Best old testament bible study books according to redditors

We found 1,104 Reddit comments discussing the best old testament bible study books. We ranked the 290 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Old Testament Bible Study:

u/ForrestFire765 · 196 pointsr/todayilearned

One thing you learn when you study egyptology is that evidence for pretty much anything is quite scant, and the major primary sources we have are laudatory funerary texts of people trying to convince the gods they are worthy of a good afterlife.

There are some Egyptologists who defend the historicity of the exodus. One, for example, is Kenneth Kitchen, an egyptologist who is Professor emiritus and Honorary research fellow at the School of Archeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. One good book on the topic that attempts to create a defense of the historicity of Israel in Egypt is James K. Hoffmeier's Israel in Egypt: The Evidence of the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition.

Anyway, what do you mean evidence that it never happened? are you referring to primary sources that say "The Israelites were not here"? There may certainly be a lack of evidence, but that does not mean that it didn't happen, only if you would expect there to be more evidence if it did happen, and that can be debated.

u/vfr · 77 pointsr/atheism

That search is what made me atheist. The truth is that there is no true history of the bible. It's long lost, a mystery. For instance, we have no idea who wrote the gospels.. .totally anonymous. We don't know who wrote the OT... At best we know Paul's letters and a few other books, and we know when certain things were added or changed (for instance the famous John 3:16 was added by a monk later on).

If you want some insight into the history of Christianity, here are some links. It's a messy world filled with 2000 years of apologetics muddying the waters.

http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/atheistgems#HistoryandLiteraryAnalysis (specifically this one: Examining the Existence of a Historical Jesus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvleOBYTrDE )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenical_council#List_of_ecumenical_councils

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne (responsible for converting most of Europe... by the sword. Dealth penalty for having any pagan items, sacked whole villages, etc). more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I_and_Christianity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology

Now, if you want some good books... I recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060738170

http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353/ref=pd_sim_b_6

Any other questions?

u/Altilana · 75 pointsr/ATBGE

Except that’s not what happens. They eat of the fruit of knowledge which is what kicks them out. It’s an allegory for adulthood/leaving behind innocence, knowing the difference between right/ wrong and being self aware enough to feel shame (hence covering the body.) The creation story is an explanation why humanity isn’t childlike, and living in paradise. A lot of modern translations have tamed down the sexual language in scripture but there is a shit ton of sex, and sex play going on in the Bible. The Book of Genesis by Robert Crumb is a silly read but good at shocking people into realize how much sex goes on in the Bible.

u/kangareagle · 69 pointsr/AskHistorians

According to to the Biblical scholar Robert Alter, this passage uses a common convention of repeating something to show that the person listening needed convincing or more explanation.

> "This is the first instance of a common convention of Biblical narrative: when a speaker addresses someone and the formula for introducing speech is repeated with no intervening response from the interlocutor, it generally indicates some sort of significant silence - a failure to comprehend, a resistance to the speaker's words, and so forth."

He goes on, in more words than I feel like typing, to say that after God flatly states his promise, apparently Noah needs more convincing.

----

I can't link to the text, but here's a link to the book. He says what I quoted in the notes to the passage in question. The Five Books of Moses

u/SabaziosZagreus · 46 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

1.) I think the wording of this title is hilarious.

2.) I just finished Benjamin Sommer's book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel which examines the different theologies that Israelites had regarding the body and bodies of God, and related beliefs from other Near Eastern cultures. It was amazing. I could go into it, but it's better if you listen to Sommer himself. Here's parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of lectures he gave. If you don't want to listen/read, you can still always ask me questions and I'll do my best to provide a general gist.

u/darksmiles22 · 41 pointsr/atheism

What an excellent selection of material! I suggest adding the thought of Democritus, Epicurus, Cicero, Lucretius, Mark Twain, Ingersoll, George Carlin, Noam Chomsky, Tim Wise, and Ahmed Rashid to your little library. If you're looking for fun and thought-provoking fiction, Joss Whedon, Terry Pratchett, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglass Adams, and Arthur C. Clarke are also great.

Edit: Also, interesting historical non-theistic traditions include Confucianism, Buddhism, and Greek virtue and philosophy.

u/HaiKarate · 40 pointsr/TrueAtheism

Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Freeman -- breaks down the composition of the first five books of the Bible, and why it seems a little funky to the average reader (hint: multiple authors and editing for each book).

The Bible Unearthed -- One of the top archaeologists in Israel today demonstrates why the foundational stories of the Bible can't be literally true.

A History of God -- Explains the known history behind the idea of the god of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and how that idea evolved from polytheistic roots.

The above three books would represent where most Bible scholars are on the issue of the historical authenticity of the Bible's stories.

u/tazemanian-devil · 22 pointsr/exjw

Hello and welcome! Here are my recommendations for getting those nasty watchtower cobwebs out of your head, in other words, here is what I did to de-indoctrinate myself:

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.


For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

u/WastedP0tential · 20 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

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

u/Im_just_saying · 20 pointsr/Christianity

Answers in Genesis is basically a young earth, six day creationist group. Their founder, Ken Ham, is a questionable fellow (just google him), but is unquestionably bad with science.

I would be hard pressed to promote anything from AIG. I don't envy your predicament.

Having said that, a book on the subject I really recommend folk read is Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One. Corny title, amazing book.

u/Shorts28 · 18 pointsr/AskAChristian

I believe in and subscribe to evolution. The science is undeniable.

You probably realize that there are good and strong Christians who take different positions about creation and evolution. There are 5 main positions:


  • Young Earth, 6-day creation: The Earth is only about 6,000-10,000 years old, and God created the universe and everything we see in 6 24-hr days.
  • Old Earth, 6-day creation: The universe is 13 billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and God created it all in 6 days 13 billion years ago.
  • Day-Age Theory: Each of the “days” of creation in Genesis aren’t literal days, but they represent long eras. For instance, the first “day” of creation (creation of light) could have been billions of years in the making. But each age follows the sequence as outlined in Genesis 1.
  • Gap Theory: Genesis 1.1, like the first phase of creation, happened billions of years ago. Then something cataclysmic happened, and it was all turned “formless and void,” and God started the second phase of creation in Genesis 1.2, which happened more recently.
  • Evolutionary Creationism: God created the universe and all that we see, but he used the processes of the Big Bang and evolution to created everything we see. If this is the position one takes, Genesis 1 is about how God ordered the universe to function (light functions to give us day, the Earth functions to bring forth vegetation, the heavenly bodies function to give us seasons, etc.), not about how He manufactured it. He certainly created (manufactured) it, but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about.

    At the same time, there are 6 different ways to define “evolution.” Only #6 is completely contrary to Christianity.


  • The ancient earth thesis, some 4.5 billion years old
  • The progress thesis: The claim that life has progressed from relatively simple to relatively complex forms. In the beginning there was relatively simple unicellular life. Then more complex unicellular life, then relatively simple multi-cellular life (seagoing worms, coral, jellyfish), then fish, then amphibia, then reptiles, birds, mammals, and human beings.
  • Descent with modification: The enormous diversity of the contemporary living world has come about by way of offspring differing, ordinarily in small and subtle ways, from their parents.
  • Common ancestry thesis: Life originated at only one place of earth, all subsequent life being related by descent to those original living creatures—the claim that, as Gould puts it, there is a “tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy.” According to this theory, we are all cousins of each other—and indeed of all living things (horses, bats bacteria, oak trees, poison ivy, humans.
  • Darwinism: There is a naturalistic mechanism driving this process of descent with modification: the most popular candidate is natural selection operating on random genetic mutation, although some other processes are also sometimes proposed.
  • Naturalistic origins thesis: Life itself developed from non-living matter without any special creative activity of God but just by virtue of processed described by the ordinary laws of physics, chemistry, and biology.

    So how can the Bible and evolution go together? Very easily if we take Christian position #5 and evolutionary positions #1-5. As long as we keep God as the central and necessary sovereign intelligence, power, person, and morality in the process, I don’t see where it’s a problem.

    I subscribe to the interpretation of Genesis 1-2 laid out by Dr. John Walton in “The Lost World of Genesis 1” (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=john+walton&qid=1564575785&s=gateway&sr=8-2). Briefly reporting, in it he asserts that Genesis 1 is about how God ordered the cosmos to function, not how He manufactured it. Certainly God created the universe (as taught in other verses in the Bible), but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about.

    The first "day" is clearly (literally) about a *period* of light called day, and a *period* of light called night. It is about the sequence of day and night, evening and morning, literally. Therefore, what Day 1 is about is God ordering the universe and our lives with the function of TIME, not God creating what the physicists call "light," about which the ancients knew nothing.


    Look through the whole chapter. It is about how the firmament functions to bring us weather (the firmament above and below), how the earth functions to bring forth plants for our sustenance, how the sun, moon, and stars function to order the days and seasons. We find out in day 6 the function of humans: to be fruitful and multiply, to rule the earth and subdue it. Walton contends that we have to look at the text through ancient eyes, not modern ones, and the concern of the ancients was function and order. (It was a given that the deities created the material universe.) The differences between cultures (and creation accounts) was how the universe functioned, how it was ordered, and what people were for. (There were large disagreements among the ancients about function and order; it widely separates the Bible from the surrounding mythologies.)


    And on the 7th day God rested. In the ancient world when a god came to "rest" in the temple, he came to live there and engage with the people as their god. So it is not a day of disengagement, but of action and relationship.


    In other words, it's a temple text, not an account of material creation. There was no temple that could be built by human hands that would be suitable for him, so God ordered the entire universe to function as his Temple. The earth was ordered to function as the "Holy Place," and the Garden of Eden as his "Holy of Holies." Adam and Eve were given the function of being his priest and priestess, to care for sacred space (very similar to Leviticus) and to be in relationship with God (that's what Genesis 2 is about).


    You probably want to know about the seven days. In the ancient world ALL temple dedications were 7-day dedications, where what God had done to order his world was rehearsed, and on the 7th day God came to "rest" in his temple—to dwell with his people and engage with them as their God. That's what the seven days mean.


    Back to evolution. Therefore Gn 1-2 make no comment on *how* the material world came about, or how long it took. We need science to tell us that. We need Gn 1-2 to tell us what it's there for (God's temple) and how it is supposed to function (to provide a place of fellowship between God and humans, and to bring God glory as an adequate temple for his Majesty).


    Feel free to discuss this. For those who have never heard these ideas, it takes a little adjusting. But they make a whole lot of sense to me.
u/NomadicVagabond · 18 pointsr/skeptic

The two best books for getting a basic understanding of the writing and transmission process of the Bible are:

Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? for the Hebrew Scriptures

Burton Mack's Who Wrote the New Testament? for the Christian Scriptures

u/[deleted] · 15 pointsr/exjw

It's a bunch of gobbledygook about the generations and the kingdom and all of that. It's all nonsense. In my humble opinion, you need to de-indoctrinate yourself to fully remove these types of fears. Not sure if I've shared this post with you before, but here's what I did personally:

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.


For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

Another way to clear out the cobwebs is to read and listen to exiting stories. Here are some resources:

https://leavingjw.org

Here is a post with links to a bunch of podcasts interviewing JWs who've left

Here's another bunch of podcasts about JWs

Here is a great book from Psychotherapist and former JW Bonnie Zieman - Exiting the JW Cult: A Helping Handbook

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

To go further down the rabbit hole, watch this series.

Here's a nice series debunking most creationist "logic".

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

u/davidjricardo · 15 pointsr/Reformed

Here's my reading list on Reformed Perspectives on Creation. I don't agree with everything written by all of the authors, but they are all worth reading. The also aren't all written from a Reformed perspective, but many of them are. If you are looking more for a Scientific perspective I'd particularly recommend Collins, Jelsma, and Haarsma since those are the ones written by scientists instead of theologians. If you didn't see it already, I also listed a number of other resources by Collins yesterday in the post about his AMA.

u/Venus100 · 15 pointsr/exchristian

This was what first made me start the process of deconversion. I had for a long time held that some form of theistic evolution must be true. I had read Francis Collins, and John Walton books, and thought my reasoning was logical.

The tiny seeds of my eventual deconversion were planted however in a discussion/debate with my mother-in-law. She is a staunch creationist, doesn't think anyone who believes in evolution can possibly be a christian. We had a long discussion about the issue, and she kind of came around to my point of view--or at least didn't think I was going straight to hell anymore. But in the course of this conversation, she off-handedly made some comment about evolution meaning there was always death. We didn't really talk about the subject any more than that.

But it kept popping into my mind over the coming days. And for some reason, I had never considered this idea before. Months later, after much research, reading and considering, I came to realize that I could find no acceptable explanation for what "the fall" was, if it was a merely symbolic event. If there was always sickness and pain and death from day one, then the world was always "fallen". And without a fall, my understanding of who Jesus was and what he did was on VERY shaky ground. So it was the beginning of the end for me.

u/QDefenestration · 13 pointsr/politics

> round earth, and evolution

People in the Middle Ages knew the Earth was round, and the Catholic church never condemned that knowledge. We've known since antiquity the shape and relative size of the Earth and did not lose that knowledge with the fall of Rome. Columbus did not sail in hopes of proving that the Earth was round, but rather in hopes of proving that it was much smaller than everyone else thought-- small enough that he could circumnavigate the globe without running out of food or water. The idea that superstitious clerics thought the Earth was flat in the middle ages was in fact an Enlightenment error. Washington Irving's Biography of Columbus especially did a lot of damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

The Catholic church also never opposed Evolution. Its first official statement on the matter was that it was permissible for Catholics to believe in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humani_generis

> or worshipping a book that has the Genesis in it

Biblical literalism is a recent phenomena tied to American fundamentalist protestantism. Augustine (possibly the most important Catholic thinker; possibly only second after Aquinas) was already in the fourth century arguing that one should not read Genesis literally suggesting that the Earth was fashioned in seven days.

https://www.amazon.com/41-St-Augustine-Vol-Christian/dp/0809103265

> They were doing good science despite the church, not because of it.

Sed Contra, as Augustine Says:

> Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions… and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

> The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions".

Respondeo: The Catholic Church's epistemology encourages scientific inquiry; the founders of our Western scientific tradition (men like Roger Bacon and William of Ockham) built on rather than rejected Catholic-Scholastic approaches to understanding the world. The Scholastics saw God as the ultimate rational being and thus determined that His creation must itself be knowable through rational investigation and, even further, that such investigation was very praiseworthy as investigation of creation necessarily lead to knowledge of Creator. Creation was seen as almost a second scripture. This attitude continued right on down to John Paul II's Fides et Ratio.

TLDR: The Catholic Church never opposed a round earth. It never opposed evolution. Anyone who thinks that either is the case is incredibly historically ignorant. The Western Scientific Tradition does not begin with Enlightenment Deists rejecting all that the previous epoch stood before-- rather, Medieval and Early Modern thinkers built off of Catholic/Scholastic philosophical traditions. To this day, the Catholic Church remains a major proponent of science, not just in the abstract, but practically:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Observatory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Academy_of_Sciences

Qualifier: I'm not addressing the Galileo Affair above. It's complicated. Others are discussing it throughout this thread. I also did not address comments about purgatory/indulgences, since that seems to have little to do with science, nor with contraception and abortion, since the Church's opinions there concern morality, not science.

u/unsubinator · 13 pointsr/TrueChristian

>in the opinion of modern scholars

In the opinion of some modern scholars. The opinions to which you give voice are hardly universal and they're trending toward a minority among contemporary scholars. Such views were much more widely held at the beginning of the 20th Century, for instance, than they are today.

Among the scholars to which you can refer to good scholarship and a less Modernist point of view are N.T. Wright and Scott Hahn. Both are (as far as I know) well regarded scholars of the Bible. There are others but those are the two that spring to mind.

>the disciples didn't really believe Jesus was God (if he existed)

I think this is false on the face of it, and even Bart Ehrman concludes that it was their belief in the resurrection that convinced Jesus' disciples that Jesus was God in the years immediately following the crucifixion. See here for a radio interview with Ehrman about his book, How Jesus Became God.

Ehrman courted the disfavor of his atheist admirers in one of his other recent books, where he took aim at the Jesus mythicists, arguing that Jesus was definitely an historical character.

Again, I would refer you to N.T. Wright and his works on the historicity of the Bible.

> the Bible is a collage of stolen myths

Once again, this is just flatly false and is only believed by the most extreme "scholars" in the Jesus Mythicist camp (as far as I know).

>My second question: is there a term for someone who studies Biblical topics in general? As in one who studies ancient near-east cultures, comparative mythology, languages, Biblical source documents, Jewish literature, archaeology, and other "Biblical Humanities"? That's what I like.

I don't know about a "term", but check out Scott Hahn, the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, this book (if you can find it), and especially (for this question), I would recommend John Walton and his books, The Lost World of Genesis One and Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible.

u/arachnophilia · 12 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

hi /u/lenusme. this is probably not the right place for this. self promotion is generally frowned upon here, unless you have an exceptionally well researched blog post, or an actual academic paper you'd like to share. and this is a pretty surface level discussion at best, to be honest. but i'd like to discuss some problems anyways.

> Some believe that Moses wrote Genesis while was in the land of Midian. Others believe he wrote it in the desert after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai. Although there is no way to know.

in fact, modern scholarship nearly universally rejects mosaic authorship entirely. you may want to consult the popular books "who wrote the bible?" and "the bible with sources revealed" by richard elliott friedman for an introduction to the documentary hypothesis (or start with this wiki page, if you'd like).

there are a number of other notable problems with mosaic authorship too, from an archaeological/historical standpoint. for instance, the amarna letters contain a few hundred correspondences between the pharaohs at akhentaten (now el-amarna) and their vassal territories in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE, and are among many other pieces of evidence that indicate that the egyptian empire looked rather like this for most of the time between 1550 BCE and 1100-ish BCE:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Egypt_NK_edit.svg

other relevant pieces of evidence for this are the egyptian hittite peace treaty that places the border between those two empires approximately 100 miles north of jerusalem around 1259 BCE, signed by the great ramesses ii, and the stele left by his son mernepteh in 1208 BCE reaffirming conquest of canaan -- including our oldest positive historical reference to a people called "israel". there are also egyptian outposts like jaffa which persisted until about the mid 1100's BCE, when egypt begins to lose control canaan in the bronze age collapse.

you can probably see why this causes some problems; the entire historical context of the narrative is wrong. there was no free land to lead the israelites to: moses's destination in the story was egypt in history. so, who was moses, then?

> Although the Jews call it Bereshit because it is the first and means "in the beginning."

it actually means "in the beginning of." you may wish to see rashi's commentary:

>> This verse calls aloud for explanation in the manner that our Rabbis explained it: God created the world for the sake of the Torah which is called (Proverbs 8:22) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) way”, and for the sake of Israel who are called (Jeremiah 2:3) “The beginning (ראשית) of His (God’s) increase’’. If, however, you wish to explain it in its plain sense, explain it thus: At the beginning of the Creation of heaven and earth when the earth was without form and void and there was darkness, God said, “Let there be light”. The text does not intend to point out the order of the acts of Creation — to state that these (heaven and earth) were created first; for if it intended to point this out, it should have written 'בראשונה ברא את השמים וגו “At first God created etc.” And for this reason: Because, wherever the word ראשית occurs in Scripture, it is in the construct state. E. g., (Jeremiah 26:1) “In the beginning of (בראשית) the reign of Jehoiakim”; (Genesis 10:10) “The beginning of (ראשית) his kingdom”; (Deuteronomy 18:4) “The first fruit of (ראשית) thy corn.” Similarly here you must translate בראשית ברא אלהים as though it read בראשית ברוא, at the beginning of God’s creating. A similar grammatical construction (of a noun in construct followed by a verb) is: (Hosea 1:2) תחלת דבר ה' בהושע, which is as much as to say, “At the beginning of God’s speaking through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea.” Should you, however, insist that it does actually intend to point out that these (heaven and earth) were created first, and that the meaning is, “At the beginning of everything He created these, admitting therefore that the word בראשית is in the construct state and explaining the omission of a word signifying “everything” by saying that you have texts which are elliptical, omitting a word, as for example (Job 3:10) “Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb” where it does not explicitly explain who it was that closed the womb; and (Isaiah 8:4) “He shall take away the spoil of Samaria” without explaining who shall take it away; and (Amos 6:12) “Doth he plough with oxen," and it does not explicitly state, “Doth a man plough with oxen”; (Isaiah 46:10) “Declaring from the beginning the end,” and it does not explicitly state, “Declaring from the beginning of a thing the end of a thing’ — if it is so (that you assert that this verse intends to point out that heaven and earth were created first), you should be astonished at yourself, because as a matter of fact the waters were created before heaven and earth, for, lo, it is written, (v. 2) “The Spirit of God was hovering on the face of the waters,” and Scripture had not yet disclosed when the creation of the waters took place — consequently you must learn from this that the creation of the waters preceded that of the earth. And a further proof that the heavens and earth were not the first thing created is that the heavens were created from fire (אש) and water (מים), from which it follows that fire and water were in existence before the heavens. Therefore you must needs admit that the text teaches nothing about the earlier or later sequence of the acts of Creation.

the simplest explanation is that rashi's first reading is correct, and the masoretes have mispointed בָּרָ֣א as a perfect verb, when is should be pointed בְּרֹ֤א (gen 5:1) as an infinitive construct, which is the same kind of grammatical construction. this construction, a complex preposition in construct form, followed by an infinitive, sets up a subordinate clause. the following statement is an aside, with the initial action taking place in verse 3:

>> When God began to create heaven and earth—

>> the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—

>> God said, “Let there be light”;

this is actually a common structure for ancient near eastern creation myths, and you can see it again in genesis 2 -- a work by a different author:

>> When the Lord God made earth and heaven—

>> when no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth—

>> the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth.

subordinate clause, aside, initial action. you can see it other cultures, even:

>> When the heavens above did not exist,
And earth beneath had not come into being —
There was Apsû, the first in order, their begetter,
And demiurge Tia-mat, who gave birth to them all;
They had mingled their waters together
Before meadow-land had coalesced and reed-bed was to he found —
When not one of the gods had been formed
Or had come into being, when no destinies had been decreed,
The gods were created within them:
Lahmu and Lahamu were formed and came into being.

>> Enuma Elish, Babylon

i point this out because i see hints you're going down the wrong path here -- this first verse is not a definitive statement about anything. it merely locates the story temporally.

> The new testament begins with the words biblos geneseos

by accident. early church tradition assumed that the gospel of matthew was earliest, but based on the two source hypothesis regarding the synoptic problem, and editorial fatigue in matthew and luke, scholars mostly think that matthew and luke were copying the gospel of mark. mark, of course, begins "Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ", arxe tou euaggeliou iesou xristou uiou tou thou, the beginning of the gospel of jesus christ son of god." but there's a better candidate here. consider:

>> Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (John 1:1)

>> ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν (Gen 1:1 LXX)

it's likely that john was specifically invoking genesis here. i am not sure, at the moment, when the title "genesis" was applied to the text. i suppose i could keep going, but these are some problems i see right off the bat.

if you'd like, i could talk about the function of genesis, literary style, dates of authorship, relationship to the babylonian calendar rather than the original hebrew one, the demythologization of other deities, the polytheistic background it's explicitly rejecting, etc. this is really just scratching the surface.

u/matthewdreeves · 11 pointsr/exjw

Hello and welcome! Here are my recommendations for de-indoctrinating yourself:

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Watch this talk from Sam Harris where he explains why "free will" is likely an illusion, which debunks the entire premise of "the fall of man" as presented by most Christian religions.

Watch this video on the Cordial Curiosity channel that teaches how the "Socratic Method" works, which essentially is a way to question why we believe what we believe. Do we have good reasons to believe them? If not, should we believe them?

Watch this video by Theramin Trees that explains why we fall for the beliefs of manipulative groups in the first place.

This video explains why and how childhood indoctrination works, for those of us born-in to a high-control group.

Another great source is this youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

Next, learn some science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.

Watch this series where Aron Ra explains in great detail how all life is connected in a giant family tree.

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

Learn about critical thinking from people like [Michael Shermer] (http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things?language=en), and how to spot logical fallacies.

For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline.

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker.

Watch this Ted Talk by Hans Rosling, the late Swedish Statistician, where he shows more evidence that the world is indeed becoming a better place, and why we tend to wrongly convince ourselves otherwise.

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that we can use to become more knowledgeable people.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

u/extispicy · 11 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Here is an online resource.

Or if you prefer a book: Friedman's Bible with Sources Revealed.

u/PtyP507 · 10 pointsr/Judaism

Yes, I think Catholics have a lot of the same tradition sort of perspective vs Protestants so that's interesting. Honestly, there's a lot. If you ever go to a rabbi's office it's like a library. At least in my experience. My humble suggestion to dip a toe in would be read the weekly parasha. So, we divide the Torah into sections and every week at shabbat service one section is read. And that section is paired with a reading from the Prophets that somehow relates to the Torah portion. So, what you could do is, get a translation of the Torah you like (I use Etz Chaim: https://www.amazon.com/Etz-Hayim-Commentary-David-Lieber/dp/0827607121) and hopefully that will include footnotes with blurbs from commentaries and other literature like Talmud etc. Or, you could look here https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/guide-to-weekly-torah-commentaries-online/ and use those to read alongside the weekly portion as well. There's a bunch to choose from. I subscribe to Jonathan Sacks' mail list and also Mechon Hadar's and every week they send an e-mail with some explanation of the portion always citing from our other sources.

u/crystal__math · 10 pointsr/Christianity

> I cannot reconcile it with realistic interpretations of scripture

John Walton is a very well known Old Testament scholar who has written two books on why the literalistic interpretation of Genesis is incorrect and dishonest as the proper way to read Genesis (that is, the way that the ancient Israelites would have read Genesis). Surprisingly, he also criticizes the way that scientific minded Christians have forced a reading of Genesis to automatically fit with the evolution narrative. He doesn't touch on any science at all in his exposition and sticks to the text, so I would highly recommend checking it out.

u/InhLaba · 10 pointsr/booksuggestions

Unclean by Richard Beck

The Language of God by Dr. Francis Collins

The Lost World of Genesis One by John H. Walton

Birth and Death: Bioethical Decision Making by Paul D. Simmons

The Authenticity of Faith by Richard Beck

Beyond The Firmament by Gordon J. Glover

All of these were required reads for me as I pursued a biology degree at a Christian university. I hope these help, and I wish you the best! If you have any questions about any of the books, please feel free to ask!!

u/HaricotNoir · 10 pointsr/DepthHub

Cool video! I would also recommend the book The Bible with Sources Revealed as an excellent resource on the origins of the Pentateuch. The different font colorings really highlight the mixing and matching of the multiple sources, and make it quite digestible even for casual readers with a passing interest in the historical origins of Christian/Jewish theology.

u/KnowsAboutMath · 10 pointsr/atheism

Well, we've already got The Book of Genesis by R. Crumb.

(It's actually really good.)

u/HmanTheChicken · 9 pointsr/Catholicism

This is sort of one of my pet areas of interest, I've tried to read both the secular side and the Christian side, in the end I think these are the best books on the subject:

Kenneth Kitchen's On the Reliability of the Old Testament - He is one of the world's top Egyptologists and wrote this book to defend the OT.

https://www.amazon.com/Reliability-Old-Testament-K-Kitchen/dp/0802803962

James Hoffmeier's Israel in Egypt and Ancient Israel in Sinai - another one of the world's top Egyptologists.

https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Israel-Sinai-Authenticity-Wilderness/dp/0195155467/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Egypt-Evidence-Authenticity-Tradition/dp/019513088X/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526660677&sr=1-1&keywords=israel+in+egypt

Provan, Long, and Longman's Biblical History of Israel is very good too:

https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-History-Israel-Second-ebook/dp/B01CUKCXFW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526660730&sr=1-1&keywords=a+biblical+history+of+israel%2C+second+edition

Also, James Hoffmeier edited another book that I would recommend to any Catholic interested in biblical studies:

https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Matters-Matter-Faith-Postmodern-ebook/dp/B007IJY9YO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526660787&sr=1-1&keywords=do+historical+matters+matter+to+faith

There are many bad books out there, but these are very good and trustworthy by good scholars.

Many people will argue from a book called The Bible Unearthed that the Scriptures are not reliable, but quite frankly the arguments used in there are not very good. Kenneth Kitchen refutes them pretty in depth in his book.

u/sailorjupiter28titan · 9 pointsr/WitchesVsPatriarchy

This is a page from R. Crumb's illustrated Book of Genesis. He's got a commentary section at the end where he talks about Savina Teubal's book Sarah the Priestess: The First Matriarch of Genesis

make sure to view the second image in the gallery

u/Nadarama · 9 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

The whole First Temple period is legendary as represented in the Hebrew Bible. Modern archaeology suggests there was no United Kingdom ruled from Jerusalem, or that it may be a Judaean spin on the Omride dynasty ruled from the "Northern Kingdom" in Samaria; and household idols appear in roughly equal abundance up to the Bablylonian Exile. The earliest mentions of the "Biblical" Yahweh (from the Omride period) even associate Him with "His" Asherah, a goddess usually paired with El - so we might infer that while Yahweh was identified with El that early, He wasn't considered the only Deity.

https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869128/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3J2XQDRT81XFS6EZEBHZ

https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Kingdom-Archaeology-Northern-Monographs/dp/1589839102

u/ummmbacon · 9 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Friedman The Bible with Sources Revealed has the sections in different colors depending on the source

edited to fix link

u/OtherWisdom · 8 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

> What are some of the best books to read on this subject?

IMHO, the following two books would be considered good references:

u/witchdoc86 · 8 pointsr/DebateEvolution

My recommendations from books I read in the last year or so (yes, these are all VERY STRONG recommends curated from ~100 books in the last year) -

​

Science fiction-

Derek Kunsken's The Quantum Magician (I would describe it as a cross between Oceans Eleven with some not-too-Hard Science Fiction. Apparently will be a series, but is perfectly fine as a standalone novel).

Cixin Lu's very popular Three Body Problem series (Mixes cleverly politics, sociology, psychology and science fiction)

James A Corey's The Expanse Series (which has been made into the best sci fi tv series ever!)

Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief series (Hard science fiction. WARNING - A lot of the early stuff is intentionally mystifying with endless terminology that’s only slowly explained since the main character himself has lost his memories. Put piecing it all together is part of the charm.)

​

Fantasy-

James Islington's Shadow of What was Lost series (a deep series which makes you think - deep magic, politics, religion all intertwined)

Will Wight's Cradle series (has my vote for one of the best fantasy series ever written)

Brandon Sanderson Legion series (Brandon Sanderson. Nuff said. Creative as always)

​

Manga -

Yukito Kishiro's Alita, Battle Angel series (the manga on what the movie was based)

​

Non-Fiction-

Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (and how we are not as rational as we believe we are, and how passion works in tandem with rationality in decision making and is actually required for good decisionmaking)

Rothery's Geology - A Complete Introduction (as per title)

Joseph Krauskopf's A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play, available to read online for free, including a fabulous supplementary of Talmud Parallels to the NT (a Rabbi in 1901 explains why he is not a Christian)

​

Audiobooks -

Bob Brier's The History of Ancient Egypt (as per title - 25 hrs of the best audiobook lectures. Incredible)

​

Academic biblical studies-

Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible and The Exodus (best academic biblical introductory books into the Documentary Hypothesis and Qenite/Midian hypothesis)

Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed (how archaelogy relates to the bible)

E.P. Sander's Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63BCE-66CE ​(most detailed book of what Judaism is and their beliefs, and one can see from this balanced [Christian] scholar how Christianity has colored our perspectives of what Jews and Pharisees were really like)

Avigdor Shinan's From gods to God (how Israel transitioned from polytheism to monotheism)

Mark S Smith's The Early History of God (early history of Israel, Canaanites, and YHWH)

James D Tabor's Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (as per title)

Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (engrossing - will make you view the gospel of Mark with new eyes)

Jacob L Wright's King David and His Reign Revisited (enhanced ibook - most readable book ever on King David)

Jacob Dunn's thesis on the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis (free pdf download - warning - highly technical but also extremely well referenced)

u/chain-of-events · 8 pointsr/todayilearned

R. Crumb has done The Book of Genesis. I have it and it is true to the text raw.

u/piperson · 8 pointsr/graphicnovels

Jason is kind of unique. He tells fiction with often long passages of no words. He has a really subtle sense of humor. You would have to look to alt comix for similar comics, stuff like;

Daniel Clowes - He's got a dry sense of humor and often writes satirically about life and culture. You can check out the movies he made with Terry Zwigoff, Ghost World and Art School Confidential.


Charles Burns' work is often surreal and some what disturbing though fascinating at the same time. he is most famous for his massive Black Hole about teen age STD's gone wild. He just finished a trilogy which is part auto bio and part surreal dream sequences, X'ed Out, The Hive, and Sugar Scull

I guess you could include David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp in this group of similar works though it's really original. It's about an architect that goes through a midlife crisis though it's one of the most inventive graphic novels to ever have been made. He uses every aspect of the comic to communicate to the reader, from the drawings, to the type face, to the color and even the very design of the book. It's a must read experience, thought completely unique.

Robert Crumb often has a dry, satirical sense of humor to his work. He is most famous for his 60's underground comics as shown in the Complete Crumb #4. He's done some really beautiful biographical work like his Patton about country blues musician Charley Patton. His newest work is the illustrated Book of Genesis a massive strait comic adaption of the Bible.

u/woodrail · 8 pointsr/comics

hardcover 11 x 8.8 x 0.9 inches 224 pages of Robert Crumb goodness. $14.58 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255995575&sr=8-1

I bought it immediately of course. If you don't know Crumb then you have a wonderful surprise waiting.

u/pjamberger · 8 pointsr/Reformed

I can't say one single piece of evidence (or a single study) convinced me, but I can summarize the various pieces of evidence as biogeography - the fact that we see similar (related) creatures living in the same geographic area and even some creatures on different continents with similar features in places where plate tectonics would lead us to expect similarities - and genetics, most notably the human vitamin c gene, which is defective.


The evidence for evolution is not measured in single studies, but in the weight of the collective evidence. For an overview of the collective evidence across many fields, this book by Jerry Coyne lays out the general case for the factuality of evolution. If you read it you do need to be ready for some Dawkins-esque posturing - he wrote a book on why faith and science are incompatible, but the information in the book is very good. For a basic summary, this Khan Academy page does a good job.

Finally, institutions like the Biologos institute convinced me that it's Biblically okay to believe in Theistic Evolution (Evolutionary Creation? Whichever one posits God's active involvement in creation via evolution.). The final "nail in the coffin" was The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton.

u/Losehand · 7 pointsr/DebateReligion

>https://www.amazon.com/Documentary-Hypothesis-Umberto-Cassuto/dp/9657052351 Here's a great book that debunks the DH on what you're describing. Just blocking off names by YKVK and Elokim is not a thoughtful argument. Both names connote something different so their context matters, as do the other names of God laced throughout the Torah kEl, kEl Shakkai, and so on.

Umberto Cassuto died 1951. With all due respect, his work is quite outdated.

u/President_Martini · 7 pointsr/exchristian

The actual purpose of the tree of life, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and humans in the garden of Eden.

  1. The snake is just a snake. It's never mentioned that it was Satan, anywhere in the Bible. Theologians went through some great lengths to conclude that The Lucifer and King of Babylon passages in the Bible were talking about Satan. The idea is terribly convoluted and a lot of the details (armor of jewels, admired and respected in the garden of Eden and so on) are ignored.

  2. The reason humans were made. We were to tend to the garden. Nothing else. It's says it directly in Genesis 2. There's plenty of mythology from that era that describes the creation of life out of mud (golems). It's a great part of ancient Jewish mythology and that region in general.

  3. Genesis specifically says that the tree of life is used to make sure that the animals and man live forever. It's a fountain of youth. Plenty of myth surrounding items that do just this.

  4. Genesis also says that the forbidden tree is the food for the gods, in this case, the god in Genesis 2 (different from the god in Genesis 1). It is meant for the superior beings. The creators.

    Put all these things together, and what you have is a classic myth with your typical "servant takes from the master and gets into deep shit" plot.

    So Yaweh creates a garden. Calls it Eden. It's not the world, because Genesis 2 tells us exactly what land on earth it covered, which was somewhere around where Iraq currently is. He makes man, specifically so that he can tend to his brand new garden that he's making. Then he starts churning all these animals out from the ground, and Adam is naming them as they come out from the mud. Yaweh then realizes that Adam needs a helper, so he makes him one.

    Then the part that we all were frequently reminded about happens (snake, tree, Eve, Adam, fig tree loincloths, etc.) but here is the best part:

    Gen 2: 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

    Two things here: First, the snake wasn't lying. Adam and Eve did become like gods. Second, the fruit on the tree of life sustains the gods, as is indicative by the very words of Yaweh himself.

    So a quick summary of the whole second and third chapter: Yaweh made a garden for himself to hang out. The tree of life kept his minion gardeners (man and woman) alive for as long as he wanted to maintain his weekend getaway, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil was Yaweh's tree to eat from. It wasn't put there to give us some freedom of choice as we so frequently hear about. So the minions decide to eat what the gods eat and they are kicked out, doomed to fade into nothing. To turn into the dust they once were (or I guess specifically what Adam was. It never really tells what happens to Even except for wanting to have a man and having painful births). Also notice that there's no mention of hell. The story was written long before hell was even a concept in early Jewish beliefs. The only people that actually lived forever where those that were taken up by Yaweh in a chariot to chill with him. The rest of us just stop existing.

    This, and the rise of dualism during the Babylonian Exile are my two favorite things to discuss with Christians, if I ever have the chance. I also find the Documentary Hypothesis to be extremely fascinating. I recommend checking out Who Wrote the Bible if you get a chance. It actually makes the Bible fascinating, for a change.
u/AngelOfLight · 7 pointsr/atheism

Tangentially related to the Christian/Pagan thing, Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? and Randall Helm's Gospel Fictions both demonstrate how the Bible arose as an amalgam of ancient myth and oral tradition. I believe Dan Barker also covers some of that ground in Godless.

u/tylerjarvis · 7 pointsr/Christianity

The 4-source theory (or the Documentary Hypothesis) holds that Genesis (along with the rest of the Pentateuch [First 5 books of the Bible]) were written by 4 different authors, and later compiled into the book that we have.

The 4 sources are JEDP, J is the Jahwist, E is the Elohimist, D is the Deuteronomist, P is the Priestly Source.

I'm assuming you're writing about the flood narrative in Genesis, which is generally accepted to be a Jahwist text, thought to be written around 950 B.C.E.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

Use this to get legitimate sources.


There's also the traditional belief that Moses wrote the book of Genesis, which would place it at about 1250 B.C.E., but nobody really puts a whole lot of stock in that anymore.

Personally, I don't particularly buy the 4-source theory as it stands, as it seems to be an unnecessary explanation. It seems to me that the Pentateuch is a collection of Ancient Near Eastern myths compiled by one author, probably around 500 B.C.E. That's probably why you have some similarities with works like Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish, because they all draw from the same oral traditions.

Anyways, I would look for sources on Wikipedia. Your best bet for good, solid information is on the documentary hypothesis. Let me know if you have any other questions, I'll see what i can do to help.

EDIT: Richard Friedman might be a good source. He has a few books that are accessible to the layperson. Particularly Who Wrote the Bible?.

I'd also recommend a few commentaries on Genesis. The best one I've read is the JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis by Dr. Nahum M. Sarna. It's got a lot of Hebrew stuff in it, but you can still get some good information about the Jewish interpretation of Genesis.

Good Luck.

u/Dr-Wonderful · 7 pointsr/Reformed

Any standard work on the subject, whether literary or archeological, would point away from the basic framework of your interpretation. (The best evidence, of course, is always the Bible, properly interpreted in its context, itself).

The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts https://www.amazon.com/dp/0195167686/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_TbmWBbGQ5HYF1


The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (The Biblical Resource Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/080283972X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_9dmWBbD268FCN

Stories from Ancient Canaan, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0664232426/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_BemWBb5ADVYJF

The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures https://www.amazon.com/dp/019060865X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_5fmWBb77Z4SP3

The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions (Oxford Handbooks) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0198783019/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_KgmWBb7AE7EC5

History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226204014/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_ahmWBb97P6K64

Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Harvard University Press Reference Library) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674015177/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_.hmWBbFMA52Z7

None of these propose an exact duplicate of this simplistic model, but they triangulate to something very similar.

u/infinityball · 6 pointsr/mormon

>Illiterate

The fact that the Old Testament exists proves that false.

>scientifically ignorant

Science as a discipline didn't exist until thousands of years later. So yes, they were obviously scientifically ignorant, but that's a strange standard for a blanket sentence of "ignorance" for an entire civilization.

>superstitious

First, that depends on your beliefs. Second, every culture is filled with superstitious people.

>violent, reactionary, tribal

Sounds like America 2019. Yes, they were indeed human with many human follies.

If this is really your entire view of ancient Hebrew culture (and perhaps all ancient cultures?) I honestly feel sorry for you. It's a common view from people who have read the Old Testament but failed to actually understand it in its cultural context. I suggest reading The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter, and excellent new translation and commentary of the Pentateuch. You don't have to believe the stories are "true" to acknowledge that labeling ancient Hebrew civilization with a blank "ignorant savages" can only come, itself, from a place of ignorance.

u/EsquilaxHortensis · 6 pointsr/DebateReligion

To be honest -- and I promise that I'm making this as not-a-copout as I can -- my feeling is that if you're even taking the position that the entirety of the Bible is authentic and accurate, there's such a gulf of understanding between us that trying to bridge it would be well outside of the scope of a few posts.

I'll try to summarize as best I can, here.

Old Testament: The Torah was not given to Moses by God. Large portions of "God's laws" existed in other cultures before even the Jews claim that they were given to Moses. Like, word-for-word, verse for verse, verbatim. Sometimes with minor changes. The Law is clearly not entirely divine in origin, if any of it is (personally, I think I see the hand of God in places in Deuteronomy, but I'm not sure). Similarly, a great deal of the OT is founded upon pre-existing myths from other cultures in Mesopotamia. We're able to discern several different agents at work in the text, including people who clearly have very different conceptions of God, writing at different times, as well as any number of redactors. In some cases, it's pretty clear that the final version of the text was based upon a later writer completely failing to understand the original writer. In some cases, multiple incompatible versions of stories were combined into the text serially by redactors who clearly had no idea that the text was supposed to be "perfect". Check out the stories about how David met Saul, for example. Also, a lot of the traditional interpretations of things came about when the Jews noted the many flaws, inconsistencies, and absurdities in the Torah, and invented all sorts of amazing (and often ridiculous) explanations for them.

For more on this, I cannot recommend highly enough James Kugel's How to Read the Bible. It's written by a very intellectually honest orthodox Jew, which is very valuable to me because it's as unbiased as possible while still being sympathetic and open to the theist view. No joke, I will buy this for you in a heartbeat if you send me an address. It will radically transform and improve your understanding of these things.

As to the Gospels, you ought to be able to find any number of websites describing its inaccuracies and contradictions. Of course, there's a strain of fundamentalism that insists, through astounding intellectual dishonesty, that there are no contradictions. To assert this, one must use a definition of "contradiction" that would be prima facie absurd in any other context. The differing accounts of Jesus' birth, the date of the Last Supper, and so, so much more. Also, many of the accounts of Jesus' life are clearly, shall we say, modified to make the points that the authors cared about, such as Jesus's genealogy falling into nice round numbers that it actually didn't. Also, a lot of details seem to have been invented after the fact to give the impression that Jesus fulfilled prophecies that he likely didn't (As a Christian this doesn't bother me; I don't see the OT as inerrant, so it's not surprising to me that many of its prophecies were wrong). For example, the narrative wherein the family has to travel for a census (never happened) so that Jesus could be in the city that prophecy said the Messiah would be born in (he probably wasn't).

For more on this subject... I like Marcus Borg. Actually, this book by him and N.T. Wright does a great job examining such matters from multiple perspectives, as it's written in a format where they disagree with each other and give their own takes on things. Borg represents (IMO) rational but honest scholarship taken too far, whereas Wright represents a more traditional but still informed perspective. This book covers many important topics, such as many of the miracles, the nativity, the resurrection, and so on. If you want to be able to defend yourself against atheist attacks, buy this book if only for Wright's sections. But read Borg's, too. They'll open your eyes to so much.

Okay, now let's talk epistles. The wikipedia article on the subject of the Pauline Epistles is a great jumping-off point. For a more in-depth treatment, I really liked Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted though it definitely deals a lot with the gospels as well.

I'd like to make two more points in closing. The first is that there's just no reason at all to think that the Bible is accurate and authentic in its entirety. None. It doesn't even claim to be. It can't. It wasn't fully compiled until hundreds of years after its constituent parts were written, therefore it logically cannot be self-referential. When (not) Paul wrote that all scripture is God-breathed, he couldn't have been including the books that hadn't been written yet. Also, as you'll see if you read Kugel's book, much of scripture is clearly not inspired. Some would argue that it's still the book that God wanted us to end up with, but that raises the question of why there are so many different versions. Some bibles have books that others don't. Some translate things in contradictory ways to others. There is just no way to suggest that there's some kind of special force watching out for this book; we'd first have to posit that there's a single "right" version and then ask how we know which that is.

Secondly, consider so many of the things in the Bible that are, to put it mildly, inconvenient. Are iron chariots God's Achilles heel (Judges 1:19)? Why didn't any contemporary writers (including the other gospel authors) say anything about the zombie horde that broke loose in Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53)? Oh, and let me tell you a story:

God made the world and he saw that it was good. Except, it wasn't. So he decides that he's going to kill everyone except for one good guy and his family. So two (or seven) of every kind of animal gets crammed into -- well, we'll skip this part, you know it. But anyway, afterward, God realizes that he's made a huuuuuuge mistake and promises not to do it again.

And that is where rainbows come from.

u/outsider · 6 pointsr/atheism

St. Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Genesis

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]

u/kingnemo · 6 pointsr/Christianity

Although it may seem wild at first, I subscribe to John Walton's cosmic temple inauguration explanation. He looked closely at ancient Near Eastern literature and the Hebrew text with emphasis on the Hebrew word for "create" (bara). He discusses two types of ontologies, one material and one functional. Material creation would be what we're most familiar with, like creating a table. An example of functional ontology would be creating a meeting.

Walton makes a convincing argument that Genesis 1 is an account of God's functional creation. He took one week of 24 hour days to inaugurate his material creation, which we can observe components of scientifically but don't have a scriptural description.

I believe Adam and Eve existed but were not the first homosapiens. They were the first to be created in God's image. I also believe (not scripturally, but from our best scientific theories) in the big bang and evolution.

A good analogy would be the creation of a university. The building could take years to build. Faculty and staff would need to be interviewed and hired. Class schedules would need to be designed. The university is functionally created on the first day of class when everyone shows up and fulfills the design.

If you're interested, here is The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate

u/Veritas-VosLiberabit · 6 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

You might find this book interesting: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DKR47O/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

The question we have to ask is what kind of evidence should we be expecting to find?

u/Nicoon · 6 pointsr/atheism

There are several books on the topic:

u/benbernards · 6 pointsr/latterdaysaints

Not a book, but a GREAT podcast to help understand the OT (including formation, content, and its place in scripture:) -- Discovering the OT


For books, I also really like the Bible with sources revealed -- it only covers the first 5 books in depth, but gives you a good flavor of how it came to be. (The 2 creation story in Genesis always bugged me. This really helped clarify!)

u/autonomousgerm · 6 pointsr/atheism

If you're going to read it, read "The Bible With Sources Revealed". It color codes the writings according to the separate known writers/epochs. Reading it in this way brings quite a bit of context and clarity to the texts.

u/EvilTony · 5 pointsr/worldnews

This book Who Wrote the Bible is a really interesting take on the subject. As far as I can tell it's completely objective and doesn't attempt to address the validity of religion.

IIRC analyzing the book (the Old Testament specifically) like any other reveals at least 4 different "voices" that suggests at least 4 authors, and numerous contradictions. For example the 2 versions of Noah's flood that appear in the Bible are compared side-by-side and they're quite different, etc.

u/wingsup · 5 pointsr/exjw

http://www.bartdehrman.com/
You can find any of these books on Amazon.
Karen Armstrong A history of God.
I loved this book. "who wrote the bible, by Elliot Friedman
http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353
Spelling Edit

u/nok0000 · 5 pointsr/TrueAtheism

It is really important to read the Pentateuch in a book which shows the sources. The Moses with Pharaoh story is actually from J, P, and E! 6:1 happens to be from the E source, the rest of chapter 6 and the first half of chapter 7 is P. The part of E where they leave Egypt is 12:30-33 where you can see that Pharaoh is pushing them to leave ASAP because all their firstborn just up and died.

I recommend The Bible with Sources Revealed.

u/displacingtime · 5 pointsr/explainlikeimfive
u/speaker_2_seafood · 5 pointsr/worldnews

as far as the book being "found," it says so right in the bible, i think somewhere in kings, where it is also claimed to have been written by moses. as for it actually being written much later than moses, and likely at least partially by king josiah in order to support his religious reforms, it seems to be a rather pervasive consensus in the scholarly community, but i am having trouble finding good sources. these two wikipedia pages might be a good place to start, as well as this book.

u/bpeters07 · 5 pointsr/exmormon

> My favorite interpretation is that child sacrifice was common among Semitic tribes at the time in the area, and that Abraham was woefully paying his dues after finally having a son. And angel stopping Abraham would have been symbolic of God telling the Jews that child sacrifice was wrong, and they should put an end to it.

Some people take it even farther. According to many source critics (e.g. Harvard's R. Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed), the story we have now in Gen 22 is actually an edited version of an original story, in which Abraham really did sacrifice Isaac. A lot of today's critical biblical scholars agree on this point -- Gen 22 was originally a story encouraging child sacrifice, a story which was altered in order to justify substitutionary animal sacrifice when the Hebrews ceased this regional practice. Specifically, verses 11-15 look like a later addition.

Evidence of an earlier original with child sacrifice?

  • verse 5 ("we'll come back to you") vs. verse 19 ("Abraham went back to his boys")

  • The text refers to God as "Elohim" (thus, the "Elohist" author) up until the angelic intervention (verses 11-15), at which point "Elohim" is no longer the one who speaks, but instead it's suddenly the "angel of YHWH"

  • verse 16: "because you did this thing and didn't withhold you son"

  • Isaac never again appears in sections of the Torah which source critics attribute to the "Elohist" author

    Text of the story, for reference.
u/PM_ME_GHOST_PROOF · 5 pointsr/DebateReligion

It's the latest from Richard Elliot Friedman, who's an absolute giant in biblical scholarship, but it hasn't seen a lot of mainstream circulation yet, so the best I could find was a New York Times review of Friedman's The Exodus:

>We know that some central figures in the biblical account have Egyptian names: Moses, Aaron, Phinehas, Hophni. All eight such names, Friedman notes, belong to Levites. For it was the Levites who left. The Exodus story is really the tale of how the people we call Levites left Egypt and joined up with the Israelites already in Canaan. To support this reconstruction, Friedman relies on several converging lines of evidence.
>
>Why conclude the Levites were the ones who left Egypt? Well, in the Song of the Sea right after leaving Egypt (Exodus 15), the word “Israel” is never used. Various Egyptian practices and themes appear in Levitical sources of the Bible — and none appear in the non-Levitical sources. And each — Levites and Israelites — has a distinct name for God. The name El is of Canaanite origin and was used by the indigenous Israelites before the Levites arrived. The other, Yahweh, we find in the priestly (i.e. Levitical) sections of the Bible and was brought with them. Neither is discarded; rather they are combined and both used for the God of Israel. In other words, the Levite tradition was added to the Israelite tradition and together they formed the way the people refer to God.
>
>Friedman also argues that the Bible’s preoccupation with the stranger is not from the Israelites who, after all, already lived in Canaan. Rather it is a product of the Levite experience of wandering and eventual acceptance into the people of Israel. (“Fifty-two out of 52 references to aliens occur in Levite sources.”) If Friedman is correct that the laws about the treatment of slaves and the story of the plagues and Exodus itself are from Levite sources, we owe to the Levites some of our most humane and influential ideas.

u/EarBucket · 5 pointsr/Christianity

I'd highly recommend John Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One, Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God, and Pete Enns' The Evolution of Adam. It seems like you're using an extremely literal reading of Genesis, and it might help to look at the text in the context of its time and culture.

u/RyanTDaniels · 5 pointsr/Christianity

BioLogos.org deals head-on with this controversy in a polite and open manner. Seriously, they rock.

The Language of God, by Francis Collins, is a great starting point for the science-end of the issue.

The Lost World of Genesis One, by John Walton, is a great starting point for the Bible-end of the issue.

The Bible Project's podcast episode Science and Faith handles this issue wonderfully, as per the norm with Tim Mackie.

There are loads of other places you could go, but these are great starting points that can lead you to other sources of information. They were very helpful for me.

u/pensivebadger · 5 pointsr/Reformed

I may reply more to you later, but as a quick reply, you may be interested in the work of a couple of professors, both of whom acknowledge evolution as the mechanism behind the creation of life.

One is C. John Collins, professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary. He believes in a literal Adam and Eve and his book is Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?: Who They Were and Why You Should Care.

The second is John Walton, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. He does not believe in a literal Adam and Eve and his book is The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.

u/angami · 5 pointsr/Christianity

A friend of mine just recommended this book to me yesterday! This is the book's description on Amazon:

In this astute mix of cultural critique and biblical studies, John H. Walton presents and defends twenty propositions supporting a literary and theological understanding of Genesis 1 within the context of the ancient Near Eastern world and unpacks its implications for our modern scientific understanding of origins. Ideal for students, professors, pastors and lay readers with an interest in the intelligent design controversy and creation-evolution debates, Walton's thoughtful analysis unpacks seldom appreciated aspects of the biblical text and sets Bible-believing scientists free to investigate the question of origins.

It sounded quite interesting. Basically, the author compares the content from Genesis chapter one to other nations' writings on the origin of the world. He also writes that our modern thinking today views the creation story as the creation of the material world, but the original readers would have seen Genesis one as the creation of the functional world. More about organization and function of things, not origin of things.

Again, I have not read the book yet, but plan on it. It does use The Bible but compared with other theories and civilizations I believe. Just thought I'd share since I just found out about this book yesterday!

u/fuzzymumbochops · 5 pointsr/Reformed

Of course "six days" means "six days." The question is what does a "day" mean for the writer(s) of Genesis. Is it a period of 24 hours or not? All evidence from the surrounding passage suggests that the writer wouldn't have meant a literal 24 hour period.

I'll simplify it. What do I mean when I say to someone "I've been stuck in traffic for a year!"? Do I mean a literal period of 356 (and a third) days? No, I'd certainly hope not. How'd you know that? Context of what I was talking about. Now reread the rest Gen 1-12 with this in mind. But also read the scholarship of the people who get paid to investigate this sort of thing.

Also, as to my Hebrew qualifications, I'd rather this not become a fight about whether I'm more or less qualified than you. That's an illogical way of arguing (ad hominem). Instead, since you're well versed in Hebrew, let's also presume that you're well versed in Old Testament scholarship. So here's a better way to go about things: let's list some scholarship. I'll start. Here's a tenured Old Testament professor who's studied Hebrew for about 40 years professionally. He teaches at a fairly conservative Christian college in the United States which has a reputation for being the Harvard of the Christian education world. He's written a book called The Lost World of Genesis One which supports everything I've mentioned. But don't buy his theological position just because of his tremendous qualifications. Read the book because of that. Make up your own mind as to the success or failure of his argument. This is how intellectual discussions work.

u/steppingintorivers · 5 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

For those interested, there is a Cambridge University text The Bodies of God that expands on these passages and much more, also from the prophets, illustrating a corporeal conception of God.

u/ConceptuallyHebrew · 5 pointsr/Christianity

You might enjoy this:

https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264

Monotheism expressed via divine plurality and fluidity - the foundation of Trinitarian theology is a coherent Ancient Near Eastern idea that does not equate to polytheism.

u/Ibrey · 5 pointsr/Christianity

How do they know? Granted, there is no direct evidence for Moses or the Exodus independent of the Bible, but it is unrealistic to expect to find direct evidence for everyone who passed through Egypt over three thousand years ago.

It would be a real stretch to argue that we can prove the Exodus historically with such scant information, but James K. Hoffmeier makes a strong case in Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1996) that, rather, it fits in with what we know about the period; there is no reason to deny the Exodus so compelling that we can be called unreasonable for accepting it.

u/vfdfnfgmfvsege · 5 pointsr/politics

This is a good graphic novel version of the bible. Good for people who don't actually want to read it.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027

u/AwesomeBrainPowers · 5 pointsr/BlackPeopleTwitter

For real, check out the King James Version if you're looking to read it for artistry. (The language is antiquated, but that's part of the charm, and it's got a rhythm to it.)

However, if you just want to read some crazy, millenia-old shit told in a really great way, check out Robert Alter's translation of The Five Books of Moses: It's got some of the wildest stuff in it, and Alter translates it into more like a dictated spoken-word album than a dusty old tome.

u/boydeer · 5 pointsr/todayilearned

not exactly the same thing, but comparative linguist and scholar of the hebrew language robert alter, inspired in part by the biblical-sounding-but-modern works of those such as cormac mccarthy, recently released a very good and heavily footnoted translation of the five books of moses.

among other things, it removes the conjugation 'but' from passages, which is not a construct in the dialect the bible was written in. i own it but have not read it, because i am in the middle of another dense book. i expect it to be fascinating.

u/dognitive-cissonance · 5 pointsr/exjw

Absolutely friend :)

Let me preface it by saying that when I woke up, I felt I needed to go back and revisit everything that I had "learned" and ensure that I really knew fact from fiction.

So I did a lot of research to be sure. Some may need more research to be convinced, others may need less.

What I found very influential was the book The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. You can find it here on amazon (get it used for only $5 shipped to your door!!)

I also found the Yale University course freely available on Youtube on The Hebrew Bible by Christine Hayes.

You can also find a course of The New Testament as taught by Dale B. Martin from Yale here.

I was certainly racked with confusion and mental anguish in struggling to reach a point where I felt comfortable with the conclusions that I drew, and a big help also came from the John Cedars youtube channel, the Theramin Trees youtube channel, and DarkMatter2525. The jwfairytale channel was also very helpful to go through the experience of the pain, because it was very very similar to mine.

u/AractusP · 5 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

The wiki for this sub suggests the following:

u/brojangles · 5 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

A lot of what's been listed is devotional stuff, not critical stuff.

For a good critical intro to the New Testament, try Raymond Browns Introduction to the New Testament

Or Bart Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings

Just about anything by Geza Vermes is also very good.

For the Old Testament, I'd recommend James Kugel's How to Read the Bible

or even Asimov's Guide to the Bible.


u/Ike_hike · 5 pointsr/AskBibleScholars

Sure thing!

If you want something accessible on a college level that I have used in my courses, I'd recommend The Hebrew Bible for Beginners by Lohr and Kaminsky.

Another magnificent but weightier text that touches directly on source critical issues and the history of scholarly theories is James Kugel's How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now.

Those are both broad surveys for beginners. On the more narrow question of dating and good for someone with a bit of Hebrew background, an important new-ish book is How Old is the Hebrew Bible: A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study by Ron Hendel and Jan Joosten. They do a great job of summarizing the current state of the question. It's the closest thing I have to offer as a consensus or mainstream view.

For a more "minimalist" or skeptical view that focuses on the historical origins of biblical narratives, I would recommend beginners take a look at The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein.

Later this summer, I am really interested to see John Barton's forthcoming book A History of the Bible: The Story of the World's Most Influential Book. I haven't seen it, but he's great and it seems like a serious piece of scholarship.

u/ShamanSTK · 5 pointsr/Judaism

The academic community knows and it isn't as homogeneous as it is portrayed online. However, the academics that are cited by internet "theologians" are operating under a few faulty assumptions and will view all evidence in light of those assumptions. One of those assumptions is that ancient Israel was no different than any other contemporary civilization. They make the assumption with absolutely no evidence, and you can google all day but you'll never find anything objective supporting it, that Israel and the Canaanites were essentially the same civilization until we "suddenly became monotheistic" in Babylon and established a monotheistic temple cult under Ezra. Then the scripture was written backwards to make Judaism monotheistic. To me, that would imply that you wouldn't find henotheism in scripture, but there you go. That's the theory. The TLDR would be that they know, but don't care because they rewrite histories scripture to support their claims. It's circular reasoning. Here's a book that's relatively cheap that outlines the fundamental errors for biblical criticism. http://www.amazon.com/The-Documentary-Hypothesis-Umberto-Cassuto/dp/9657052351 It's a little outdated by now, but I still link it for a few reasons. 1) The fundamental theories have never changed. The specifics have changed to "correct" the assumptions that were disproved by archaeological evidence, but the basics of the theory have never changed. 2) that book only focuses on disproving the basic premises of the documentary hypothesis and therefore takes apart all of modern biblical criticism without having to address each specific applied instance while still touching every major specific instance still cited by internet theologians, and 3) it is written in lecture format which makes it highly readable and very easy to understand. If a more complicated point is being made, it'll explain it briefly and then defer to another book. But the most important points are extremely clear in the book.

u/Rrrrrrr777 · 4 pointsr/DebateReligion

You should also read The Documentary Hypothesis by Umberto Cassuto for the other side of the argument.

u/DefNotBradMarchand · 4 pointsr/Judaism

The sidebar which I'm linking here is a really great place to start. If you want to read the Torah, I suggest picking up a chumash, which is the Torah + commentary (don't read it without commentary). The one I use regularly is Etz Hayim.

u/yonkeltron · 4 pointsr/Judaism

"Etz Chaim Chumash" has the official JPS '85 translation considered the gold standard in academia. It's a real, straightforward translation (no allegories) and this printing has outstanding commentaries and summaries of the best meforshim. It comes with Haftarah as well and some other goodies (I think it might come with handy maps of Ancient Israel and the like).

Comes in hardcover and the significantly cheaper/lighter paperback.

If you don't need a translation into English, I'd advise the Koren series.

u/HarrisonArturus · 4 pointsr/DebateReligion

Genesis is not a Gospel. It's the first book of the Old Testament (and therefore the Bible). Beyond that, I don't know what a "a know-it-all/always right" is. It's certainly not something I'd write.

As for the things you quote: Genesis was written to a bronze iron age culture. That doesn't mean they were idiots. They could ask the exact same questions -- and certainly would have. They also had practical knowledge and common sense; they understood God wasn't telling them to eat poison berries. So Genesis is saying something else; it's not giving a play-by-play scientific description of the origins of material existence. It's very likely talking about God's establishing an order to creation and placing man in the divine economy.

John Walton has two books on this idea, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate and The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate (with N.T. Wright). I've read both, and they're a good introduction to a better contextual understanding of Genesis and its purpose as Scripture. I personally prefer something with a little more theological and (modern) cosmological depth to it, but they're aimed at a general audience and in that respect I think they're worth reading.

EDIT: bronze -> iron.

u/rtsDie · 4 pointsr/Christianity

You should definitely stay in the faith. From what you've said you're the ideal person to be a Christian. Jesus came to save sinners, not the perfect. If you feel like you don't pray enough, remind yourself that there's no gold star for praying, and that God never says he'll punish anyone for not praying enough. You're right that being a Christian isn't always easy, but it really is worth it. And yes, it can be difficult, but it's also freedom and true life. I know personally that feeling like a hypocrite sucks, but it's worth staying with it. I went through about 5 years of flirting with atheism and feeling trapped but I'm so glad I stayed. There are answers to your doubts, very good ones. But it can take a bit of searching to find good ones.

Re. Reading the Bible, I think your instinct to be careful in your interpretation is really helpful, but that doesn't mean the only options you have is reading everything as 100% literal (as in, this is what I would've seen if someone was there with a camera) on the one hand, and 100% allegorical (as in, this is kind of like Lord of the Rings in that it makes a nice point but is really just fantasy) on the other.

If you're thinking of Genesis in particular, there's a long history of reading it as not necessarily referring to 6 literal 24hr days (for example St Augustine). [The lost world of Genesis 1] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0830837043?ie=UTF8&tag=thebiofou06-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0830837043) by John Walton is a good place to start if you want to understand the way in which Genesis fits its Ancient Near Eastern context.

On the bigger topic of archaeology, slavery, what's the point of Genesis, why is the OT so wierd, is there a way between literalism and allegoricalism? etc. Inspiration and Incarnation
by Peter Enns is by far the most helpful thing I've read.


TL:DR
Keep going! Read Atheist Delusions, The Lost world of Genesis 1 and, Inspiration and Incarnation. Don't give up, there's plenty of really good answers out there. Christianity is life and freedom. You may not feel it now but the more you look into it, the more you'll see it. At least, that's my experience.

u/JJChowning · 4 pointsr/AskAChristian

>Christians who don't believe in YEC, are you mostly in the Age Gap boat, where you feel that evolution is compatible with Scripture, and you don't take portions of Genesis literally (or some other combination that makes room for deep geologic time)?

I find gap theory fairly unconvincing. I don't think Genesis 1 is actually concerned with giving a scientific chronology of creation, but has more theological interests. My take is generally something like the "poetic framework" view, though I find John Walton's approach very informative. In general I find Biologos a useful resource for examining the origins debate from a Christian and scientific perspective.

>I'm mainly asking out of curiosity, because there seems to be a fair amount of "evidence" on both sides, but I also think that both evolutionists and creationists take a fair amount of truth from evidence on faith rather than facts. What is the main deciding factor in your belief either way (specifically, evidence that points to the truth of your belief other than that the Bible says that it happened)?

There seems to be an overwhelming amount of evidence to indicate that life has common ancestry, earth has a deep geological history, and the universe has an even older history going back to the big bang.

Either God created the universe to appear old, or it really is old.

u/Mynome · 4 pointsr/Reformed

[John Walton] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Walton) is an OT scholar and professor at Wheaton College. I just finished the [Lost World of Genesis One] (https://www.amazon.ca/Lost-World-Genesis-One/dp/0830837043/) this week and would highly recommend it.

He argues that the creation account concerns functional origins rather than material origins. To show this he considers a few Hebrew words in Genesis 1, specifically bara (translated as 'create') and tohu and bohu (translated as 'formless and void'). He contends that bara primarily concerns function-giving instead of material creation, and that tohu/bohu refer to an unproductive/nonfunctional state instead of an empty one. His analysis relies heavily on considering ancient near east culture and how they would have interpreted what's writtten in Gen. 1, claiming that a truly literal approach to reading the Bible is found through understanding what it meant in the world that it was first written.

Of course he goes into a lot more detail, and discusses a number of other topics related to the Gen. 1 debate. If you're like I was before reading it, these kinds of arguments will be pretty foreign to you, but I found them to be pretty persuasive and certainly worth a read.

u/r0lav · 4 pointsr/Christianity

I suggest you take a look at these two AMAs from this past year:

u/The_Mighty_Atom · 4 pointsr/exchristian

WARNING: Long post ahead!

I admire your desire to avoid confirmation bias and develop a stronger and more reasoned system of beliefs. I also appreciate your honesty in admitting that in some sense, you wish that Christianity could still be true. The pain you are experiencing from questioning long-held beliefs is very familiar to many folks on this sub.

You're not alone. And you should definitely not give up. :)

However:

>>I will follow the evidence wherever it leads.

I'll warn you up front that if you do this, you will probably be led away from any sort of belief in Christianity. Christianity is a religion whose truth or falsehood hinges upon specific historical claims. If Jesus either (1) did not exist, or (2) existed but was not divine and did not resurrect from the dead, then Christianity literally cannot be true. And having walked the same path you're on, I found that the evidence led me to abandoning Christianity. I'm an engineer myself, and eventually I had to accept that the historical evidence just doesn't support Christianity.

With that being said, I've been reading the other posts and discussions here thus far, and it sounds to me like you're stuck between two difficult options: (1) a genuine desire to be intellectually honest, no matter the cost, and (2) facing the difficulty of abandoning a belief system which has been a major part of your marriage and your family. If you want to walk the line between the two, I would recommend that you adopt a rationalistic form of classical Deism or Theism. Accepting a "minimalistic theism," as you put it, might be pragmatically very useful. It could help smooth out any potential conflicts you might have with your spouse and children. At this emotionally difficult time, that could be very beneficial to both you and them. It could also help your family start to look at religious belief in a more rational light, just as you do.

If you haven't already, take a look at some of the best Christian apologists out there --- John Lennox, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Alvin Plantinga, and the like. I didn't find them convincing, but reading their arguments could probably help you develop a more intellectually rigorous belief system.

Also, take a look at some books written by theistic evolutionists, such as Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution by Denis Lamoureux, and The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton. These scholars have had no difficult reconciling science with theism, and they might help you in your quest to develop a minimalist theistic belief system.

Finally, this process can be long and painful, and you shouldn't rush yourself through it. Take your time.

And as always, please use this sub for questions and support when you need. If you have more questions, or want to discuss this further, let me know.

u/Repentant_Revenant · 4 pointsr/Reformed

The academic work of John Walton is what makes the most sense to me.

A really good talk by Tim Mackie from the Bible Project sums it up incredibly well.

u/AboveAverageFriend · 4 pointsr/Christianity

So it's all just a metaphor? Hard to buy that.

There are a couple of books on Amazon that address this topic, however. One is called Is God a Moral Monster? and the other is titled God Behaving Badly.

u/Deuteronomy · 4 pointsr/Judaism

I'd suggest checking out the translation of Umberto Cassuto's lectures on DH.

u/iammenotu · 4 pointsr/atheism

http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309524934&sr=1-1

If you are interested in an academic, albeit theologian's (IIRC), point of view on reasons for differences in the bible, such as the several different versions of the creation story in genesis, the several different versions of the flood and ark story, etc., the above book, "Who Wrote The Bible" by Richard Elliot Friedman, is an excellent layman's read. It is a bit dated, but is well researched and an interesting. It is not a Christian or apologist book per se, from my memory, but a book based on Mr. Friedman's doctoral dissertation at Harvard. It only covers the contradictions from the first 5 books of the bible (the Pentateuch), but still a worthwhile read in my opinion, and can be purchased for cheap on Amazon.

u/katsuhira_nightshade · 4 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Academic Biblical studies encompass a very broad range of subjects, but I'll try to cover a bunch here. In my opinion, though many people who frequent this subreddit may protest, the best overall introductory text to Higher Criticism of the O.T. would be R.E. Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?. Although Friedman holds a number of fringe views and the vanilla Documentary Hypothesis has overall fallen out of favor (though there has been a recent revival of it), this is definitely the best-written and most entertaining introduction to the basic theory (I read through the entire thing in about 3 days). If you're looking for more on DH after that, Joel Baden's book, The Composition of the Pentateuch, is much more scholarly and explains the logic behind source division using numerous test cases (providing both the original Hebrew and translation).

For literary studies, just start with Robert Alter. I'm not really sure if this falls under the category of "academia" or is what you were looking for, but it's certainly an interesting analysis of how the Bible (both as a whole and by source division) tells its stories.

The only book I've read on the foundation of the Bible in the mythology of surrounding cultures is Tim Callahan's The Secret Origins of the Bible, which wasn't written by a scholar, but the author sources just about everything he writes; think of it as a Wikipedia for Biblical mythology--not entirely trustworthy, but fine for reference and finding further information. This one's also the only book on this list that has information on the New Testament as well.

Finally, make sure to check AcademicBiblical's wiki! It has tons of resources including videos, articles, etc. that can help you out.

I don't really know of any good books for Hebrew language since I've just been studying it in school my entire life. If you do seem to find a good book/course though, make sure that it's in biblical Hebrew and not modern Hebrew, as a lot of the language is very different. Having studied Arabic myself though, I can tell you that it'll give a significant leg up in learning Biblical Hebrew. For example, the way that words are constructed by fitting 3 letter roots into certain formulations is the same in Hebrew, and the vocabulary of the two languages are often close cognates. Once you've learned Hebrew, it's much easier to pick up Aramaic (I know that as well), but if you're just learning it to read Daniel/Ezra, it's not worth learning the whole language; the grammar is practically the same and the words are also similar enough, so at that point it's easiest just to fake your way through it with knowledge of Hebrew and and good translation to check against (NJPS, NRSV).

u/samisbond · 4 pointsr/todayilearned

JasonMacker is correct, they were indeed monolateral polytheistic.^1 What Algenib is talking about is simply what some forms of modern Jewish interpretation cover, but he should have been more clear in his post, as many people seem to think this meaning exists within the text, which we know it cannot.^a

---
References:

|^1 “Israelite Religion”, H. W. Attridge, ed., The HarperCollins Study Bible, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), pp. xliv-xlv

Notes:

|^a I recommend HarperCollins Study Bible or The New Oxford Annotated Bible - both will go over the subject in great lengths - but any scholarly study Bible will do.


Further Readings:

Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

"In the Beginning", A History of God by Karen Armstrong.

u/agnosgnosia · 4 pointsr/DebateAChristian

Perhaps you've heard of documentary hypothesis? In a nutshell, its that the pentateuch is heavily edited and not written by Moses. I got The Bible with sources revealed and was curious if the Abraham and Isaac story were edited, and it appears to be.

u/MMAPhreak21 · 4 pointsr/Christianity

The one I've heard the most about for Exodus is Israel in Egypt.

u/Jim-Jones · 4 pointsr/atheism

I recommend this: [The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb] (http://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027/)

Pisses off Christians no end.

> I have not purchased this book, but have read the first chapter online. As a Jew, I am personally affronted by picturing God as an old man with the flowing beard and robes. God is noncorporeal and God's name ineffable, and the Ten Commandments warns us against any kind of god-imagery, which can lead to idolatry.

And

> The nudity in this book, though probably true, is objectionable, and unnecessary. Not recommended. I would not keep it in my library -- not wanting to sell it, it went to the dumpster.

u/Roller_ball · 4 pointsr/WTF

The artist in the second picture, Crumb, came out with an illustrated bible. It's actually pretty good.

u/pleatedzombus · 4 pointsr/occult

His illustrated Book of Genesis is a real treasure.

u/SF2K01 · 4 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

How to Read the Bible by James Kugel.

u/Germanicus118 · 4 pointsr/Catholicism

I've heard great things about this book, might want to give it a look as it may help with your question: On the Reliability of the Old Testament by K.A. Kitchen.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802803962/?coliid=I349U78PJ5CWDI&colid=2KQI2IA4VRDZA&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

u/DJSpook · 3 pointsr/TrueChristian

I don't see a theological problem with biological evolution by natural selection, and I highly recommend this book for you Young-Earth-Creationists.

u/ignignokt2D · 3 pointsr/exchristian

Apologies for being vague. It was an interview I heard years ago, and I couldn't recall the details. I managed to find it again. It's The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb.

u/cypressgreen · 3 pointsr/atheism

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb I bought it for my son, although I admit he's only skimmed it. My son is 14 and a self described atheist, while is dad is a hypocritical christian. A christian couldn't really object much to the book, as it's just the whole book of Genesis with nothing added.

u/TallahasseWaffleHous · 3 pointsr/DebateReligion

Yeah, that's pretty weird.

I may have to re-read my copy of R. Crumb's "Genesis".
While he's not a theologian, He illustrated the entire thing from a very literal and complicated point-of-view. Highly recommend just for the amazing illustrations!

>Crumb became so fascinated by the Bible’s language, “a text so great and so strange that it lends itself readily to graphic depictions,” that he decided instead to do a literal interpretation using the text word for word in a version primarily assembled from the translations of Robert Alter and the King James bible.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Genesis-Illustrated-Crumb/dp/0393061027

u/zzzlater · 3 pointsr/atheism

here is working link

u/inkblot81 · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

I've noticed a few on my library shelves, but haven't read them all yet:

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. It's Bechdel's memoir about her father, and an excellent read. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618871713/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_zF8HzbJGXQY79

The Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti by Rick Geary. It covers a milestone legal case in 20th century US. https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Vanzetti-Treasury-Century-Murder/dp/1561639362

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. It's a text on the nature of comics, in graphic novel form. It's a classic. https://www.amazon.com/dp/006097625X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_sO8HzbDMZF7EJ

The Book of Genesis, illustrated by R. Crumb. He illustrated the entire text of this book of the bible. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393061027/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_8U8HzbZBERQNM

And here's a good list from The Atlantic Monthly: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/08/comic-books-as-journalism-10-masterpieces-of-graphic-nonfiction/243351/ (I've read and enjoyed a couple of these titles, so I feel safe in assuming the others are just as good)

u/countjared · 3 pointsr/atheism
u/artman · 3 pointsr/reddit.com

I recommend Robert Crumb's The Book of Genesis. Much more, uh faithful to the text and times. Preview has nsfw Crumb nudes.

u/infidhell · 3 pointsr/atheism

Only $14 on Amazon I'm buying it. And if it's good, I'll probably give more away on Christmas.

This is my way to support the author/publisher so that can make more comics based on the books of the Bible. And maybe one day, Michael Bay will make a movie out of it.

u/tekko001 · 3 pointsr/comics

I heard he was working on this about two years ago, glad to know its already out, judging by the comments on Amazon its also worth the money... I'm buying it :)

u/DeadnamingMissDaisy · 3 pointsr/nottheonion

Well, since you've made a massive edit, allow me to correct your error.

Yes, there are numerous examples of the iron age bible lifting wholesale bits of poetry from bronze age Ba'al texts. One example is the famous "lift up your heads, oh gods" which became, nonsensically, "lift up your heads, oh gates" in Psalm 24:7. (Hint: gates don't have heads, at least not the ones in ancient west semitic cities)

This is clear example of outright theft by hebrew priests.

It doesn't mean that the Canaanite god Hadad was ever syncretized with Yahweh. We do know that El was, however.

Sources:

The Early History Of God by Mark S Smith

Stories from Ancient Canaan, Second Edition edited by by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Neil Asher Silberman

u/Erra-Epiri · 3 pointsr/pagan

Šulmu, /u/KlingonLinux! I gotchoo on "Canaanite" and Israelite (they were more or less the "same" people religio-culturally for most of Antiquity, and definitely genetically/ethnically) and Punic/Phoenician (Iron Age Levantine ["Canaanite" and Israelite peoples and so on] peoples abroad throughout the Mediterranean as far West as Southern Spain/the island of Ibiza and North Africa) sources, awīlu.

Some necessary clarification : I routinely put "Canaanite" in scare-quotes, because there was no definitive, proto-national much less national identity for so-called "Canaanites" in the way that Israelites and Judahites eventually had by the 1st millennium BCE, and the people of Syro-Palestine during the Middle to Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age would overwhelmingly identify and operate by clan, by tribe, or by city-state before calling themselves and operating as Knaʿni (Ugaritic, meaning "people of Canaan"). "Canaanite" religious forms consonantly varied quite noticeably by city-state, in ways that, say, Egyptian ones did not, even taking into account "alternative" (but not competing) Egyptian local theologies and so on. Speaking in perhaps excessively general terms, there was a State religion overarching the regional ones in Egypt which, in effect, bound them together as a cooperative dynamic unit. "Canaan" as such had no such large-scale, cohesive "religious infrastructure" of Egypt's much less Mesopotamian Kingdoms' and Empires' like, and it didn't "help" that the exceptionally powerful Egyptian Empire of the Late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom Periods and contemporaneous Mesopotamian and Hittite Empires were constantly vying for control of the North Sinai and Syro-Palestine. The economic centers of "Canaan" were, indeed, frequently subservient to Egypt throughout Bronze Age history, with Egyptian Kings investing governors and mayors of its own throughout "Canaanite" territories following the Thutmosid Conquest, much to the personal danger of said governors and mayors (who were neither particularly liked nor trusted by their Levantine subjects nor by Egyptian officials) and much to the cantankerous chagrin of the Levantine peoples living under Egyptian Imperial rule. Which is to say nothing of Egyptian-mandated relocations of restive Levantine people and so forth.

Furthermore, Hebrew Biblical literature intensely confuses what "Canaanite" even means in a religio-cultural sense, using the term simply to inveigh against religious beliefs and conventions, regardless of actual origin, Deuteronomic Jews did not wish to see carry over from their ancestral religion(s)/culture(s) and from neighboring religions/cultures (e.g., Mesopotamian and Egyptian religions/cultures. See Leviticus 18, Deuteronomy 7, and Ezekiel 23 as but three illustrations of the aforementioned) into newly-minted Judaism and what had then become the Israelite-Judahite "national" identities (primarily in politically-motivated defiance, it should be noted, of their later Master, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which had made of the internally-fractured Kingdoms of Israel and Judah satellite states through rigorous opportunistic military conquest and serious economic and political strong-arming, beginning with the great and cunning King Tukultī-apil-Ešarra/"Tiglath-Pileser" III). A few scholars and especially many would-be Revivalists not academically-trained frequently, unwittingly hang their understanding of "Canaanite" upon all this confusion -- and the latter not in anything like a Jewish context nor through a Jewish hermeneutic, either, while still treating iffy Jewish accounts embedded in Scripture entirely too literally, which makes it an even more weird and defunct confusion.

Now, it's very important to form a baseline understanding of the historical circumstances of the Near East concerning "Canaan," what came out of it, its influential neighbors, and religio-cultural receptors. I know it feels like unnecessary drudgery to many people, but the religious tidbits don't make much sense and their use in/continued relevance to Modernity can't be adequately evaluated without learning and understanding their historical contexts, which is where a lot of would-be Revivalists go very wrong, in my opinion -- especially since "Canaanite" and other non-Kemetic ANE religious Revivals are still very much in their formative stages and aren't being led by people with necessary, thorough backgrounds in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. For this, I recommend beginning with Donald B. Redford's Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Marc Van De Mieroop's A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000 to 323 BC, Amanda H. Podany's Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East, and Mark Woolmer's Ancient Phoenicia: An Introduction. They're not short texts, apart from Woolmer's that is, but they will give you a decent, fairly comprehensive understanding of the circumstances of the ANE.

Concerning "Canaanite" and Israelite, etc., religious details and developments, just about anything by Mark S. Smith, Rainer Albertz (namely, this massive text he co-authored with Rüdiger Schmitt), Daniel E. Fleming, and Dennis Pardee are quite sound.

Stories from Ancient Canaan, 2nd Edition edited by Mark S. Smith and Michael D. Coogan is probably where you're looking to start vis-a-vis "Canaanite" religion(s), as most people like to get at the mythic material first and foremost. After that, I would definitely recommend picking up The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Biblical Resource Series), along with Pardee's Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World) and Nicolas Wyatt's Religious Texts from Ugarit -- there should be a free PDF of the latter still floating around the nets somewhere.

While William Foxwell Albright has since become outdated in areas, his works are nevertheless necessary, now "classic" reads. Of particular use and importance is his Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: An Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths

Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan by John Day and the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Second Edition are handy, but relatively scarce and expensive.

Tryggve N. D. Mettinger is a much-beloved scholar of mine, though be aware that in The Riddle of the Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East -- one of the very few decent and comprehensive texts in ANE "comparative religious studies" -- wherein he addresses a few major Levantine Gods like Ba'l-Hadad, he unfortunately demonstrates a very poor comprehension of Greek, so if you ever pick that title up please do remember to take his interpretations in the chapter concerning the Phoenician God Melqart with a metric ton of salt.

Aaron J. Brody's Each Man Cried Out to His God: The Specialized Religion of Canaanite and Phoenician Seafarers was a short, widely-accessible, and enjoyable volume; he covers quite a few lesser-known and under-explored elements of Levantine religions therein.

It sounds like a lot, I'm sure, and there's so much more to read and discuss beyond all these, but hopefully this will provide a decent springboard for you into the crazy, wonderful world of Levantine religions.

I hope this helped, and if you need anything else on this, or concerning Mesopotamia and Egypt, feel free to ask anytime.

u/Fogge · 3 pointsr/history

What's this? A wild literature tip appears!

http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869128

http://www.amazon.com/David-Solomon-Search-Western-Tradition/dp/0743243633/ref=pd_sim_b_4

Also, there is Bibeln och arkeologerna ('The bible and the archaeologists') by Hans Furuhagen but I don't think there is an English translation.

It's super effective!

u/Danishsnow · 3 pointsr/TrueChristian

Hello there /u/drac07, as a person who has studied the Exodus, such a topic matter is divided among people (even some Christians). Certainly from what you've said that some people seem desperate, I would agree with you on that. Though not all are.
I recommend the scholarly works of James K Hoffmeier and Kenneth A Kitchen who are experts in the field of Egyptology and Biblical Archeology.

Israel in Egypt
On the Reliability of the Old Testament

Hopefully this will help you to understand the historicity of the Exodus, other events and also answering sceptical scholars objections to the Exodus.

u/caethan · 3 pointsr/slatestarcodex

There are whole books written by Church Fathers about how to interpret the creation story, because it was obvious then just like it's obvious now that a naive material literalism applied to scripture is false. From that book:

> It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.

Bluntly, the American Fundamentalist groups you seem to have been affiliated with are in the position of "a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters".

u/bobo_brizinski · 3 pointsr/Christianity

You should use a secondary introduction like Lawrence Boadt's Reading the Old Testament, or Kaminsky and Lohr's The Torah: A Beginner's Guide (which I think is excellent). Many parts of the Bible are difficult to read without some sense of context and methods of interpretation. If you feel like a beginner I'd highly recommend the Access Bible as a study edition.

I wouldn't recommend reading it in order from Genesis to Revelation. It's okay to jump around when it comes to the Bible. Otherwise it will feel like quenching your thirst with a fire hose when you wanted a glass of water.

Use a reading guide, ask your pastor for help, or even talk to a professor if you're going to school.

These two reading plans, one from Kristy Burmesiter and another "narrative reading plan" are good imo.

u/usr81541 · 3 pointsr/Catholicism

Some books that helped me:

How Do Catholics Read the Bible?
Short book that discusses the holistic approach to Scripture study in the Catholic Tradition

Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction; Second Edition
Comprehensive historical discussion of the books of the Old Testament with some theological interpretation

Reading the Bible: A Study Guide
Covers pretty much the whole Bible with historical context and modern application of Scripture

Faith Comes from What Is Heard: An Introduction to Fundamental Theology
This is a huge book with just a LOT going on, but it has a very clear response to the question of the historical reliability of the gospels in the later chapters. It’s pretty well comprehensive for Catholic apologetics, but it’s aimed at a more academic audience than, for example, Catholic Answers

The Bible, the Church, and Authority: The Canon of the Christian Bible in History and Theology
On the development of the canon of Scripture

u/dodgepong · 3 pointsr/Christianity

The problem here is that your co-worker will never acknowledge evolution's merits because he cannot say that the Bible is wrong or false in any way. Infallability and inerrancy are two core beliefs of fundamentalists about the Bible, and in his view, Genesis is very clear about what happened six thousand years ago.

If you want to convince him that it's OK to look to science for explanations of how the world came to be without giving up his beliefs about the Bible's inerrancy and infallibility, you'll have to tell him about a reasonable alternative explanation of Genesis 1 that still allows room for the reader to look to science for answers regarding the origin of the world.

Here's is a fantastic presentation by Dr. John Walton, a theologian, who interprets Genesis 1 in a different way than a lot of Christians are used to. Walton argues that the creation described in Genesis was not describing the material origins of the world, but rather the functional origins, which is more consistent with the way Ancient Israelites would have understood the concept of "creation" (he explains it all in the video). I heard John Walton talk about this in person (and read his book, The Lost World of Genesis One), and it was what finally made me more comfortable with evolution as a legitimate science, having come from a fundamentalist background myself.

It's from a Christian author and theologian who is sympathetic to the Christian view, and it's on YouTube, so it's free!

u/ND3I · 3 pointsr/Christianity

To understand the biblical creation account, you have to put it in its cultural context. God inspired the story to tell them that he, alone, was responsible for creation. He didn't give them a science textbook to explain how the cosmos worked; he gave them a story that aligned with their view of the cosmos, and their view was completely different than our view.

For example, the people in that area, at that time, saw the cosmos as: earth (the realm where we are, not a planet), with "waters" above and below. They put "waters" there because the seas they were familiar with represented the unknown and chaos.

If you want more (lots more) information about this, look for John Walton's talks and books:

An intro:
http://biologos.org/resources/videos/john-walton-on-understanding-genesis

A detailed talk—the whole thing is good, but here's where he talks about the cosmology:
https://youtu.be/3a5Fcyb9tD0?t=613

His popular book:
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043

And Google will return lots, lots more.

u/madcowbomber · 3 pointsr/Christianity

The resource I used was The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton.

u/pilgrimboy · 3 pointsr/Christianity

Well, that's the common idea among leading Hebrew scholars.

Here are a few other good articles.

No Contest - Why the Argument Over Genesis?

Book Review: Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One

Personally, I recommend the whole book. Walton is one of the leading, if not the foremost, Old Testament scholars of our time.

The Lost World of Genesis One

u/tiphphin · 3 pointsr/Christianity

The Lost World of Genesis One is a very interesting book written by a Bible-believing Christian for Bible-believing Christians that discusses the theology of Genesis 1.

It mentions evolution in passing, but primarily discusses what a 7 day creation week means from a scriptural/historical point of view.

It's a very readable and interesting book. I don't agree with all of it, but it is certainly a well argued view point.

u/JohnStrangerGalt · 3 pointsr/IAmA

You are delusional, Some Mistakes of Moses is a pretty good place to start reading.

u/ziddina · 3 pointsr/exjw

Yes and no.

There are multiple gods in the bible. You might want to read Mark S. Smith's books:

https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X

I haven't gotten to read this one yet, but it looks interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/God-Translation-Cross-Cultural-Discourse-Biblical/dp/0802864333

Might also check this one out:

https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264

u/MedayekMan · 3 pointsr/Judaism

The dh fails in a lot of respects. If you're really interested in the topic, I suggest the book Documentary Hypothesis by Umberto Cassuto.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/9657052351/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/178-9044561-1948155

u/flannelpancakes · 3 pointsr/exmormon

I believe they also referenced Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedman. I haven't read it but I plan to very soon.

u/boner-of-rage · 3 pointsr/TrueAtheism

Fair warning though: If you start to openly push back after reading up some on Ehrman and a few other sources mentioned (I posted a wiki link to stuff on the NT papyri in an above comment) and your family is as hardcore fundamentalist as they sound from your description, be ready for a shitshow.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AtheistHavens/ ---if you need to get out

Also, Richard Eliot Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? is a great introduction to the Pentateuch and the Documentary Hypothesis. For all the emphasis Christians place on the New Testament and how Jesus resurrected and everything, he clearly seems to have believed the Old Testament to have been true and accurate, per the gospel writers. Problem is that it's way more complicated and problematic when it comes to sources/verification than even the New Testament.

u/otakuman · 3 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

I can recommend Bart D. Ehrman's book "The Text of the New Testament", regarding the NT. Regarding the books of the Old Testament, I can recommend "The Bible with sources revealed" by Richard Elliott Friedman. Oh, he also wrote a book called... (drum rolls please...) "Who wrote the Bible?"

u/jebei · 3 pointsr/atheism

I've had a similar obsession with the bible over the years. It made no sense to me when I was part of a church but everything opened up once I realized it's one of the best insights we have into the ancient mind and I find it fun to read now.

The top response to this post says the god of the Old Testament is the same as the god of the New but that's because they are looking at it only as a religious text. Looking at it as a historical document you can clearly see a progression over time from a Polytheistic War god at the beginning who demands blood sacrifices to a Monotheistic vengeful god of a chosen few. The New Testament is clearly written with Greek/Roman influences and a kinder god that was changed in ways to better fit and grow in that society.

If you haven't read it already, a good first book on the subject is Who Wrote the Bible by Friedman. I like The Bible Unearthed by Finklestein and Ehrmann's books are good too. There are dozens of other good overviews that show the Bible's progression from ancient campfire stories to the form we see today. After reading a few, I don't see how anyone can seriously believe the Bible is the unerring word of god.

I know I'll never convince my family members that Christianity is wrong so I've focused my efforts to get them to understand the bible was written by man. Even if we grant them that a god actually spoke to Moses and Jesus is his literal son neither man wrote the words in the book. Later men took the stories and wrote them down. The books of the Torah were finalized 600+ years after Moses is supposed to have lived. The Gospels were written 50 years after Jesus is said to have died. These writers were not gods and to say they were divinely inspired is a cop-out. They interpreted what they heard but these men were also products of their times. They practiced blood sacrifice and accepted slavery nor did they have a fraction of our understanding of the world. It's why you can't take the book literally.

There may be truths in the Bible but you have to look behind the words to find them.

u/uwootm8 · 3 pointsr/islam

Hey man.

The difference between doing history with Islam and doing history with the Bible is that Islam already had a historical critical method during its crucial years. Thanks to hadith criticism, we have information that we are absolutely sure come from the Prophet and/or his companions.

One of the principles of hadith criticism is multiple attestation. The historical critical method (that which Bart Ehrman and all other historians would also use) contain such a principle as well. If there are multiple sources we know for certain are independent (ie. they cannot get together and agree to report the same thing), then we know that the claim really goes back to the source.

This is not true with the bible. So the historical critical method would be used. Some assumptions that they have are:

  • Orthodoxy developed over time (so statements from the Prophet about future sects must be thrown out- it is simply seen as a way for sunni Islam to have fabricated the hadiths so as to discredit their opponents).

  • Principle of dissimilarity. This is reverse of the first principle I listed. It states that if there is something in the historical source (usually speaking of a religious text) that directly contradicts orthodoxy, it is probably true, because the orthodoxy would not invent this. An example would be the dubious 'constitution of medina' because it gives rights to the jews that the caliphate did not (sort of an equal standing political place). I have issues with this principle. Just because the orthodoxy did not invent it, how do you know that it was not invented by a person of heterodoxy? You don't know what this information would serve. For example, how do you know this constitution of madina was not fabricated by a jewish man wanting to raise the status of jews?

  • Anachronisms, "too convenient" etc. Basically if a text contains something that we know could only be known later, it is false.

    Also, if a piece of information is too politically convenient, then it should be disregarded. Because politicians invented it.

    (there are more principles, e.g. principle of verisimilitude)
    _____

    Now, the method is great, however the problem is is that it is only going to take you so far. A lot of these principles should be overturned by multiple attestation.

    For example, if it is multiply attested that the Prophet said X thing, yet the event itself happens to benefit a group of people, then one should simply accept that the Prophet really did said this, and these group of people, rather than inventing this tale up (because it would have been multiply attested so invention of it would be highly unlikely or impossible), simply looked back at the Prophet's words and then acted in a way so as to take benefit of it. I believe the abbassids (not sure who exactly) did this with the hadith about the army with black flags. OR it was simply a coincidence.

    Now, it must be noted that orientalists can and do apply the HCM on Islam. Keep in mind that (atleast up until the last couple of decades with new historical information and some brilliant research) many consider hadith to be forged altogether. From this you know of a group of people I would term the revisionists, and you see their arguments quoted on atheist and Christian blogs everywhere. However most of their theories, in my opinion, are really atrocious. One idea is that the group of people called "muslims" did not exist, rather the Prophet called all Christians and Jews and Pagans under the banner "mu'min". This theory is advocated by people who believe the Qur'an to be from the Prophet's time by the Prophet himself. However, the assertion is ridiculous and only works if you ignore 1/3rd of the Qur'an. Another assertion is that Mecca was not the birthplace of Islam. But such a conspiracy (who changed the 'birthplace'? Why did nobody object at all? Even if there were different sects, eg. shia, proto-sunnis, etc) would be far more difficult to believe than to accept that Islam really did start in Mecca. But then, where did the Prophet Muhammad get his information? That area, according to people who reject hadith, did not have any monotheistic religions. So it must be explained.

    I could go on and on but I'm gonna stop at that.

    >On the Jews and inventing scripture, would you say that the claim that Mosaic law is eternal, would be one of those inventions? Also, what material do you recommend in regards to investigating such fabrications?

    I am actually talking about the Pentateuch, the five books of the bible that Christians and Jews call the "Torah". These are definitely not from Musa (a.s.) as they claim it is. There is a very large amount of evidence against it. The most obvious is that its internal evidence dates it to a time far further than Moses (a.s.). I will give you a blatantly obvious examples:

    >Deuteronomy 34, the account of Moses' death, including the phrase in verse 6, "no one knows his burial place to this day."

    Clearly someone after him is writing this, or else they would not say "to this day"

    >Genesis 12:6 - Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

    But they were still there when Musa (a.s.) was alive, so obviously this statement was written after he died.

    There's a lot of proofs. Nobody doubts that Moses did not write the Torah (even Christians will say stuff like "well he wrote it and then someone later redacted it into a language the common people could understand at the time" which is silly IMO).

    I would recommend that you start here:

    http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353

    But first please read the five books of Moses! I still have not yet finished this book because I'm getting through the bible. It's a great book BTW. Very good intro. Note a lot of things they say contradicts Islam, because of their assumptions that revelation isn't true / moses is probably a mythical figure or something / a lot of other assumptions which you can puzzle out yourself I think.
u/BracesForImpact · 3 pointsr/TalkHeathen

He must support his claims with evidence. If you make the opposite claim, support yours the same way. He has cheap evangelical tools that are not experts in their field. You have both Christian and non-Christian scholars on yours.

For a good overview, I would recommend Who Wrote The Bible by Richard Elliott Freedman

u/Sahqon · 3 pointsr/exchristian

> If not, I've been lied to and held to impossible expectations my whole life and that's hard to swallow.

You must realize that when you believed without question, you also "lied" to everybody else about the same thing. You are not a single person being lied to, you are part of a group in which likely no one is lying to anyone else, they just don't know any better (than you do), and everybody else is just confirming to the others that "of course we are right".

Read some books about the history of the religion (The Bible Unearthed or Who Wrote the Bible for the OT and the Jesus Wars for the NT are a good and rather entertaining overview), and maybe read Sagan's The Demon Haunted World to clear up some things about who believes what and why it's not necessarily a lie, but might still not be the truth. Seriously, it's about UFOs, lol.

r/academicbiblical is also good (and free), but it's sort of short answers to specific questions about the Bible. Their wiki is the best though!

u/--O-- · 3 pointsr/Christianity

I think it's sad how many Christians know so little about the history of their own religion and holy book. I really recommend you pick up a book on the topic... amazon has many. e.g:

http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353

For OT specifically, also check out the Yale Open Course on it:

http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/introduction-to-the-old-testament-hebrew-bible/content/class-sessions/

u/imatexasda · 3 pointsr/AskHistorians

My religion class used Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Friedman. This is not an annotated text like some of the other suggestions (i.e.- it won't go line by line and give you notes on what the context of the verse is) but rather, it's a look at the question of authorship and the context of authorship. It might be a good entry point into a study of an annotated bible.

u/Fochinell · 3 pointsr/Judaism

All I can offer up is Richard Elliot Friedman’s new book The Exodus in which he hypothesizes that the Exodus out of Egypt actually happened though it was accomplished by the Levites. The rest of us who would later become “The Jews” were already in Canaan clobbering the other Canaanite tribes who desperately needed a good clobbering. Quite provocative.

I’d always understood that when Moses was attributed to leading the former Hebrew slaves of Egypt within sight of what would become Israel, the Trojan War was taking place hundreds of miles away to the Northeast.

We only have Scripture, not a functional time machine to see for ourselves.

u/jc4hokies · 3 pointsr/DebateReligion

Jewish scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, in The Exodus, suggests that the Exodus involved only Levites. Its history propagated through all of Hebrew culture through Levites role as priests.

excerpts from a shorter interview:

> Levites have names that come from Egypt. Other Israelites don’t.

> This is also significant because the architecture of the Tabernacle and its surrounding courtyard matches that of the battle tent of Pharaoh Rameses II, for which we have archaeological evidence, as was shown by Professor Michael Homan in a brilliant combination of archaeology and text (To Your Tents, O Israel, 2005).

> Likewise, only the Levite authors emphasize that males have to be circumcised, which was an Egyptian practice.

> And the Levite authors are also the ones who explicitly insist that Israel must not mistreat aliens (foreign residents).

> One of the Levites’ main tasks as priests was to teach Torah to the Israelite people. Naturally, when the Levites taught Torah, they taught the tradition they had brought with them out of Egypt.

u/franks-and-beans · 3 pointsr/AskBibleScholars

Apparently I can't post this as a direct reply, but:

Richard Elliott Friedman's new book The Exodus talks quite a bit about this topic. I found this part of the book not quite so interesting to me personally so I won't try to muff my way through a detailed explanation, but in short according to Friedman it started with the Levites, the group he proposes as the only ones who were actually enslaved in Egypt and left for Canaan as the book of Exodus describes. When the Levites arrived in Canaan they were allowed to assimilate into the lands owned by the other tribes. The Levites brought with them the idea of YHWH and as the priest and teacher class were able to integrate the idea that their YHWH (their only god) and the god the Israelites worshiped, El, were one and the same. They worshiped no other gods at this point, hence "monotheism". I generalize of course, but this is the basic chain of events. Read the book for the details.

Luckily the book as has a lengthy free preview on the topic on Amazon although I didn't look to see how many pages on this topic could actually be read in free preview.

Here's a link: The Exodus.

u/jiohdi1960 · 2 pointsr/DebateReligion
u/moreLytes · 2 pointsr/PhilosophyofReligion

I am fascinated with both topics as well.

Recommendations on anthropology of religion:

u/canteloupy · 2 pointsr/skeptic

http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353

It's been investigated in depth for the OT. It's a very interesting tale.

u/paleo_bear · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Who wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman is a good place to start learning about the Torah/OT.

From Jesus to Christianity by Michael White is a historical look at the early Church and the New Testament writings in that context.

u/idigdigdug · 2 pointsr/Judaism

Lots of comments here trying to argue that you're "doing Judiasm wrong" or "not hard enough" ("Of course mitzvos aren't fun... that's the point!") so I'll offer the kofer perspective.


Write:

  • Start a blog (if kids do that these days, tumblr?) and write about your thoughts and ideas. The process will help you figure out what you think. You will also get feedback from readers who will challenge you and help you sharpen and defend your point of view. Google phrases like: jewish skeptic blog, orthoprax, frum skeptic. You'll find a whole community of people asking the same questions you are.


    Do:
  • Do the mitzvos that you find meaning in. Try alternatives to mitzvos that turn you off to Judiasm. For example, I get nothing out of davening so when I go to shul I bring a book that offers some personal or spiritual growth and read that on Shabbos instead. (I do not go to shul during the week).


    Here's a bunch of stuff I've found informative in my personal journey:


    Skeptic reading:
  • On the origin of the Torah - Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman
  • On the origin of the Universe - A Brief History Time by Stephen Hawking
  • On the origin of people - Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne


    Skeptic viewing:
  • To see a pair of magicians aggressively attack illogical thought - Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (if you don't have Prime just YouTube it).
  • To see a bombastic, arrogant, smart, funny atheist debate R' Boteach - Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Debate on God - There a lots of these on YouTube. Many are worth watching.
  • Mythbusters - A good place to be entertained and learn how to attack a question/problem analytically.


    Skeptic Listening:
  • This American Life: 290: Godless America Personally, I found Act Two with Julia Sweeney particularly meaningful.
u/matts2 · 2 pointsr/AskHistorians

This is a different issue. You are referring to the documentary hypothesis. The Torha seems to come from several different sources with different religious ideas. So there are different names for God depending on the source material. In addition early Judaism seems to have been polytheist and later transforms to monotheism. So there is acceptance of other gods at times.

u/seifd · 2 pointsr/atheism

If the Bible is the word of God, it'd have certain properties. I'd expect it to be right about the history and nature of the world. All evidence suggests that it isn't. Biblical understanding of history and nature is right in line with what you'd expect from ancient people.

I would expect God to be able to keep his facts straight. The Bible does not. From what I've read, scholars seem to have a pretty good handle on who wrote the various parts of the Bible based on the agendas revealed by these contradictions.

Finally, if the Bible was the word of God, all his prophecies would come to pass. They have not.

Finally, I'd like to note that there are Biblical scholars that hold this view. They include Robert M. Price, Bart D. Ehrman, Richard Elliot Friedman, and Burton L. Mack. I guess they're all misinformed too. If only they had studied the Bible.

u/TheNaturalMan · 2 pointsr/exmormon

I know that there was (probably) no Moses and that the Bible is a collection of works from various Jewish sects. I was just using the TBM's vocabulary.

u/illogician · 2 pointsr/philosophy

This is only tangentially related to your question, but Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible might interest you if you haven't read it. He makes an in-depth investigation of the authorship of the Hebrew Bible and in the process, reveals a lot about the values the authors are representing. His conclusions contrast both what the average Jew or Christian of today might believe and probably also any sort of 'Platonized' conception of the nature of those religions. I think in Friedman's view, no such 'Platonization' should be conceivable because each Biblical author was writing with their own set of interests, for their own aims, to address their own contemporary problems, and it's largely a historical accident that we bind certain disparate texts together into a 'book'. The essentialists want to treat religious texts as though they just fell out of the sky one day and Friedman does a good job of putting them in a historical context with human writers and editors.

u/lollerkeet · 2 pointsr/atheism

Who wrote the Bible. I would suggest this as a subtler, long term approach. Make them actually think objectively about the book they base all of their beliefs on. Once they begin to see it not as the word of God but as the result of centuries-long political squabbles, they will be able to wonder which parts are true and which aren't.

u/ProbablyNotJohnSaxon · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

It's a very brief survey of the subject, but I like it:

Who Wrote the Bible?

It is not at all authoritative, and some will quibble about some areas, but, overall, it gives one a good overview of what went into making the Bible happen in the form it is today.

u/ZensunniWanderer · 2 pointsr/TrueAtheism

Should you ever find yourself in the mood, you should read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliot Friedman. It's a dissection of the first five books of the OT in the attempt to explain how they were compiled, and it reads like a mystery novel.

u/ThisIsMyRedditLogin · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Genesis was written by 2 people at different times and put together later. This is why it is muddled up in places.

For the curious, check out this book.

u/katapetasma · 2 pointsr/ConservativeBible

The Exodus by Richard Elliot Friedman is a good moderate-liberal academic-light book on the historicity of the Exodus/Conquest. Probably can't beat Lost World of Israelite Conquest by John Walton.

u/wascallywabbite · 2 pointsr/movies

You may be 4% interested in Etz Hayim, a modern torah commentary that rejects the historicity of everything before around Judges. https://www.amazon.com/Etz-Hayim-Commentary-David-Lieber/dp/0827607121

u/rhomphaia · 2 pointsr/DebateAChristian

Depends on what you mean by "literal." I'm partial to John Walton's approach. He argues that Genesis one is describing the assigning of functions in the temple opening ceremony of the cosmos, NOT the material creation of the universe. If that is so, and with the insights pointed out by mynuname regarding the logic behind the structure of the assignments, there is no scientific problem. This reading is "literal," but it is with an awareness of the historical context in which Genesis was written. For more on this see: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-World-Genesis-One/dp/0830837043

u/imnotverycr8ive · 2 pointsr/atheism

I'm not here to support Christianity, but I would rather there be more Christians supporting science education in our schools and with their families. You can point out that there are many Christians that have found ways to reconcile their faith with science. Try redirecting him to the BioLogos Foundation or this book where the Christian author argues that Genesis isn't intended to provide a historical creation account.

Christians feel safer learning from other Christians. This might get him to open up his mind a little bit.

u/xaogypsie · 2 pointsr/IAmA

A lot of this comes from a fairly accessible book called "The Lost World of Genesis 1" by John Walton. You can get it here: http://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314164889&sr=8-1

It's a great read.

u/mattb93 · 2 pointsr/Reformed

John Walton's the Lost World of Genesis One seems to be what you're looking for. He argues that Genesis 1 needs to be understood culturally rather than literally.

If I remember correctly, Keller's view on Genesis was influenced by Meredith Kline so reading him could be helpful. Kline helped popularize the [Framework interpretation of Genesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_interpretation_(Genesis)

u/micahnotmika20 · 2 pointsr/DebateEvolution

Chapters 1-11 sorry.

“If the creation account was meant to be taken literally(which I think is more likely) then I believe it's incorrect.”

That’s the million dollar question, how did the original author of genesis intend readers to understand genesis 1. One book(or books) I would recommend on this subject is The Lost World Series by John Walton where he writes about interpreting Genesis in the Ancient Near Eastern context.


The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate https://www.amazon.com/dp/0830837043/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_etO6CbG3VQCRK

u/BobbyBobbie · 2 pointsr/DebateReligion

>Yes, there should be no there. Why would a benevolent god shield a few animals in a garden while the rest were susceptible to diseases and cancers and genetic disorders. Not to mentions the necessity of ending the life of another animal to eat is pretty miserable too. Both living things want to keep living but neither have sinned to warrant their own deaths.

I think you're kind of feeding into OP's assumption here, that suffering = result of sin. I'm arguing that isn't the case.

What Genesis 2-3 could be referring to is that time when God started revealing Himself to creation in a direct way, at a time when it was deemed humans were ready to respond. A fascinating part of the book The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John Walton was that some parts of the story seems to indicate that the adam (literally , "the human") was given priestly tasks. Perhaps it was the role of these first pair to start dishing out information on God, and people would come to Eden to meet with God. Certainly we get that impression from the rest of the Bible: that God isn't content with only a few knowing about Him, but that the whole world should come to worship (and of course, this kind of finds its climax in Christ, in the story of the Bible).

> Advice recall, In Genesis it implies God doesn't want them to live forever if they know the secrets of the world. So are you saying had they not eaten the first fruit they would have lived forever?

I would rather say, if they continued eating the second fruit. But eating the first fruit (from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) disqualified them from access to the second.

Now whatever that first tree represented is still up in the air. There's a number of good guesses. My personal favourite is that it's an idiom for "wisdom without reference to God". Kind of like how we might say "we searched high and low". We don't mean there's only two places we looked - it's everything inbetween. So too this first tree might be a metaphor for living without God, and instituting moral decisions without God's authority. It was, in effect, a mutiny.

u/ggchappell · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Interesting looking book. Here's a U.S. Amazon link, for all you 'muricans out there.

u/Bilbo_Fraggins · 2 pointsr/DebateAChristian

Let's stick to the firmament for a bit. Your authors are quite wrong on a number of counts.

Here's the definition of the Hebrew word from my condensed copy of BDB, considered the definitive Hebrew lexicon:

רָקִיעַ n.m. extended surface, (solid) expanse (as if beaten out) — firmamentum

  1. (flat) expanse (as if of ice), as base, support.
  2. the vault of heaven, or ‘firmament,’ regarded by Hebrews as solid, and supporting ‘waters’ above it.

    First, there's a few places in the Bible where the firmament is shown as clearly solid:

    http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job%2037:18;%20Job%2022:14&version=HCSB

    (Note the verb translated "spread out" is the verb form of the word translated as firmament. In every use in the OT it means to beat out a solid thing. Here's two other uses of the verb form.)

    A bunch of guys got to go up there and see God on top of the firmament:
    http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ex%2024:9-10&version=HCSB

    Also Ezekiel's vision clearly shows his views of the solid dome God lives above:
    http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%201:22-25;%2010:1-2&version=HCSB

    At minimum this makes the claim that they didn't know of this cosmology seem silly. The same is true of the claim that it wasn't a common cosmology. We have good evidence for the summerian and canaanite and other groups.

    One of your other sources claims the Bible has birds fly in the firmament. That's not true, and it doesn't read that way in any modern translation, only those derived from the KJV. The verse in Genesis literally says "flies in front of the face of the firmament of the heavens". The word face is also used for the surface of the earth and other solid things, and a better translation is really "flies in front of the surface of the firmament of the heavens."


    Consider also where the fire comes from to burn up Elijah's offering, where the chariot of fire goes up to, Jacob's ladder, etc.

    There's tons more evidence, and if you want a book by a conservative Christian scholar on the issue, check out this one.

    He also wrote The Lost World of Genesis One where he deals with how he thinks this information should be used to change our understanding of the goal of the writers of Genesis. An essay version of the main points of his book is here.
u/stebrepar · 2 pointsr/TrueChristian

I've heard good things about this book, which may help.

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043

u/jmikola · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Regarding your second question, some would argue (rightly, I believe) that a literal interpretation requires analyzing the text as it would have been understood for its contemporary audience. This requires translating culture along with the obvious language translation. The ancient cultures (not just Jews, but Akkadians, Sumerians, Egyptians, etc.) were much more concerned with existence/creation from a functional perspective (something exists because it has purpose), in contrast to modern thoughts that they deal with the material nature.

I'm presently reading The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John Walton, and would definitely recommend getting your hands on it if this topic interests you. While you can take this with a grain of salt, Walton doesn't appear be using an escapist argument to avoid disagreement between other "literal" (e.g. 6,000 year old earth) interpretations of Genesis and modern science. He makes a compelling case for his form of literal interpretation, and the Christian/genome-scientist Francis Collins has come out in support of it.

u/themagicman1986 · 2 pointsr/Christianity

The best advise I can offer is to check out God Behaving Badly it has been a great read and helps level out your concerns or point in the right direction for them at the very least. A lot of the verses that seem sexist need to be studied very closely if we really want to understand the full meaning.

One basic and yet over simplified point. God created women second. That's totally not an inferiority thing. Seriously, if men were the first draft women are the improved second draft. I know this issue is a lot deeper then that but men and women were created in God's image and He has a plan that requires both men and women to fully recognize it and bring it to fruition. Prayers headed your way. God bless you in your search.

u/steamwhistler · 2 pointsr/atheism

Some Mistakes of Moses by Robert G. Ingersoll.

u/Torlek1 · 2 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

"Messianic Jewish" stuff? Really?

Orthodox Jew Daniel Boyarin and Conservative Jew Benjamin Sommer made more palatable references from the Rabbinic, Judaic side. Heck, there's this article by Yishai Kiel!

u/luvintheride · 2 pointsr/Catholicism

The historical and archaeological evidence for Moses is skant. I have studied the Bible enough to believe it to be very reliable, so I believe that Moses was a real person.

I checked with a historian who works on the related archeology and Pentateuch studies. Here's what he said:

> there are many Christian and Jewish scholars who do not believe Moses is a myth. The debates about the evidence often boil down to a "glass half full" vs. "glass half empty." Pro-Moses scholars point out the evidence that makes his existence plausible, and anti-Moses scholars point out the lack of direct external proof of his existence. I belong to two consortiums of scholars in Pentateuch studies, each composed of about 20-40 scholars, all of whom believe there was a Moses. They are all internationally qualified Ph.D.'s.

Recommended resources:

The video documentary Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus, which is very balanced and well-done: http://patternsofevidence.com/

Secondly, Kenneth Kitchen's book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament:
https://www.amazon.com/Reliability-Old-Testament-K-Kitchen/dp/0802803962

Thirdly, the work of Egyptologist James K. Hoffmeier:
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Egypt-Evidence-Authenticity-Tradition/dp/019513088X
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Israel-Sinai-Authenticity-Wilderness/dp/0199731691

u/theroundmound · 2 pointsr/Christianity

John Lennox

This book will help you out a lot. Written by a mathematician who also happens to be a professor at Oxford University and a Christian.

u/lapapinton · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Hi prophetofantman. I am one of the few creationists on this sub. I recommend you post your question to /r/Creation as well. If you message the mods I'm sure you'll be given access.

If you are interested in some more general books on this topic, I can recommend the following:

Three Views on Creation and Evolution.

Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism.

The Cell's Design - Fazale Rana

---------------

Some good Young Earth Creationist books:

Understanding the Pattern of Life - Todd Wood

Thousands, Not Billions, ed. Don DeYoung

Seraphim Hamilton, a young Eastern Orthodox commentator and YEC, wrote a good blog post here.

-----

A good book on theistic evolution is "Creation or Evolution: Do we have to choose?" by Denis Alexander


-----

A good Old Earth Creationist book is John Lennox's

"The Seven Days Which Divide the World".

You might also be interested in this Christianity Today article
"A Tale of Two Scientists"

u/dubsnipe · 2 pointsr/DebateAChristian

Perhaps this is not a debate point, but if you're really interested, you should check a book by John Lennox called Seven Days that Divide The World. I think it has some very strong claims that address your claims. There are some lectures of his on Youtube on his book, as well. I'll come back and answer you later today!

u/magnaFarter · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Seven Days the Divide the World by John Lennox

Short book (192 small pages), intended to get to the bottom of what truths we should accept from the Genesis creation account and other parts of scripture.

Its purpose seems to be to prevent people from both:

  • rejecting theories based on observable evidence due to their misunderstanding of Scripture

  • compromising important doctrines because they think that those parts of Scripture contradict scientific discoveries and are therefore to be ignored entirely

    Because it is so short there is not a lot of depth, but I think it is a good start.
u/eternityisreal · 2 pointsr/Christianity

I believe there is a third option, laid out much better than I could ever begin to in 7 Days That Divided the World by Dr. John Lennox. Check it out
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0310492173?pc_redir=1408078642&robot_redir=1

u/The_Fooder · 2 pointsr/TheMotte

I'm surprised no on mentioned Jordan Peterson's extensive analysis of Genesis, which may be one of his more useful contributions to the public record, IMO. He views and describes Genesis through the lens of psycho-social development, and makes, what I think is a pretty compelling description of how a person can hear these stories and see themselves within the narrative as protagonists aligned with the ancients seeking a covenant with God (Peterson's definition of God is roughly, that which represents the highest attributes and ideals). If anyone was interested in this reading and this topic, I highly suggest listening to the Peterson lectures; I found them very interesting.

One final thing on this point, Peterson remarks quite frequently about the self-referential nature of the bible, that it has numerous links throughout the text back to other stories and that these should often be taken as updates, revisions and remarks on the original tales. It's one of the things that makes the New Testament so interesting to me because it acts as a commentary on the body of work that had been meticulously edited and passed around for a few thousand years recasting the meaning of the Old Testament as the means to the NT ends, i.e. forgiveness of Sin for our endless bullshit into a new age of grace ennobling us to move forward.

I'd also add that R. Crumb's illustrated Genesis is amazing and really drove home the human element underlining these stories. While his aesthetic is more cartoony than realistic, he's clearly a master of his craft and really drives home the emotion and strife of the various actors and lays out the stories in a fun and thoughtful way.

u/Ohthere530 · 2 pointsr/atheism

Add this to your coffee table: The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb.

It is a respectful and unabridged translation with awesome drawings, comic book style.

Don't let Grandma be the first to share these fun stories. Do it yourself when you can talk about the details and set the agenda.

u/nattyd · 2 pointsr/funny

Actually, I was raised in a Unitarian church and read nearly all of the Bible (and several other religious texts). You're playing a bit of "no true scotsman" and a lot of selective reading. Some congregations are tolerant, many others are not.

The famous quotes about gays in the bible are usually:

Lev 18:22-23 "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination." Lev 20:13 "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death."

1 Cor 6:9 "Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals"

But of course, you can read any part of the Bible and find all kinds of nasty stuff. Seriously, just pick it up and start with Genesis. Or, if you find it boring, get R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis Illustrated, and just flip a few pages to find plenty of violence, rape, slavery, incest, etc.

You can argue all you want about what the Bible "means", but what it actually says is, unfortunately for your argument, a particularly well-preserved matter of record.

u/srgmpdns · 2 pointsr/atheism
u/MonkeyBones · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

R. Crumb wrote a comic version of the book of Genesis.

u/OIlberger · 2 pointsr/atheism

[Robert Crumb’s comic version of the book of Genesis](
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027) is supposedly very good.

u/puripurihakase · 2 pointsr/jerktalkdiamond
u/troutmask_replica · 2 pointsr/Christianity
u/joegekko · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

The illustrations in this book absolutely confirm it.

The pictures are drawn using Genesis as word-for-word inspiration with no embellishment (other than the artists style- there is no content that isn't straight from the Bible).

u/maimonides · 2 pointsr/Judaism

If you're going literary, you can't beat Robert Alter. Compare:


JPS:
>When God began to create heaven and earth — the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water — God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

Alter:
>When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters, God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And it was evening and it was morning, first day.


He's translated the psalms, too, to interesting effect:


nJPS:

My God, my God, why have You abandoned me;
why so far from delivering me and from my anguished roaring?
My God, I cry by day——You answer not;
by night, and have no respite.

Alter:

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Far from my rescue are the words that I roar.
My God, I call out by day and You do not answer,
by night——no stillness for me.

KJV:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art Thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not;
and in the night season, and am not silent.

u/BoboBrizinski · 2 pointsr/Christianity

I think the Oxford Bible Commentary is a great resource in general. They publish commentary on sections of the Bible in separate volumes, including one on the Pentateuch, which includes an overview of the history of Pentateuch criticism and the development of the JEPD Documentary Hypothesis.

The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library has a lot of good resources in biblical criticism too. They recently released this hefty renewal/evaluation/overview of JEPD. It received a good review from the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, which I think is considered a respectable representative of mainstream biblical studies.

Also, Robert Alter (The Art of Biblical Narrative) is always fun to read for a fresh, literary perspective. He might have an interesting take on JEPD in his edition of the Pentateuch.

u/Admonisher66 · 2 pointsr/atheism

All religions interest me (as does atheism). My formal graduate education was Christian-centered, but I've always branched out in my private studies. Of the non-Abrahamic faiths, the one I've probably had the most exposure to is Buddhism. I grew up in a religious household, but my parents were never judgmental or exclusionary of other traditions, so I was encouraged to talk to people and find out more about them. I encountered many belief systems and made diverse friends in public school, from Roman Catholic to hardcore atheist, and my interest blossomed from there. I've also always been a voracious reader, which helps!

If you ever want to learn more about the context of Genesis as it was written and as it might have been read by its original audience, I recommend the translation-with-commentary The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter. (An ironic name for a translator, I know -- but he's outstanding, and takes a knowledgeable secular approach rather than a devotional one. He's also done the David Story, the Psalms, and the Wisdom Books, including Job.) For more on the "Image/Likeness" distinction, it shows up in many Orthodox Christian writings, but Bishop Kallistos Ware (a frequent writer of apologetic works) gives a decent explanation of the concept as his community understands it, beginning on page 219 of his book The Orthodox Church.

u/Radically_Reformed · 2 pointsr/theology

Stories from Ancient Caanan by Michael Coogan is an excellent book detailing Ancient Caananite mythology. Baal is talked about a lot in this book, along with many other dieties found in Caananite religion.

Actually, thanks for asking this question. I was just thinking about picking this book back up and doing a study similar to yours.

u/mephistoA · 2 pointsr/DebateAChristian

the bible is not at all historically accurate, and archaeologists are increasingly starting to discover just how wrong the bible actually is. christians are, as usual, about 30 years behind on this matter. See the following

http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869128

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed

u/noluckatall · 2 pointsr/TrueAtheism

If you'd like to read more about the historical backdrop behind the various stories in Genesis, there's a really good book on the subject. The author is a biblical historian.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-Guide-Scripture/dp/0743235878/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396028025&sr=1-1&keywords=kugel

u/delete_not_brain · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Well, that will depends entirely on the definition of "historically accurate"...

To put it simple, if the definition means

1) you always need outside sources for confirmation, to accept it as "historically accurate".
Then you have a huge problem. Since most historical accounts (ancient, greek, egypt, middle ages, etc..) come from single sources written (or oldest known manuscripts) way after the event. Basically most ancient (and sometimes even not so ancient) history we learned in school was then fantastical bullshit.

2) a text is deemed "historically accurate" as long as no archeological findings & other sources tell a different story.
Then it will depend on a) how much content is disputed
b) which source has more credibility
c) how good is my text overall (1 wrong part, will not disprove 100 verified ones)
d) how good is my archeology

So I treat the OT/NT text as a historical text. That can be critizised/analyzed/studied like any other manuscript.
Personally I belief the supernatural stories about god, Jesus, are true also, but that cannot be verified historically. That's, like in any religion, a matter of belief... But practically a lot of old manuscripts & "writting on stones" (egypt, greek, ...) contain supernatural sayings, and god(s) who interfere. If you would discredit the OT/NT text on that basis, most of ancient history that you learned would have to be discarded as well.
And all that personal stories, like "he said this" & "she answered this", you will be never to prove/disprove anyway. Only the surrounding text (language,names) and factual information (knowledge of time period, locations, etc...)

When it come to the OT/NT text so far, most things that can/could be verified archeologically seem to support the bible as an accurate historical text.
In the NT especially Acts as a mainly historical book stands out...

In the OT, the farther back you get, the fuzzier the answer will be. My problem with most criticism, like Finkelsteins, is that it depends heavily on "evidence not found" coupled with "time dating the site" (="no evidence at the time wehre I date the event").

This approach has 3 problems:
1) exact locations (cities, places, etc.) are often highly disputed. We often don't know the verified exact locations of roman and sometimes even middle age battles in Europe. So it seems a little strange, when some archeologist says for events 1000-2000 years earlier, this is definitively the site (while he most definitively never looked 2 miles to the west...).
2) Dating in Egypt, Israel, heck the whole Middle East ist pretty much a mess of its own for the OT time period. First there are not too many "datable" artefacts, and secondly Finkelstein & Co don't believe in C14 carbon dating. O.K. that's highly simplified and blatantly wrong. The truth is: the "established standard timeline" based on Egyptology practically never corresponded really to C14 dating (a couple of hundred years difference). Since a few years back they think they can solve this technically (and with some hypothetical explanations), but it means that practically any C14 dating that doesn't fit the wanted result gets ignored. Basically a lot (mostly older) archeologists of that time in Egypt & Middle East are ignoring C14 dating results for that purpose. There is a battle between archeologists fought here...and C14 seems to be winning lately...
3) dating OT events is always speculative, there are competing arguments e.g. for the time of the exodus (1450-1200) and some dispute the event it at all.

This means personally for me, that while archeological findings in OT times are fun, interesting and sometimes truly awesome, any claim based on "at that time Israel did not exist, the city was not inhabited, long destroyed, we found no evidence" depends too much on "I accurately dated the site/event".
And the absence of findings does not really disprove the existence of something historically. The question quickly becomes one of trusting the underlying assumptions. So far I haven't found much that contradicts the confutable historical narrative parts of the OT/NT text. Archeological research that depends on "exact" location/time dating offers questions and definitive mistakes in the text. But the time/place dating of this research depends often highly on other factors and interpretations, and is mostly disputed.



===============

Kitchen (On the Reliability of the Old Testament) is "the standard" book about your question.
http://www.amazon.com/Reliability-Old-Testament-K-Kitchen/dp/0802803962/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

But for some fun (about the disputes on dating) read "Centuries of Darkness". Kitchen does't agree with them (and I lean more to him honestly), but then who agrees really about anything for that time period :-)
http://www.centuries.co.uk/index.htm

u/Total_Denomination · 2 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

See John Walton.

Kitchen's Reliability of the Old Testament also has some comparative studies -- the most significant being his assertion that suzerain treaties in contrast to the Pentateuch fundamentally undermine the Documentary Hypothesis.

If you're looking for primary sources only, I'd recommend Old Testament Parallels

u/fatlewis · 2 pointsr/Reformed

Kenneth Kitchen's "On the Reliability of the Old Testament" is a decade old but remains excellent.

u/Donkey_of_Balaam · 2 pointsr/DebateReligion

>If you don't like wikipedia as a source, feel free to click through. Nothing in that article is missing citations.

Okay, how about this one:

>The Delta is an alluvial fan of mud deposited through many millennia by the annual flooding of the Nile; it has no source of stone within it. Mud, mud and wattle, and mud-brick structures were of limited duration and use, and were repeatedly leveled and replaced, and very largely merged once more with the mud of the fields. . . . The mud hovels of brickfield slaves and humble cultivators have long since gone back to their mud origins, never to be seen again. . . . And, as pharaohs never monumentalize defeats on temple walls, no record of the successful exit of a large bunch of foreign slaves (with loss of a full chariot squadron) would ever have been memorialized by any king, in temples in the Delta or anywhere else. On these matters, once and for all, biblicists must shed their naïve attitudes and cease demanding ‘evidence’ that cannot exist." p. 246 (Kenneth Kitchen is one of the most preeminent scholars of ancient Egypt, having authored hundreds of journal articles and books.)

So absence of evidence is ... absence of evidence. How underwhelming and obvious.

>Your argument is just an argument from personal incredulity.

No, it's an argument to the best explanation. This is called abductive reasoning.

>As for the difficulty of getting a whole bunch of people to believe a story that is purported to have been a thousand years earlier? Why not. Who from a thousand years earlier was there to contradict the story?

Everyone:

"Hey everybody, look what I have. This document explains the moral code, legal system, ontology, and history of mankind that G-d gave our ancestors."

"How come we've never heard of it before? What does 'circumcision' mean? On the seventh year we do what with our crops?! Yeah, this makes sense. Let's all start doing this! We agree with this document that portrays us as slaves, idolaters, malcontents, and worse. We especially like the feces-god some of us worshipped in Numbers 25. Nice touch! From this day forward we will all devote our lives to the perpetuation of this book. Thank you, Not-Moses! Let's kill everyone who doesn't go along with this."

I have a better explanation.

u/turbovoncrim · 2 pointsr/Christianity

Boadt's, Reading the Old Testament, An Introduction is an awesome resource. I need to dig my first edition out again.

u/AccessibleFaith · 2 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

It’s a little older, but Lawrence Boadt’s Introduction “Reading the the Old Testament” is a good overview. It has a second edition which I should probably get and see what has been updated.


https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Old-Testament-Introduction-Second/dp/0809147807/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=lawrence+boadt%2C+reading+the+old+testament+an+introduction&qid=1572617990&sprefix=lawrence+boadt&sr=8-1

u/xogizopawe · 1 pointr/changemyview

provide an actual link to a source that says common ancestor is 1000CE. not true at all (humans did not almost go extinct 1000 years ago so your panda example is not relevant)

​

the amazon page for the source you just posted

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Egypt-Evidence-Authenticity-Tradition-ebook/dp/B005DKR47O#customerReviews

lol read the description:

"Scholars of the Hebrew Bible have in the last decade begun to question the historical accuracy of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, as described in the book of Exodus. The reason for the rejection of the exodus tradition is said to be the lack of historical and archaeological evidence in Egypt."

try reading some of the sources I posted in the original post and youll see the clear academic conensus that the Exodus is not real. the Jews did were not enslaved in and did not live in Egypt

u/meekrobe · 1 pointr/AcademicBiblical

Can you refute Cassuto's take on it?

http://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/2ro5qp/understanding_passages_with_contradictory/cnikit9

Cassuto's book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Documentary-Hypothesis-Umberto-Cassuto/dp/9657052351

Layman, so I don't know if the academic position is to "hey we don't have the time to refute every Rabbi's take on reconciling creation 1 and 2", or if it's because Cassuto makes a good case. I've been unable to find a refutation of Cassuto's findings on creation.

u/Inoku · 1 pointr/AskReddit

You should always get side-by-side English-Hebrew/Greek/Arabic translations, if possible.

I think the Jewish Publication Society has a good translation of the Torah (the Tanakh/Old Testament), but it might be worth it to purchase a Chumash--that is, a Torah (only the first five books) with accompanying commentary, along with the weekly Haftarah readings (from the other books of the Tanakh). I personally have an Etz Hayim Chumash that I really like.

u/That_cant_be_good · 1 pointr/news

What if I told you scriptures are not a scientific tome, but rather a generalized explanation of a relationship between a divine being and people, how we should live with one another, care for one another, and help one another?

And that study of Science is there to help us understand the world we live in, and further the aforementioned goal of living with one another, caring for one another, and helping one another?

And that Scriptures were never intended to be a scientific tome, or even be referenced as a scientific tome?

John Walton, "Lost World of Genesis.", and "Lost world of Adam and Eve"

Anyway, I'm not saying you're wrong, but suggesting that perhaps the people who do have the position you correctly point out are very confused about what they have been taught about their scriptures.

u/fatherlearningtolove · 1 pointr/Christianity

I think that your instincts are right on - that you're right to think that the defense given for these positions does not cut it. And you are absolutely not the first person to notice this. I will say that I once believed as your pastor (was it a pastor or youth pastor?). But I've since really examined a lot of my beliefs and come to different conclusions. I think this is happening more and more.

I would encourage you to check out different churches, but I'm guessing because of your age that this might be difficult to do? If that is the case, I would encourage you in the meantime to do some reading. On evolution, I would recommend the following:

The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate

The Evolution of Adam, What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

On the topic of homosexuality and the Bible, while it might seem to be selfish of me, I'm going to recommend a blogpost I wrote on the subject. There are books out there on this subject - I, however, arrived at my conclusions through much google searching and reading information from many, many websites. So I can't pick a book I haven't read and recommend it.

u/Wakeboarder1019 · 1 pointr/AcademicBiblical

Are you talking about what John Walton argues in his creation book, which name escapes me at the minute? Or something else? And it may be Walton's argument on a theological level, not necessarily this is how the ancient Hebrews viewed vocabulary.

EDIT: Found the book

u/haploid-20 · 1 pointr/Christianity

Hap hap hello there! I am a bot and you linked to Amazon.

This comment contains 1 pricing graph(s)

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Product 1: The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (0830837043)

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|--:|:--|:--|:--|
|Cur|$16.15|$6.03|$5.79|
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u/FA1R_ENOUGH · 1 pointr/Christianity

>To me, the most obvious explanation for why you don't think Genesis should be taken literally is that you understand that it can't be literally true and so you conclude that it wasn't intended to be so. On the other hand, you want to believe in Jesus and the gospels, so you believe that they're true, and then decide that they must have been written as truth. If this isn't the reason for your position, then please tell me what your actual reason is.

Could you be a little more condescending here? How is this the "most obvious explanation"? This is the most obvious explanation if you take me to be an idiot or intellectually dishonest; I do not appreciate those implications. Charity will ensure that our discussions are fruitful.

If we are going to interpret the Bible, then we must discern how different genres should be interpreted. The Bible has a plethora of different genres: narrative, poetry, song, genealogy, letters, apocalypse, law, prophecy, etc. We need to understand the nature of these genres so we can read them right. Otherwise, we are going to produce absurd ideas. For example, if we read the newspaper thinking that it's a love poem, we will probably become frustrated.

Genesis 1 has a lot of poetic elements to it. It is a story of how God created the universe and assigned function to everything. It should not be difficult to see the poetic nature of this chapter. For example, Days 1-3 depict God creating various containers; Days 4-6 depict God filling the containers. On Day 4, he creates sun, moon, and stars, which corresponds to Day 1 - light and dark. Day 5 has fish and birds which fill the sky and sea (Day 2). Day 6 is plant and animal life and humans, which fills the land made on Day 3.

Anyway, the story is much more a story about God than about the mechanics of creation. It is not a historical narrative. Thus, trying to interpret this like we would a historical narrative is an unfortunate category mistake. I've found John Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One to be a helpful deconstruction of this chapter.

Now, the Gospels are a different genre. They are biographies of Jesus Christ, and they focus on what he did. These are quite similar to other, secular biographies that we have from the same time period. Furthermore, fiction from that time is not written like the Gospels. The Gospels demonstrate eyewitness sources. To say that they were not to be intended as actual history is to say that the writers effectively invented a brand-new genre of realistic fiction. Mythic writings in this time were not like the Gospels. For example, contrast the Revelation or 1 Enoch (apocalyptic literature) with the Gospels. One should easily be able to tell the difference.

The point is, we should realize that the Bible has different genres, was written over the course of hundreds of years, and is a diverse document. As it sounds silly to question if the epistles were written to actual people because the Psalms are worship music, the idea that Genesis 1 is not intended to be historical implies nothing about the historicity of the Gospels. If you are interesting in a full understanding of the different texts, I would recommend Fee/Stuart's How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, and How to Read the Bible Book by Book. They are helpful introductions to the topic of Biblical Intepretation.

u/ITzNybble · 1 pointr/Bible

Well said, I read a book on Genesis 1 recently that went into the other early far eastern text and how they speak to creation and all the books were more focused on the functionality or purpose of the creations not the actual creation itself. I.E. They didn't seem to care how the trees were made, it was more important to know whom made them and what they purpose was for, in this sense science is helping reveal to us more the why and how.

​

link to the book just to source it. I obviously paraphrased the entire book in one sentence which does not do it justice

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0830837043

u/thescroggy · 1 pointr/Christianity

I would encourage you to read “The Lost World of Genesis One” by Walton.

it’s worth it.

u/bravereviews · 1 pointr/Christianity

You made me think of this book ... http://amzn.to/1tiQWlZ (John Walton)

u/PWYoung623 · 1 pointr/christianquestions

There is a book called "God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist, and Racist?" by David T. Lamb. Met the guy at a Young Life seminar and he is very interesting. I suggest you give that a read.
https://www.amazon.com/God-Behaving-Badly-Testament-Sexist/dp/0830838260


u/TheDavidKent · 1 pointr/Christianity

Ok that was longer than a few moments, but here we go!



Well, for one thing, we have to understand that there is a vast cultural rift between 2012 America/Canada/Europe/whatever and the 1500ish BC Middle East.

Some of Old Testament regulations regarding slavery, marriage, etc. may seem harsh to us, but compared to the brutal cultural norms of that era, they were actually quite liberating. For the Bible to say that women, children, slaves, and foreigners had any rights at all was a revolutionary idea.

Still, the Old Testament commandments were not necessarily intended to illustrate God's vision of a perfect society.

Rather, they were intended to restrict evil as much as was reasonably possible within a somewhat barbaric culture (though they might say the same of our culture in many ways!), and ultimately to show them that their own attempt to perfectly follow every part of the law was hopeless- that as lawbreakers they needed a righteousness that went beyond mere behavior modification. That's where Jesus comes in.



Here is a link multiple links to a talk by Dr. John Dickson (PhD in Ancient History) that touches on a lot of your concerns (specifically violence in the Old Testament):

Part 1 http://www.rzim.org/resources/listen/justthinking.aspx?archive=1&pid=2531

Part 2 http://www.rzim.org/resources/listen/justthinking.aspx?archive=1&pid=2532

Part 3 http://www.rzim.org/resources/listen/justthinking.aspx?archive=1&pid=2533

Part 4 http://www.rzim.org/resources/listen/justthinking.aspx?archive=1&pid=2534




And here is a gigantic unorganized pile of some other somewhat relevant links. I can't absolutely vouch for everything, but they should be generally helpful.



http://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/2011/11/30/what-about-genocide-in-the-old-testament/

http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2009/08/did-god-condone-slavery.html

http://www.thevillagechurch.net/the-village-blog/what-are-christians-to-do-with-old-testament-law/

http://carm.org/why-do-christians-not-obey-old-testaments-commands-to-kill-homosexuals

http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/stone-woman-not-being-virgin

http://carm.org/slavery

http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/you-may-buy-slaves

http://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/2011/02/02/was-the-mosaic-law-meant-to-be-permanent/

http://carm.org/why-do-christians-not-obey-old-testaments-commands-to-kill-homosexuals

http://www.toughquestionsanswered.org/2010/08/13/does-god-condone-slavery-in-the-old-testament-part-1/

http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/stone-rebellious-son

http://carm.org/questions/about-bible

http://carm.org/questions/skeptics-ask

http://carm.org/god-of-old-testament-a-monster

http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy

http://carm.org/introduction-bible-difficulties-and-bible-contradictions




Also, here are a couple of books you might be interested in. I have not personally read them, but I've heard good things.


http://www.amazon.com/God-Behaving-Badly-Testament-Sexist/dp/0830838260/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801072751?tag=apture-20



I hope that helps! Thanks for your honest and respectful questions. :)

u/Solsoldier · 1 pointr/TrueChristian

I admit I didn't look at all the verses, though the ones I did look at seem to me only to demonstrate that we can only apply words and human standards to God analogically.

Also the book [God Behaving Badly] (http://www.amazon.com/God-Behaving-Badly-Testament-Sexist/dp/0830838260), deals with many of these verses explicitly. All it seemed to me to show was that God either allowed people to use their free will (Who will do it? I will!) or that his response to us changes as we change because his nature is unchanging (I will destroy them men repent I will not destroy them).

u/MarcoVincenzo · 1 pointr/atheism

Ignore it. Maybe while she has it she'll read it. In the meantime, pick up a new book... I suggest Robert Green Ingersoll's Some Mistakes of Moses. And, if she steals that one, she'll really learn something.

u/EcclesiaM · 1 pointr/DebateAChristian

>The colloquial usage of semantics, is when someone is needlessly pedantic over words.

In any philosophical or theological discussion, "colloquial usage" is simply an unsuitable tool for the job at hand.

>Why do no Jewish scholars,

Because this is a Christian argument concerning the Trinity and its presence in the Old Testament. The theology of the Trinity is developed from numerous OT sources which, as I indicated in my OP, I'll not go into here. The reason for this is that I am describing one, specific test of a theory in which Unitarian statements have latent (i.e. non-obvious) Trinitarian semantics.

>not one

Clearly our disagreement over the meaning of "one" goes deeper than I thought. Here is one: Dr. Benjamin Sommer (professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary), in his book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel comes to the conclusion that doctrine of the Trinity is compatible with monotheism and that it does not provide a theological basis for Jewish objection to Christianity (thought, obviously, he believes there are others). I've not yet read the book, but he gives a talk about it here. You'll want to skip to around the 34 minute mark to hear him on this subject.



u/slipstream37 · 1 pointr/DebateAChristian

Who Wrote the Bible by Friedman. http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353

I only mean that it is impossible to prove that God can punish you, but convenient for a ruler to say you'll be punished after you die by going to Hell if you go against him, and therefore God.

It's the ultimate con. Why should anyone be afraid of the afterlife if their body cannot experience it?

u/srg2k5 · 1 pointr/AdviceAnimals

>>What tangible evidence would that be exactly?

Me repeatedly telling you I don't care to talk about it anymore.

Alright Mr. Fair Shake At All Sides I will give you 4 books you should read. You say you are well versed, prove it. If you have read counter points to your beliefs, go ahead and list them for me. Otherwise you should read these 4 books:

Atheist Material:

Dawkins - The God Delusion

Harris - End of Faith

Actual Scholar Material:

Friedman - Who Wrote The Bible?

Ehrman - Misquoting Jesus

Actually Ehrman has many books, but I don't want to overload you.

Until you actually READ the counter material, you won't get anywhere.

u/ljak · 1 pointr/Judaism

Your best bet is Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?. It provides a layman overview of the documentary hypothesis.

If you have more time, there's a free online course from Yale that goes over the entire Hebrew Bible. The lectures are great, and refer you to a various texts you can read.

u/Aesir1 · 1 pointr/atheism

Richard Elliot Friedman also has an excellent book on the Documentary hypothesis called "Who Wrote the Bible." For those interested in reading each of the authors contributions to the Pentateuch I highly recommend "The Bible with Sources Revealed."

u/CalvinLawson · 1 pointr/atheism

It's not so much the evidence against Christianity, it's more the lack of evidence for it. It's similar to how you might look at other religions right now, only instead applied to your own.


This can be surprisingly difficult to do, It's like trying to look a certain direction and not being able to. Which by itself constitutes "proof" that something weird is going on, if you think about it.


If you want to know about Christianity, learn its history. Learn where the "Bible" came from. Learn about Jesus.


If anyone tells you that you shouldn't be learning these things you can be sure they aren't worth listening to.


Good luck!

u/soundofthesun · 1 pointr/answers

stop everything and read this book. it explains a lot about origins and sources. it might even change your beliefs. ultimately they believe ezra edited the bible and made it somewhat what it is today.

u/exeverythingguy · 1 pointr/atheism

OT: Who Wrote the Bible

NT:Text of the New Testament - this one is quite technical

others:
Whose Bible is it?

anything by Bart Ehrman or Bruce Metzger should be interesting...

u/wifibandit · 1 pointr/worldnews

> The Bible was still legit

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.

u/tkrex · 1 pointr/atheism

Remember that there are multiple ways to interpret most parts of the Bible. It's very easy to scoff at the literal view that many fundies take, but not all Christians take the bible literally. If i'm asked to swallow the creation stories in Genesis as actual accounts of how the world came into being, i can't but roll my eyes. However, when I view the creation stories in Genesis as mythology, I can appreciate them as poetry on the same level that i appreciate the mythology of ancient Greece. So, approach the bible as you would Homer or Ovid (but with less coherence to the stories).

Also, remember that the authors of the bible were usually using fictionalized or fantastical stories to relay something that actually happened. Quick example: Jonah and the whale. Though many fundies take this story as literal, it was actually written as an allegory for Israel not heeding their God's instructions. Jonah is Israel, being swallowed by the whale is Israel being taken into captivity as punishment for ignoring their deity. This type of interpretation holds for quite a few of the old testament stories.

Also, learn about how it was written, and who it was written for. Gain a sense of literary context, if you will. I recommend this book for an overview of how the Torah was written. It's actually pretty interesting.


tl;dr: If you read the bible the way fundies do, you'll end up with a poor understanding of it, just like the fundies. If you approach it as an academic, you'll understand their own sacred text better than they do themselves.

u/lungfish59 · 1 pointr/atheism
u/PwntEFX · 1 pointr/exmormon

Right before I left the church, I was Gospel Doctrine teacher. It was my favorite calling. I loved teaching.

Not sure what I can add to the list of pharisaical things Mormons do, but I will throw this out there if you're teaching about the OT. I just got finished reading "Who Wrote the Bible?", and it was very enlightening. Helped the OT make more sense: the short version (which I hadn't gotten from other sources) is that the Torah was a compilation of two different sources, one pro-Judah and one pro-Israel that got written after Israel was divided after Solomon died. They cut and pasted each story side by side. The compilation likely happened after the Babylonian Exile, which would have been after Lehi btw.

Oh wait, if you're in UT, you could mention the on one hand anal way people drive (never let people in because they should have seen the yellow line) combined with utter social cluelessness (I know I'm where I'm supposed to be, so even if I'm doing 50 in the fast lane, not my problem).

u/ropers · 1 pointr/atheism

I'd give them this book. It's serious, it's not condescending, and it's scientific without being boring.

u/badtim · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

good intro work: http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353

Friedman is a great guy, and ridiculously knowledgeable. i took a class from him ages ago at UCSD, should have taken more :)

u/iamadogand · 1 pointr/news

Some of it is political, yes. Not all of it, but more than most people realize. I'm not an expert so o have to be careful with what I state is true!

My info above mostly came from this really interesting book Who Wrote The Bible by Richard Friedman. The four authors theory is pretty well known and widely accepted. This book lays it all out in a great overview.

u/iamaravis · 1 pointr/TheFacebookDelusion

Regarding who wrote the Pentateuch, I enjoyed this book.

u/Sigvarr · 1 pointr/atheism

For validity of the bible you can start here

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060630353

If you are going to have a problem reading a book like that out in the open you can start with Evid3nc3 he has two episodes directly about the bible on YouTube. They are short and should get the wheels moving in your head which will most likely force you to read the above book. I suggest looking at all his videos they are amazing. They really helped me to finally shed that "the devil is temping me" feeling when I deconveted.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Evid3nc3/videos

u/fizzix_is_fun · 1 pointr/exmormon

For the Pentateuch here's what you want I've found the translation a bit wonky (I can read Hebrew myself) but it'll give you exactly what you're looking for, sections colorized by author group as per the Documentary Hypothesis.

If you're not willing to shell out money, you can get a (IMO worse) verse assignment for Genesis here. You can also see Exodus as well.

u/troubadour_einar · 1 pointr/TrueAtheism

If you want more information on how the Bible was written, look into the book "Who Wrote the New Testament: The Bible with Sources Revealed"
http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Revealed-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/006073065X

u/ChristianityBot · 1 pointr/ChristianityBot

Removed comment posted by /u/bdw9000 at 01/04/15 22:27:15:

> The Bible With Sources Revealed
>
> In addition to a good explanation for why scholars have come to the conclusions they have, it includes the OT "books of moses" in their entirety, color coded to correspond to the JEDP authors. This helps you read the bible with a new perspective and gain a greater appreciation for what each author was trying to do.

... in response to submission Question: Looking for books on JEPD. Any good resources? posted by /u/RevMelissa at 01/04/15 19:32:08:

> I want to write a bible study this Summer on the four early voices in the Hebrew Bible: Jahwe, Elohim, Priestly and Deuteronomical. Any great resources?

____

Removed comment posted by /u/Checake1 at 01/04/15 22:28:11:

> Does conversion from one religion to another prove anything? I am sure if you google religion x to conversion to religion y where x and y are all religions in the world, you'll find numerous examples. Does Bart Ehrman's leaving the Christianity, even though he is more knowledgeable in Bible and Christian history than 99.9% of Christian population prove christianity is not true? No, apostasy in my opinion aren't really evidence for anything. Numerous factors go into. I am sure in America you'll hear of numerous jews converting to christianity. Where as in Israel you'll hear of numerous Jews staying fast to their faith.

... in response to comment posted by /u/evo64 at 01/04/15 22:03:05:

> I haven't watched them and am not sure I will for a while.
>
> I presume an interesting counterpoint might be the testimony of Father James Bernstein, an Orthodox Christian priest who first became an evangelical Christian, but then converted to Orthodoxy. His father was an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in the Old City of Jerusalem.
>
> Hw authored a book that is popular with Orthodox Christians entitled Surprised by Christ: My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity

u/Neanderthal-Man · 1 pointr/todayilearned

The majority of biblical scholars acknowledge that the first four books of the Pentateuch are composite documents comprised of material spanning hundreds of years. Those who contend otherwise, asserting Mosaic authorship, are typically extremely conservative or fundamentalist Christian and Jewish scholars (i.e., those whose views of scripture are at stake if Mosaic authorship is denied).

The documentary hypothesis, particularly the traditional JEPD formulation, is not considered the final word on the subject. Like any other academic enterprise, there's certainly debate. Scholars don't always agree about how many sources were involved and the period in which they were composed. However, it's a working theory which makes reasonable sense of differences which can't be reconciled by a traditionalist, fundamentalist doctrine of scripture. The scholars who aren't sold on JEPD, as traditionally understood, typically have a different theory of compositional development and don't adhere to conservative Christian or Jewish views of the Pentateuch.

How can you insist that there's no grounding in history or reality for such a theory? If you read the literature produced by scholars (and not Christian apologists or conservative theologians summarizing the documentary hypothesis only to immediately denigrate it), the theories are well grounded in the language and thematic elements of the texts. One can still disagree, of course, while recognizing that it's a thoroughly plausible and nuanced theory.

Efforts to preserve Mosaic authorship and, ultimately, rigid concepts of the nature of the biblical texts, rely upon implausible and frequently irrational explanations which would never be extended towards nonbiblical texts. In other words, conservative or fundamentalist explanations for the origin of the Pentateuch are ultimately motivated from a need to protect one's concept of the Bible. There's a lot at stake for such folks and attempts to argue in behalf of Mosaic authorship or against compositional development and redaction are rarely motivated by unprejudiced scholarship and textual evidence.

It's similar to the Synoptic Problem with the New Testament gospels. The differences and divergences are present within the text. One may elect to explain them in a way that upholds the belief that the Bible is inspired/inerrant/infallible/God's word, but such arguments are unlikely to be as compelling or as rational. It’s unfortunate that some allow their religious beliefs to lead them into intellectual dishonesty, rather than following the textual evidence and drawing a conclusion from scholarship which may run counter to what they want to believe. Conservative views of scripture demand many presuppositions about the nature of the biblical texts which, ultimately, can’t be logically supported. They require that the Bible be considered exceptional to all other human documents and often claim some supernatural component. So, ultimately driven by the need to defend such views, conservatives dismiss seemingly threatening scholarship out-of-hand and rarely take the time to evaluate whether their presuppositions cause themselves to be unduly and unreasonably biased.

I do encourage you to read the opening section of The Bible with Sources Revealed - which I’ve uploaded here – and tell me what you think. I wouldn't mind dialoguing about specific elements of Friedman's version of the documentary hypothesis which you consider to be “merely an elaborate theory without root or grounding in history, let alone reality."

u/Juniperus_virginiana · 1 pointr/Christianity

In a general sense yes. The full documentation is more complicated but I loved reading it with color coded sources and it gave me so much more depth and sense of history to what I was reading. It was like a cultural time machine.

Of course oral tradition dominated in this time so it likely existed for some time before being written. And that is indeed attributed to Moses, which I think is dope because he himself claims poor speaking ability and yet is a sublime poet. Behind Jesus (duh) he's my favorite father of faith.

u/SinisterSwords · 1 pointr/todayilearned

This article (where an atheist slams C. Hitchens) makes an interesting reference to this - and Hitchens' perpetuation of it:

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/christopher_hitchens_lies_do_atheism_no_favors/

Apparently this guy and his writings complicate matters on the issue:

http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Egypt-Evidence-Authenticity-Tradition/dp/019513088X

James K. Hoffmeier - Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition, Oxford University Press

u/Otiac · 1 pointr/todayilearned

This thread is a troll's best dream come true.

Unfortunately, tents, poles, and poop don't last long in the desert.

u/bigbaumer · 1 pointr/DebateAChristian

There's a book that I believe does a decent job of tackling this subject. In it, the author addresses the order of creation, the meaning of 'days', as well as many other topics.

He's also written another book that tackles the silly notion that science and faith cannot coexist.

I know this is not really conducive to debate, but I thought it pertinent to bring these books to everyone's attention.

u/JamesNoff · 1 pointr/DebateAChristian

Evolution could have been a tool that God used, but the belief that God created the universe is a core belief of Christianity.

If the 6 day interpretation of Genesis is giving you a hard time look up some Old Earth creationist theories.
This book might help:
http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-That-Divide-World/dp/0310492173/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405985900&sr=1-1&keywords=7+days+that+divide+the+world

u/trickytown · 1 pointr/Christianity

John Lennox' book, Seven Days that Divide the World, is a great resource for thinking this through. The tl;dr is Genesis doesn't aim to tell us how, it aims to tell us why.

u/AADPS · 1 pointr/Christianity

John Lennox wrote a book about a theory similar to this called Seven Days That Divide the World.

Here's one of his (pretty darn long) lectures on it, and I find him to be a delightful (and I don't use "delightful" lightly) speaker.

I hate to give a summary, because it's pretty nuanced, but the big points are that the Bible doesn't necessarily say anything about the age of the earth and that he has no trouble with the estimated 12-13 billion year age of the universe. I absolutely loved it when I first heard it, and it kind of sent me off on a journey to start assaulting my faith with ridiculously difficult questions so I can be absolutely sure of it.

u/EuthyphrosButtcrack · 1 pointr/DebateAChristian

These type of "objections" have been raised a dime a dozen and frankly its getting boring dealing with them. However, I'm in a good mood so lets go. Before I start, I'm a doctor so when I read "the oldest of those dying the painful death of having their teeth rot out of their skull" I just had to ask, what the heck is that????

Ok moving on. Dealing with Genesis, we have to deal with the Hermeneutics of the book itself. It can be said that the book is written in a poetry style and was meant not to educate people about the way the universe formed, but rather to demonstrate that Yahweh was above all that they had worshipped as Gods (sun, moon, stars). If you are into reading, John Lennox's Seven Days that Divide the world could help shed some light on how Christians view Genesis. Not every Christian is Ken Ham in the same way that not every atheist is Josef Stalin.

Before I move on to the next part of your rant, I would like to ask. You mentioned "Heaven, completely capable of intervening, watches this with total indifference." Why does this bother you?

u/growingforwards · 1 pointr/NoFap



https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Days-That-Divide-World/dp/0310492173/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Switch-Your-Brain-Happiness-Thinking/dp/1480536245

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Improbable-Planet-Earth-Became-Humanitys/dp/0801016894

I don't have time right now to give more then this. But those books will detail how your statement is not true. Obviously I can't go through the entire bible and give examples for ever single thing. But all those 3 books are very topical to Nofap or creation :)

u/dave_hitz · 1 pointr/atheistparents

I think it's important for kids in our culture to be familiar with Jesus. He is an influential figure.

Even though I am an atheist, it doesn't bother me that religious family members tell my daughter about Jesus and God. In fact, I bought R. Crumb's Illustrated Book of Genesis because I thought it would be a fun way for her to learn about Bible stories. I also read her a book of Greek myths. And Harry Potter.

But that doesn't mean you need to pretend to agree with those stories. When my daughter asks me to tell her about Jesus, I start with, "Some people believe...." Sometimes she asks what I believe. I tell the truth.

I'd be upset if my wife (now ex) had objected to me sharing my beliefs. Likewise, I can understand why your husband would be upset that you don't want him to share his beliefs.

u/itsableeder · 1 pointr/writing

It's public domain for the most part (some translations aren't), hence awesome things like this and this being able to exist.

And just to head this off early; they're awesome because of the illustrations and the way those stories are adapted, not because of the actual content. I'm an atheist.

u/strangewine · 1 pointr/Showerthoughts

There's even a version adapted and illustrated by Robert Crumb. All original text.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027

u/muhfuhkuh · 1 pointr/pics

If you dig a unique spin on it, here's Robert Crumb's "The Book of Genesis". His drawings are really detailed!

u/swampfish · 1 pointr/AdviceAnimals

Buy it here.

u/Ghiizhar · 1 pointr/atheism

For those that have not read the entire book of Genesis, here's an illustrated version, with full text, that you may find more entertaining than just reading the text:

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

u/SpookyTanooki · 1 pointr/atheism

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb isn't exactly what you're looking for (i.e. it's only Genesis) but it is awesome and the illustrations really bring the book to life (though there are some passages that may not be suitable for your girls...I'm looking at you Lot).

u/the_good_dr · 1 pointr/atheism

Not the whole bible but...

u/RedStick83 · 1 pointr/atheism

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb I know this isn't exactly what you were looking for but I flipped through this while at the library and thought it was pretty neat.

u/AmanitaZest · 1 pointr/IWantToLearn

If you're interested, start with The Illustrated Book of Genesis, by Robert Crumb. You get the full text of the first book in the Bible series, with lots of well-drawn pictures. This way you can also still see how there are actually two distinct creation myths, and you can clearly see how the Bible is the greatest soap opera known to man.

u/amoralnihilist · 1 pointr/atheistparents

The Book of Genesis illustrated by R. Crumb. Seriously, this is a real book, and he treats all the subject matter literally. It's a great read and the literal interpretation highlights how strange some of the Bible stories are. I just wish he had done the whole Bible as a set.

u/Generality · 1 pointr/atheism
u/ryanlynds · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

it makes sense to a dude who did the research. his footnotes go into great detail concerning his reasons for translating certain words certain ways. It's a very interesting read, even if you don't ultimately agree with him.

https://www.amazon.ca/Five-Books-Moses-Translation-Commentary/dp/0393333930

u/vritsa · 1 pointr/Judaism

Go with the JPS or Artscroll if you want a more classical translation, or go with Alter which is a really nice edition.

u/YourFairyGodmother · 1 pointr/atheism

Not that it will convince him, but Finkelstein and Silberman have pretty solidly demolished much of Genesis and Exodus. There's a good review here but read The Bible Unearthed for your own edification.

u/unkz · 1 pointr/atheism

Good luck pinpointing those places. But first, read a book called "The Bible Unearthed"

u/Waksss · 1 pointr/theology

I can't comment much about that book. However, I did find this book to be pretty helpful regard that.

James Kugel, How to Read the Bible (http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-Guide-Scripture/dp/0743235878/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449018176&sr=1-1&keywords=How+to+Read+the+Bible)

He does well to trace some of the history of Biblical interpretation with particular depth while at the same time covers a breadth of issues.

I thought I had one more, but I can't seem to find it on my shelf.


u/ses1 · 1 pointr/DebateAChristian

> 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.

u/thebeachhours · 1 pointr/Reformed

It's been years since I've read it, but I remember enjoying K.A. Kitchen's On the Reliability of the Old Testament in my undergrad years.

u/Sophiera · 1 pointr/TrueChristian

I just checked the wikipedia page about it and I am not sure if that is a good unbiased source.

Further searching showed me this book. Have you read this one? https://www.amazon.com/Reliability-Old-Testament-K-Kitchen/dp/0802803962

u/oally · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

"Reading The Old Testament" by Lawrence Boadt. It's a textbook that I read for a Judaic Studies class a few years back and it gets into detail on the various texts that were put together, what was added and omitted, translations and interpretations, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Old-Testament-Introduction-Second/dp/0809147807/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499619958&sr=8-1&keywords=reading+the+old+testament

u/EyvindrWolf · 1 pointr/askgaybros

I've been dealing with this user and was braced to deal with further hostility. Seriously bro, I'm sorry. That was bad on me.


Supernatural events...oh boy. I'll ELI5 for you at the end.


This is coming from my memory of studying Lawrence Boadt's books. This is the second edition of the book I went through


I subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis, but there is some debate on that apparently.


The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, had four sources that wrote them. Genesis started as oral tradition passed down through the tribes as a creation myth (similar to Native Americans' and other tribal societies) that was eventually written down. By the time it was written down (Before 1000 BCE if I remember right) there were two versions of it. Both were kept. I think Genesis is a moral and historical lesson rather than something to be taken literally.


The three sources I remember in Genesis are the two tribal creation myths and then one from the priesthood. The priests were from around 600-ish BCE if I remember correctly and they went back and added ritualistic numbers all over the Pentateuch ranging from 7 days of creation to 40 days and nights. They're also responsible for Leviticus as well as all of the various lineages.


So in the first five books of the Bible/Torah you have four different sources of authorship. You have some stories that are meant to be divine comedies (like Jonah, which was essentially a religious comedy for children. Ancient Veggie Tales) and many of the others that are just full of politics.

 

In the New Testament you get more of the same. Mark was written when the Romans were majorly pissed at Christians to say that people of the time were complete idiots. Matthew was written awhile later and used Mark and another document that we no longer have (the Q source) as material, Luke was written WAY later - possibly by a woman - and used Mark and Q and themselves as a source. John was written in a monastic-ish community and has its own interesting history.


The apostles in the gospels likely didn't literally exist, going back to ritualistic numbers there's 1 apostle for each tribe of Israel if I'm remembering correctly. The books in the Bible were not all written immediately around the time of Jesus Christ. Revelations' modern interpretation is particularly silly because it was a coded message to evade Roman persecution...not a doomsday prophecy.


Paul, a tax collector that fell over in the street and went out one day then woke up a changed man who stated he'd come in touch with the divine and knew he had to get up and be a different person, wrote several letters to ancient Christians as an advisor. To my understanding, Paul's letters didn't claim any supernatural events other than "something knocked me on my butt and I woke up and knew it was good and that I had to serve it."


The Pastorals were written by someone other than Paul and falsely attributed to him and there's an insertion in Corinthians that is widely regarded to not be Paul himself.

ELI5

My focus on Paul is because his letters are the only thing in the entire Bible that I accept as the author being literally truthful to their own experiences. "I was knocked on my ass one day. I saw something. I thought it was good. So I decided to stop being a dishonest asshole and serve it." It may have just been a seizure that scared the crap out of him, but regardless he's honest about it. Every other part of the Bible fails to live up to a modern standard of literal truth.


In my opinion, the rest of the Bible is a history/sociology lesson veiled in supernatural events that we've no proof or evidence of. There's a continuous hope that there's something bigger than humanity out there that cares about us, and that hope is worth taking.


There are other hypotheses out there about how things fit together, but my final judgement when I studied the Bible was that it was an honest book in sociopolitical context, dishonest in our modern context, and a preoccupation with it is unhealthy.


So you shouldn't believe in religious dogma. Any all-powerful being interested in your well-being will do what it's going to do regardless of if you believe in it or not, or if you get dunked in a bathtub and then eat toast and drink wine on Sundays.


Being an asshole to people that do though, that robs them of their ability to grow.

u/Stakenshake · 0 pointsr/atheism

Only closed minded Christians (and quite frankly blind followers who can't think for themselves) believe this. I would strongly sugguest that some of you guys read Seven Days That Divide the World.

Lennox talks about how back in the day, science was saying that the earth revolved around the sun, but the church was saying that the earth was the center of the universe due too several Biblical passages. But nowadays everyone believe what the scientists were saying.

Now this leads to the gapping issue. Where science has these gaps, and Christians use God to fill these gaps, and Lennox goes indepth about this issue in his book. It's a very cool read.

TLDR: Christians can't blatantly deny facts from science.

Edit: Thank you Mr. PoisonPotato

u/nevermark · 0 pointsr/atheism

Well I think all kinds of sources are needed. "Enemies" of a religion might not be fair minded, but many intelligent critiques of religions are not by enemies. Also believers are highly unlikely to highlight (or even acknowledge) obvious problems with their religion.

The best sources are the original documents or as close to those as exist. I.e. the best critique of the Bible is the Bible, etc. Applying scientific and logical thinking (i.e. thinking which actually attempts to check itself against bias and coincidence) to original texts has left no good religion unsullied.

Or maybe the best source would always be a faithful graphic novel of the original sources. This seems to bring the wackiness of Genesis to life in a humorous way:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260227764&sr=8-4

u/Fucanelli · 0 pointsr/Christianity

>How can God be made Lord by God?

By the fact that God exists in multiple hypostasis and can exalt one back to full divinity after its subsequent descension into humanity.

> What is clear is that God gave Jesus His name when He exalted Jesus. You said only God’s name can save... Well here God gives His name to Jesus at a particular point in history...

Yeah so? This was fortold as far back as Daniel 7.

u/korvexius · 0 pointsr/DebateReligion

> So then why does the Bible describe Yahweh as changing? Is it all anthropomorphic terminology? How do you know that?

How do I know it's anthropormphic terminology? Seriously? There have been entire academic books published on the thorough anthropomorphism of the OT, especially the Pentateuch. Here's a very prominent such academic book:

https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-God-World-Ancient-Israel/dp/1107422264

Here's another written just this year:

https://www.amazon.ca/Gods-Body-Anthropomorphic-God-Testament/dp/0567655989

There's so much literature on this topic that the only explanation for your lack of familiarity with it is that you don't read any scholarship on the meaning of the biblical texts yet comfortably feel yourself an authority to make declarative statements like "There is no justification for ... anthropomorphization [in the bible]" and "The only possible justification is [insert simplistic development model here]".

>Yahweh knew the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah was great and their sin was grievous. Obviously he didn't know quite how grievous, which is why he came down to check it out.

Did he hear the outcry from heaven or something? Were they that loud? And how did he know it was "grievous sin"? Were the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah having extremely loud conversations about how particularly sinful they were that day that intruded on Yahweh's clouds?

>Furthermore, the whole of the Bible is an argument against Yahweh's omnipotence.

Matthew 19:26: Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

So the Bible says God is omnipotent. Revelation 19:6 calls God the "Almighty".

>It's the story of people defying his will again and again and again and again and again forever.

Yeah , and God letting it happen. That's the part you conveniently leave out.

u/AcademicHistorian · 0 pointsr/atheism

>>If you want to insist that historians do not know how to do history I never said that. Yet another logical fallacy to add to your pile.

That wouldn't be a logical fallacy. Also, I've actually studied logical fallacies, I do not believe at any point in this entire discussion I have been guilty of one. Quite a lot of people though if they try to be 1) unpleasant, 2) give the illusion of appearing to have the upper-hand in a dispute will charge their interlocutor with falling fowl of logical fallacies when none have occurred.

Anyway, if you want to hold the evidence of early Christianity to a different standard to other periods of history, or different topics. That is your choice, but that is not how scholarship or history works. Historians don't retrospectively decide that since the story of Jesus became important to world history that he should be held to different standards of historicity than anyone else in antiquity. If you are consistent you will believe pretty much everything and everyone from ancient history didn't exist, (and likely all historians are all half-assed liars.)

>>What I actually made clear is that a half-assed "historical-critical" methodology is INSUFFICIENT to establish anything to a level of hard scientific certainty. Which any legitimate historian (without an agenda) would and should absolutely agree with. Historians should not and cannot claim to be scientists. Which you tacitly acknowledge with your comment about working "to formulate the historical-critical method".

I never said history can reach the same validity as, say, proving gravity or the hard sciences. I, literally, never argued that. I have no dispute with you about that. If you want to know, I think history gives scant reason to believe in a miraculous Jesus and if people are building their faith on that, they are wrong. But, as every historian will tell you, the only theory that makes sense of the evidence is a historical, but human, Jesus.

I cannot begin to understand why you think that I reference the historical-critical method you believe that is me tactically positioning the scholarly study of history to equate to a hard science. I can only believe you don't know what "historical-critical method" is. Google it.


If you want to read about the shift in archaeologists opinion regarding the Exodus, please see, e.g. http://exodus.calit2.net/ or https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319047676 or https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0062565249 or https://www.academia.edu/12144234/Egyptologists_and_the_Israelite_Exodus_from_Egypt

It is now the acknowledged consensus among archaeologists and Egyptologists (not Biblical historians, although them too) that there is a historical basis for the Exodus, but it is smaller than the Bible stated.

Professor Friedman by the way is a favourite of Bible skeptics, mainly as his book "Who Wrote the Bible" shows the layers of human scribal activity in the Torah (just in case you want, although I suppose you will do it anyway) to try to suggest he, and pretty much all other historians are wrong and all faith-based.

As, again, you should see, despite your emotional reaction, I was telling the truth, and the amateur websites you've obtained your information from (or just what you presumed) is in error.

u/JeweledEdge · -1 pointsr/DebateReligion

>It posits that the Torah/Pentateuch/OT/Hebrew Bible... whatever u call it, was written in a fragmented way and compiled by diff sources/writers based on analysis of different writing styles used in the scripture (aka use of Yahweh as the name for God or use of Elohim/El)

https://www.amazon.com/Documentary-Hypothesis-Umberto-Cassuto/dp/9657052351

Here's a great book that debunks the DH on what you're describing. Just blocking off names by YKVK and Elokim is not a thoughtful argument. Both names connote something different so their context matters, as do the other names of God laced throughout the Torah kEl, kEl Shakkai, and so on.

As for the story about Isaac, there's no inconsistency. He was brought as an offering, (here's a great essay on the lesson/meaning of that story), and since he was not offered, he became what's called "hekdesh," which means he was something set aside for a purpose of holiness (as one sets aside a certain thing for an offering, they are supposed to bring that specific thing and not something different). As a result, Isaac never leaves the land of Israel the rest of his life, unlike his father did and unlike his son Jacob eventually does.

The real issue with all this redactor theory is that no one is willing to claim who the redactor is. Judaism makes claims on who wrote every book contained in our bible, sometimes even specific verses. The proponents of the DH are constantly suggesting and resuggesting theories as every theory they've proposed gets holes poked in it. While people poke holes in Judaism's claims, we don't huddle up and suggest another one as there's no real need to.

u/thelukinat0r · -1 pointsr/AcademicBiblical

Umberto Cassuto is good.

u/mCopps · -2 pointsr/AskHistorians

I'm not a historian but afaik the historical records of Jesus are slim to none.

Edit: as for your main question this is a bit of a side to your question but does deal with some of the issues
http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353