried at court, and it was not for following Christ even though he was at that time period. and 2.) Pontius Pilate supposedly executed him, and there would be a very bold record of that.
Currently the best source on these theiries are Richard Carrier, and mind you, he is an actual historian, not some crazy dude on the street. Check out his latest book if you're curious: http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1616145595
These are theories by actual historians, that are just as qualified and respected as Christian Scholars.
I'm not going to debate you because neither of us are qualified to do so, but please realize that there are other world views than your own, and that doesn't mean they're wrong.
Actually, testing your faith as an outsider is necessary for being able to determine its objective truth and hardly "a waste." For instance, suppose you were raised as a Catholic, baptized as an infant. Ask yourself, how do other reasonable people first become believers, or insiders, if from the outside they can't understand Christianity? Which comes first, faith or understanding? If, as a nonbelieving outsider, someone cannot understand the Christian faith, then how does God expect them to reasonably come to faith in the first place? How do you get from being an outsider to being an insider as a rational, thinking, skeptical adult? If you were raised Catholic from childhood then you know that as children we had not yet developed critical thinking faculties to question what our parents told us. We didn't know any better. Isn't it unfair to bring up a child in that environment? How many Catholic parents have adequately questioned their own faith and investigated its truth content before raising their children Catholic?
How many Catholics would accept Catholicism if it were forced upon them when they were 18 years old? Wouldn't we have asked some questions about what our parents told us? If someone came along and tried presenting you a brand new religious paradigm, for example, Scientology or Mormonism, at your age you would, as an outsider, take a critical, skeptical stance against accepting those views. At some point along the line, as we become adults, we need to critically examine what we were taught as children. Doubt and skepticism are learned virtues and as we learn to question, we become thinking adults. But strangely most people don't seem to question their religious faiths which seem too obvious and have become too ingrained in us, usually because they are a part of the culture we live in. Not only that, your faith has ingrained in you a fear of Hell if you deviate from it (of course there is no evidence for the existence of heaven or hell, either), although if you do deviate from it, you can always return later.
Given the abundance of religions around the globe, the probability that the one you happened to have been brought up in is true is highly unlikely. Basically all religions teach that they are the one true religion. At best, only one can be true, as you pointed out earlier. At worst, they are all false. The only rational way to test one's culturally adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider, a nonbeliever, with the same level of reasonable skepticism that a believer already uses when examining the other religious faiths he or she rejects. If you can do that and show how Catholicism is still objectively true, then Catholicism is the one true religion, and all nonbelievers could rationally convert. The problem is that there is just no evidence to support its truth. Again, Richard Carrier's Proving History and its companion On the Historicity of Jesus are the most comprehensive scholarly treatments on the existence of Jesus. Carrier has done a lot of scholarship on the early history of the church and the facts do not hold up the way that the Catholic church would make you think they do. Not to mention that "God's true church" has been involved in some nasty terrible acts throughout history and held some embarrassingly mistaken views about reality, and it is not the paragon of moral virtue that an institution with divine inspiration would exhibit. I would challenge you to question your faith as an outsider. Read those books by Richard Carrier, for instance. Read The Outsider Test For Faith by John Loftus and question your faith as an outsider would. And if you still hold to Catholicism as the one true religion, then you have not lost anything. But if you are convinced by reasonable, skeptical arguments that Catholicism is mistaken at bare minimum or at most totally false, then you have gained a truer perspective on reality.
Ah, ye olde appeal to authority and/or popularity. If that's your opening salvo, you've already lost this argument.
How about we just jump to the end?
Find a single solitary historian who can present ANY contemporaneous evidence of Jesus of Nazareth. One will do.
Because if you can't, and you can't, then their starting assumption that Jesus actually existed cannot be supported by the evidence.
Then, ask yourself why they might hold onto this assumption, in light of a complete lack of evidence?
It really shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
In the meantime, here's a good layman's article on the topic.
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/07/jesus-the-man-that-never-was/
And here is the peer-reviewed master's class.
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494
A good read.
Yup. It's all made up. Beginning to the end. Here's a scholarly analysis of the evidence, both for and against historicity.
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1566348717&sr=1-1
LOL. Scholars think there's only a 1 in 3 chance that a character of Jesus really existed. Those odds are probably too high.
If anyone is interested in a great back and forth between a mythicist and a historicist, check out this debate between Richard Carrrier and Zeba Crook.
I think Crook ultimately comes out looking better, but they both make some good points.
Richard Carrier has published a peer reviewed book called "On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt".
Yeah, I wasn't sure how Amazon links were treated here. Here's the full URL:
http://www.amazon.com/On-Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason/dp/1909697494
If you want to know what got me into Bayes, it's Richard Carrier and his methodology for proving that Jesus never existed ;)
It seems as though your only source, that isn't the bible, is Bart Ehrman. In fact, almost everything that you've written on the subject is almost verbatim Ehrman's own phrasing, especially this little gem which Ehrman has never provided any evidence for:
> Each and every one of these scholars with a teaching position at a university not only believes that Jesus existed...
So, either you are Ehrman or you've read a single book that validates your viewpoints and have begun a crusade on r/atheism.
I will see your one, single source, and raise you 2 additional doctorates in the field that disagree directly with Ehrman:
On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier, PhD Ancient History
The Messiah Myth by Thomas Thompson, PhD Theology who also was a professor of religious studies at a few universities despite the incessant assertions of both yourself and Ehrman that every single scholar in a teaching position believes the same as you.
The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems by Robert Price, PhD Systematic Theology and PhD New Testament yet another professor of religion at a university.
Hello!
Just because there is no evidence that any religion has it right doesn't mean there is no God.
I urge you to not completely discard your Christianity. Jesus became a myth creature only later, there was a real jesus who did actually say some profound stuff. So i'd recommend you look at what practices and teachings you had during your Christianity and maintain some of them, but for different reasons than formally. Oh and if you are intellectually curious as to what Jesus actually said and actually believed I'd recommend The Gospel of Jesus, which has an interesting take, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, which is more historically rigorous, and the Five Gospels: What did Jesus really say?, which is a good reference book on the historicity of individual biblical Jesus quotes
Oh and ---> Christian Deism
The Five Gospels.
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.
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.
> 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.
Worth reading: Forged, by Bart Ehrman
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.
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?
> 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.
There are so many awesome texts out there!
I'm really partial to the character of Enoch, and the more weird, apocalyptic sorts of books. I'll throw a few of those out there for your perusing pleasure.
I'm using two Wiki links to give a general overview of the two texts I'll talk about, but please
The Book of Enoch, or First Enoch - this book is regarded as canon by Christians in Ethiopia/Eritrea, but not by other churches. I think it is particularly interesting because Enoch is taken around on a grand tour of the cosmos: he sees the world, up into the heavens, and even down to Sheol. It's pretty cool to read how people reckoned the cosmos worked back then. There are weird visions of angels, a few parables and even an astronomical calendar text thrown into the mix.
Slavonic Enoch, or, Second Enoch is unrelated to First Enoch (i.e., different author, very different date and region) but contains a lot of the same sort of stories about good old Enoch. There's also some stuff about Melchizedek, whom you probably recognize since it seems you're interested in Gnostic stuff. (the Wiki link for this one isn't as strong as the first- please check out more sources for better analysis of the text)
More information on the books of Enoch:
Jewishencyclopedia.com
Detailed analysis by Andri Orlov
If you are looking for more fun Gnostic stuff to peruse, and haven't checked out Apocalyptic/Gnostic scholar Elaine Pagels yet, you're missing out:
Youtube Discussion about the Book of Revelation
I'd definitely check out her books on the Origin of Satan and Revelations
The book of rev was discarded as heresy until it was championed for it's ability to target heretics by labeling them anti-Christs. There was a ton of other apocalyptic literature at the time that never made canon for good reason. Any Christian who's done research on the early church, yet still believes in the rapture doctrine, is fucking 110% delusional by their own standards; at least Islam is consistent in their madness. Elaine Pagels wrote a fantastic, short book on the subject:
http://www.amazon.ca/Revelations-Visions-Prophecy-Politics-Revelation/dp/0143121634
Bruce Metzger worked with Erhman on this book but if Erhman makes you suspicious, then Metzger has one on his own on the Canon of the NT, but both of those are about the NT only, not about the results.
Philip Jenkins' Jesus Wars is also eminently readable, but you might want to check the ToC to see if the subject matter is what you're looking for.
The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration is a good read on this issue. In general I don't think Ehrman is a great historian, but this book is pretty good. it is not only informational, it is a fun read.
https://www.amazon.com/Text-New-Testament-Transmission-Restoration/dp/019516122X
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534
great Book!
You can look at religion (in my example religious text) from an academic lens (ex:Bart D. Ehrman’s textbook on the New Testament) where using historical fragments of manuscript you can see what portions were likely edited or added later. You factor in writing styles and other variables and evaluate it as a historical text that changes over time (and why those changes occur). This evaluation let’s you see that say some authors may have influenced the writing of other later writers who may have added elements they thought weren’t sufficiently elaborated (ex: resurrection) which then led to later editors adding that to the earlier authors so they all were in agreement. It can actually be really interesting to look at the text in this way.
Within Catholicism, the Jesuits are particularly interested in science / academia which has sometimes created theological debate where they push / publish something at odds with a historically held position. They’ve actually contributed to several areas of science (ex: experimental physics in the 17th century), but someone with more background would need to speak more to this.
Comparing a class I had in primary school (the equivalent of 6th grade) to later classes outside of school in the US there were notable differences. The first emphasized ethics and pulled in history and science as tools to help explain and answer “why is this the case” or “how does this work” questions while the second was more “this is what is true and anything that conflicts must not be true” which threw out a lot of history / science that didn’t agree (ex: evolution).
It’s the difference between allowing scientific knowledge to influence your beliefs so that you see evolution as an even greater and more powerful miracle than a simple creation as is vs. ignoring science and seeing evolution as fiction because it wasn’t in the book.
Honestly, it's not something I've put a lot of thought in to... His textbook on the New Testament is the one we used for our class, and it is actually a pretty good analysis of the history, structure, etc of the New Testament, but it isn't a theological text that attempts to confirm/deny the validity of Christianity.
Now, I'm assuming (but correct me if I'm wrong) that the "beliefs" you asked about are his beliefs that the Bible has been corrupted over time and is therefore unreliable as a theological text. And, by extension, if the Bible is unreliable, the things it says about God must be false. I think this is one of the big problems one runs in to when using Bible as the sole source of your faith, as many of our protestant brothers & sisters do. In Catholicism, we base our beliefs on not only what the Bible says, but on the teachings & traditions that have been passed down to us since apostolic times. Indeed, I'd say the we tend to give primacy to the teachings & traditions that are handed down over those put forth in the Bible, which is a good thing since books/passages in the Bible often have multiple interpretations (on a side note, that's why there are 20,000+ protestant denominations).
So, say that Mr. Ehrman was able to 100% prove that the Bible was corrupted and is entirely false -- impossible, but play along for sake of discussion. Would it cause some theological difficulties? Sure. But would it affect the teachings & traditions of Christianity? Not so much, unless the Bible was your sole source of theology (applies to many protestant denominations, not Catholicism).
I hope this makes sense. If not, feel free to ask for more info.
Who Wrote the New Testament and The New Testament a Historical Introduction are both good places to start. The latter is by Bart Ehrman, who Bikewer mentioned.
If you need to do school work, you should totally not read The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings by Bart Ehrman. This is his text book for an intro class.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/0199757534/ref=la_B001I9RR7G_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521610864&sr=1-15&refinements=p_82%3AB001I9RR7G
You copied this list directly from this wiki page about a book that advances Jesus mythicism, the notion that there was no historical Jesus, a thesis that is rightly dismissed by every tenured professor at leading research universities who study first century Judaism and Christianity.
Even Richard Carrier, the most prominent Christ mythicist, calls the book "unreliable," citing damning methodological problems.
>In general, even when the evidence is real, it often only appears many years after Christianity began, and thus might be evidence of diffusion in the other direction. . . . [then he cites several other methodological problems]
>All this is not to say Graves didn't have some things right. But you will never be able to tell what he has right from what he has wrong without totally redoing all his research and beyond, which makes him utterly useless to historians as a source. For example, almost all his sources on Krishna long postdate Christian-Nestorian influence on India. No pre-Christian texts on Krishna contain the details crucial to his case, apart from those few that were common among many gods everywhere. Can you tell from Graves which details are attested by early evidence, and which by late? That's a problem.
When even Carrier, who is largely dismissed by the academic community, dismisses something as unreliable and utterly useless, you know it's bad.
If you want to study how early Christianity was related to other systems of belief contemporary to it, go to the scholars who are well regarded in the field, and avoid sensational, popular-level books. Bart Ehrman wrote a good, undergraduate-level textbook on the New Testament and early Christianity.
>> That's what this conversation is about.
> It's a simple enough problem: If Jesus existed and is not a deity, then the people who claim he is immortal might well be wrong about every word they've said about him, which calls the entire bible (and any other "sacred" or "holy" works) into question.
No, please read the wikipedia article on the Historicity of Jesus that I linked. The article explains the process by which modern, secular scholarship studies secular and non-secular sources to conclude that a historical Jesus existed.
For further reading, see Bart Ehrman's textbook, (The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings )[http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Historical-Introduction/dp/0199757534]. It goes into some detail on the question of a historical Jesus. (Sidenote: I recommend this book to you because Bart Ehrman is not a Christian.)
>Wrong, my day job is in science. Science is not based in trust whatsoever; it happens to be the case that trustworthy scientists are employed by large academic institutions because of the quality of their work—for the most part (there are exceptions).
Take my field, for example. If I'm working on some cell line mechanism in the lab, I will indeed be working based on something someone has done before me. There will be prior evidence which I have to utilise. I don't just blindly accept it and work on it. I have to read it, analyse it, and see whether other independent groups have come to the same conclusions. That's the whole basis of meta-analysis—you don't trust one person's work. It's a fundamental aspect of science.
>Science is not based in trust whatsoever;
And, then you also explain what you trust in science:
>That's the whole basis of meta-analysis—you don't trust one person's work. It's a fundamental aspect of science. And it happens to be the case that trustworthy scientists..
That is what I am saying about Biblical Studies, in particular language. Trustworthy scholars do the work. Not one person.
That's the whole basis of meta-analysis—you don't trust one person's work. It's a fundamental aspect of
sciencetextual analysis in Biblical Studies. No one person verifies the work of all the others, not me or anyone else, because that is impossible, but that is what you think ought to happen "to be sure" of whatever.>The fact that you're questioning my credentials based on a really obvious flaw makes you argument incredibly weak.
I assumed you could not work in science because of how self-contradictory your argument was, but I just showed you how you did it with science too. The problem, I see, is definitely more based in logic.
>Perhaps you're just talking about mathematicians and statisticians, where prior mathematical proof is easier to validate. Others can do it there and then, whereas in the physical sciences you have to physically set up an experiment and replicate it.
No, I am talking about all sciences.
>Whilst I can't say with 100% certainty (and no one ever will) that Jesus did not walk on water, raise from the dead or turn water into wine, it goes against all current scientific knowledge. For those to be true, fundamental laws of physics and chemistry would need to be re-evaluated.
But that wasn't your claim. Your claim was that parts of the Bible are "exagerated or fabricated" within the contect to textual analysis. You are questioning the veracity of the text itself, and that is what I am answering. This isn't about what is particularly "un-scientific" abou the Bible, however interesting a subject that might be.
>And, indeed, thorough historical proof that it happened. AFAIK the only solid evidence is that Jesus was crucified. There is no evidence from that generation which conclusively says he went missing from his grave.
Now you turn to historiography, rather than emperical science, as the source of your complaint. Since this is closer to the subject at hand, textual analysis, I will address it briefly. That are scholars who argue in exhaustive detail the historicity of the resurrection. If you have time to read a 700 page book on it by a professor who's taught at Oxford and Cambridge, I recommend N.T. Wright's [Resurrecetion of the Son of God*](http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796). It offers what the author, and plenty of others, regard as evidence for the historical ressurection. If you have not read it and refuted its contents, you are not in a position to say there is no evidence, even if you continue to say there isn't, which I fully expect to be the case.
>lack of evidence
If you are interested in re-evaluating your position, I recommend a 700 page argument for the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. It might be more informative than a reddit conversation.
The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3
http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796
What (other than prejudice) would keep you from reading it?
>You claim that your god interacts with the physical world in response to prayers and according to his "plan" to influence people and events and yet have never shown any proof of the truth of such a claim nor have you even advanced a theory on how such an external supernatural action would occur outside of physical laws.
There are those who may say they have proof in the experiencing the miracles or answered prayers themselves, but I do not believe I'll be able to provide you with "proof" that God interacts with the world. What would that proof look like anyway?
>On top of that, you claim that wine and bread literally transforms into blood and body of Christ. Not allegorically, not metaphorically, literally. This claim is easily disprovable and hurts your credibility. As well, the claim that blessings, confession, sacraments, adoration or any of these ceremonies has a basis in reality is absurd and has zero evidence to back it up.
Yes, I do believe that at the words of consecration from the priest, the bread and wine literally, substantially, truly become the body and blood of Christ.
The claim is easily disprovable in what way? Do you want to take the bread and wine and examine it? We assert that even under a microscope, the bread and wine will still look like bread and wine.
The doctrine of the Real Presence states that Jesus is present under the appearances of bread and wine. So any testing would still reveal that bread and wine are still present.
Even Jesus' own followers left him after hearing him say that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood, it is not surprising that those not of the faith would scoff at it. It is a scandalous claim indeed.
>Spirital as it pertains to biological as well as life-after-death. You say a lot about what the afterlife is like and what the parameters for attaining it are without any basis of proof aside from stories from ancient illiterate shepherds who had no idea how reality worked. You have zero actual knowledge of souls, sins, resurrection, afterlife, etc. and yet you make many claims about them and call these claims "truth".
This depends on what you mean by "knowledge." Are you suggesting that the only way of attaining knowledge of something is to prove it scientifically?
This proof you are seeking is nothing something we've ever claimed that we've had. These things you mention (sins, resurrection, afterlife, etc.) are things we believe de fide divina et ecclesiastica (of divine and ecclesiastical faith).
As far as the soul, I think there is room for discussion about the evidence of the soul. Intentionality comes to mind.
Also, you said that our basis for proof comes from:
> "stories from ancient illiterate shephards who had no idea how reality worked
This is a genetic fallacy
And to suggest they "had no idea how reality worked" is an absurd claim.
>Again, you say this and yet your church makes many claims about knowing precisely this. Belief is irrelevant, evidence is relevant. You can believe what your books say all you want. Even if everyone on Earth believed something that was untrue, say that the Earth was flat (coughthebiblecough), it doesn't make it true.
Belief is not irrelevant and knowledge of something being true is not solely contingent upon seeing scientific proof of it.
For example, you rightly believe that there are other minds apart from yourself. But it is impossible to prove this scientifically. Does it make the belief unwarranted? No, it is a properly basic belief.
Also, the bible does not attempt to tell us how the material world actually is. It's not a science book. There is nothing in the bible that says the earth is flat. What you would most likely refer to is where, in the Bible, it means the "four corners of the earth."
>I have enough evidence to reject it in favour of the null hypothesis for reality with a little help from Occam. The null hypothesis would be that there is no unseen, spiritual world and the only world that exists is what we can detect with our own senses and scientific measurement. Since we have seen exactly zero evidence that contradicts this or supports a magical spiritual world, the only possible conclusion is that magic doesn't exist.
You're starting point is that the only "proof" you'll accept is scientific. The entities in question are not empirical, thus the scientific method is of no use for determining the reality of the after life.
So if your criteria for determining the reality of the after life is that it must meet the standard of scientific proof, you're making an assumption that that's the only proof that is acceptable.
If there is intentionality, a will, I think it's compelling evidence of something "other wordly" that has power over the material world. When I move my leg, I willed my leg to move. This is a good starting point for understanding the spiritual as it related to the biological.
>They aren't credible to anyone unless you already accept their truth a priori. They're about as credible as Homer's Odyssey or any other story devised by man.
Do not treat the Bible as one single book, first off.
Secondly, if you treat the New Testament, especially the Gospel accounts, as you would any other historical document, you may find the historical reliability of the gospel accounts on the resurrection of Christ are quite compelling. See here for quick reference.
For a more in depth look, see here.
>In sum, you use the word "truth" in reference to your claims, yet there can be no truth without evidence.
Are you talking about scientific evidence? Because if you are, then this is simply not true.
You can arrive at truth without scientific in many things, in fact, you have to. Take for example mathematical truths. You cannot prove these with science because science must presuppose them.
You can arrive at logical truths without scientific evidence. You can also know things are true, such as someone is beautiful, without scientific evidence.
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.
If you'd be interested in doing some reading on the Resurrection, Michael Licona's The Resurrection of Jesus, Dale Allison's Resurrecting Jesus, and N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God are all excellent. They're all on the long side, but if you really want to dig into the historical question, one or more would be helpful.
Sorry I'm a little late replying.
I would say there is more truth to cypherhalo's comment than first appears. Most biblical scholarship and textual criticism (as well as biblical archaeology) unfolds naturally according to the particular scholar's philosophical pre-dispositions. Welhausen's DEJPQ theory is an example, as is Davide Hume's natural history of religion. In other words, I would say there is no such thing as "biased" vs "unbiased" views on a subject this large, one that requires multiple non-empirical judgments and hunches in order to form an opinion on. I would perhaps use an equally blunt contrast of "university press" vs "popular press" publishing – and stick with the former.
If you are interested in a full-throated defense of the resurrection by an Oxbridge academic, give The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright a look. It is 740 pages, so not exactly light reading; but what kind of scholarly investigation into such a subject would be?
God did speak for himself. That's the authority that I case my claims upon.
Ok, links:
https://www.amazon.com/Testament-Christian-Origins-Question-Paperback/dp/0800626818
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796
http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/garyhabermas.htm
https://historyofphilosophy.net/
The Gospels or this:
https://smile.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796/ref=gp_aw_ybh_a_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=BCRD1RNFXNXC16V43V08
Yes, sure. If you imagined a literate culture with wide access to papyrus you certainly would. I think, however, an ancient historian would tell you that historians often have to rely on a single account of history from a single official source. If you want a strong case for the miraculous around Jesus death, ancient historian / bishop / leading theologian N.T. Write digs into the circumstances and argues convincingly that the early church could not have begun the way it did if Jesus had not been raised from the dead. The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God
There’s plenty of proof for that as well:
http://www.lydiamcgrew.com/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdf
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796
> Hard to have a grudge against something you don't think exists.
I see your point, but I would also say that if God does exist - this stance toward God is in itself a grudge.
>What makes you say everyone, even Christians, has a grudge against God? That sounds like an interesting idea even though I already disagree.
The short answer is that all have sinned/are sinners. It's hardwired in our very existence - that we are enemies of God and by nature objects of wrath. The longer answer would take some lengthy conversations about one's understanding about Christianity, and discussions about terms such as sin, salvation, grace, redemption, justification, sanctification.
> My point earlier was that admitting Jesus existed doesn't mean admitting any of those other things.
I agree with that - my answer above was that this is the easiest route to take. If Jesus doesn't exist, I don't have to worry about any of his claims, or examine any of his life.
> No one comes back from the dead, and no one ever will.
I'd highly recommend this book. It's long and dense - but Wright makes a compelling case for the historicity of the Resurrection. But your adamance in the impossibility of coming back from the dead I think is useful as well - Human beings know this to be true, which is what makes the Resurrection story a gamechanger.
I'm not sure about one book in particular but N.T. Wright would be a good place to start – perhaps The Resurrection of the Son of God.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier
It maybe he didn't exist at all
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_jUYxCb233PSW3
Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00772ZH8Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_oVYxCb3MF1Z9J
https://youtu.be/mwUZOZN-9dc
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.
Jeesuksen historiallisuudesta on loppujen lopuksi todella vähän nykyaikaiset metodit täyttävää tutkimusta. Ja Carrier on kollegasi kun hän on väitellyt historiasta tohtoriksi todella kovasta yliopistosta (Columbiasta New York). Carrierin metodi ja lähdekritiikki kestää päivänvalon.
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494
Uskontoja syntyy ilman, että tarvitsee olla historiallista sankaria kaiken takana. Itseasiassa Jeesusta vanhempia mutta kovin samankaltaisia mysteerijumaluuksia tunnetaan lukuisia ja niitä kaikkia pidetään keksittyinä. Miksi tämä yksi olisi poikkeus?
Tietenkin jos löytyisi yksikin todiste historiallisesta Jeesuksesta niin kysymystä siitä onko Jeesus olemassa vain musteena paperilla ei tarvitsisi käydä vaan voitaisiin miettiä minkälainen henkilö siellä loppujen lopuksi oli.
And then there's Richard Carrier who argues the opposite.
http://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt-ebook/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421015615&sr=1-1&keywords=richard+carrier
The question of why christianity emerged has a fairly complex answer. It's tied to the roman occupation of jerusalem, influence from mystery cults, societal discontent, a feeling that the jewish leadership was immoral, a constant re-reading of scriptures to search for hidden truths, and a kind of darwinian elimination of other competing sects.
If you're actually interested in the case against historicity, Richard Carrier has a masterful work called On the Historicity of Jesus Christ - Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. This is incredibly well researched, heavily footnoted (i've never seen a book more thoroughly documented), and over 700 pages.
Dr Carrier wrote the book in such a way as to push this discussion into a format that can be analyzed in a scientific way. Up until now, this debate has just basically been a series of opinions. He's changing things by trying to take all of the assumptions and assign them probabilities. All of the evidence and assumptions are broken into the smallest pieces and assigned an "element number" which can allow historians to push this conversation along. Disagree with Dr Carrier? Great - point to the element that isn't right, and we can refine the model.
> how do respond to the claim that Jesus is essentially too unique and revolutionary not to be a God? That his message was so subversive and out of the blue that there's no way he could just be some guy?
Actually, around the time of Jesus there were a lot of apocalyptic preachers going around. He wasn't unique at all. Jesus is just the one whose influence happened to continue to our time.
You might want to search YouTube for "Richard Carrier" or read his book.
On the Historicity of Jesus
You also have the option of reading books written by actual bible scholars, like Bart Ehrman.
Try for example "Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are" (https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors-ebook/dp/B004IWR3JW) or "Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)" (https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions-ebook/dp/B001TKD4XA/). Both books discuss real and deep problems with the Bible that are quite difficult to dismiss.
And there is also "The Invention of God" by Thomas Römer (https://www.amazon.com/Invention-God-Thomas-R%C3%B6mer-ebook/dp/B01985ZGGA) which presents evidence on how the abrahamitic god evolved as an amalgamation of several gods from the arabian/middle eastern desert, all explained by using the Bible itself as a source. Beware, though, that this book is a much heavier read than the ones by Ehrman.
> Does he mention the Codex Escalada which mentions Juan Diego and is dated around the same time as the painting?
If you go and read the article yourself, you'll see that he does mention it and explains why it's not convincing - it's a single scrap of parchment of unknown provenance that just happened to appear right around the time when Juan Diego was being considered for canonization. Even if the "codex" is authentic, there are (AFAIK) no other contemporary sources to corroborate it. So all we really know is that someone made this piece of writing/drawing - perhaps for the express purpose of convincing people that the legend of Juan Diego was a real event. There's a long history of Christian writers lying to advance their own theological views that goes back to the New Testament authors, so it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case here too.
>Also, are you aware Juan Diego was made a saint?
Yes, and I don't consider it relevant. The Catholic Church decides who becomes a saint, and they have a conflict of interest – this gives them more miracle claims that they can present to their congregations as proof that their beliefs are correct. Even if they're not deliberately deceiving people or fabricating evidence, the fact is that the people doing these investigations are Catholic themselves. They're invested in their faith and they want these miracles to be real, which makes them biased.
> You said "some" are accepted not to be by Paul, therefore its a trick to ask questions about the authors intent. This is a pretty stark contradiction.
No, you are conflating two separate issues.
> That does not mean that Jesus could not be speaking literally, he very well could be. He did say quite a few culturally outrageous things, some of which he clearly expects nobody to be able to follow i.e. when he states the part of the way to attain eternal life is to give up all earthly things, his apostles protest that its not possible and jesus confirms that with man it is not possible.
Thank you for admitting that Jesus advocated extreme poverty. The early church also practiced small-scale communism, forcing new members of the cult to give up their possessions, so I don't know where you're getting the idea that Jesus was just kidding. (They thought that Jesus was coming "very soon", so it's hard to blame them.) Jesus also preached self-mutilation as a means of avoiding sin. (Mat 5:29-30, Mat 18:8-9) Yes, Jesus said some screwed-up stuff that Christians are wise to discount and ignore. It sounds like you are making my argument for me.
> Other scholars have offered that the use of the term hate in that context was meant more as a comparative word meaning 'to love less', stating the the idea of passionate hatred didn't exist in this context.
Yes, I have heard this bad argument before. I believe there is at least one translation of the NT that translates the word "hate" as "not love as much", which is not the first time a translation was used to change scripture support contemporary values. Yes, "hate" means "to love less". It also means "do not love at all, and wish ill upon". To call what Jesus meant as "loving less" instead of "hate" is spin, and an example of what I call The Christian Narrative. I repeat: Christians do NOT believe in the Bible. The Word of God is the Christian Narrative, NOT the Bible. The Bible is interpreted so that it fits the narrative. The Bible supports the Narrative, not the other way around.
I will make this more clear:My guess is that when you preach Rom 3:23 to someone else, then you don't spend five paragraphs trying to figure out the "intent of the author". It's not necessary to do that because Rom 3:23 already conforms to your values and thus it does not require any "interpretation".
> I would challenge you to explain why the literal reading should be the assumed one, I would challenge that that is not how you approach life in general.
Of course it's not how I approach life in general, and that is because life in general is not purported to be the perfect word of a divine being. The Bible is supposed to be the ultimate story of reality and how I should live my life. How am I supposed to regard life and general in the same way? That's an entirely unfair comparison, and thus it's a bogus argument.
My challenge back to you is for you to explain to me which Bible verses you take literally (Rom 3:23 and John 3:16 perhaps?), and which ones you don't take literally, and why you don't take them literally. The reason why you cannot take some verses literally because they clash with extra-biblical values that are more important, and thus those offending verses must be "interpreted" to suit the higher calling. I submit that loving your mother is more important that obeying everything Jesus told you to do, and I believe you agree with that because that is part of your Christian Narrative, which is the Word of God. Not the Bible.
> Yeah there are people in my extended family that converted to catholicism (albeit it was because of marriage). They seem more chill than the christianity i'm normally exposed to.
Well from the sound of it, they’re probably non-practicing/cultural Catholics. Unfortunately, this is common. xP
> I consider myself a seeker. I wouldn't be asking these questions and currently trying to read the bible if I wasn't. I've been to church. I don't get that fuzzy feeling everyone else does.
Kudos to you for your love for the truth!
>but I cant bring myself to be confident in the mechanism by which this higher power has manifested life, death, and everything in between. It would not be humble of me to claim such things with 100% certainty. I feel like there's always something to learn.
Ah, well just to clarify, Catholicism does not claim to know everything. There is a lot that we do not and cannot know because we are human and not God. However, there is also a lot that we can and do know due to divine revelation and human reason (see the classical theist tradition for example).
The evidence is out there. I mean if there wasn't any, then being an atheist or agnostic would be the clear-cut choice right? Yet there are many brilliant people in the world today who believe in God as a result of compelling philosophical, scientific and historical evidence. Anthony Flew for example, the world's most influential atheist in the 20th century, converted to deism in 2004. He came to believe in the God of Aristotle, a God that possessed the attributes of immutability, immateriality, omnipotence, omniscience, oneness or indivisibility, perfect goodness and necessary existence. He also ended up developing a great respect for the Christian religion saying: "I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honoured and respected whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true. There is nothing like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul…If you’re wanting Omnipotence to set up a religion, this is the one to beat" (There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind, 185-186).
> And if in the process of me learning, I die and go to hell, well f**k me right? Like what can I do?
If you die in the process of learning then you will be judged by God who is perfect justice. Again, you aren't screwed. If you've lived a good life and tried your best to follow the truth then I have no doubt you'll be saved.
>The hostility is unwarranted and should not happen. However, I don't think it's necessarily the hostility that contributes to their reluctance. Whether they are right or wrong ...or whether believers are right or wrong, there is some kind of resistance there for sure, but if its coming from a genuine place, how do both parties work with each other and come to a solution? Not everyone who doesn't believe is wanting to continue to sin or rejects Jesus. I personally believe Jesus historically existed. Sometimes it's just hard to believe in a resurrection, I don't know how to make it any more philosophical than that.
There are biases on both sides. The bias for Christianity can stem from seeking comfort in the idea of God during hard times, loving the idea of heaven or falling in love with Christ and one’s faith.
On the other hand, the bias for atheism often stems from an atheist not wanting to make significant changes to himself and the way he lives his life, especially in the matters related to sex (although I was never an atheist, I could relate to this). If there is one thing about Christianity that rubs modern man in the wrong direction, it is its sexual ethos – that’s where all the hate and vitriol comes from really. If atheism is true, then we are free to do as we please. However, if Christianity is true, then there is a rightful way by which we should live, a life of virtue, and more is expected for us. In the light of Christianity and its demands, atheism is very attractive, comforting and relieving.
This bias for atheism makes them atheists less receptive to the gospel and hinders them from weighing the evidence for the existence of God objectively. Few gladly follow the evidence wherever it leads because many want atheism to be true.
>Sometimes it's just hard to believe in a resurrection, I don't know how to make it any more philosophical than that.
I wonder what it’s like for an atheist like you, who was never a Christian, to approach Christianity and all its claims..
Anyway, if you’re interested, I suggest seriously looking into the evidence for the resurrection. Check out what we Christians have to say on the topic, what are our strongest arguments, etc. For starters, I recommend checking out this article by Dr. Kreeft but if you’re looking for a serious challenge, I suggest picking up N.T. Wright’s magisterial study The Resurrection of the Son of God.
>So it goes back to my OP, which is how do you "unknow" what logically makes sense to you?
The only way to "unknow what logically makes sense to you" is to learn more and realize that you're wrong. When that happens, you'll make changes to your worldview based on this new information that you perceive to be correct.
Minimally, if the effect of prayrer is unverifiable, it would be wrong to say it universally fails (I don't know if you said that but someone did). Prayrer isn't deliberately unfalsifiable, I suppose the nature of prayrer and testing scientifically if prayrer 'works' is . . not really a matter of science, even though I can imagine certain kinds of scientific tests to observe if certain prayrers 'work', and even the term 'work' is difficult to use because of the nature of prayrer. So maybe it would be better to say a significantly better methodology would need to be employed.
If God didn't heal 100 out of 100 amputees, the most you could say based on that experiment is that God said no, 100 out of 100 times. . and then you are assuming there is a God in the first place, and God could have morally sufficient reasons for saying no 100 times.
In regards to the nature of answered prayrer, it is not true theologically speaking that all answered prayrer must happen supernaturally. So answered prayrer could come in the form of a friend meeting a need, and I completely grant that that makes the conversation in regards to science and prayrer even more confusing, which I think supports my point regarding the general untestability of the effects of prayrer in a certain sense.
We live amongst brilliant people so I think something could be done, but the experiments im aware of are either too simple or are based on a superficial understanding of prayrer.
Not that you need to read it, but theirs an incredible book by Craig Keener called Miracles that has significant crossover into the conversation we're having here, more in the region of things like exotic medical ailments being undone. Very well documented. Conclusions aside, it is good work. And its nice to hear what you have to say, too, so I appreciate your conversing :)
You should check out this book
It doesn't really matter what my beliefs are, just that, no, not every religion can be disproven, which is what you said.
However, my two big reasons for thinking there's probably a god (or, at the very least, a spiritual realm) are NDEs and documented, modern miracles.
edit: I forgot one: Edith turner and similar anthropologists
God gives us logic, and then occasionally circumvents the rules He established.
It's not blind acceptance of the irrational. It's accepting that God's miraculous intervention in our universe can circumvent known laws of nature. This book outlines hundreds of scientifically supported examples of miraculous events occurring. This is not explained by science alone. Miracles do seem to occur on occasion when situations are charged with religious significance. The acceptance of a rational only universe (according to Newtonian mechanics) is in my opinion, lacking in evidence. It does not best explain the universe I see. I approach the evidence like a jury approaches the evidence in a murder trial - what is the likely event, beyond reasonable doubt, given the evidence we have available. When new evidence surfaces, we can revise our decision.
I consider this a rational approach, and it means accepting that God has circumvented the laws of logic.
I don't know if He hasn't. If you've got a library near you or are willing to shed big bucks, I'd recommend Craig Keener's book Miracles. It's in two volumes and it basically goes through arguments for accepting miracles, then a listing of modern miracle claims. I've not read all of it, but while I was at Uni I got to read a good portion. It's amazing stuff: https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525 I think it will answer your question better than I can.
Either way, God is under no moral obligation to do anything but punish sinners. If He wanted He could justly have never came and saved us and just let us all be damned.
I would check out the long amazon review on the book
https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/product-reviews/0801039525/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=all_reviews#reviews-filter-bar
Keener takes Pat Robertson seriously.
See a pro-Christian blog
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/07/healing-of-amputees.html
" In other words, Keener isn't giving us much to go by. But he is providing more than Chris suggests. "
" Keener notes that he found more than 25 cases with "something like [healed amputees] " something like it
His evidence is "eyewitness accounts" like in Robertson's book where somebody saw it happen "in Ghana" and cases of things like spontaneous cancer remission.
>There are processes that select for more complexity and rationality.
Again, processes require an agent to set up the initial process. That agent also must be very intelligent if the program goal is to select for complexity and rationality.
Also, an ordered process is not at all likely to arise within this universe. The reason being is that the 2nd Law of thermodynamics states that the universe is constantly becoming more and more disordered: http://www.livescience.com/50941-second-law-thermodynamics.html If such a process has arisen, then it needed an agent to help it.
My point is simple: Name something else, besides what you think of the brain, that uses itself; and that is not designed.
There really isn't anything else. Hammers need carpenters, skis need skiers, planes need pilots, and computer need users. The brain is a computer, and as a computer it requires a user.
We haven't even talked about DNA, which is somehow a code without a writer. How can a code not have a writer? Check out this recent study done with DNA at Harvard:
http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/93/writing-the-book-in-dna
Quote from the article:
"In another departure, the team rejected so-called "shotgun sequencing," which reassembles long DNA sequences by identifying overlaps in short strands. Instead, they took their cue from information technology, and encoded the book in 96-bit data blocks, each with a 19-bit address to guide reassembly. Including jpeg images and HTML formatting, the code for the book required 54,898 of these data blocks, each a unique DNA sequence. "We wanted to illustrate how the modern world is really full of zeroes and ones, not As through Zs alone," Kosuri said."
If the modern world is full of zeroes and ones, and DNA is a code capable of doing this experiment, then that code requires a super intelligent writer that exists outside the realm of the code (so outside the natural world) Same as a software designer exists outside the software.
>There's no evidence whatsoever anything like a supernatural realm exists, which is what my original post was searching for I believe.
Well, I just posted some evidence straight from Harvard.
I would also suggest checking out this book on documented modern miracles: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801039525?creativeASIN=0801039525&linkCode=w00&linkId=ZT4A3RX5O2OMDWSA&ref_=as_sl_pc_tf_til&tag=roalll-20
Also, here's a link to my website: https://www.rocalternative.com/Testimonies.html
If we're going to go by empirical evidence here, then is it really logical to dismiss ALL testimonies of supernatural encounters? Especially when we are talking about millions of them that have happened over thousands of years? Not everyone can be insane or lying.
By the way, the number 2 isn't based at all in the natural world. It is not a material thing. Does this mean that the number 2 doesn't exist?
Btw, the reason I know all this stuff is because I used to be an atheist. It was because of all these things I've laid out, not to mention a few of my own supernatural encounters, that I was forced to change my mind about my former beliefs.
Sauces...Ah, can I just refer you to a book?
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham
Jesus was a very common name indeed. That's why you often see disambiguation when Jesus' name is referred to in conversation but not in narrative (because which other Jesus would they be talking about?):
> Matthew 21:6--The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.
>
> Matthew 21:11--And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”
>
> Matthew 21:12--And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
And then a few chapters later:
> Matthew 26:64--Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
>
> Matthew 26:69--Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. And a servant girl came up to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.”
>
> Matthew 26:71--And when he went out to the entrance, another servant girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.”
>
> Matthew 26:75--And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
But that one is supposed to be easy, because Jesus was a fairly common name (6th most popular in Palestine among Jews). However, outside of Palestine, Jesus was not a common name at all. So would someone outside of Palestine 150 or so years later know to do this kind of disambiguation if they were making up this story? Possibly, but it's unlikely.
The name of John the Baptist is also disambiguated in John 14 in much the same way.
I mention this because if the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts, they use person names very convincingly. The apocryphal gospels, on the other hand, use names in very wacky ways, for example, the Gospel of Thomas's main character is a dude named Didymos Judas Thomas, which means Twin Judas Twin, and no one used names that way back then.
What's also interesting is that in the NT Gospels (early to mid 1st century, except for John which was written probably later 1st century), Jesus is called Jesus. In the Gospel of Philip (mid 2nd century), he's still called Jesus, but he is mostly referred to as "Christ". And then in the Gospels of Peter (late 2nd century) and Mary (late 2nd century), the name "Jesus" isn't even present. Instead you have mainly "Lord" and "Savior".
So yeah, someone in the 2nd century probably had no idea what were the common names in the 1st century among Jewish Palestinians. But the gospels, which were supposedly written so late, gets those kinds of names right. Without the internet.
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauchman
User Basilides answers your eyewitness claim eloquently:
> "...one of the things Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) proposes is that the Twelve Apostles are named in order to identify them as eyewitnesses and also that the twelve were responsible for assuring the accuracy of the gospel narratives. But if that were true, how is it (As Stephen J. Patterson noted in his review: "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses," Review of Biblical Literature; 2010, Vol. 12, p365-369)
that we ended up with four wildly divergent accounts? If the Twelve took it upon themselves to "peer review" the manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, then whence so many discrepancies?
> I have already pointed to plenty of bullshit in the gospels. As Richard Carrier pointed out in his essay on the Resurrection, why is it that no one else in history noticed the tearing of the temple veil mentioned in Mark's passion narrative, not even the priests whose sole duty was attendance of the veil? Also see my previous post on the subject of gospel reliability here. Fact is, either the gospels are not based on eyewitness testimony or the eyewitnesses are pathological liars. Neither hypothesis is encouraging for someone arguing the resurrection."
> Was Jesus Raised: Reliability and Authorship of NT Documents
The claims of an eyewitness account are extremely shaky.
> bottled in the same plant
Are the factory codes the same? The factory codes on the can would be the analogy to the oxygen ratios of the rocks.
> Evidence?
Do you have evidence they witnessed it? Let's see it.
> commonplace for people to write down history
Not only do we have many manuscripts from that time, but we are talking about a singularly unique event: Re-animated corpses wandering around the town for days. And no one wrote a single page about it? Writing was indeed common then, so why don't we have documentation of it?
> Tacitus' Annals ... yet no one questions his authenticity
No extraordinary claims are made. We don't really have a reason to doubt them. I'm sure we could dig up someone who would disagree with their historical accuracy. How is this relevant to the veracity of the resurrection claim?
> Few objects of that sort survive this long.
The most important figure to ever walk the earth is crucified, and there are no relics of his life left behind? There are no souvenirs? We have manmade relics that date back thousands of years before Christ. They survived the ages just fine.
> Faith is the evidence of things not seen.
Faith by its very definition is gullibility. It is belief without evidence. It is belief without reason. People had "faith" in the god Mithra long before Jesus was around (6 BC). They had the exact same evidence you have. Born on the 25th of December to a virgin, witnessed by shepherds who followed a star, known as the son of god, could raise the dead, cure the blind and sick, sacrificed at the spring equinox (Eostre or Easter), rose up after three days and ascended into paradise. Get this, followers would even 'eat' their god in the form of wafers and bread marked with a cross. Followers even spoke of a judgement day when 'sinners' and the 'unbaptized' would be dragged into darkness.
Sounds pretty familiar right? These followers had just as much evidence and faith as you. Why are they wrong, and you are right?
Two thoughts. First, if you are interested in a scholarly work that refutes Ehrman et al, here is one you can check out.
Second, "what is true"?
A painting [generally] isn't photorealistic. It has all sorts of things that aren't accurate in it. In some senses, it isn't "true." But the difference between it and reality also serve a function. Because of these differences, the artist is able to communicate a message. The artist didn't make something photorealistic because he wasn't trying to. Instead, he was trying to communicate something.
Ancient biographers approached their work in much the same way. They were completely uninterested in doing modern biography, where you lay aside all bias and present the facts in precise chronological order. They felt free to play around with details (especially of chronology and geography, and especially by mixing and matching different speeches) to present a picture that they thought most accurately painted the life, personality, and core teachings of their subject. In some ways they treated biography more like literature than journalism. So when you ask "what time precisely did Jesus die [or what order did he call the disciples, or did he clear the temple at the beginning or end of his ministry, etc...]" my answer is:
The Gospel authors weren't concerned with communicating that. So I'm not going to evaluate them the way I evaluate modern biography. I will evaluate whether or not they were accurate in the things they were trying to be accurate in. But those weren't details like chronology and geography.
Yes, I do believe it is a possible to behave in a way which is contradictory to God's morality, but to believe that one is behaving in accordance with God's morality. So, what, then shall we do? It boils down to this: Truth either exists or it doesn't (I believe it does). I believe Christianity is true, and it is quite possible that I am right. Looking at the evidence (cross-referencing, continuity in text, prophecy (read Isaiah 53)) it seems most plausible. Theism is more logical than atheism to me. Christianity is more logical than any other religion. It stands apart in that God saved humanity.
If my beliefs are determined by my geography, then clearly you are an atheist because of where you were born/lived. I believe China now has the largest Christian population in the world. Why?
I'm not here to convert you to anything either. I'm here to share the truth as I know (believe) it. I don't gain points by "converting" just like you don't for "deconverting" me, which I do not think you're trying to do.
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331922895&sr=1-1
Honestly, I'll buy this book for you, if you will read it. If you won't read it, that's fine. Please don't have me buy it for you and cast it aside though. That wouldn't be nice.
What does Richard Carrier believe happened?
We have over 5000 Greek manuscripts from the new testament. Why so many if this was mythological? Clearly, some things were meant to be historical accounts with the way that they were described.
Which historians see the gnostic gospels as fully relevant?
Specifically, what is highly embellished, made up or recycled?
There's no 'proof' as such, since we're dealing with history, not science. However, there is evidence which we can examine and weigh critically.
For one example of this evidence, the ascription of the authorship of the Gospels comes from an early tradition of the Church, for which our earliest evidence comes from Papias, writing a generation later, around 100AD. We do not have his work extant, but we have quotes of him from later writers.
Papias appears to have been aware of a tradition that Mark's Gospel was derived from Peter, who handed him a collection of his own sermons in Rome, just before he was martyred, and which Mark then put into order. Papias also relates a separate tradition that Matthew also used a similar source and put it together in Hebrew. What this actually means is debatable. Scholars believe it variously to mean that Matthew wrote his gospel originally in the Hebrew language, or translated it into Hebrew, presumably from Greek, or that this Hebrew way was not the Hebrew language, but just a different way of organising the material so as to appeal to a Jewish audience. (Or perhaps Papias is talking about a completely different Gospel, the mysterious "Gospel of the Hebrews".)
Whether this tradition was true, or merely a legend that had been associated with the scrolls after the fact is another question, which I can't provide an adequate analysis of here. For this, and for other evidence regarding the authorship and sources for the Gospels, I would recommend that you get hold of a copy of the superb Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, by Richard Bauckham which goes through all of the evidence in rich detail, and provides an unparalleled examination and overview of the argument.
>It upsets me that I believed that without doing research.
Don't be too upset. It's a very common mistake—even among religious people.
>I can accept that the writings may have been done by witnesses.
Rather than claim that the witnesses were the ones to place pen to papyrus, I would start with the more modest proposition that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony—and there is good evidence that this is the case. I am partway through a very interesting book on this subject in which the author challenges the old idea that the Gospels are based on generations of anonymous oral tradition, but instead record first-hand eyewitness testimony.
>I still believe that the writings can be deluded seeing as we all know that over time, stories can be blown out of proportion.
I understand. Even if it's shown that the Gospels do give us the actual testimony of the Apostles, it is possible that the Apostles themselves are not perfectly reliable. Let me tell you something that many, many Christians are deeply (and often passionately) mistaken about: Christianity is not dependent on inerrant, infallible, or even on inspired writings. This ought to be readily apparent when you consider that Christianity predates those writings. Even if only a few of the most elementary points recorded in the Gospels/Acts are accurate—points which the overwhelming majority of both religious and secular scholars affirm—then there is sufficient grounds for basic Christian belief.
Other reviewers on Amazon beg to differ.
Those passages are in context, would you like to read them in the new international version or a literal translation? I quoted KJV because that is what is seen as a fairly standard bible. If you think that there are different interpretations of them then please say what you think they are. My advice? ignore the whole book, it is impossible to read the whole thing without either ignoring the contradicting parts of the bible or going mad trying to fulfill both parts.
Critical thought applied to the bible gives you this, which is no different than aesop or any other storyteller trying to instill values through the telling of stories.
The big thick one. It's called The Resurrection of Jesus. The section on historiography is especially helpful. It's something hardly any other book goes into in such detail.
https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Jesus-New-Historiographical-Approach/dp/0830827196/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518996512&sr=8-1
No such thing as a dumb question! And that question specifically is an excellent question! IMO, always ask for the facts and arguments that another person has, rather than asking for their conclusions. That way you can calculate the conclusions yourself from the facts/arguments. IMO, half the stuff you'll google or find on reddit talks about conclusions and not data/arguments (e.g. "Jesus never existed". Okay, well reddituser, could you explain more why you think that?)
There's a lot to study. I recommend using Feynman's method for learning (https://mattyford.com/blog/2014/1/23/the-feynman-technique-model). Can speed up your learning by 4x.
> Huh? Whole chunks of NT are questionable. Even entire chapters of Paul are questionable. The gospels are a complete mess.
Okay, and there's people much smarter than you or I who, after years of research, disagree with you. This shouldn't surprise you. Saying "Gospels are a complete mess" tells me you don't really know the other side very well. Probably still asking questions like "Well then who was at the tomb? One woman or three", yeah?
A great recent addition to this discussion is Bauckman's "Jesus and the Eye Witnesses" - https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesses-Gospels-Eyewitness-Testimony/dp/0802863906
> They don't call it apologetics because there's a good solid foundation for Christian beliefs.
Lol, they call it apologetics because it's based on the Greek word "apologia". Nice try though.
I think the most important reason is Jesus. We have good reasons to believe that he rose from the dead.
The arguments are sketched out in a book that was published several years ago called The Case for Christ. Recently, there have been two more scholarly treatments of roughly the same subject, one by a guy named Richard Bauckham, called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, and the other by N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God.
A guy named William Lane Craig is probably the most active popular defender of the historicity of the resurrection. He has written lots of books and essays on the subject, and google will also turn up transcripts and recordings of his debates.
Eine ausgewogene Sichtweise kann nur entwickelt werden, wenn beide Seiten gehört werden.
Timothy Keller - The Reason for God - Believing in an Age of Skepticism (chapter summaries)
C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity
J. Warner Wallace - Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels
Richard Bauckham - Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
Alvin Plantinga - Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism
Francis S. Collins - The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
Craig A. Evans - Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels
You can find longer list over at christianapologetics or at Kindle Deals in Christianity, Christian Worldview, and Apologetics
Textsammlung des IGUW
bethinking.org exists to help you make sense of the big questions about life.
The Biologos Foundation Ressource Finder
The Veritas Forum Talks
Yep. Here are my sources:
(http://www.amazon.com/Inculturation-Jesus-Tradition-Impact-Cultures/dp/1563382954/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)
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
There's lots, on all different levels. So it depends what you're looking for and what questions are important to you. You might consider:
If you want to understand the philosophical arguments for God you could try:
Specifically on Jesus, you might try,
And one last one which I haven't read, but I hear is good
But honestly, simply reading the Bible, praying and earnestly seeking is the best start.
Give it a read! I gift a copy to all devout Christian family members: https://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Morals-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/1604591285/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485115764&sr=8-1&keywords=jefferson+bible
Christian deism doesn't recognize Jesus as the son of a god, nor as a man speaking the word or intent of a god. It's more about sharing the same values and culture as Christians. A god created the universe, but the god didn't share teachings with humans or interact with humans.
Thomas Jefferson is a good example. For his own reading, he meticulously edited the New Testament, cutting and pasting a new version that focused on the teachings of Jesus, with all of Jesus' miracles removed and most supernatural elements removed. In the end, you just have a book about a philosopher. It's known as the Jefferson Bible. You can buy one on Amazon.
I tend to view deists of that period as almost atheists, even though they would have opposed that notion. Many answers/theories/explanations they'd want about the origin of life and the universe simply didn't exist, and it was a foreign idea to think of these things naturally occurring, so they believed in a god as a necessity for understanding the most basic questions regarding life.
The Jefferson Bible is an interesting read indeed.
In history, especially as it applies to the Christian tradition, you should never go with what the majority says for many good reasons. You should check every bit of work you find and read it for yourself. The majority of biblical studies is a cess-pool of preconceived notions and bad scholarship.
More:
The End of Biblical Studies, Hector Avalos
Online: Ignatian Vexation, Richard Carrier
Proving History, Richard Carrier
One of the first Great examples of using historical methods on theological issues: The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, David Friedrich Strauss (1860)
If the mythical Jesus never actually lived, then no. It's like asking if it is at all true ithat Hermes actually brought messages from the gods. Since probably everything we know about Jesus comes from mythical writings, we have good reason to doubt that he existed. See Richard Carrier's recently released book, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt.
> Can you cite to any peer-reviewed historians other than Ray Price for your position? Can you explain why the book is "drivel"?
It's published by InterVarsity. It's a christian apologetics publisher. If I post a book by Dawkins as my proof that he didn't exist, would you accept that? If so here's my equivalent 'proof'. I couldn't make it through the entirety of your book. The authors will say one thing "consistency is what matters" then throw that out the next page, and just accept inconsistent evidence. It's just awful.
> I'm not seeing you provide any reasoning or reference to authority (other than, "there's no evidence because I choose not to recognize any of the evidence"),
If you'd post any that was real, I'd look at it. But there isn't any. Just a few books written 300 years after he died, with so many contradictions that they're useless as a history book.
> so at this point it seems like you are simply stating your opinion.
My opinion is that Jesus did exist. I just walked the Via Dolorosa, and went to the Holy Church of the Sepulchure last month. But I don't delude myself that there's any 'proof', and none should be needed. That's what faith is all about.
>If so, then I can't respond. If your opinion is that chocolate is better, I'm not going to try and convince you to prefer vanilla.
Likewise, it's simply your opinion that he did at this point. You've posted nothing substantial, then ask me to do so. Which I will. Now its your turn to not post something horrible and shitty as 'evidence'
Here - the only peer reviewed work to ever be published on the topic. we'll call this one 'better than anything you can provide'
Ok.
Tell me about your childhood situation:
parents marital situation
financial situation
siblings
location(s)
Elaborate as much as you feel comfortable
EDIT:
yeah, you are an very conservative mormon, and somehow you think you didn't suffer childhood trauma. Okaaaaayyyyyyy.......
You do realize that parents long-term, consistently lying to their children is broadly accepted, and has been for a long time, as significantly traumatic to a child, right?
https://www.google.com/search?q=parents+lying+to+children+considered+trauma
and do some reading on something called NPD
https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Americans-Confident-Assertive-Entitled/dp/1476755566
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Always-About-You-Narcissism/dp/0743214285
https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Oz-Other-Narcissists-Relationship/dp/0972072837
Instead of bottle-ing up your misgivings about devoting your entire life orientation around a gigantic lie your parents forced on you, you might try being honest with yourself and doing some actual research about the topic. Here's a good place to start if/when you summon up enough courage and honesty to do so:
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt/dp/1909697494
Obviously you're intelligent enough analytically to already realize that Mormonism is complete and total bullshit, yet you can't seem to accept it and move on. The problem seems to be you can't accept that your parents subverted your life for their own desires. Again, you'll find reading about NPD's effects on children very enlightening. I'll take a wild guess that there are some addiction and avoidant issues you need to address as well.
Here's a good start:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/special-reports/new-insights-narcissistic-personality-disorder/page/0/1
Ronningstam, Harvard U., and is considered one of the, if not the, best researchers in the world on NPD. Hopefully that measures up to your grandiose personal standards of quality research.
Btw, ADHD is one of the biggest garbage can diagnoses in modern medicine. Can't focus consistently DOES NOT automatically = ADHD. It's just as worthless a standalone dx as "irritable bowel syndrome". Amazingly, nearly every person with a personality disorder and/or significant addiction could also qualify for an ADHD diagnosis, if their other issues were not taken into consideration (DSM, flawed as it is, actually qualifies this in hierarchical diagnostic criteria, but I'm sure you already knew that from your super extensive personal research into ALL of psychology, psychiatry, and brain science, not just some reading about ADHD, right?).
Case studies are FULL of examples of zombie-fied children of religious-version narcissistic parents. You can plenty of case study books available for purchase online.
Good luck!
Yes it is
And I suggest you read Richard Carrier - On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. He's an atheist who is upset at folks like Bart Ehrman who he feels have dropped the ball when it comes to this particular subject despite being generally clear thinkers on other subjects.
Here's what I read in my grad school class. This is probably the best place to start IMO. Link.
I wasn't kidding when I said I didn't have time to get into a detailed debate about the Resurrection. However, I would like to make a few general remarks.
The first is that the view you are advocating has been atomized at the highest levels of academia by the brightest minds with deep and specialised knowledge for a very, very long time. And if you think that it can lead to the justified conclusion that nothing unusual happened on the first Easter Sunday then you are simply ignorant of the matter of which you speak.
For instance, the established historical explanadum includes post mortem appearance experiences. And every serious historian must account for them.
Take Bart Ehrman. “Historians,” he writes, “have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection. For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus’ followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution.” He then goes on to place the Resurrection hypothesis in historical quarantine because, he says, miracles by their very nature lie beyond the explanatory scope of the historian.
Dale Allison may be held in even higher regard than Ehrman in high academia. And as Craig concludes of Allison's book Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters,
>That Allison should, despite his sceptical arguments, finally affirm the facts of Jesus’ burial, empty tomb, post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection and hold that the resurrection hypothesis is as viable an explanation as any other rival hypothesis, depending upon the worldview one brings to the investigation, is testimony to the strength of the case for Jesus’ historical resurrection.
My point is that whatever explanatory entity you appeal to you will still be tasked with providing an explanation for how and why the disciples came to a fierce belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus because it is historical bedrock for virtually every critical scholar with a terminal degree in a relevant field. And it follows from this that the hypothesis that the New Testament was given mythological embellishments is only going to get you so far—and certainly not to a justified denial of the Resurrection Hypothesis.
My second point is that I think you are very impressionable and this concerns me. One day you are working yourself into a lather that Islam is the one true religion. On the next you are accusing Islam of teaching idolatry—probably the single-most offensive thing you could suggest to a Muslim. On a third day I notice your flair is something about Saint Paul being a heretic who is burning in Hell. On a fourth day I am surprised by a PM in which you tell me you will probably end up being a nondenominational Christian.
It concerns me because I think it lacks wisdom, prudence and love and these are properties that I believe should supervene on anyone who is in communion with God. I once saw you tell someone who objected to the doctrine of hell (you were wearing your Islamic hat at the time) that they were, "God's bitch," and he could do as he pleased with them. Whatever religion God has revealed himself in, one thing is for sure: He would not approve of this.
And whatever religion you are tomorrow you will I take it still be a theist. And I think belief in God has practical moral implications for our everyday life. I think it means that we ought to try to act with love, patience and prudence. I don't know, dude. Maybe just chill as a basic theist for a while and pray to God for guidance and discernment in discovering his true revelation in history. Surely this would be better than alternately defending and trashing religions? Trashing atheism is fine. God is different. Even in my criticism of other religions I try to be respectful. God is sacred and I think we should be solemn and loving in our quest for him.
Lastly, if you want to really get stuck into the Resurrection (instead of, you know, taking glib potshots like you are currently doing) this is the book you need to read. Have at it!
Don't hate on Jesus, even Jefferson so potential in a person with good intentions: https://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Bible-Smithsonian-Morals-Nazareth/dp/158834312X/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/137-8229286-4014834?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=158834312X&pd_rd_r=026db146-55ee-4501-afda-bb9c85c7cf81&pd_rd_w=2P2nc&pd_rd_wg=rMtNZ&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=A0ZWKTDSZ77J7CP4R6HB&psc=1&refRID=A0ZWKTDSZ77J7CP4R6HB
Hi OP, thanks for the insightful post. You did a lot of collecting of good Bible verses to make the point.
Essentially, your argument is a reductio ad absurdem taking the form: "If X, then Y. Not Y. Therefore not X."
I think you well supported the first premise. And the conclusion follows from the two premises.
The place to look is your second premise. The second premise you simply stated. You said that history and modern times are not replete with miracles (except ones that are "discredited").
If I challenged the second premise, asserting that anyone who cares to investigate miracle claims (from Christians or any other group) will discover that the observable world is indeed full of them, what would you say?
I'd venture that some people (and just wait for the comments!) will mock me. But let's ignore them.
Fourthly, and relatedly, the problem with doubting a thing's existence is that doubt disincentivizes the search for evidence. If I don't believe in sea creatures, I am not likely to go swimming in the ocean looking to "prove" to myself that the ocean is indeed empty.
All that to say, the evidence and proof are plain to most people and readily available unless you are (a) already so sure that you're right that you only mock and dismiss those who could potentially offer you evidence and (b) don't go out of the way to seek the uncomfortable truth about our world.
I believe in science, have a Ph.D., and have personally experienced miracles and know people who perform miracles with some regularity. So, despite skepticism of some particular claims, I credit many of the Biblical stories, historical stories, and modern stories. I don't think that I am weird in this way. Disbelief in the supernatural is a minority report, globally. Most scientifically educated Americans believe in the supernatural. About 50 percent of working scientists are religious and believe in a god or higher power (footnote: http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/)
So there is nothing particularly wild or mysterious about the phenomena you describe as "magic." I've seen it personally, and hundreds of people I know have experienced it personally. So, when I consider the evidence impartially (including verifiable eye-witness accounts), I'd say your second premise needs revisiting.
But like I said, I appreciated the post, and enjoy thinking these things through.
I'd appreciate non-mocking thoughtful responses as well.
Cheers!
Edit: added footnote to verify claim that a slight majority of scientists believe in a god or higher power (51%) according to Pew.