(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best christian bible history books

I see you're looking for book recommendations - I've posted this before, but you'll probably enjoy There Was No Jesus, There Is No God, which, incisive title notwithstanding, does a great job consolidating Ehrman's and Carriers' research into an objective analysis of what evidence there is for Jesus' existence and what weight we can apply to it. The book itself is a rewrite of the author's doctoral thesis, written for the layman. Despite the rewrite it is still very dry material, but if you have an academic interest in it you'll be fascinated enough to make it through.

EDIT: The most interesting part, in my opinion, was the author's deconstruction of biblical scholarship and how much less rigorously their documents are verified because of the underlying intent to reinforce the religion they follow. It gets really bad... to the extent of conjuring up hypothetical sources from which the gospels could have drawn "because they would have to have existed", and then citing the hypothetical source as evidence verifying the legitimacy of other documents. It's godawful sloppy scholarship, because it has to be; an honest objective analysis would disregard these sources entirely.

Read The Hidden Origins of Islam. It's a tough read (in the sense that the language used in it is very academic) but it's very fascinating as well. If you don't want to buy it, PM me and I can send you the PDF.

Karen Armstrong's Holy War about the Crusades and their impact on the modern western world, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Would highly recommend.

I would read Karen Armstrong's Holy War to get a sense of the rich history of Jewish-Arab coexistence and the wide context of Western aggression against the Arab world.

Greg Woolfe: Rome, an Empire's story. It was one of the set books for my degree.

Rome: An Empire's Story https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0199677514/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_vd.vDbYGXJCV7

This text has some decent info form what I've heard.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/13/libyan-peace-rally-slams-terrorism-offers-apology-for-attack_n_1881798.html

That made headlines.

Read this book and it shows that even though the crusades have happened such a long time ago, the echoes are still being felt today.
http://www.amazon.com/Holy-War-Crusades-Impact-Todays/dp/0385721404

With Jesus' beloved disciple, who “reclined upon the bosom of the Lord” and whispered to him at the Last Supper, you ask if they were sitting or standing. If the disciple lay on Jesus' chest, what do you think? You venture no opinion as to the pair's evident closeness if Jesus requested that this disciple take care of his mother after his death. And this was the only male disciple to attend Jesus' crucifixion. You've left this point unanswered. King James I of England compared his own sexual relationship with the Duke of Buckingham to that between Jesus and his beloved. Elton John also viewed the two as fuckbuddies. Dare you disagree with Elton John?

You denigrate books that speak of Jesus' homosexuality, like this one and [this one](https://www.amazon.com/man-jesus-loved-Theodore-Jennings/dp/082981535X?ie=UTF8&tag=jesusinloveor-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969
) and [this one](http://www.lulu.com/shop/robert-holt/gay-gospel-jesus-and-john-the-beloved-disciple/ebook/product-17553396.html
) and this one, but this is after claiming there's no source material. At least you've dropped the suggestion that Clement's letter was forged.

gimme a break

those passages are for real and calling them "complex" is bullshit

https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Talmud-Peter-Sch%C3%A4fer/dp/0691143188

>Furthermore, Schafer shows that Celsus and early church fathers such as Justin Martyr fought against similar polemics to that in the Balvi in pagan sources. While Schafer points out that this is not evidence of historicity, it shows clear trends in counter-Christian polemics. Christians will find this slanderous: calling Mary licentious, Jesus a magician and corruptor of Rabbis out of Egypt, and seeing him depicted in the afterlife in his excrement, and one of the few who damned as opposed to merely annihilated in Jewish thought is clear. However, Schafer also shows how deeply counter to Jewish tradition, not just Pharisees but even to Temple Judaism, many of the claims of Christianity would have seemed, particularly, once again, as stated in the Gospel of John.

While he's often dismissed as a mere apologist, William Lane Craig's doctorate in theology was on this topic and resulted in this monograph:

The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy

Maybe search for it in a local university?

Of course it sucks. They can't even tell the truth about Jesus (ie that there was probably no historical Jesus, and even if there was one, he didn't perform miracles or rise from the dead).


https://www.amazon.com/there-was-Jesus-God-Philosophical/dp/1492234419/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=there+was+no+jesus&qid=1566128499&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Even if we are, so what? It doesn't make us wrong.

Weighing up the evidence for the ‘Historical Jesus’

There Was No Jesus, There Is No God by Raphael Lataster

It's very unclear what are references to Jesus in the Talmud and what are not. There is a figure called "Yeshu" who is depicted unfavorably. The section you refer to is very unclear. Here is the text from the Soncino edition of the Babylonian Talmud (Gittin 57a):

> [Onkelos] then went and raised Balaam by incantations. [Onkelos] asked him: "Who is in repute in the other world?" [Balaam] replied: "Israel." "What then," [Onkelos] said, "about joining them?" [Balaam] replied: "Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever." [Onkelos] then asked: "What is your punishment?" [Balaam] replied: "With boiling hot semen."

> [Onkelos] then went and raised by incantations the sinners of Israel. He asked them: "Who is in repute in the other world?" They replied: "Israel." [Onkelos asked,] "What about joining them?" They replied: "Seek their welfare, seek not their harm. Whoever touches them touches the apple of his eye." [Onkelos] said: "What is your punishment?" They replied: "With boiling hot excrement, since a Master has said: 'Whoever mocks at the words of the Sages is punished with boiling hot excrement.'"

Now, in some versions of the Babylonian Talmud, it doesn't say the "sinners of Israel." In some versions, it says "Yeshu." No one knows what the original was, and it's been debated if this "Yeshu" even is the same person as Jesus. You may find this book worthwhile.

Edit:

A further note: Many claim that "Yeshu" is not even a personal name, but an acronym standing for the phrase, "May his name and his memory be obliterated."

• Islam:The key concepts
  
  
• The race for paradise
  
  
• Marriage and slavery in early Islam
  
  
• Leaving Islam
  
  
• An illusion of harmony
  
  
• Narratives of Islamic origins
  
  
• The early Islamic conquests

Recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0385721404?pc_redir=1404163101&robot_redir=1
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Dont let the title fool you. It isnt about the crusades alone Karen Armstrong gives the history of the crusades while in parallel giving the history of the holy land's mondern conflict. She weaves them how wars faught hundreds of years ago still have an effect on the tumultuous landb of palestine.

Judging medieval polities by modern standards is stupid, since as you said we have to throw medieval Christians under the bus as well. Compared to Europe, many Muslim lands were better for Jews at the time, and for non-orthodox Christians (heretics).

It's obvious you don't like Islam or Muslims, and have projected the modern divisions in the middle East back into the past, which has given you a highly distorted view of those times, in order to justify your dislike.

As I said, the reality was far more varied, complex, and changed many times over the centuries. The earliest Muslim empires relied on the conquered Roman and Persian administrative structure (aka, Christian and Zoroastrian) to run the empire, and did not use force to convert the native population. This state of affairs continued for 2 generations, as some of the native elite converted to Islam and took over administrative control from the Arab conquerers.

You might try reading more about this early history and try to understand it in its own context, rather than making poor comparisons to today's world.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Cross-Crescent-Dramatic-Encounters-Christians/dp/0143034812&ved=2ahUKEwip_tOakaPjAhVtk4sKHXdHBHsQFjAKegQIAxAC&usg=AOvVaw0cE3uXh_mtmvHkzGrTSxLP

If you want to know why contemporary Jews dont accept Jesus, look to the Talmud. Remember the Talmud was written a few hundred years after Christ, so he's referenced like 50+ times. None of them positive mind you. Basically The Talmud teaches that Jesus Christ was illegitimate, Mary was a whore who lay with a Roman soldier. Christ was conceived during menstruation; that he had the soul of Esau (Issacs son); that he was a fool, a conjurer, a seducer; that he was crucified, buried in hell and set up as an idol ever since by his followers. If you're interested in the topic read "Jesus in the Talmud" by Peter Schafer, he was a professor at Stanford Princeton that put it all the references to Jesus in one book with explanation of the context of every passage. https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Talmud-Peter-Sch%C3%A4fer-ebook/dp/B002WJM5Y6

So yea, modern Talmudic Jews are not fans of Jesus, and modern Judiasm a false religion. Christ died so that all men be saved.

> i ask you to explain to me, how the average person has the required level of knowledge on politics to make informed decisions about who should run state?

It’s not necessary to explain this to you because the question is entirely irrelevant. It is a very narrow and parochial understanding of knowledge which becomes apparent if you reverse the question: How can any one individual, or small group of select individuals, have the required knowledge of the populace to make informed decisions about how the state should be run on their behalf?

The issue is not whether "the vast majority of people” have or don’t have "the required level of knowledge on politics” because they don’t need whatever this specialist knowledge is to have specialist knowledge of their own lives and families.

In fact, for that matter, specialist knowledge of the kind you are talking about is highly disputed, is not a well-defined object that can be learned or not and is the subject of endless debate - in a democracy at least that’s true. Under a dictatorship you can simply have dissenting voices silenced.

> … dictatorships are less pleasant but democracies are just as corrupt as any dictatorship its just far less obvious ...

That is absolute rubbish. I mean it’s not even a different point of view, just actual palpable nonsense.

The only way in which that statement could be true is if we were to extend the meaning of ‘Democracy’ to include countries like North Korea as they are named the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea or Zimbabwe or any other places which ostensibly have some form of democracy, let’s say Nigeria, but where corruption is absolutely rife and not even “far less obvious” but plain to see to anyone from the minute they wake up in the morning to the moment they go to bed at night.

The important point there from your argument is that the issues of corruption in the latter ‘democracies’ have absolutely nothing to do with the form of government they have, or who is in power at any one time, or whether or not the populace at large have what you call "the required level of knowledge on politics to make informed decisions”.

Corruption exists in democracies such as the US or the UK and so on. But so do burglary, murder, extortion, rape, riots, inequality and any number of other crimes and injustices. A democratic system is not a promise of utopia and was never meant to be.

You’re a student so you’re young and it’s fine to hold pompous and silly ideas for the sake of shocking older people such as myself, but if it really is the case that you have actually "done considerable research” into dictatorships and democracies, then perhaps you could tell me what your thoughts on. The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 1: The Spell of Plato as I have to say your comments are rather suggestive of the idea that you think a dictatorship ruled by an elite class of selfless and benign philosophers would be just as good, perhaps better, than a democracy.

You could also, for instance, look at books such as these and explain where you can find anything comparable happening under a functioning democracy (and not e.g. those I mentioned before):

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder

The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World by Theodore Dalrymple

Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot

Karl-Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R. Puin have apparently been making a highly minimalist / skeptical argument. This is the homepage of the research group Inarah (in German):

• http://inarah.de/
  
  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the work seems controversial; at least two of the collaborators use pseudonyms (Luxenberg and Warraq); and the work is being pursued in Germany, by non-Muslims. Could such study ever be meaningfully embraced by a wing of Islam, a la the liberal Protestant mainline in Christianity? I have no idea... Muʿtazila sounds like a candidate, except per Wikipedia, "By the end of the 15th century, Mu'tazila had essentially ceased to exist as a held position." Maybe the Ismailis? But it only takes a few assassination attempts to make people nervous...
  
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%CA%BFtazila
  
• http://www.meforum.org/395/the-rushdie-rules
  
  
  Die dunklen Anfänge: Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islams (2005)
  https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/die-dunklen-anfaenge.html
  
  The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History (2009)
  https://www.academia.edu/8011113/Hidden_Origins_of_Islam
  
  Schlaglichter: Die beiden ersten islamischen Jahrhunderte (2008)
  https://www.amazon.de/Schlaglichter-beiden-ersten-islamischen-Jahrhunderte/dp/3899302249
  
  Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2010)
  https://www.amazon.de/Islam-historisch-kritische-Rekonstruktion-zeitgen%C3%B6ssischer-Quellen/dp/3899300904/
  
  Early Islam: A Critical Reconstruction Based on Contemporary Sources (2013)
  https://www.amazon.com/Early-Islam-Critical-Reconstruction-Contemporary/dp/161614825X
  http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/83/3/868.short?rss=1
  
  press:
  
  
• https://en.qantara.de/content/interview-with-karl-heinz-ohlig-muhammad-as-a-christological-honorific-title
  
• http://www.newenglishreview.org/Ibn_Warraq/A_Conference_On_The_Early_History_Of_Islam_And_The_Koran/
  
• http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/dispute-among-islam-scholars-did-muhammad-ever-really-live-a-579052.html
  
• http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/die-wurzeln-des-glaubens-ist-jesus-der-prophet-des-islams-1694200.html?printPagedArticle=true
  
• http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/12/the-christian-origins-of-islam

You clearly haven't read Jesus in the Talmud.

I am at least speaking metaphorically and I see metaphor as theater. Whether you are "disturbed" may depend on whether or not you see humanity as one race with one origin or many races with many origins. Self-identified Jews clearly see themselves as a race, and they will likely pay a price for their racist views. For a Jew to dodge my assault, they would simply have to see humanity as having one origin, there are no "races," and they could opt to step down from their view of being "chosen ones." Or if a Jew were to insist they are a race and that races come from multiple origins, they will have to own up to their racist anti-Gentilism, take responsibility for their criticisms of "Gentiles," and take responsibility for their irreverence of other religions written about in their Talmud - specifically Christianity. Alas, that is impossible, for Talmedic laws permit lying, and there is no way to tell if a Jew is lying unless he leaves the religion entirely.

The Talmud is the first anti-Christian bible, and in a way you could call it the first "Satanic" bible. Anton LaVey's "Satanic" bible is benevolent by comparison and barely "Satanic" if at all, considering it insists it is atheist-based.

Your being disturbed is your own ethnocentrism and inability to see through the eyes of a Jew, to understand the Jew, and to understand Jewish motivations and intentions.