Thank you for your kind words, and I appreciate the sincerity of your responses.

I agree that people do not need belief in a supreme being to be kind to each other, but this is where I think our worldviews will inevitably collide due to the nature of the different paradigms.

I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that the main theme of the Bible is God’s rulership or kingdom. According to the Bible, we were created to serve, honor, and glorify God, not ourselves.

In Ezekiel 18, Ezekiel is talking to self-righteous Jewish leaders, who believe in the afterlife and think they are going to enter heaven because of their good deeds. Ezekiel essentially tells them that God isn’t going to look at their good deeds, only at the things that displeased Him, and will judge them on that basis. The self-righteous Jewish leaders thought this was unfair, because they wanted their good deeds to be weighed against their bad deeds, and were convinced that they had done more of the good deeds. Now, Ezekiel essentially tells them that God is going to count the good deeds against them too. The Jewish leaders again responded by saying this was not fair. Then Ezekiel offered a solution—if they repent of their pride, self-autonomy, and desire to exalt the self, then God will disregard all the bad deeds and thoughts they had ever committed and had, and reward them on the basis of their good deeds.

So, why were their good deeds going to be counted against them? It is because those good deeds are done by the motivation of exalting the self, not God. The worst of all sins of humanity is the sin of pride, and Isaiah (ch. 64), who also spoke to self-righteous Jewish leaders, indicated that all these good deeds are like filthy rags to God, and He will be offending by them.

A major distinguishing factor between Christianity and the other religions is that other religions require people to perform good deeds in order to get into heaven, whereas Christianity focuses on the relationship of the individual to God. If the individual places God first and is dependent on Him, then he/she will be rewarded for the good deeds; if the individual is self-autonomous, then he/she will be judged.

So it is my relationship to God that motivates me to serve Him and others. Upon repenting of my sins and receiving Jesus Christ as forgiver and leader, my heart was transformed and I had new desires. Granted, being a Christian is no walk in the park, but there is this inner peace and satisfaction of living a life that is honoring to God.

After one repents and receives Christ as forgiver and leader, he/she is justified and undergoes sanctification, a life-long process that progressively shapes the person to know Christ and be conformed to His image. All believers are morally flawed, but you should see a decrease in their character flaws and sinful desires over time, especially if they are true to their discipleship.

In terms of the questionable acts that you listed, I can see how this can be unsettling at first glance, but those events and commands are specific to those individuals at those particular periods of time, and not for us to universalize or carry out. Additionally, those judgments are not evil, because God stood for goodness in the midst of bad, wicked, and reprobate individuals and societies.

• God decided to establish a nation—land, people, and government—to be entrusted with His word, to be a blessing, and to mediate between Him and other people.
  
• God gave His Law to Moses (Mosaic Law/Covenant), which further defined the government and the people (providing cultural guidelines).
  
• The Law also provided moral commandments, protection from spiritual and physical harm, and allowed blessings if obeyed.
  
  Today, we are in the age of grace and under the New Covenant.
  
  
• The New Covenant involves: 1) a new relationship with God in which laws are on the heart 2) complete forgiveness 3) giving of the Holy Spirit 4) national revival for Israel.
  
• We’re not rejected or accepted by how well we keep the Law; we’re saved by grace through faith. However, the Torah is still a valuable source of teaching.
  
  For a specific response to 2 Kings 2, please see Why did God kill 42 lads merely for saying Elisha was bald?
  
  And please let me know if you want more details about the trial of adultery, etc.
  
  Also, if you’re interested, the following resources might be useful:
  
  Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Dr. Paul Copan
  
  Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions by Kenneth R. Samples
  
  The Bible Fast Forward: Piecing Together the Biblical Puzzle
  
  Thank you for your message, and no offense was taken. I just want to let you know that my intent is not to re-convert you to Christianity or anything like that. I’m simply here to answer questions and provide reasons for the hope that I have. I know that the Gospel message is offensive enough.
  
  Best regards, and your thoughts are always welcome.
  

When you say orthodoxy I assume this is Eastern Orthodoxy.

Before getting into the problems with Eastern Orthodoxy or the most compelling evidence for Reformed theology, let’s first understand what Christianity is.

I think the best place to start is the gospels. What are your daily habits like? Maybe read the Gospel of John, or re-read it, and try to understand what the author is saying in each passage and how he brings it together and what he’s trying to tell the audience, i.e. you. (John helpfully states his purpose in John 20:31, which is why it’s a good book to read both for those exploring the Christian faith and those who need to continue believing.)

The gospels contain the words and life of Jesus, and Jesus himself reiterates throughout John how important and life-giving his words are. Take the example of Martha and Mary, where Martha was working away and complains about how Mary doesn’t help her. Jesus says Mary chose the better option, by simply sitting at Jesus’ feet and listening to him.

How, ultimately, are you going to settle on an answer to this? Not from Reddit answers, though they may be helpful and point you in the right direction, but from listening to Jesus himself! And Jesus’ words can be found in the gospels, and in the whole Bible. The Bible is a wonderful compilation of books written by many people over centuries for different contexts and audiences and purposes, but they all tell one unifying story of God acting through history to save his people, and all of it is God’s word. Prayer is just as vital, and we want to be asking God to help us listen to him in his word and understand him clearly, that he would change us through it and think deeply about what he’s telling us.

So I hope that introduces some foundations for our discussion. The centre of our faith is Jesus. And we’ll have greater clarity by knowing Jesus better. And how do we know Jesus better? Through his words, which we have in our Bibles.

The Reformed tradition upholds supremely the Bible as our means to hear God and know what he wants for us. I think this is absolutely right, and I think if we read the Bible itself we will get a similar impression from God of what he thinks of his Scriptures.

The Eastern Orthodox Church upholds the Scriptures, but also greatly treasures, to the point of being divinely inspired, Holy Tradition.

But how do we really know what ‘tradition’ is? Or what the right tradition is?

If there was only one Church claiming to be the original apostolic Church passed down through tradition this may help a little, but there are others. Most prominently of course is the Roman Catholic Church, which claims that Tradition and the early church fathers would actually uphold the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, over the rest of the bishops, and as such they are the true apostolic Church. This doesn’t even get started on all the other issues the early church fathers would disagree on.

We can easily get lost in the weeds here, and theologians and historians can argue over this forever... they’ve been doing it for centuries! How on earth are we meant to arrive at the right conclusion?

Well, let’s go back to the foundation of our discussion. Jesus. Listening to him in the Bible. What does he have to say? What does he think salvation is? Is it by trusting in him and his sacrifice on the cross for our sins, and nothing else? Are there good deeds involved to also merit our salvation? And what about all the things Orthodox Tradition introduced that have no explicit existence in Scripture? Should we pray to the saints?

I think the Bible has very clear answers. And we could go into those further if you’d like. But let’s try and clarify that the Bible is our go-to, and all traditions, including the Reformed one, can be helpful but will always be fallible and subservient to the authority of God’s very words.

I can go on and say Reformed theology has the biblical view of salvation - that salvation is by faith alone in Jesus by his grace alone, and the biblical view of God’s sovereignty, and the biblical view of how we relate to God.

But how are you going to test that? It’s easier said than done, but to keep going to the Bible and seeing what God has to say through the human authors of the text.

Some good resources (other than the Bible, and of course having no authority in themselves unlike the Bible, and should be tested by it!)

Dig Deeper by Nigel Beynon and Andrew Sach

https://www.amazon.com/Dig-Deeper-Tools-Understanding-Gods/dp/1581349718

The above is a really helpful toolkit to read the Bible for ourselves. It contains a number of different ‘tools’, like the ‘context’ tool, and other tools to understand and digest a text and unearth the treasures that God has for us in them.

Knowing God by J.I. Packer

https://www.amazon.com/Knowing-God-J-I-Packer/dp/083081650X

The above is an absolute classic that richly and clearly illustrates who God is and how we can know him.

God’s Big Picture by Vaughan Roberts

https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Big-Picture-Tracing-Storyline/dp/0830853642

The above explains God’s incredible narrative throughout the entire Bible. Very helpful to understand what the Bible is all about.

Hey sorry for the delay getting back to you. I think BirdieNZ nailed it. The Law of Moses is a covenant of law but not a covenant of works. What's the difference?

The Covenant of Works (with Adam) had in view the full picture of man's relationship to God. Perfect obedience was required to maintain that relationship. If Adam obeyed perfectly then he would live and no salvation would be necessary since there would be nothing to be saved from. This is not the case with Israel receiving the Law, since:

1. All are already fallen in Adam and in need of salvation. The perfect obedience ship already sailed. (Rom 3-5; Gal 3-5; 1 Cor 15)
   
   
2. Israel received the Law as part of redemptive history. God's first words to Moses were "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob", pointing back to Abraham and the covenant God made with him and was continuing to keep.
   
   
3. The order is backwards for Israel if the Law is a covenant of works: God redeemed Israel from Egyptian slavery then gave them the Law.
   
   
4. The Law included a system of sacrifices for sins, which both (1) pre-supposes law-breaking; and (2) points forward in the COG to Christ.
   
   
5. God had already promised grace to Abraham and his offspring, and that promise cannot be undone by the presence of the Law. Regarding this promise, Paul explains:
   
   > 15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. 16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. 17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. 18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Gal 3:15-18
   
   The Covenant of Law was "a guardian" (Gal 3:24), given to national Israel to instruct them in the will of the God who redeemed them. This was never intended as a means of salvation (Rom 3-4; Gal 3).
   
   Here's a perfect explanation of the above from Scripture:
   
   > 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, 10 and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. 11 You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today. Deut 7:6-11
   
   It's true that there are blessings and curses associated with the Law, but note the language of the blessings and curses (e.g., Deut 28). It's all about the land and the enemies around them, but never about salvation, which is conferred by Christ under the Covenant of Grace. Justification always has, and always will, come by grace through faith (Rom 4). Paul (Rom 2:29) and Moses (Deut 10:12-17) both say true "circumcision" is a matter of the heart (i.e., faith). Paul says not everyone born of Abraham had faith (Rom 9). Regardless of what happened to Israel, from Achan to Babylon, everyone with genuine faith was saved under the Covenant of Grace.
   
   I know I've already said it, but I'll recommend again The Christ of the Covenants. Best $12 you'll ever spend! :-)

You should really read Jewish Magic and Superstition by Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg. It’s a study of the magical techniques and, more importantly, the magical philosophy which flourished among Jews primarily in the Rhineland around the 12th Century (known as the Hasidei Ashkenaz). The book is available for free at the link I provided, but you can also purchase it pretty cheap and find it in other formats elsewhere.

Magic of this type is termed “Practical Kabbalah” (distinguishing it from the more well known Meditative Kabbalah as found in the Zohar). I found this website some time ago on Practical Kabbalah. It has a really pretty format, but ultimately is nearly contentless and looks abandoned. However, it has a pretty great starting bibliography. I’ve been working on and off to collect the books on said bibliography and other books relating to Jewish magical practices. Recently I acquired a partial translation of Sefer Hasidim (the foundational text of the Hasedei Ashkenaz).

You might also want to look into the magical thought and stories in the Hasidic movement (not to be confused with the like-named Hasedei Ashkenaz). The aforementioned bibliography has, I think, two books on the subject, but there’s more books which broadly look at the mystical/magical practices of Hasidism and their legends. A good beginner book focusing on Hasidic legends is Elie Wiesel’s Souls on Fire. Martin Buber has written Tales of the Hasidim which has more tales, but is a little more dry.

There are some other books I have of varying relevance, but I don’t know how many book recommendations you need. Some of the books mentioned, centrally Jewish Magic and Superstition, are probably a good start. Also, a good book on mythic stories in Judaism is Tree of Souls by Howard Schwartz.

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Edit:

I just finished reading Alan J. Avery-Peck’s article “The Galilean Charismatic and Rabbinic Piety: The Holy Man in the Talmudic Literature” in The Historical Jesus in Context. It focuses on Honi the Circle Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa, two individuals part of the charismatic, miracle tradition of antiquity and how this tradition was rethemed and incorporated into Rabbinic Judaism. You might be interested in such individuals and such a tradition. Of the same general time period, you might also be interested in Maaseh Merkavah (and Hekhalot) and Maaseh Bereshit (from which emerges Sefer Yetzirah).

Also, some Jewish figures have featured prominently in alchemy (like Mariam the Jewess).

It looks like I’m just going to keep editing this post with more stuff. Anyway, in regards to patriarchal religion being introduced by the Jews which led to the destruction of the Great Goddess, well, the whole Great Goddess hypothesis isn’t really argued in modern academia. Regardless, a patriarchal dynamic to religion was not introduced by Jews, and the Jewish God is overtly asserted to not have a gender (or be two genders, depending on how you read the text) and female personification has historically been applied to the Jewish God. All of this aside, Rabbi Jill Hammer has done a lot of theological work focusing on the Divine Feminine in Judaism. She even worked to make a highly female inclusive siddur (which seems to be permanently out of print). She runs this website which has, for instance, an article on the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine of the Godhead which is the kind of thing that’d probably fit just as easily on a website on Wicca. She’s also written, like, a Jewish wheel of the year book (which I bought and, regardless of how one feels about the book as a whole, is a nice assortment of references to midrash). In a similar theme, I’ve also read On the Wings of Shekhinah: Rediscovering Judaism’s Divine Feminine by Rabbi Leah Novick, but I didn’t really like it.

You might also want to look into The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism. I own it, but haven’t really looked through it. I’ve seen some other people cite it though. So I can’t really give my own opinion of it other than mention its existence.

Wait, also also, just occurred to me, you might want to look into the creation of Matzevot and Bethel as seen primarily in Genesis. They’re akin to altars anointed with oil where the Divine is asked to be present. The best book I know of academically touching on the subject is Benjamin Sommer’s Bodies of God (which is a book I somehow manage to tie into just about everything I ever write on Reddit). Glancing around to see if I could find anything else on this theme, I came across this text (I don’t know how relevant or interesting it is since I hadn’t read it, I’m reading it now) (Finished reading. I’d certainly recommend it as an interesting text. Not much about Metzevot. Instead a whole lot on early Medieval Jewish magic involving oil. There are a good handful of these divination rituals translated. The rituals primarily involve using oil and a reflective surface [predominantly a fingernail, but also mentioned is oil on water, iron, mirror, liver, glass cups, and resin] to commune with spiritual Princes.).

Probably should have also mentioned Ancient Jewish Magic: A History by Gideon Bohak which makes reference to Trachtenberg's work, but aims to be more expansive and make use of later scholarship to advance the neglected study of Jewish magical traditions.

> Also, is it true to say that the God we're referring to here is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent?



I'll start with this point because it's a necessary assumption for this discussion. All three adjectives certainly apply here.



> Why did he create Adam and Eve with a desire to be independent of God?



God created man with free will, the ability to abide or reject him, and this seems to naturally lead to man choosing himself over God. I won't say that God wanted man to make that decision after creating him, but I believe He absolutely knew that man would make the decision. One thing I've always wondering about was if somehow Adam had refrained from sin, and his descendants were still living in that garden with the three, how long would it be until someone decided to take hold of the fruit and disobey? It seems inevitable in the long run; however, even taking the garden account as allegory, I think it illustrates something we all see in ourselves: even by our own internal scale of right and wrong, we still make bad decisions at times.



In God's omniscience, the sacrifice to be made by Jesus Christ that would atone for mankind's sin was known to Him before the creation of the world (cf. 2 Timothy 1:9, Revelation 13:8, and [1 Peter 1:20](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter 1:20;&version=31;)). So this opens another question that I don't purport to have an answer for: if God knew before creation that mankind would sin and such atonement would be necessary, why bother moving forward with the plan?



I'm reading through a book entitled Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, and it's full of evidence that while other Mesopotamian cultures believed that the gods depended in some way on humans (either needing worship or the amenities provided in the temple and its offerings), the Israelites understood that God in no way depended on them. And yet, at the same time, OT writers were asking why God created man (cf. Psalm 8:3-6, Job 7:16-18, and commentary).



When asked to explain God's perfection, apologist Ravi Zacharias is credited as responding, "God is the only being in existence, the reason for whose existence lies within himself." I agree with the succinct response, and believe that God's lack of a cause, dependence or origin means that He would be the same with or without creation or mankind. While I don't believe God created man because he was lonely or wanted to exert control over some lesser beings, I do recognize that God desires that we fellowship with him (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:9). But I honestly don't believe I can comprehend His motivation for creating us in his omniscience.



> If so, why didn't he just stop the snake from talking to them? Also, if God knew everything, then he knew that all this would happen, so why did he bother setting up this whole situation in the first place?



Could God have sheltered Adam and Eve from outside influences in the garden? Absolutely. Would this have, as I hypothesized in the first paragraph above, prevented man from sinning at all? I can't say. If God had removed every allowance for man to exercise his free will, effectively filtering out every situation where man was presented with a choice, I suppose we could ask if that would really be free will.



I allude to the second question in the preceding paragraphs and confess that, while I understand facets of the relationship between God and man, I can't answer "why" with certitude. Truthfully, I do wonder about the question, though, and even right now it brings to mind the question of why God allowed Satan to victimize Job in order to demonstrate the man's faithfulness.



This also seems to beg the question if it was man, the snake, or even God that was ultimately responsible. Yes, man sinned by taking the fruit, but the serpent is accredited with propositioning Eve, and if we go back further it was God himself who placed the tree there. To refer back to a verse cited in my original post, James 1:13-15 tells us that man is just as capable of tempting himself with his own desires. Meanwhile, the character and very definition of God excludes Him as a mechanism for temptation.



> Why didn't he just give them omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence so they could freely do whatever they wanted and not have to go through all this drama?



Forgive me if I'm jumping to conclusions, but this seems to ask why God would not just make man as He is, rather than in His image (sharing some qualities, but certainly not equal). Consulting varying definitions of omnipotence, I came across the omnipotence paradox which asks if any all-powerful being could do such a thing as to limit itself. Biblically, I think the omnipotence paradox is at least partially answered in the personhood of Christ, as Philippians 2:5-8 records him setting aside his Godly glory for the likeness of man on earth.



But your question seems to approach the paradox from the opposite direction and ask if an omnipotent being could create other, omnipotent beings. Scripture presents qualities of God that we might take to be limits (doing my best not to sound heretical here), the violations of which would likely mean that He is not God. For instance, God's holiness precludes him from fellowship with sin, setting in place the requirement for atonement, and he cannot lie (cf. Numbers 23:19). We logically think of these things as limits, but perhaps they are more appropriately considered as the very nature of God.



I think that God's establishment of other beings equal in his power would diminish his identity as God. Could multiple beings all be omnipotent concurrently? If God granted omnipotence to other beings, wouldn't that suggest that He had yielded Himself in some way? In pondering whether two beings could share omniscience, my mind began to run in circles with "are you thinking what i'm thinking about what you're thinking about...", so I'll leave that alone. Again borrowing a concept from the Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament book I was reading, the gods of Mesopotamia were organized in a pantheon, with each assigned various responsibilities, functions and authority. Each existed within the cosmos, whereas the Israelite God was attributed as birthing the cosmos and operated independent of it. To grant equivalent power, or knowledge to created beings would turn that relationship (between Creator and created) on its side. And as the writer of Philippians puts it, Jesus as man "did not consider equality with God something to be grasped."



I also wonder if man was effectively put in the role of God, as your question hypothesizes, if he could be trusted not to destroy everything. This is of course assuming that man possessed the same free will, but was more capable in executing the whims of his desires. Or would Godly omniscience prevent man from willing anything "bad", since he would absolutely understand the harmful repercussions of his actions before doing them? The philosophy of this is beyond me, but it's deep stuff to think about. I can only offer that as we are now, men not gods, Jesus says that man's very heart breeds evil ambition (cf. Mark 7:14-23), so I inclined to think that we're better off without such unlimited power.



Thanks for following up with your questions. It's given me quite a bit to think about and I enjoyed the research along the way.

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EDIT: fixed link formatting.

I apologize if I said hundreds of thousands of years. The events in the Bible seem to only cover the 4-8 thousand years leading up to Christ and the early church. No room for hundreds of thousands in there. What I meant to say is hundreds and thousands, though it would probably have been safer to say hundreds only. Many miraculous stories in the Bible and bookended by generations of Jews that experience no such miracles. My point was that miracles weren't necessarily a day to day occurrence in Biblical times either. When I used the parenting analogy I didn't mean to say that God has pulled back completely and is not present or active in the years since the early church. That would be bad parenting indeed! After Jesus ascended, Christians belive that God gave his Spirit to indwell his followers. This is an ongoing miracle for Christians who have experienced it and leaned on it. Christians definitely believe God is still active.
So now we're to the question about the flashy miracles like water into wine and resurrection of the dead. The point about the printing press and the internet is a common one. Why would the transference of information about Christ's miracles through one medium be superior to another? If the miracles happened pre-papyrus, we could wonder why the miracles didn't happen later during the age of scrolls. The miracles were recorded and shared not only orally but in book form in the gospels during the lifetimes of its eyewitnesses. What it really comes down to is: Why can't I see a miracle right now with my own eyes? And for that I fall back on what I wrote before. I don't know exactly and Christians differ. I personally think such revelation would undermine the free will of too many people. For the whole word to suddenly be made aware that God does exist and he is just as all powerful as ever, would lead to a mass conversion of people deprived of the chance to find God and instead motivated completely by fear. I doubt this is the sort of relationship God had in mind. Like I said before, using us to help the poor and the oppressed not only gets the job done for the victims but also grows us into the people He wants us to be.

According to the current Big Bang model, time, space, and matter all came into being at the Big Bang. The laws of physics and the universe deal exclusively with these three things. How could the law of gravity have existed before mass? How could the laws of electric fields exist before electrons? The laws of the universe are only applicable in a reality already containing time, space, and matter. Let's assume for a second that the fundamental laws DID somehow exist prior to the quantities they describe. Laws are abstract objects like numbers. Abstract objects can be helpful for describing the way things are, but they do not stand in causal relationship to anything (i.e. they cannot cause anything to happen or come into being).
Popular science articles do a great disservice when they talk about the possibility of something coming from nothing. The ideas you are referring to is evidence of atomic and subatomic particles 'popping' into existence from the quantum vacuum. This is highly misleading to laymen because the quantum vacuum isn't technically 'nothing'. It may not contain atoms or the subatomic particles we are aware of but it definitely contains energy fields and electromagnetic waves. From fluctuations in these energy fields it may appear that a subatomic particle 'pops' into existence but I can assure you that energy fields are not synonymous with 'nothing'. Nor is the quantum vacuum an accurate depiction of reality logically prior to the Big Bang. Before that first instance there was 'nothing', as in zip, no energy fields, no energy, no atoms, etc. There is still literally no theory for how something can come to exist out of pure nothingness and I wouldn't hold my breath either. Like the hypothesis of many worlds or other universes, scientific testing in this space is impossible. We have time, space, and matter at our disposal for testing which affords us no feasible glimpse outside of those realities. How can one use material tools (matter) to test or gain knowledge of a state prior to matter? Immaterial realities, such as the one prior to the Big Bang are unobservable which is the death sentence for scientific inquiry in that space. If you can't observe it, you can't test hypothesis. So now we're left with an immaterial cause of the material universe. It can't be natural laws of the universe because those describe the way things are inside the universe, not outside of it. So I ask myself, what is immaterial, powerful enough to create a universe, and intentional enough to create a universe fine-tuned to allow the evolution of life?

It's a good question to ask why all the supposed waste in the universe, volcanoes on limitless other planets, etc. Did you know that for the superhot early material in the Big Bang to coalesce into stars and planets and stable solar systems necessary for life that we should actually expect the universe to have grown as big as it has and be as old as it is? It takes so many years to get a stable universe like that and then so many more for a sentient species to evolve. Not only that but I think you assume I believe that God did it all for us! I think that would be arrogant of me. The Bible itself mentions other sentient species completely separate from humanity and earth: angels. They're usually thought of in Christianity as purely spiritual beings but who's to say they are? What if they had their own planet out there? What if God's plan is so much bigger than just us? The Bible is God's revelation to humanity, but it doesn't tell us even a fraction of all we'd like to know about God or the universe out there. For one thing, I don't think they make books that big. For another, if my hope in Christ is sound, enternity is a long time, and there's lots to see.

As for the laws of physics seeming violent and random, this is another case where we wouldnt have our stable solar system if it weren't for the violent and spectacular collision of stars and asteroids and life and death of galaxies. Think of forrest fires. They seem pointless and destructive, but they are necessary for new life to grow. Through the violence and the chaos, new seeds are released by the agitated flora which give the forrest a new lease on existence. There are fundamental forces and quantities in our universe that if, at the Big Bang, they had turned out to be the tiniest fraction different from what they currently are, that stars wouldn't have formed? Change another and atoms wouldn't form into molecules. There are approximately 10^80 atoms in the entire universe. The amount needed to change one of these quantities to make life impossible in the universe is something like 1 part in 10^120. Inconceivable!

As for an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, I'm not too worried. The Bible is fairly ambiguous about how the Earth is going to end so if it's by asteroid.. I guess that's as good a way as any. Regardless of how the world ends or how I die, I am confident in my hope that God will gather me into his presence and the real adventure begins.

Whew, this post is looooong (and possibly boring so I apologize). Alright, home stretch. Why do we have to live on Earth if the end goal is Heaven? There's something important I want to get out of the way first. According to Christianity, Humans aren't destined for Heaven. Earth was created to be the home planet of Humanity whom God wanted to know and enter into a relationship with. With our sentience and free will came our responsibility to take care of this planet. By ditching God and using the Earth for our own selfish purposes, we have made it into kind of a crappy place sometimes. The Earth was supposed to be our ultimate home for all time. By turning from God, Christianity teaches that humanity brought ruin not only to ourselves but the Earth as well. The whole thing needs God's healing. Once those who have freely chosen to accept and enact God's healing have died, the world as we know it will end and a new Earth will be made as the final home for those who freely entered into a relationship with God. Heaven, is more of a temporary location for souls as they await the end. The Bible is not entirely clear if the old Earth will be abandoned and new one created or if the current planet will simply be restored and made 'like new'. This is all my personal interpretation of Christian eschatology of course but it basically coincides with mainstream Christian thought. In the meantime though, this is the Earth we have. It is still our responsibility to take care of it and take care of it's people.

Alright so I hope I didn't waste too much of your time with this post. I should probably stop responding since the post length is growing exponentially. However I would like to point you towards some other materials if you are interested.

On the existence of God: The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology - Various

http://www.amazon.com/Blackwell-Companion-Theology-Companions-Philosophy/dp/1444350854/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341437104&sr=1-1&keywords=blackwell+companion+to+natural+theology

On Old Testament Ethics: Is God a Moral Monster? - Paul Copan

http://www.amazon.com/Is-God-Moral-Monster-Testament/dp/0801072751/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341437061&sr=8-1&keywords=is+god+a+moral+monster

Miscellaneous websites:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/

http://www.starcourse.org/jcp/ <--Ugly website but awesome man. Check the Q&A page.

I could list more, but the Bibliographies in these books will lead you to priceless resources on their own. Thank you for the questions, they were intelligent and clear.

p.s. I hope I rightly interpreted your 'dizzying intellect' line to be a reference to Princess Bride. Otherwise I probably just come off as a cocky jerk at the top of this post.

This is at least partially true, we all too often explain rather than deduce. However, it also means we have reason to trust extrinsic evidence over intrinsic evidence, and demand our beliefs converge as closely as possible with the findings of science, which is name we've given to the best set of tools we've created for removing bias from our understanding.

If any religion was true, it should be increasingly convergent over time, not increasingly divergent. See also the problem of inconsistant revelations.

I'm not a Christian because no evidence has been proposed that makes Christianity exceptional, and lots has been proposed that makes it wrong in it's traditional formulations. See for example the lack of an historical Adam, which is highly damaging to the Pauline view of Christianity.

Also, the Bible is just plain wrong on the first 13 billion years of the universe, the first ~247,000 years of the human species, the first at least 47,000 years of socially modern humans, the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, the grand united Davidic kingdom(though there was likely a local Davidic Kingdom, whose size and power are still debated as new evidence appears), and just about everything else before the 8th century BC. It's clear from textual clues the historical David was pumped up to justify the political ambitions of Josiah (who, you'll recall, "just happened" to "find" the Deuteronomic books that were "lost".) From then on it's a heavily biased book, demonizing the acts of certain rulers and glorifying others, in ways that don't seem to fit the historical record. The stories it contains condone misogyny, genocide, homophobia, slavery, etc as we should expect as the natural writings of the wisdom of desert dwellers in 8th to 4th century BC. (For more, see The Bible Unearthed, which despite being 10 years old has aged quite well. The only debated part in the journals has been just how small the Davidic kingdom is, but no one is arguing for the grand united Davidic kingdom as seen in the Bible.)

The Bible is not all bad of course, some of the writers had lofty goals like social justice and care for the poor in mind. But it certainly doesn't read like the perfect revelation of an almighty God. Most scholars would happily agree with me, and seek to increasingly mystify the Bible. (See Borg's Reading the Bible Again For the First Time for one of the better examples.)

You'll note William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga, though accomplished philosophers, both heavily lean on the "internal witness of the Holy Spirit" for their own belief. Once again, this is introspection, and devalues the religious experiences of every other religion out there.

If there were other evidence that led us to think any of this might be true, I'd be happy to go that way. But so far, I have not found any. The best argument that takes all the evidence into account is Spongs, given in Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and A New Christianity for a New World. Like many modern theologians, he has retreated into a panentheistic view of God, who is out there but outside of the reach of our understanding, and demotes all holy books to the writings of humans trying to understand this being. This at least is cogent, though once again it mostly boils down to mistaking introspection for facts.

I've written before on what it would take for me to believe, and as you'll see if you read it, it's pretty much "convergent evidence". Right now, no religion has that, and each one says they are justified based on introspection.

Science converges based on an external reality, religion diverges based on biased introspection and mutual competing claimed "revelations" that clearly aren't.

And that is in a nutshell why I'm an atheist. (At least that's what I tell myself. ;-)

(Sorry for the preaching, but it was just about the perfect setup ;-)

Answers!

>How do you reconcile the problem of evil?

Plantinga's free will defense (which most philosophers consider solving the problem of evil): http://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-log/#H4

>What are your thoughts on the atheist argument of there being hundreds of gods, and that we only believe in one less than you?

It's not a very good argument: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5F-73eMSyA

>What about Yahweh specifically entices you to put faith in that one god out of the many other individual gods and pantheons to choose from?

Well, it's the person of Jesus that entices me. We see the heart of God most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ.

Please understand how broad this question you're asking is. There's not a very good way for me to go about answering it because, am I supposed to go line by line and say, YHWH vs. Allah. YHWH vs Krishna. YHWH vs __. You get the idea. Besides, there's already pretty good book about that, that was written by a man who was raised in Hindu India: http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Among-Other-Gods-Christian/dp/0849943272/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320956328&sr=8-1

> What is your opinion of the theory of evolution?

Evolution is fine. I'd imagine the people you met are fundamentalists, who don't understand that certain passages were written not as historical truth, but as mythic (which isn't to say false) allegory.

In other words, evolution is understood as a biological mechanism. God is the agent which started all natural mechanisms.

> A friend's father once told me, "I believe in God because it comforts me and because I want to believe that there is something more to this world. I can't back it up with evidence, and I probably can't convince you to believe, but it's good enough for me and that's all that matters." To this day, it is the most perfect explanation of personal beliefs that I have ever heard. He relies on faith and faith alone to keep his beliefs, and I have an immense amount of respect for that. Do you agree with him, or do you try to use physical evidence to back up your faith?

I disagree. Faith should have evidence; specifically evidence of things unseen. Jesus explicitly said his followers would be able to do works greater than he. I think that, in the west, Christians have settled for too long for a form of faith that lacks power.

As far as physical evidence is concerned, it's a funny question. On one hand, I don't think physical evidence is a good criteria for judging the truth of something. The positivists made that mistake in the 30's and then were debunked. On the other hand, if a blind man you knew was blind was healed before your very eyes, you wouldn't be able to deny the reality.

Those are my two cents slapped together in 5 minutes. Enjoy.

1. God loves you unconditionally and gives more grace than we could ever deserve.
   
2. You aren't alone. I felt this exact way when I found out I was attracted to guys when I first started college.
   
3. Don't give into pressure to choose one side or the other right away or even soon. This is a process of learning and growth and it probably sucks right now, but lean into the tension. Coming out / being 100% confident of your sexuality really soon is something that is, in my opinion, overhyped. Take your time.
   
4. I don't know how much research you have done yet, but I would recuse yourself from your currently held position and take a stance of neutrality. It's important as a Christian to figure out why you believe what you believe. This can be hard to do, but see what the Side A (Affirming) crowd's arguments and experiences are. Take notes. Understand why they genuinely believe that they are not acting against God. See how and why they counter their opponents' arguments. Once you have fully done that (and by fully I mean take your time and do it for a few months), then look up the non-affirming (Side B, Y, and X) positions and do the same. Even if this doesn't help you come to a conclusion right away, this still is a healthy practice of understanding the why behind the what.
   
5. This process of testing the foundations of your beliefs is/should probably extend to issues beyond LGBT inclusion in the church. One main pillar behind any LGBT/church argument is a stance on if Scripture is inerrant or not / what does it mean for something to be "inspired by God" / Should we hold to the same values as people 2,000 years ago (we've already expanded / moved on some from that)?
   
6. Remember to take breaks from this. Be diligent, but don't let this pursuit of the truth consume you.
   
7. Find non-judgmental friends who won't try to preach at you and can support you in your time of discernment and beyond.
   
   If you would like to PM me and ask more questions, I'm always happy to help people who were where I was 4 years ago.
   
   ​
   
   Here are a few good Affirming (A) resources to start out with:
   
   Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-VS-Christians Debate by Justin Lee (A)
   
   God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vines (A)
   
   Modern Kinship by David and Constantino Khalaf (A)
   
   Blue Babies Pink by Brett Trapp / B.T. Harmann (A)
   
   Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church's Debate on Same-Sex Relationships by James Brownson (A)
   
   Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation by Dale Martin (A)
   
   Risking Grace, Loving Our Gay Family and Friends Like Jesus by Dave Jackson (A)
   
   ​
   
   I'm compiling a list of other good resources / bad ones (from all perspectives, not just ones I disagree with), so let me know if you're looking for something more specific.

I highly recommend Marcus Borg's Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but not Literally. This is a fantastic place to begin to understand the way that those of us who do not read the Bible literally approach the text.

Another good help for you might be Timothy Bael's Biblical Literacy: The Essential Bible Stories Everyone Needs to Know. It is very 101, but fantastic for someone who has never really read their Bible. You'll find Bael's introductory chapters helpful in getting your head around what the text is and how it ought to be understood in a very general sense. Then, Bael goes on to introduce you to individual biblical stories, book by book, raising questions and pointing out ways in which each story has influenced our culture. Note that Bael raises questions, he doesn't often offer answers. That is sort of the point. It's your job to wrestle with the text--he just helps you ask questions you might not have thought of.

> If you view the more fantastic stories such as the creation as a metaphor, why can't all of it be metaphorical? How do you choose what's literal and what isn't?

It would really depend on the individual story, book, letter, or poem you're talking about. The Bible isn't a "book" in the sense that we usually think of books. The Bible is a library of many different forms of literature, written for different purposes, by different people, in different cultures, and to different audiences. All of these factors weigh in on how you understand the text.

There are further questions about what the Bible even is in a theological sense, and then how the Bible ought to be used and interpreted in Christian communities. As far as this goes, I greatly value what N.T. Wright has to offer in Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today and what Dale Martin has to offer in the opening chapter of Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in the Bible. I'm honestly not sure if either of those last two books would be remotely helpful for you.

I definitely, definitely recommend the first two though, if you can afford it.

So my comments above show my linking skills, but I will do my best in advance of the report coming out monday (already advance reviews are mixed to break down this issue...

As regards the Covenant of Works ("COW"), was it, in any sense, "republished" in the mosaic covenant? Republicationists say yes (hence there name). However, if you have read any John Murray, you'll know he objected to the very term COW in favor for a Covenant of Life, between Adam and God. The reason being is that Murray and his spiritual successors in the anti-repub camp see a Grace element in EVERY single of the covenant administrations (for more on the various covenants, please see O Palmer Robertson's classic work.) By calling it a covenant of works, they feel, runs the risk of downplaying the grace in the COW. Republicationists do not deny a grace element in the COW, nor any of the subsequent covenants, but you can see the problems from this short paragraph, when one side won't even allow for a COW, when our standards refer to it in those exact terms.

I refer to above again to the idea of no smoking gun in this case. In other words, one can claim a repub position, or an anti-repub position, and maintain themselves as orthodox reformed.

And as some are talking about Kline, it could be reduced to that in its simplist form, if you don't want to get into the covenant issues. Are you for Kline (like me?). Then you like repub (he advocated it). Against Kline, you probably argue against it.

Whether Repub is Biblical or not, is of course the question at hand. There's a lot to this. For Kline's more important work, one should work through his lectures on their commute or something, they are worth it, I have gotten through quite a few of these. I have [his book] (https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Prologue-Foundations-Covenantal-Worldview/dp/1597525642) in my own personal archives, but anyway, that is the best I can frame all this. Any of you want to correct or add, please feel free. Love to all the reformed redditors! Read the report on Monday when it comes out, and we'll see how accurate I am haha

3:16 by Knuth

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

“Love One Another, As I Have Loved You.”

"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you."

"But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic.
Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same."

I have read some of Bart Ehrman's work, and transcripts of a number of interviews, where he states he is agnostic. I don't recall seeing Ehrman provide a definition of what he means by 'agnostic' or 'agnosticism.' Is anyone aware of what Ehrman meaning of 'agnosticism'?

After watching part of the vid; yep, when talking/debating/arguing with someone knowledgeable/subject matter expert, it is not a good idea to go into the talk/discussion/debate unprepared. The Dunning–Kruger effect haunts us all! A better approach would have been to ask Ehrman to explain/present his position concerning a historical Jesus using from Biblical sources, and then from extra-Biblical sources, discuss the issues/debate surrounding the extra-Biblical sources (e.g., late additions to the text, do the citations reference the same "Jesus" as the Gospels?). Finally, discuss the case for the Christian claim of the Divinity of Jesus as The Christ; does the Jewish belief/prophecies require or identify that the Messiah/Mashiach be Divine/God (Yahweh) in man form/literally the Son of God?; do the Gospel narratives support (1) the claim of being the Jewish Messiah/Mashiach? (2) the claim of Divinity? As an atheist, the issue of the historical Jesus is interesting in that it establishes a foundation that the person existed and gives a basis for the morality presented in the narratives related to Jesus, but, more relevant are the claims made that Jesus is Divine, a supernatural Deity, a God in man form, fully human/fully Yahweh.

Since this subreddit address Christian beliefs, while Ehrman does conclude that the evidence very strongly supports a historical Jesus, Ehrman raises questions concerning the Divinity of Jesus, as the Christ.

From Jesus, Interrupted, by Bart Ehrman...

• Doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and heaven and hell are not based on anything Jesus or his earlier followers said.
  
  From my understanding of the Gospels, a strong argument can be made that Jesus does present himself as a claimant to be the Jewish Messiah/Mashiach can be made; but showing that Jesus claimed to be, literally, the Son of God, or Divine, is not supported.
  
  
• At least 19 of the 27 books in the New Testament are forgeries.
  
  In this case, the label "forgeries" applies to narratives which were likely not written by the person to which they are associated/claimed authorship, e.g., (simplistically) people writing in the name of other people and trying to pass their work off as genuinely by some other person. See Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, by Bart Ehrman (review).
  
  
• Believing the Bible is infallible is not a condition for being a Christian.
  
  
• "Christianity has never been about the Bible being the inerrant word of God," Ehrman says. "Christianity is about the belief in Christ."
  
  In my experience, not all Christians would agree with this statement; while belief/Religious Faith in The Christ is foundational to the overwhelming majority of Christians, many also hold that the Bible being is the inerrant word of God.

[All this assumes the scholarly standard JEDP source criticism. I applaud the Jewish poster who input the talmudic sources which corroborate this info, but work under vastly different assumptions]

It is widely understood by OT scholars to be addressing the heavenly council. Gen1 and Gen2 are two different creation stories. Gen1 was written at a later date (the P source), than Gen2, which was a much earlier source. The majority of Gen2-11 is attested to be whole blocks of earlier sources, interspersed with editorial changes/flourishes. Many scholars suggest that Gen1 was written in a typological fashion to describe Eden as a divinely ordered temple (the authors being priests). And in a temple there is never just one liturgical actor. The P source, being much later had a developed sense of other divine beings (the academic definition of "monotheism" being an ideal type, and a red herring -- there are almost zero actual "strict monotheists" societies ever recorded in the world) in the heavenly court.

As an example "the serpent" is not "the devil" or even "the Satan". The serpent is merely a member of the divine court, punished for its actions. "The Satan" doesn't make an appearance until Job (which is actually written very very early, around the times of many of the original Genesis sources [chp2-11]) and is not "the devil" but merely another divine court actor -- the narrative explicitly tells us that Satan has an audience at the court with God.

All this is scholarly work of understanding who, when, and with what material the original authors were working with. This is not an act of Christian (or Jewish, as the Talmud self-attests as) interpretation. That said, any Christian attempt at interpreting this as emphatically, or foreshadowing the Trinity has their work cut out for them hermeneutically. Orthodox and Catholic traditions generally lean on metaphysical interpretations that can point to a Trinity, but such a move is merely indirect. Mainline protestant traditions don't attempt that interpretation and for the most part have left behind metaphysics (as they're mostly American, or heavily influenced by American pragmatism or liberal protestantism). Evangelicals are really the only group who attempt such an interpretation.

I would recommend "Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible" for the task

Edit: link -- http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Near-Eastern-Thought-Testament/dp/0801027500/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1342141393&sr=8-2&keywords=john+walton

It's part of the MA program at my university. At the risk of being spammy, I'll take a minute to plug the university (I'm very happy with the education I'm receiving, and I receive no advertising royalties, I swear)

I go to a small Catholic university in San Diego, CA.

Undergraduate^(click for more info)

The undergraduate programs focus on business, film, animation, and video game design. But all the undergrads have to take as part of the core curriculum classes in biblical studies, philosophy, and theology. The religious and philosophical courses are rigorous and students come out very well formed. The mantra of the university is to Impact Culture for Christ. So we bring philosophy, the bible, and theology into the fields of business, film, video games, etc. I got my undergraduate degree here, my major was New Evangelization (we're the only university of which I am aware which has such a major). My major focused on biblical studies, philosophy, and theology, with strong emphases on Entrepreneurial Business and Film. The point is to train effective evangelizers.

Graduate^(click for more info)

I'm currently studying for my MA in Biblical Theology. The program here is taught by young Catholic scholars who are very active in the scholarly world (for example, they present regularly at national SBL conferences, and contribute to multiple journals). To understand how amazing our program is here, you have to understand a bit about the current field of biblical studies:


It is largely dominated by secular historical study of the bible. Bible scholars aren't allowed to look at the bible as the word of God. They are to assume that it's merely a human work, and they study it using what's called the Historical Critical Method (for examples, check out /r/AcademicBiblical). There are positives and negatives to this situation, but for believers, the negatives are quite important. Essentially, you can do theology or serious historical work on the bible, but these are seen as two separate disciplines.

My university seeks to integrate the two. Our professors believe that you can be a believer and can also do serious biblical study. So, we have rigorous courses in biblical languages, textual issues, historical concerns, and the other good and helpful aspects of the Historical Critical Method. But these classes are integrated with robust theological courses. We don't see the two as separate disciplines. So we look at the bible critically as a scholar should, but we don't "check our theology at the door" so to speak. We do serious theological exegesis. Not just one or the other. I personally think that the formation I'm receiving is necessary for any believer. But obviously, that's just my opinion.

We have two tracts in the MA program: Exegetical and Cetechetical

• The Exegetical tract is for people who want to engage with modern scholarship (many in this tract will try to get a PhD in a similar field). I'm in the Exegetical tract.
  
• The Catechetical tract is for people who want to work in dioceses and parishes or other apostolates, that they may teach lay people.
  
  

  Greek
  

  The greek classes are focused around a few text books. We basically just follow the texts:
  
  

• This is the foundational text for Greek I. It is paired with the corresponding workbook, and we're recommended to get these study aids.
  
• For Greek II, we finish out the Greek I book, and then move toward this text and work on being able to translate 1 John with the help of this text
  
  Because I'll be seeking out a PhD, I'll have to do extensive further study in Greek and I'll have to learn Hebrew (which my university offers as an elective), along with some other languages. But these courses were a great start, and have made me capable of reading approx 80% of the NT without a Lexicon. I hope to eventually have a command of Greek so that I can read the NT and LXX (greek Old Testament) with only rare need to recourse to a lexicon, along with being able to do serious exegetical work in the original language of the New Testament.
  
  ***
  
  

  Concluding Thoughts
  

  Our students are largely Catholic, but I see no issue in a serious Protestant coming here. The program can be taken entirely online as well (of course, a film-oriented school ought to be able to offer online courses).
  
  If you'd like me to elaborate on any of these points, I'd seriously LOVE to discuss it. I am head over heels for our graduate program. It's something I really believe in, and its rapidly growing, so it seems to me that others feel the same way. By 2022, we're projected to be the largest graduate program in theology in California:
  
  > Since 2009, JPCatholic has developed a strong competitive position in Biblical Theology - the study of Scripture and Theology. With our state-of-the-art online learning system, students around the globe now participate in our MA program. We are teaching the teachers of our Catholic faith. We plan to launch a BA degree [in theology, I think] in 2017 and a PhD in 2022, and will become the largest School of Theology in the State of California.
  
  
  ***
  
  Edit, added links, and a bit of text.

Ok cool, I was genuinely asking since verses in Leviticus (like you posted) have differing contexts, audiences, time periods and all sorts of things compared to other passages on the topic of homosexuality or homosexual acts (of which there aren't many) say in Romans.


There are a couple things I'd say about this passage by way of giving some context which I think changes it.
1 - These are laws written to the people of Israel at a specific time in history. It is clear that God goes to great lengths to keep them distinct from the peoples around them as they are transmission point for the bulk of his revealed will so far. Their writings, history, and civic systems would form the foundation upon which God would point towards Christ 1300-1400 years after these books were written. There are a lot of things God forbids that are obvious in keeping the culture separate like intermarriage or certain political alliances. Others are more cultural like tattoos, certain foods, etc. It is my firm belief that this passage is speaking of all manner of things common in neighboring cultures who worshipped Moloch and similar deities. These cultures were pretty bad and God went to great lengths to keep Israel seperate from them. If you'd like to read more about Israel's relation to its neighbors through the Old Testament narrative I recommend "The Old Testament Against Its Environment by G. Ernest Wright. https://www.amazon.com/Testament-Against-Environment-Biblical-Theology/dp/B002EBGKTS/


2 - Despite point #1, many of the things are this list are part of God's moral will for our lives. Several things on the list go against how the God has made us according to the bible and thus are both wrong (IE a transgression worthy of punishment in an eternal sense) and harmful (IE something that will not satisfy or make one happy in the long run or hurts/defrauds others, sometimes both). I think it is the consensus of biblical text that the intention of our creator was for sexuality to exist on a man/woman spectrum. Some disagree with this but I think most biblical scholars would agree that the above passage most especially in its punishments for certain acts, is for a certain place and time and not an ongoing command of any type. It is important to not just do what the bible says but also emphasize what the bible emphasizes. Such a command to enforce any kind of morality regardless of the rightness of it is really foreign the bible. God is the enforcer, we aren't really called to do such a thing. We may disagree on what's God's moral will is for our lives (or whether there is a God or that his moral will is knowable), but I think the context here paints it in a much different light than "God says it's cool to hit gays with a rock". If you'd like to read further on the topic of understanding God's actions in the Old Testament, I recommend "Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God" by Paul Copan. https://www.amazon.com/God-Moral-Monster-Making-Testament/dp/0801072751/


3 - The other important context here is God's redemptive plan for humanity. Why is it so important to keep this people group a certain way over time? What could be so important that you have these books full of civic and moral hoops to jump through with harsh consequences for non-compliance? The answer is that humanity has a problem, born seperated from God by the wrong things that we do, we are under the sentence of death and unable to deal with the punishment for our actions by a just God or the alienation between us and Him due to our sin. As I said everything about ancient Israel prepares for an points directly to Jesus, God's son who came to Earth as a human and died sinless to take the punishment onto himself. Having accepted this sacrifice we can not only escape the eternal consequences of our sin but also end the alienation between us and God and have a relationship with him. This is the moment where all of humanity, every person who has or will ever live on Earth, went from having the sentence of death hanging over them to the potential to live forever and have an eternal purpose. If you'd like to read more about this I recommend Romans Chapter 1:18-2:16,3:9-8:39.


The whole book is good but I've tried to exclude some sections as you are not, I assume, a first century jew living in Rome. I'd also recommend reading it in a more modern translation. It looks like what you posted is from the King James probably? That bible was really great in 1611 but since then modern archaelogy was invented and our greater access to older texts and evolution of better historically grounded textual scholarship means that many many versions are better. I personally like the New American Standard Bible which tries to be more of a "word for word" translation of the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic in the text. It can sound a bit like Yoda so if you'd like a "Thought for Thought" translation the New Internation Version, New Living Translation, and English Standard Bible are all fine.


This might be more reply than you're looking for but at least we can agree that Twitter is perhaps not the best place for something so complex. :D Also sorry for a hastily written reply, I didn't think I'd be discussing Leviticus today.

The problem is that you said this,

> It's like if the Gospels hadn't been put together into the Bible they'd count as non-Biblical records proving that Jesus existed, but because they are in the Bible that means they don't prove anything.

and you complained about this,

> If you put everything ever written about Jesus into the Bible then there would be no non-Biblical sources for proof, if you don't put everything ever written in then that shows you were picking and choosing your own religion

So now that you have engaged into "backtracking mode", as in,

>All the best historical accounts would be a subset of everything ever written, and so would 'accounts that best fit the goals of the early church'.

So...let's be clear how far we are:

• 1. There is little to no non-christian sources about Jesus.
     
• 2. There are many brutally contradicting christian accounts of Jesus
     
• Of those Christian items, a very few have been selected for inclusion into the canon. Probalby settling about the third/fourth century.
  
  Now, let me address your erroneous statement that the gospels are "the earliest". At best, a portion of one of the gospels may have been written by 70AD (Mark), but could be as late as 100AD. A full 40 years, best case, after the events. The next two (Matthew , Luke )were most likely written based on Mark. Finally, John is most likely even later
  
  This matches very well Egerton Gospel (70AD at earliest) or the Gospel of the Egyptian (80 AD at earliest) and many more whose dating might well be equal to or precede the canonical gospels.
  
  As far as the agenda of the early church, it is well known, and does not worry about historical accuracy, but about setting dogma straight. So, yes, they had an agenda, and that agenda was not to look for historical truth but for orthodoxy. Hardly the standard to create an even close to reliable text.
  
  Ergo, and as a whole, I tell you that this,
  
  > I think it's reasonable to think that the 'selected' canon was selected and held on to because it is the best historical account.
  
  Is not correct. It was selected because it met the orthodoxy of bishops in the 4th century.
  
  You should read this book. It would show you why the bible is not historical record.
  

Thanks!

>I have never tried in the Greek.

You should! It's quite rewarding.

As for what I'm using. I thankfully was a step ahead, as I'd studied Classical Attic when I was in college. That was awhile ago, but the alphabet and basic grammar was still floating around my memory. Vocabulary was and is my biggest shortcoming.

To refresh my grammar (and help me with changes in the language from Athens ca. 600 BC to the 1st century Roman Empire), I bought this textbook: Reading Koine Greek by Rodney Decker. It's an introductory one, so I was able to blow through the early lessons quickly enough, while focusing mainly on vocabulary. He structures his vocab lists based on word frequency in the New Testament and Septuagint, meaning you learn more common words first, which in turn helps to quickly build reading comprehension. It also focuses on the grammar of that time period and specifically early Christian writing (with reading exercises mostly from the NT, but occasionally the Septuagint or something like the Apostolic Fathers).

Once I was ready for some more advanced references, I picked up Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, which is a more general reference book (focused on the NT) recommended by Prof. Decker. I also splurged, thanks to some spare cash, and bought myself the BDAG, an incredibly thorough dictionary of Biblical Greek. The amount of scholarship in that one book is nothing short of mind-boggling. It has an incredible number of references to both the New Testament and tons of other contemporary usage, as well as citing to journal articles about certain words, the works. Oh yeah, I also got a dual-language (Greek and English) edition of the Apostolic Fathers somewhere along the line, although I haven't read it much yet.

So that's where I am. As I said, it's slow going for now since my vocabulary is still pretty bad, but it's improving. And I find that learning by seeing things in context is much better for me than just trying to do flashcards or something (although I may supplement with those).

I have two more books on the way: Metzger's Textual Commentary (where he talks about the decisions that went into which reading they chose in the UBS edition of the NT), and the most recent edition of his The Text of the New Testament (as updated by Bart Ehrman), which is an introduction to NT textual criticism and a kind of summary of various scholarly research on the subject.

So yeah, it's quite an undertaking!

> [W]hat makes Christianity the right religion?

I think the arguments for God's existence are strong enough to eliminate all but the major monotheistic religions as candidates for truth, and among these religions I think argument for the unique revelation of the Christian God in the person of Jesus is strong enough to identify Christianity as the most plausible. Christianity presents a coherent worldview and conforms most closely to the reality of our existence.

Ravi Zacharias has addressed this issue far more eloquently than I can in his book Jesus Among Other Gods. If you want a comparison with non-theistic worldviews, he's also written Jesus Among Secular Gods.

> Are Muslims going to hell?

If the claims of Christianity are true and if Muslims do not believe that Jesus is both God's Son and the single effective path to salvation, then yes. If Christianity is not true, then I don't have an answer.

> Why does the Christian god doom 1.8 billion people by birth?

The answer here probably depends on how you conceive of God's foreknowledge. For example, Molinists would hold that God knows how everyone will freely respond to his offer of salvation in any possible circumstance. One could then argue that God therefore places every person who will respond positively in a particular region where and time when they will eventually be granted that opportunity to respond.

Another angle is that even in so-called "closed" countries, the internet is still reaching millions of Muslims every day. And in the absence of the internet, we now read many stories of Muslims having vivid dreams or visions of Jesus. If such dreams are from God, it would appear that Muslims are not "doomed" by their place of birth after all.

> There seems to be some marked differences between the God of the old testament and new testament.

There is a discipline called 'Biblical Theology', which shows that the Bible is one whole narrative with recurring themes throughout.

If you want to see how the Old and New Testaments fit together, this is a good direction to take.

If you'd like to explore this (which I think you should), here are some worthwhile starting resources:

• Don Carson did a 14 part video series called The God Who is There
  
• Vaughan Roberts - God's Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible
  
• Graeme Goldsworthy - Gospel and Kingdom
  
  If you feel that you want some more materials on this topic which are more in-depth, please let me know as I am happy to direct you to them.
  
  Edit If you have a look at the Don Carson video series you'll notice in the top right corner a 'courses' button, which gives access to a large range of great teaching on many important topics. This includes foundational materials, doctrine, church history, practical issues and teaching on every book of the Bible. I heartily recommend all of the materials produced on this website. End Edit
  
  Some other resources I'd like to direct you to are some free ebooks by R.C. Sproul on fundamental topics. Crucial Questions will help you navigate through 28 important topics and help you get a good foundation.

If by 'lacking' you mean 'nonexistent', then yes.

I went to public school but with heavy influence from my folks and church, all of whom seem to be involved in some sort of Fundamentalism competition. I learned exactly as much as I had to in order to pass the test, but I was always convinced it was a lie because scientists are all "out to get" Christianity.

I'm still wrapping my head around just how unhealthy this worldview can be.

I'll echo /u/Cognizant_Psyche - kudos on taking that first step and deciding to get smart on this topic.

I talked to my church pastor, who passed me off to his wife (who has apologetics degrees out the ass). She recommended The Language of God, a tactic which soundly backfired on her. That book was fantastic. It explains evolution from a DNA perspective but then tries to tell me I can still believe in God if I want to. For me, from such a fundamentalist, literalist background, the bible had to be true word-for-word, yet this book flew in the face of the entire Genesis account of creation. If that wasn't real, how could I trust any of the rest?

Once I was 'cleared' to learn about Evolution, I grabbed Dawkins' The God Delusion. I watched the Ham-Nye debate. I grabbed Who Wrote The New Testament, and Misquoting Jesus. That pretty much did it for me.

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.

What to read...

There's so much!

"The Ancient Near East" by Amelié Khurt is a great overall history.

Someone already mentioned History begins at Sumer and Ancient Iraq, they're a bit dated but still quite good. For a simple synchronic overview with nice maps look at Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia by Michael Roaf. Also another good history book A History of the Ancient Near East by Marc Van de Mieroop.

Regarding texts, there's a great book that does the history of Mesoptamia through primary sources The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation ed. Mark Chavalas.

That should get you started. Those book are all quite current or still very usable, let me know if you need anything else. As for later periods (i.e. post-Achaemenid) that's not my field... I read A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani which was quite good and as far as I understand a well respected overview of later Mesopotamian history.

On 1 Corinithians 14:33b-36 specifically:

The best commentary I have found on this is in a book by Gordon Fee, but I doubt that will suit your immediate practical purposes. This article is the best I could find on short notice. Also, the wikipedia entry for 1 Corinithians talks about this issue.

Other sources I haven't read but have seen cited:

• F. X. Cleary (1980), Women in the New Testament: St. Paul and the Early Pauline Tradition
  
• G. W. Trompf (1980), On Attitudes Towards Women in Paul and Paulinist Literature: 1 Corinthians 11:3-26 and Its Context
  
• E. H. Pagels (1974), Paul and Women: A Response to Recent Discussion
  
  More broadly, about Deutero-Pauline pseudepigrapha in general:
  
  
• Wikipedia has a great entry on the authorship of the Pauline epistles. Additionally, the wikipedia articles specific to each specific epistle have sections that address their authenticity pretty well (Titus, for example).
  
• Encyclopedia.com has a number of sources.
  
  A great read that covers these issues as a whole is Marcus Borg's Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. Borg is a great writer in general, and it is through his writings that I first learned about the authorship issues in the New Testament. I have not yet read it, but I imagine this book covers the authorship issues in great detail.
  
  Finally, this is what I have in my NRSV translation of the bible: https://imgur.com/UTaZWDa.jpg

>women's Bible studies

A new book that has been highly praised is Wisdom's Feast: An Invitation to Feminist Interpretation of the Scriptures by Barbara Reid.

>"beginners" Bible studies

I personally like The IVP Introduction to the Bible.

A great beginner's study Bible is the Access Bible (NRSV). It's academic but the notes are solid and accessible for newcomers and I think it's very underrated so I recommend it to curious seekers every chance I get. It's like a lighter version of the New Oxford Annotated Bible or HarperCollins Study Bible.

For the Old Testament, I like Lawrence Boadt's introduction. You'd also get a lot out of Ellen Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament. There is also The Torah: A Beginner's Guide, which covers the first five books of the Old Testament (which tends to confuse many Christians).

For the New Testament, I like Luke Timothy Johnson, The New Testament: A Very Short Introduction..

I don't want to overwhelm you, just to show that you have a lot of good beginner's options available. Happy reading.

>You cannot separate the old and new testament as the word of God. If you believe one, you believe the other, and one is so full of death, destruction, anger, hate, and just plain vile stories that it simply cannot be divinely inspired.

I agree with you in that they are the exact same God. The God of the new testament and the God of the old testament, so if you believe in one, you believe in the other because they are one in the same. I'm not going to try to explain it, because it's such a broad topic, and I don't feel I have a good enough command of the english language to get my point across, but I can believe the actions of God in the old testament can be fairly easily rectified. This book helped to reconcile my beliefs when I needed answers about the very same topic. And after a quick google search, I found this a youtube video of a radio interview with Paul Copan, the author of that book.

As far as being good without God, from a worldy view, this is definitely possible, but not so much from a Christian view. There is nothing good in me. On my own, I am capable of no good need. I am human, I am corrupt, and evil by nature. God is the only thing in me that is good, and every time I complete a good action, it is solely because of Him. In a secular sense, you can be good without God, because even though you may not believe in God, you still live in His world. There is still an ultimate moral standard, that everyone agrees upon, yet has no natural explanation. You can most certainly have more 'goodness' than a christian from the perspective of completing more 'good' acts.

I don't believe God stacked the evidence against Himself when he created the universe. There is just as much scientific evidence for biblical creation, as there is for a natural creation. In fact, it's the exact same evidence! The evidence that atheists use to proclaim the nonexistence of God, is used by Theists to proclaim His existence! The same evidence is just interpreted differently by two different groups of people. The problem is, everyone has a world view, so it's impossible to look at the evidence and be completely neutral. If you begin examining the evidence believing one thing, you will most likely draw a conclusion similar to your prior beliefs. A world view is like a colored lens. If you wore green glasses everywhere, you might suspect everything is green. Not because it is, but because the glasses make it seem so. So really the proof in whether or not there is a God, comes down to determining which world view is correct. Fortunately, all world views separate from Christianity conflict themselves somewhere, thus proving they can't be the 'correct' view. Most of them lead to the conclusion that we shouldn't be able to know anything about the universe that we live in, or that day to day actions of anyone without God, are completely unexplainable. This is because Christianity is the only world view that can accurately account for the preconditions of intelligibility, or the conditions that must exist before we can know anything. Atheists cannot account for these conditions, and have to actually rely on the Bible, before they can argue against it. I'm not going to give a super thorough explanation here, but I would suggest looking into Presuppositional apologetics, and the preconditions of intelligibility.

I have not spent a ton of time reading about this, but based on the source in my original comment - A History of the Ancient Near East by van der Mieroop - there is a cuneiform literary style called the royal inscription they put on buildings or special objects, like border markers.

It started out simply as "King X on the orders of god Y built this in year Z" and over time have became more elaborate stories of why the building is being built, what battle/conquest it commemorates, ets. Usually they are pretty over the top and extremely flattering to the king and the line between gods and kings is pretty blurred. For example the god would be right there participating in the battle and the king accomplishing some sort of super human feats. (Which, I assume, was meant and perceived as metaphor.) Actual decision making is usually attributed to the god with the king just carrying out his orders. This is from mid-2000s BCE. Later periods have more realistic styles.

The reason I say there are thousands of them is because these things are nothing special. Every city had a king and every king was fighting his neighbors, building stuff, and having this type of inscriptions made. It didn't occur to me before I started reading about this period, but there a lot of cities and most have not been excavated, so most of this stuff is just sitting in the ground.

Unfortunately the book is not in google books, so I can't link to an example passage. But I highly recommend at least taking a look at it because it really puts the Abrahamic religions in vital context without which it is impossible to understand them fully. The book is in very broad strokes, but we are talking 3000 years worth of history over a decent size area with a lot of actors. Also it does not go into religion much, which is mostly why I am reading about this in the first place, so I definitely need another source on religion.

>If you want me to take the evidence seriously, this is the only way.

Baloney, it isn't the only way to take evidence - one simply critically exams the evidence - that the way to accept or reject evidence. But let's play your game.

Bruce Metzger was probably the most renowned NT textual critic in the last 100 year.

While the UBS5 or NA28 gives the conclusions of the textual committee that decided on the precise reading for each passage of the Greek New Testament, Metzger's A Textual Commentary of the NT gives the reasoning for each of these variant passages.

Here is Metzger's conclusion:

By comparison with the New Testament, most other books from the ancient world are not nearly so well authenticated. The well-known New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger estimated that the Mahabharata of Hinduism is copied with only about 90 percent accuracy and Homer's Iliad with about 95 percent. By comparison, he estimated the New Testament is about 99.5 percent accurate. So the New Testament text can be reconstructed with over 99 percent accuracy. And, what is more, 100 percent of the message of the New Testament has been preserved in its manuscripts! [B. M. Metzger, "Recent Trends In The Textual Criticism Of The Iliad And The Mahabharata", Chapters In The History Of New Testament Textual Criticism, 1963, E. J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 142-154.]

Now of course you will reject Metzger since he is a Christian. But curiously Metzger also wrote The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration with famed athiest/agnostic and Biblical critic Bart Erhman.

Ehrman and Metzger state in that book that we can have a high degree of confidence that we can reconstruct the original text of the New Testament, the text that is in the Bibles we use, because of the abundance of textual evidence we have to compare. The variations are largely minor and don’t obscure our ability to construct an accurate text. The 4th edition of this work was published in 2005 – the same year Ehrman published Misquoting Jesus, which relies on the same body of information and offers no new or different evidence to state the opposite conclusion.

Here is what Erhman said in a footnote in his book Misquoting Jesus: Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions – he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not – we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.

So now we have, in addition to a Christian expert that says the Biblical text is 99.5% accurate we have an atheist/agnostic expert who agrees.

Note: to review the many errors in Erhman's book Misquoting Jesus see here

>I don't, but the possibility is there due to their organizational ties. You don't think it's in their best interest to skew evidence to further their narrative?

Can we level this same criticism at you? That you will "skew evidence to further their narrative"?

How does one even have a conversation if one assume s that their interlocutor is so biased that it interferes with their rationality?

It seems the best we can do is assume that we are all being as unbiased as we can and the critically examine the evidence and arguments.

Raymond Brown's An Introduction to the New Testament, published in 1997 from the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library, includes attempts to review and summarize scholarly opinion on authorship (and date and purpose and audience) of all the books in the New Testament Canon. Here are some passages relevant to your question.

From "Did Paul Write II Thessalonians?" (pp. 592-594):

> In 20th-century German scholarship, running from W. Wrede in 1904 to W. Trilling in 1972, arguments presented against Pauline writing gradually made this minority view more and more accepted. English-speaking scholarship (e.g., Aus, Best, Bruce, Jewett, L. T. Johnson, Marshall, and Morris) has tended to defend writing by Paul, but more recently Bailey, Collins, Giblin, Holland, and Hughes have been among the increasing numbers opting for pseudonymity.

Of the scholars defending Pauline authorship, the most relevant might be R. Aus, Augsberg Commentaries, 1984; and R. Jewett, The Thessalonian Corresponandance, 1986. Brown also goes on to list the main arguments for and against Pauline authorship, which is worth reading.

From "Did Paul Write Colossians?" (pp. 610-615):

> At the present moment about 60 percent of critical scholarship holds that Paul did not write the letter.

A footnote here says that R. F. Collins, in Letters that Paul Did Not Write (1988), "surveys the various scholars and the nuances of their views." The footnote also says, "Cannon's detailed study favors Paul as the writer", referring to G. E. Cannon's 1983 publication "The Use of Traditional Materials in Colossians". Though Brown doesn't dwell on which scholars have which opinions, he does survey arguments for and against. I suppose Collins would be a good place to look for more.

From "Ephesians: To Whom and By Whom?" (pp. 626-630):

> Although some scholars continue to accept Paul as the writer of Eph, the thrust of the evidence has pushed 70 to 80 percent of critical scholarship to reject that view, including a significant number who think that Paul wrote Col.

Though Brown does not here list scholars who argue Pauline authorship, a previous footnote states "See in Cross, the debate over the Pauline writings of Eph (for, J. N. Sanders; against, D. E. Nineham." This refers to F. L. Cross's Studies in Ephesians (1956), and presumably earlier scholars he cites. Brown gives an analysis of arguments both for and against pseudonymity, though he doesn't list a single paper published after 1970 that argues Pauline authorship, which is telling.

In "Who Wrote Titus and I Timothy? (pp. 662-668), he gives a wide array of reasons to doubt the authority of the Pastorals, also explaining traditional reasons to suppose Pauline authorship, and concludes:

> About 80 to 90 percent of modern scholars would agree that the Pastorals were written after Paul's lifetime.

He indicates that more information can be found in R. F. Collins's Letters that Paul Did Not Write, which argues pseudonymity. But the only modern scholars Brown mentions who might still hold Pauline authorship of the Pastorals is G. W. Knight, from the New International Commentary on the New Testament, 1992, and L. T. Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament, 1986. When discussing II Timothy, Brown only mentions that some scholars still hold Pauline authorship without naming them specifically, though he indicates that Johnson may be one.

All in all, I'd say Brown somewhat understates the likelihood that a modern scholar will think these letters are pseudonymous. But if you read the percentages as "percent of New Testament scholars still alive in 1997 who hold this opinion, regardless of when their most recent relevant publication was", it may not be far from the mark.

Brown also includes an entire chapter, "25: Pseudonymity and the Deuteropauline Writings" that examines the issues holistically, giving a great deal of insight about the complex issues involved in determining authorship of ancient texts. It's definitely worth reading, if you get a chance.

There is scientific evidence that what I am saying is true. It's Historical in nature (and History is a science right?)

Christianity has been the seedbed for every Scientific revolution, Isaac Newton, Mendel, Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, all believed in the Christian God and therefore found justification for their scientific pursuits in that belief.

Also, the kind of free Government we enjoy in western Nations was born after the Reformation under the watchful eyes of the Baptists, Anabaptists and the Puritans.

The ethic behind these movements was completely Christian, and religious freedom could only have been born under Christianity.

If you want to talk about the Old Testament and its laws, a simple way of seeing it is that Jesus fulfilled the law's demands as our the federal head of God's people. He purchased his children and redeemed them and so the Mosaic law now stands as a testimony to God's graceful forgiveness.

There's a whole lot written on the subject. If you like you can read this book to clarify some things for you. You can get a paperback or kindle version.

N.T. Wright is generally considered to be the current expert on Paul.

A really great and short book, adapted from a lecture series: Paul in Fresh Perspective.

An exhaustive 1700 page monster: Paul and the Faithfulness of God. I'm working through this one now. It's very informative and a good read, but it really does engage with pretty much every academic writer of any substance from the past hundred years, so sometimes it feels like you're listening in on the middle of a conversation. The earlier books in this series, particularly The New Testament and the People of God (which is volume 1, and has much of the background material) covers the political and religious situation during the Second Temple period. It has a lot of great discussion about the Pharisees (a very complex group of people) and their opponents, Roman and Greek stuff, and so on.

These are some of the better books I've accumulated in school:

• An Introduction to the New Testament - Raymond Brown. Exactly what the title says.
  
  
• The Early Church - Henry Chadwick. This is more of a historical overview of the development of the Church, etc.
  
  
• The Shape of Catholic Theology - Aiden Nichols. This book is kind of a dense read. Not gonna lie.
  
  
• At the Origin of the Christian Claim - Luigi Giussani.
  
  
• The Craft of Theology - Avery Dulles.
  
  
• The Theology of the Church - Charles Jornet. - This one is about ecclesiology, or the structure of the Church.
  
  
• Early Christian Fathers -Cyril Richardson. Includes primary sources like letters and homilies.
  
  
• The Trinitarian Crontroversy - William Rusch. Very good history of early heresies, like Arianism and Nestorianism, and how they pushed the Church to develop the Creed.
  
  
• Called to Communion - Joseph Ratzinger.
  
  
• Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man - Henri de Lubac. This book is fantastic!
  
  
• The Meaning of Tradition - Yves Congar.
  
  
• Introduction to Moral Theology - Romanus Cessario.
  
  
• The Major Works -Anselm of Canterbury. Nice collection, see especially: Cur Deus Homo.
  
  
• On the Incarnation - Ignatius of Antioch. I LOVED this one!
  
  
• Credo for Today - Joseph Ratzinger. Basically anything by Ratzinger.

Oh man. Where do I begin?

It started with Edward Feser. Then Aquinas.

I recently compiled my 'short list' of books that were foundational for a Master's:

Start here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764807188/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019925995X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Then go here:

https://www.amazon.com/Story-Christianity-Vol-Church-Reformation/dp/006185588X

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061855898/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=T5D86TV1MTCSQAYZ4GHR

G.K. Chesterton is always a good supplement (Heretics and Orthodoxy):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ALKPW4S/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bible Study:

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Testament-Anchor-Reference-Library/dp/0385247672/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477868333&sr=1-1&keywords=raymond+brown

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1585169420/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809147807/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(Jewish perspective on NT): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195297709/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

After you've gotten through these (or maybe interspersed), get into de Chardin -- but be careful, because he toes the line into heresy with the noosphere stuff.

Then, start reading the theoretical physicist priests in our faith, Stanley Jaki, for example.

And this. This.

Finally, try to muddle through Spitzer. These guys have more smarts in their little finger than I will ever have.

Edit: I refreshed the thread and saw that you've already found Feser. Excellent. Are you familiar with John C. Wright as well? Sci-fi-writer-former-atheist-now-traditionalist-Catholic.

I'm interested in any science + metaphysics books you've come across too. . .

Here are a few of my favorite theologians, Bible scholars, and books

For Biblical exegesis

Inductive Bible Study by Robert Traina and David Bauer

For Systematic Theology

Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology by Thomas C. Oden (Almost anything by Oden is good really)

For Pauline Studies

Paul and the Faithfulness of God by NT Wright

The Theology of Paul by James D. G. Dunn


For Cultural Background in New Testament

Craig S. Keener (his commentary on John's Gospel is phenomenal, as is the IVP Background commentary by him)

Ben Witherington III (his commentaries are generally good)

For Christian ethics

Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays

For Old Testament

Walter Brueggeman (pretty much anything by this guy)

Terrence Fretheim (I especially like his commentary on Exodus)

Sandra Richter (Epic of Eden, a good primer on ancient Israelite and Canaanite culture and how it shaped the OT)

Philosophy of Religion

Soren Kierkegaard (my absolute favorite philosopher, I especially recommend Fear and Trembling)

Thomas Aquinas

St. Augustine

Alvin Plantiga (I personally dislike Plantiga's philosophy, but he's become a big name in philosophy of Religion so not someone to be ignorant of)

William Hasker

William Abraham

Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes by Charles Hartshorne (I'm not a process theologian, but this book in particular is highly important in modern theology, definitely worth a read)


Edit:
If you wanted a broad, general sweep of theology, I'd recommend The Modern Theologians by David F. Ford. It's a good overview of various theological movements since the start of the 20th century and covers theology from many different perspectives.

Visual Greek. Learn using cartoons!!!! A similar method is Greek To Me. Again, learn using cartoons! I've read most of the book and it was a HUGE help. Also, both are Koine, and the visual greek method uses Mounce's book, which is THE standard intro. Mounce also wrote an easier intro for people who just want to know enough to do basic bible studies and use some of the better Greek tools out there, it's called Greek for the rest of us. Other books that take it easy on you are Learn Biblical Greek by John Dobson and English Grammar to Ace New Testament Greek. If you're wondering "Why grammar?" it is because you need to know how grammar works. If you know how it works in your language, you'll have a better grasp of grammar in other languages (at least you'll know what the books you read mean when they talk about active and passive verbs etc...).

I'd say that it may be out of the scope of this particular project.

I can't imagine anyone who would recommend AGAINST learning Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek, but it's a pretty big undertaking (as is learning any new language). You have the added obstacle of being culturally and chronologically separated from original authors, meaning that you still ought to seek input from "experts" concerning the meaning of a particular passage (failure to do so can lead to this.).

While I'm not a mod or originator of this project, my understanding is that it is at least partially aimed at "Bible Novices," who may not have the time/motivation/background to commit to learning two ancient languages.

That all said, it is possible for neophytes to do "spot translations" of certain passages. One of my heroes, Don Knuth embarked on a translation project where he used resources like Strong's Concordance to do his own translations, but he has also commented that the project took several hours a week for a single verse.

Now, when I rule the world (and I will someday), churches everywhere will offer courses in Biblical languages to their congregants, simply because there is a world of benefits and few drawbacks to doing so. However, I don't think it's an appropriate exercise here.

You're not telling the full story. There are several very very good reasons to believe that Mark's ending as we have it today is a scribal addition, and not faithful to the original author's gospel.

In addition, even very conservative scholars agree with this sentiment, including the popular pop-apologist William Lane Craig and JP Moreland. Also, renowned conservative Greek Scholar Bruce Metzger writes a detailed section of his book devoted to this question. I would recommend picking up this book if you'd truly like to know more about what drives these scholars' beliefs. I'd like to avoid repeating their sentiments in a lengthy post here.

>suggest a (roughly) two-month reading plan to get through the Old Testament? Ie, how much to read per day, in what order to read the books

I'd suggest reading one whole book at a go, i.e. finish reading Genesis either in one sitting, or in a few sittings. The Old Testament is such that you need the big picture before you can fully understand each part.

>recommend extra-biblical resources to help me understand the OT? I know the [1] Rose Book is a good one, any others?

I'd suggest two books. Graeme Goldsworthy's Gospel and Kingdom and Vaughn Roberts' God's Big Picture. Those two are very short and easy to understand books. These two books help you understand that the role of the OT is to point to Jesus, and gives you a very quick big picture and central message of the OT and thus the whole Bible. I'd highly recommend them first before you start your OT reading.

>give general advice/tips on how to make the reading time most productive/effective and not cause me to burn out?

Read the OT narratives as stories, rather than trying to do a Bible study on them every single time. You can do your bible study after you have finished reading it. :) Secondly, when reading wisdom books or prophecies, keep in mind the timeline of Israel and when it is written and the history behind it. It will illuminate the prophets for you, otherwise they'll be a mystery to you.

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.

I don't think so. The first line is translated as

> in the summit “Elohiym [Powers]” fattened the sky and the land

The translation of בְּרֵאשִׁית as "in the summit" is a very uncommon conjecture made to strengthen the parallel between Genesis and the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which opens with "when on high". There are indeed parallels between the two texts, but the translation of that particular word is a non-literal interpretation. Literally, it means something like "at the head".

The translation of בָּרָא as "fattened" is something that I've never seen before. At best it's a fringe theory.

Skimming the rest of the lines, I can see many more of these unusual translations which were likely made to fit into some sort of specific non-standard interpretation. For example, the simple word "טוֹב" (good) is translated as "functional".

I recommend the Jewish Study Bible, which is often used in university courses. It uses the latest JPS translation, which is decent, but more importantly it includes ample commentary by unbiased experts.

I'd encourage you to read a book called Is God a Moral Monster? by Dr. Paul Copan. The way he approaches the issues posed by seemingly barbaric things in the Old Testament is by acknowledging that from the Christian perspective the laws and commands we find there were not perfect or eternal ideals. They were used by God as a means to incrementally reform humanity and bring it back to Creation ideals.

For example, one helpful thing he points out (that I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the book in front of me) is that when Jesus says in Matthew 19:8 that Moses permitted men to give their wives a certificate of divorce that isn't a solitary teaching just on divorce, rather it illuminates how God approached man in the past in a much broader sense too. We can also read that as "God permitted you to wage wars against your neighbors because your hearts were hard," and "God permitted you to be patriarchal because your hearts were hard," etc.

That's a nice theory, but it has no basis on fact, no evidence for it, and the oldest manuscripts do not contain any indication of any of those heresies.

In reality, the range of locations for the oldest manuscripts varies widely, while the range of locations for the older manuscripts centers in the Catholic church. Again - the only reason you might affirm Textus Receptus is if you are Catholic.

If you'd really like to dig in, the best book I've found on the subject of manuscripts is Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament.

If you read the original intro for the KJV translation it gives one of the best defenses of using the best and oldest sources for material.

Lastly, there are no differences in primary or secondary doctrine between the TR and the Critical Texts (NA28 or UBS). The ESV and NASB still agree with the KJV about practically all doctrine.

After doing enough research of ancient civilizations and taking one class on all of them, these are the best books in my opinion that give a general overview to start with when researching, depending on the civilization you are researching. Then once you have these and look through them, you can make a good library of least 350 books about the ancient world like I have. I hope this helps and if you want help picking books, just ask. Also these books are written by the authorities in their subjects so they will be good research materials.

Ancient Rome: Christopher Mackay’s Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History

Ancient Greece: Sarah Pomeroy’s Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History

Ancient Mesopotamia: Marc Van De Mieroop’s A History of Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt: Marc Van De Mieroop’s A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC

Ancient Phoenicia: Maria Aubet’s The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade

Ancient Carthage: Dexter Hoyo’s The Carthaginians (Peoples of the Ancient World)

Ancient Hellenistic World: R. Malcom Errington’s A History of the Hellenistic World: 323 - 30 Bc

Ancient Silk Road Area: Xinru Liu’s The Silk Road in World History (The New Oxford World History)

Ancient Persia: Maria Brosius’ The Persians (Peoples of the Ancient World)

Ancient Hittites: O.R. Gurney’s The Hittites

No.

(I was really tempted to just leave it there.)

I don't know what you mean by "incomplete," because I can't think of any myth that attempts to be a complete summation of all knowledge. A myth is a story that attempts to communicate truth. Most myths have specific truths in mind they are trying to communicate. They aren't trying to be a summa theologica, the myth author has a specific set of truths in mind for a particular myth.

Saying a myth is "by definition false" is like saying that Aesop's fables are, by definition false. Whether a myth corresponds to some actual historical event (as many surely do) is besides the point. The original readers and writers of Genesis were not trying to write history ("history" didn't even exist as a discipline). They were trying to communicate truths through story. Again, I'll suggest The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter, and also In the Beginning by Lawrence Farley for a better sense of how these stories operated in their original context.

The modern assertion that "true and false only relate to the empirical" or "a story is only true insofar as it represents a documentation of what actually occurred" is both strange and a severe limitation in human thought.

There has been a great deal of study devoted to when and why the books of the Bible were originally written. A good introductory work on the field is How to Read the Jewish Bible by Marc Zvi Brettler. For more comprehensive references, the HarperCollins Study Bible and New Oxford Annotated Bible are packed with the best available research. Further useful reading would be The Ancient Mediterranean World: From the Stone Age to A.D. 600, People of the Covenant: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, and Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.

>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.

I always recommend Robert Alter's The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. It is a beautiful translation that's meant for people interested in the Bible as literature, and he keeps very true to the original Hebrew.

For example:

>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.”

Out of curiosity, why do you want modern?

I've been reading Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ recently. It might be the best book on CT from a baptistic perspective out there, though its 300+ years old. Alternatively The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology is excellently done, scholarly and modern. It can be a bit tedious, since it was originally written in French as a master's thesis.

From a presbyterian perspective, I read The Christ of the Covenants and found it excellent and winsome. A number of reformed colleges and seminaries use it as a textbook.

You should be able to get any of those from the Christian Book Nook, or I can lend them to you at church on Sunday if you'd rather save some cash.

The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration is a good read on this issue. In general I don't think Ehrman is a great historian, but this book is pretty good. it is not only informational, it is a fun read.
https://www.amazon.com/Text-New-Testament-Transmission-Restoration/dp/019516122X

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. :)

This is really quite the question. You'll undoubtedly get some really insightful response from guys way smarter than me!

So let me contribute my widow's mite to the conversation. Grab a couple of books and read them slowly and thoughtfully. I think this deliberate lingering look at the subject that your post shows you've obviously given much thought to, will serve you better than a paragraph or two here in reddit - be they ever so clear!

If I may recommend two for you?

You've got to read the seminal work by O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants

Then follow that up with Michael Horton's book Introducing Covenant Theology for a more modern look at the subject.

Both of these you can buy used at Amazon for right around $5. I think they will be great tools for you as you work through the thoughts you outline above.

Forgive the lack of 'crunchy' in this post by skirting an answer with book recommendations!

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

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

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.

I think the best rebuttal (which you already touched on in your comments) is that there Ancient Near East had no concept of loving, equal relationship between same-sex couples.

Early Christians (including those with Jewish backgrounds) were all extremely Hellenized but would have also viewed Greek society as "worldly" and something that they needed to separate themselves from. So, since their only exposure to homosexuality was between an older man and a young boy for the purpose of material gain or idolatry.

>Some scholars locate its origin in pool initiation ritual, particularly rites of passage on Crete, where it was associated with entrance into military life and the religion of Zeus.[[5]](https://6trtt to ⅝6/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece#cite_note-5). The wiki has a lot of good info.

I'd also recommend [Sex and the Single Savior](https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Single-Savior-Sexuality-Interpretation/dp/0664230466
by Dale Martin), who is the professor of the Yale NT course.

I read the bible with the aid of a commentary (The New Jerome Biblical Commentary), and a Bible Dictionary (HarperCollins Bible Dictionary). It slowed the pace a bit, but I got a lot out of it. I also had some good intros to the New Testament (An Introduction to the New Testament by Raymond Brown and The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings by Bart Ehrman).

Some other interesting study aids:

• Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedman - for an overview on the Documentary Hypothesis of the Pentateuch.
  
  
• Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman - goes over the difficulty of rebuilding the original words of the authors of the bible.
  
  Good Luck.

I second /u/ancient_dude's suggestion of John Dominic Crossan. He's probably the "safest" author if you want someone who is a fascinating scholar yet still a confessing Christian.

Who Wrote the New Testament? by Burton Mack is a great read, information-dense but easy to get into.

Also good is Cutting Jesus Down to Size by G.A. Wells.

For a book more focused on Acts and its depiction of early Christianity, try The Mystery of Acts: Unraveling Its Story by Richard Pervo.

Every page of these books will present you with ideas and critical scholarship that probably never occurred to you (or most lay readers of the Bible).

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

General:

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

Upvote for the divine council angle. It best fits the narrative and our understanding of the ANE world.

Also, I wouldn't say the author of Genesis did not have any kind of Trinitarian concept at all, just not the rigorous kind of Athanasian theology we really like. Divine plurality and fluidity is a well-attested idea in the ancient world:

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

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.

Goldsworthy is a great place to start. I recommend According to Plan, which includes "Gospel and Kingdom" mentioned elsewhere but also "Gospel and Wisdom" and "Gospel in Revelation". So you get the covenant theology take on all of Scripture.

For what it's worth, Christ of the Covenants is like $10 on Amazon. I think that's the book I used in my OT class in college. But I think I'd go with Goldsworthy for the extra eight bucks.

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.

I'd recommend this book -- short SUPER easy read that helps explain the different genres in the Bible, and how the different pieces fit together.

> IMO, statements like this could be used in a politically inappropriate manner.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? (Certainly, I see how it could be abused, but what are you suggesting practically? Many comments, even many biblical ones, are often applied inappropriately in a political setting, so I don't understand the point of your comment.)

> Also, there is a very interesting and well-informed earlier thread concerning this subject matter here.
>
> Furthermore, some may be interested in checking out Dale Allison's collection of essays entitled: Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation.

Thank you for the referrals. Out of curiosity, though, did you mean them as a response to my comment or as general recommendations for all readers of the thread?

You are welcome!

I think I first came across it in this book which is definitely on the academic side of things but is approachable – I had no background in OT studies. It compares and contrasts Jewish thought to what we see in the cultures around it, to glean understanding both from what they had in common (eg, the divine council) and how they differed (eg, no images in the temple). Super interesting.

The author teaches at Wheaton.

Did choose one - Jesus was a Jew.

Scholars will make it a course of study...Has been done since the Church was first started, as in "The Book of Hebrews"...

> https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Study-Bible-Publication-Translation/dp/0195297512

> The Jewish Study Bible: Featuring The Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation: Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, Michael Fishbane: 9780195297515: Amazon.com: Books

> The Jewish Study Bible is a one-volume resource tailored especially for the needs of students of the Hebrew Bible. Nearly forty scholars worldwide contributed to the translation and interpretation of the Jewish Study Bible, representing the best of Jewish biblical scholarship available today. A committee of highly-respected biblical scholars and rabbis from the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism movements produced this modern translation.

> No knowledge of Hebrew is required for one to make use of this unique volume. The Jewish Study Bible uses The Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation.

> Since its publication, the Jewish Study Bible has become one of the most popular volumes in Oxford's celebrated line of bibles. The quality of scholarship, easy-to-navigate format, and vibrant supplementary features bring the ancient text to life.

>* Informative essays that address a wide variety of topics relating to Judaism's use and interpretation of the Bible through the ages.

• In-text tables, maps, and charts.
  
• Tables of weights and measures.
  
• Verse and chapter differences.
  
• Table of Scriptural Readings.
  
• Glossary of technical terms.
  
• An index to all the study materials.
  
• Full color New Oxford Bible Maps, with index.
  
  

Not a panelist, but a masters student who has taken a course on the Bible's cultural context. Here are the books I found the most helpful:

• Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, by John H. Walton
  
• The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, by Henri Frankfort and others
  
• The Ancient Orient, by Wolfram von Soden

> So, does Jesus specifically address homosexuality? No. Does he establish and apply Genesis 1-2 as normative and authoritative for human sexual and marital relationships? Yes. Does that passage have implications for homosexuality? Also yes.

IMO, statements like this could be used in a politically inappropriate manner.

Also, there is a very interesting and well-informed earlier thread concerning this subject matter here.

Furthermore, some may be interested in checking out Dale Allison's collection of essays entitled: Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation.

Another resource I really like is The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter which you can pick up for about 8 dollars, used on amazon Alter is a Professor of Hebrew at Berkeley as well as honorific titles elsewhere he has gone back and not only given a better translation than a lot of the original Masoretic translation but also adds in some historical context as well. It is a fairly scholarly work, that is some might find it a bit dry but I think it is a great addition to learning.

Hmmm, I don't personally know of any good intro to Jewish philosophy books, but I'm sure they exist. Maybe other redditors can give us some good suggestions? I wouldn't recommend that Talmud though. It basically assumes prior knowledge of Tanakh (the Jewish bible), and is the size of a full set of encyclopedias. I do really like The Jewish Study Bible however. It's basically an English translation of the bible and lots of commentary. It might be a decent intro to Judaism, but it might be a little too involved to read without background or someone to talk to about it.

> Therefore, I want to learn about the Bible; not what it says but rather how it was written, received (and translated), preserved, and most importantly: how we can be sure we know these things (how studying the Bible works).

Then you want to read this. There is a bibliography if you're interested in delving deeper into the textual criticism arena.

Also, these IVP dictionaries are a go-to for any reference topic you are curios about. You can get on Amazon for cheaper, FYI, but that link lists all the books in the series. There is a bibliography after each article for further study if needed.

One significant but controversial book on this topic is Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century by John Boswell.

I'd also recommend Dale Martin's book Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation as well as his book The Corinthian Body (if you can get it), which is not only about homosexuality, but does discuss it and how it pertained to Paul's views on the subject.

One thing that should be understood is that the ancients did not think of sexuality in terms of fixed orientation. That is, they did not think in terms of "gay and straight," but much more along the lines of "tops and bottoms." Martin says in The Corinthian Body, that being a passive partner - being penetrated - made one more vulnerable to spiritual corruption. This was true for either male and female. Being a passive male partner in sex was seen as feminine, but not being the active, penetrative partner. However, Paul still thought it was risky to be the top because one could become corrupted by the passive partner, so that's why he wanted to limit sexual conduct as much as possible and restrict it to (at most) monogamous marriage.

The Greek terms in 1 Corinthians 6:9 (echoed in the Pseudo-Pauline 1 Timothy 1:10) which are commonly translated as referring to homosexuality are malakos and arsenokoites (pl. malakoi and arsenokoitai) are discussed at some length in an online article by Dale Martin here: Arsenokoités and Malakos: Meanings and Consequence: History of Condemnation in the Church

I think those terms most likely refer to pederasty and male prostitution, not to homosexual relationships in general but to exploitative sexual behavior. I did a paper once on the word aresnokoites and I tracked down every single extant attestation of he word from antiquity and I'm reasonably sure it refers to pederasty, whether mercenary or otherwise.

This is still an open question, though, so you should do your own reading.

>As I said, I grew up as Catholic as one can.

You also said you attended seminary for four years. One would think that you have studied the Summa upon immediate entry into your pre-theology.

>I actually studied for a year the Acts of the Apostles.

Then surely, as a former Seminarian, you have a Reverse Interlinear and a Greek Primer to study Scripture as in-depth as possible? Because, as every good seminarian knows, Scripture is written in Koine Greek, and we need to study various facets of language to understand the full meaning of what is recorded.

>Do I try to seek answers? Everyday I do. I visit /r/Christianity to check on discussions often

I would not qualify visiting an online forum as a means of seeking answers.

>I read a lot about the history of the Bible.

Whom have you read?

Surely, as a seminarian, you have read An Introduction to the New Testament by Brown and Reading the Old Testament by Boadt. Both are standard readings in seminary.

>I would never have known that creationism is a Jewish folklore.

Eh...I wouldn't say that "creationism if a Jewish folklore." I would say that Creationism is a non-Catholic interpretation of the Genesis myth (here I do not mean today's understanding of "myth").

Have you thought about reading any christian theology books? I find reading opposing perspectives and ideas helps to strengthen my own. If I can make a few recommendations...

The Reason for God - Timothy Keller

Jesus Among Other Gods - Ravi Zacharias

The End of Reason - Zacharias

Christian Apologetics - Norman Geisler

Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis

I would highly recommend everyone read Wayne Grudem's "Christian Beliefs". It's an abbreviated version of "Systematic Theology". Very short but concise overview of basic christian beliefs.

I can only recommend christian material as I haven't read a lot of other religious text. Christianity is the most relevant religion where I live, so understanding has been helpful in conversing with the religious folks around me.

I'd argue that Christianity is also batshit insane, despite how culturally accustomed we may be to that particular type of insanity, but I take your point.

I can't claim to understand Gödel's religious views and as I've said, without any supporting arguments for it, I'm not interested in his religious views. But I think it's worth pointing out that by their own admission very few theists believe what they believe based on evidence and reasoning, instead it's faith which underlies most theists' beliefs. Childhood indoctrination strongly insulates religious beliefs from critical analysis or questioning. Even intelligent, well educated theists can compartmentalise their religious ideas and protect them from the rigorous treatment they'd give to any other ideas they hold.

I suspect that this also applies in Gödel's case, although since (to my knowledge) he never wrote about his religious beliefs, we'll never know. If you're interested, Donald Knuth is an extremely well-known and respected computer scientist who arguably rivals Gödel on matters of logic. He's also a theist who has written about the basis for his religious beliefs and a textual analysis of the bible.

> The method doesn’t and can’t prove Paul wrote any of them.

i think you've missed the argument. someone wrote them, and literary criticism points to an ex-pharisee living around ~50 CE, an outsider to the early christian church who converted and began running gentile churches away from jerusalem. that person calls himself "paul", so we call him "paul" as well, because it's as good a name as any. even if he wasn't paul, he may as well be because all of the facts we can ascertain from critical readings of his texts basically match the description of the apostle paul. the author of these works is paul, by definition.

> Robert Price does and goes through them line by line showing how they suffer from a lot of the same problems as the forgeries do.

robert price isn't exactly a peer reviewed scholar here. he's a former theologian who went on a mythicist bent. he has some qualification, but it's not like he's submitting papers on why the pauline epistles are forgeries to biblical criticism journals.

> One example is Romans where “Paul” is writing to Rome, having not been there yet, and presuming anachronistically that there’s already an established church there.

corinthians is also sent to corinth, and indicates that there was already a church there. we know that christianity spread before paul. he was persecuting christians in damascus, 134 miles from jerusalem, more or less just prior to his conversion, which he places around the time others witnessed the resurrection. in fact, this itself might be a good argument in favor of mythicism. how is christianity spreading, when the historical jesus was one guy with a minor ministry in jerusalem?

> There were obviously different Christian sects floating around with different views

yes, and one of the reasons we think the early pauline letters are legitimate is because they are a different sect from the mainstream christians of the day. paul is an outsider, who disagrees with peter/cephas and james on some pretty important topics. the later works seek to harmonize their disputes into an orthodoxy, whereas the early texts show this dispute more clearly.

> but if Paul’s letters were before the gospels it wouldn’t make them “early” or force them into the first century necessarily. The gospels themselves were probably written in the second century themselves.

negative, the gospel of mark is written about 70 CE by all accounts. it is unquestionably first century; the other gospels less so. FWIW, i take a later date for luke than standard convention, because i think it's dependent on antiquities, ~93 CE. john may well be early second century. there's a problem with dating them much later, though. we know the contents of marcion's canon, ~130-140 CE. he had a modified version of luke as his gospel (there is debate over whether it reflects a revision of luke, or an earlier state), and the pauline epistles except the ones scholars universally agree are pseudepigraphical, and none of the pseudepigraphical catholic epistles. in any case, we know that mark was earlier than luke, because luke is based on mark and Q, and other minor sources.

> All the dating is based on taking elements of these letters and gospels at face value and that’s the problem.

it really is not. scholars do not think that paul is totally honest, particularly about his statements regarding the source of his gospel as revelation. rather, there are certain facts that paul has to make apologetics for, notably his late arrival to the church (not called by jesus during his lifetime), his prior persecution of christians, his low standing in the church, etc. we think these aspects are probably correct because why would you invent damning criticism for yourself? indeed, we think he is probably lying to some degree to downplay those things, claiming personal revelation rather than being taught by other christians. claiming he was called by the resurrected jesus, because he wasn't called by the living one. to say that scholars are "just taking these letters and gospels at face value" is to be hilariously ignorant of what scholarship is and does. like, it's the same argument that creationists make about biologists.

> Bible studies is a field dominated by Christians. Yeah there’s a handful of atheists/agnostics consisting of the Christians that went into the field and lost their faith.

there certainly are lots of christians, sure. but there's more than a handful of atheist/agnostic biblical scholars, not to mention jewish, muslim, hindu biblical scholars. people frequently are motivated to get into because of faith, but that doesn't mean it's a devotional field. it's not theology or apologetics. it's critical scholarship, literary and linguistic studies, and historical studies. same as any other academic field.

> In Galatians Paul says he met Peter and identifies him as an apostle.

three years after his revelation/conversion, and after preaching the gospel for three years in damascus. the whole point of that passage is that he didn't learn the gospel from human beings -- a claim which is obviously a lie. from there (see galatians 2) he claims it was 14 years before he actually met the twelve.

> You seem uninformed yet so valiantly want to rush out and defend Christianity and Ehrman’s unfounded claims for some reason.

oh yeah, i'm just another atheist biased by my christian faith.

> Paul doesn’t mention Pilate, or John the Baptist, or Herod or any other dating mechanism for the life of Jesus.

yes, that's correct. likely because paul doesn't really know these things.

> So how do they think Paul wrote in the 50s?

aside for relatively subtle/subject literary critical reasons involving stylistics, they, for instance, have exactly zero knowledge of the fall of the temple, outlawing of judaism, and the events of 66-70 CE. those would have been great arguments against the judaizers of the early church, but since they weren't around after 70 CE, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to argue against them.

> It’s by assuming the gospel narratives are true and putting Jesus into the typical window of time under Pilate and having Jesus die around 30ad. That’s not based on Paul now is it?

no, it's not. though it is compatible what paul says. we can extrapolate a timeline from his epistles. it's 17 years after his conversion before he claims he met the twelve, and the epistles are written after that event. corinthians seems to imply that his revelation happened shortly following the execution of jesus. so around 20 years prior to the epistles puts us around the mid 30s CE.

now, from non-christian sources, we have jesus's execution placed during the reign of tiberius (14-37 CE) under pontius pilate (26-36 CE). so it's a decent ballpark.

> Ehrman isn’t. He just takes the Christian fundamentalist view of Paul at face value and arrogantly dismisses anyone else that doesn’t. Robert Price on the other hand offers true critical scholarship and goes through these “7 undisputed Paul letters” line by line offering critical analysis.

uh, ehrman absolutely is a critical scholar. he literally wrote a booked "forged" on why the like half the epistles are forgeries and not just pseudepigraphical. like, claiming that the author of a book on why most of the new testament is a forgery is "just taking paul at face value" is patently ridiculous.

>the claims of christianity are quite extraordinary, and thereby requires extraordinary evidence or argumentation; I am sure that if any of these people had come up with a truly extraordinary argument I would have heard about it. I must conclude they have not.

My earlier point, when I mentioned both classical and contemporary philosophers/theologians, was to show you that christendom had already produced rigorous and rational reasons for the intellectual viability of the christian faith. From the fact that you haven't heard about these writings it does not necessarily follow that they are not compelling or true, or further, that they do not exist. Therefore, your deduction is invalid on this point.

>This in contrast with my limited experience with theology...I have examined the ideas and found them to be extremely wanting in terms of logic and evidence.

You seem to vacillate on whether you are actually familiar with christian thought. You seem to say that you have limited experience with it, and then claim that you find their defences to be illogical and wanting. Seeing as how you also claimed that you hadn't come across 'extraordinary' (i'll construe this as compelling) arguments for christianity, I can safely assume you aren't familiar with rigorous christian thought. This also means that the pool of information from which you deduce your conclusions is insuficient. I'll provide some links to some material to further your knowledge of the christian faith.

>Any open-minded child can see it, and it takes an adult mind to come up with the kind of contortions that pass for a defense of those ideas.

When it comes to questions that are religious or philosophical in nature, the answers are hardly simple. Any subject matter becomes increasingly sophisticated the more you develop it, and the same is with religion and philosophy. To expect otherwise is unfair at the least, and irrational at worst.

Per your request of your wishing me to delineate the founding principles of christianity, I will admit that I neither have the talent or the time to do them justice in this kind of setting. It should suffice that I affirm the nicean creed. As per your list, this should get you started:
God 1 and 2,
the Trinity,
Omniscience 1 and 2.
I'll construe your question of God and regret to the question on whether God can change. If that's fair, then these links may help.
Your question on how the OT and NT harmonize may come because you see the seemingly moral infractions that God causes in the OT versus the seemingly squishy and loving God in the NT. If this is the case, then maybe these links will help some.
For your question on the atonement, this may help.
The wikipedia article on original sin is pretty good, so read that for more info.
Your question on why the theist God is more plausible than other gods that humanity has come up with should become self-evident if you go through the material I have linked here.

>My basic argument will be this: it is possible to waste many words on these topics, but no essay can compete with the idea that it is simply made-up nonsense in terms of parsimony and consistency. Therefore, for anyone who values reason, that should be the default position.

Your position here is one that I find most unhelpful in this exchange. Unless you provide reasons or material on why christianity is "simply made-up nonsense", then your saying that "no essay (which I'll interpret as argumentation) can compete with [your] idea" actually boils down to circular argumentation. You really come across as saying that christianity is silly because it's obviously silly. That kind of assertion (not deduction) doesn't hold water; you have to provide reasons for why that should be the case. If you say that Occam's Razor is an intrinsic defeater for christianity, then you have to show me just how it defeats it. If you say christianity is illogical, then you have to show me how. Once you tell me how you came to those conclusion, I can understand where you're coming from and we can share/learn from one another.

I've given you stuff that I went through when learning about my faith so I've linked it to you. You may find it frustrating that I sent you material for you to go through yourself instead of my just typing it out. I did this because I don't think you've exposed yourself to enough material on christianity to substantiate the claims you make here. If you're going to hold your views, that's cool, but if you want to make huge claims like christianity is "baloney" or "illogical," then you have to be familiar with what you're going up against. Until you familiarize yourself with the material, I doubt our exchange would be useful; at least not until you are more forthcoming in telling me what you believe, why you believe it, and (for the purposes of this conversation) why you think (in detail) that christianity is baloney and illogical.

If you liked Dale Martin's class, you might also enjoy his book Sex and the Single Savior. It was interesting to me because both Dale and I are gay Christians. I thought he raised some interesting points.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0664230466/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1418422830&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Amazon Smile Link: http://smile.amazon.com/3-16-Bible-Texts-Illuminated/dp/0895792524


|Country|Link|Charity Links|
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|USA|smile.amazon.com|EFF|
|UK|www.amazon.co.uk|Macmillan|
|Spain|www.amazon.es||
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|Japan|www.amazon.co.jp||
|Canada|www.amazon.ca||
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|India|www.amazon.in||




To help donate money to charity, please have a look at this thread.

This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.

>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.

Good study bibles: The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible or The HarperCollins Study Bible.

Another good one for great insights into the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament): Jewish Study Bible

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

How to Think About God: A guide for the 20th Century Pagan

Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity

Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief

Biblical Games: Game Theory and the Hebrew Bible

The Probability of God: A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth

The Abolition of Man

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith


Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

Another potential good read for those interested:
Paul and the Faithfulness of God https://www.amazon.com/dp/0800626834/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_4-wJAbN6F1NS6

Most of it came from classes and lectures. I don't have the class book list and sources anymore. I do hope you really, really like reading!

Forged writingss

Misquoting Jesus A well known book.

Introduction to the new testiment

The new testament: a historical intoduction

Revelation and the End of All Things Also a somewhat popular book

You can also do some Wikipedia reading on Gnosticism and other early Christen sects to get an idea of just how many groups their were and how differing their beliefs could be. Also look for things on the Q, M and L source.

Edit

You can likely find a number of online pod-casts (or whatever you call them) and lectures on these things.

I am not a historian so my access to books and memorized sources is very limited, I am a student and have been accused of reading serial boxes at least once when I accidentally quoted the wrong book name, It was too much fun to make the correction as no one had ever said that too me before and I felt special, like I had hit an academic milestone.

Also, Don't feel bad about asking for sources.

I specially like Forged, it's the only book from Ehrman where he went out of his way to do actual original research. So it's unique from others in that regard. Pretty cool book in my opinion.

http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/B006QS02F8

Bart Ehrman has a number of good books on this subject. I just finished Misquoting Jesus and am in the middle of Forged. Ehrman has a nice writing style that is easy to read.

readthescriptures.com. There are recordings that you can listen to in the car on the way home and/or follow along with which might help. There is also a doubleday edition of the book of mormon that doesn't have the verses in it and flows with the story more. Grant Hardy's bofm readers edition has explanations https://www.amazon.com/dp/025207341X/ Lots of people study the scriptures via topics rather than just reading any of the books straight through. Elder Nelson suggested studying the words of the Savior. Here's a help for doing that: http://ldsgeo.org/ElderNelsonChallengeOnSteroids.php

Grant Hardy has created a Reader's Edition of the Book of Mormon where he has formatted the text (added paragraphs, indented quotations, formatted poetry) all to make it a lot easier to read. Much of the difficulty in reading the BoM comes from the fact that is is formatted into verses and columns that are hard to read. He also has a nice guide called Understanding the Book of Mormon which addresses themes and the narrative structure of the text.

>I'm looking for a Christian minded book, but preferably one that doesn't just talk about God through Christian legalistic eyes quoting solely scripture, but books that include science and philosophy as well. Or a book that compares religions thoroughly.

I'd recommend this:

Jesus Among Other Gods, Ravi Zacharias

>What if I told you the only group of Christianity that really opposed Evolution is a specific, small subset out of the world-wide population of Christians? It is only really prominent within Conservative Evangelical Christianity (which happens to be, unfortunately, the largest, the most vocal and the most influential religious demographic within the USA, world-wide however is a different story)

I wouldn't call them small considering the influence they wield in government.

>Would you be surprised if I told you that the evidence for Jesus' existence is so overwhelming that no serious Ancient History, Classics, or Christian/New Testament Studies department in any university would deny that he was a real figure?

There are scholars that have put forth the theory he is an amalgam of characters of history and I'm not sure they are wrong. This aside even if a person name Jesus existed in this time frame there is nowhere near the evidence to substantuate the claims of the Bible.

>Would it surprise you if I told you that we know there are contradictions, and that a lot of us don't think they are significant enough to undo our faith?

Nope... I found plenty of Christians willing to cherry pick what they believe, nothing new here.

>We have a lot more complex and nuanced view than simply "everything the Bible says is true" and "the Bible never contradicts itself".

How can you expect us to believe its the word of god if it doesn't demonstrate divine like qualities? For example if the Bible was readable regardless of your language to everyone without translation this would be evidence there is something more here.. Or perhaps if Bibles were impossible to destroy. Two things a divine, all powerful being could do in order to demonstrate there is something special about this book. Instead the Bible appears to be a poorly written book, riddled with contradictions and historical inaccuracies.


>However, scholars generally believe that the NT is basically reliable in giving an account of his life, and along with the external evidence provided, is enough to explain who Jesus was and what he did in his historical context.

Very wrong here. Please go read 'Who wrote the New Testament'
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Wrote-New-Testament-Christian/dp/0060655186

Try this. Paul reworked the Shema so that Jesus received a place of mention beside the Father. Also note how Paul sometimes treats them as interchangeable.

For non-biblical sources, N. T. Wright has put out a couple books on the subject: Jesus and the Victor of God is perhaps the most relevant, but his recent monster of a book Paul and the Faithfulness of God dedicates a portion of the book to Monotheism in Paul's thought. If you're into academic stuff you could give PatFoG a try, as it goes over historical research in the time as well. It's 1700 pages though.

Sure. In no specific order:

Book 1

Book 2

Book 3

Book 4


None of these are specifically Biblical history, as I'm sure you'll quickly gather. To fully grasp the Old Testament, however, there are a few important areas that one must be strong in (in my humble opinion, that is): Ancient Near East history, and the New Testament, and a general understanding of Judaism and its individual history.

I am another Christian who has read it. I know many others who have read it and have come to be more understanding of the atheistic viewpoint. I would also recommend it. :-)

I would also recommend for basic understanding of the Christian viewpoint:

• Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
  
• The Language of God - Francis Collins
  
• Jesus Among Other Gods - Ravi Zacharias
  
• The Case for Christ - Lee Strobel
  

Are you, like, 14? Have you never encountered a liberal Christian before? Is this only the first of what is sure to be ENDLESS discussions like this?

As I said, read this book:http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Bible-Again-First-Time/dp/0060609192/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319831658&sr=1-1

There is a version for you :)

Try either the

Reader’s Edition

or the

Study Edition

of the Book of Mormon, both by Grant Hardy. He’s a literary scholar who felt as you do.

For Greek:

I highly recommend Bill Mounce as a Biblical Language teacher. I used his books to help me get a grasp of the basics of Greek and they are hands down the most easily accessible.

• He has a Youtube Channel with free lessons in Koine Greek: LINK
  
  
• His book "Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar" is also very helpful and you can get a used copy for a reasonable price on Amazon: LINK
  
  
  For Hebrew:
  
  Unfortunately I don't know of many cheap Hebrew resources to recommend you. I learned the basics using "Biblical Hebrew Grammar" by Bailey and Strange but it seem as if this isn't in print anymore and the price for a copy has gone up significantly.
  
  
  
  
  

If you are interested in warfare, this magazine can very helpful:

http://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/cms/karwansaray/ancient-warfare/about.html

For general history, these books could be of use:

A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC: http://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-Near-East-3000/dp/1405149116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380612184&sr=1-1&keywords=ancient+middle+east

The Greeks in Bactria and India: http://www.amazon.com/Greeks-Bactria-Cambridge-Library-Collection/dp/1108009417/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380612297&sr=1-3&keywords=bactria

Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture: http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Near-Eastern-History-Culture/dp/032142297X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380612365&sr=1-3&keywords=Ancient+middle+east+history

Hope this is useful to you.

For the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, "The Jewish Study Bible" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Jewish-Study-Bible-Publication/dp/0195297512) has pretty fantastic analytical commentary. While I can't attest to the quality of the translation itself, the extensive discussion of the midrash and modern historical analyses may give you the sort of nuanced details that you're looking for.

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.

If you're at all interested in the bible, or dismantling the bible, you should read up on some christian theology ... your argument stems from certain preconceptions of Christianity which don't hold true for a majority of denominations. I mean really, you expect to Bible to be literal truth after being written by man and re-organized a bunch of times over thousands of years?

A good book is Reading the Bible Again for the First Time. It's a solid epistemological approach to understanding how and who the bible was written for. note: i'm not a christian.

Mostly what /u/koine_lingua said. I think a lot of people have recommended this book and the accompanying materials. I minored in Ancient Greek, so my preference is to study Attic Greek.

Since you will be on your own, I would recommend this vocab book. It will break vocab up into manageable sections and if you learn all the words in the book, BOOM, you know like 75% of the most frequent words. The Mounce materials have accompanying flash cards.

I'd see if any churches in your area have any classes or search YouTube for some grammar videos (I know of at least one series that does a fairly decent job).

All that being said, I'd caution you against any preconceived notions that you will obtain some esoteric hidden knowledge by learning this magical language. It's not necessary at all to understand the Bible. I enjoyed the language and in reading Homer, the plays, and some other documents. I also enjoy the knowledge base I have to better understand textual criticism, but it's not like I possess some mystical insight into God's revelation. That's Gnosticism.

Edit: I can't spell in English.

>Mostly what u/koine_lingua said. I think a lot of people have recommended this book and the accompanying materials. I minored in Ancient Greek, so my preference is to study Attic Greek.

Since you will be on your own, I would recommend this vocab book. It will break vocab up into manageable sections and if you learn all the words in the book, BOOM, you know like 75% of the most frequent words. The Mounce materials have accompanying flash cards.

I'd see if any churches in your area have any classes or search YouTube for some grammar videos (I know of at least one series that does a fairly decen job).

All that being said, I'd caution you against any preconceived notions that you will obtain some esoteric hidden knowledge by learning this magical language. It's not necessary at all to understand the Bible. I enjoyed the language and in reading Homer, the plays, and some other documents. I also enjoy the knowledge base I have to better understand textual criticism, but it's not like I possess some mystical insight into God's revelation. That's Gnosticism.

FTFY

>I've googled that and came up with nothing reliable I'd definitely be very interested in your source

I'm always willing to bet my academic and personal integrity as an ANE historian.

>>From a past reply on the problems with the Exodus Narrative

>The Exodus and actual Egyptology.

>In Search of 'Ancient Israel': A Study in Biblical Origins

>Biblical History and Israel S Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History

>The Oxford History of the Biblical World


>The section in the third link just below where I've had it link too about difficulties placing Egypt within the Exodus narrative is also fun.

I would also recommend to you two of Marc Van De Mieroops works:

A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC, 2nd Edition and A History of Ancient Egypt

Both are fairly accessible college entry level works on ANE and Egyptian history.

I believe that they are referring to The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition by Grant Hardy. His other book, Understanding the Book of Mormon is highly recommended by other redditors. /u/Karl_Marxxx

I'm a big N.T. Wright fan for the perspective he gives on the context and world of 2nd Temple Judaism and Jews in the Grecko-Roman world.

For more academic and lengthy reading, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. For more casual and accessible reading, Paul: A Biography

Donald Knuth books? I wonder if this counts: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0895792524?pc_redir=1395648537&robot_redir=1

And for bonus points, my dad has played volleyball with him.

Jesus Among Other Gods

and

Problem of Pain

are two that come to my mind. I think both are great reads for non-believers who were raised Christian or have a solid understanding of Christianity.

I second Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide.

One of the best Book of Mormon companions I have purchased, especially alongside his Readers Edition of the Book of Mormon, which removes the verses and organizes the book into chapters that are grouped appropriately and the poetic parts of the book into a format instantly recognized.

I have learned more from this work than any other Book of Mormon verse-by-verse study guide. We often get stuck in a specific study format for the scriptures. This 'Reader's Guide' produces a different way read that may entice some that need some new encouragement.

Start here.

Erhman is a smart, (brutally) honest, reputable theologian

http://www.amazon.ca/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/B006QS02F8

Funny, I was looking for the same thing today. I didn't find one that covers the entire period you asked for (I think it's too large a period for just one book) but the one that I ended up considering was A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC. Unfortunately it's a bit too expensive for me so I only saved it to my wish list but looking at the table of content it was exactly what I was looking for. I think this book together with another covering the history of Rome should be enough for a decent coverage of the entire period you're interested in.

Here is a fine short book on covenant theology.

https://www.amazon.com/Far-Curse-Found-Covenant-Redemption/dp/0875525105

This is also great.

https://www.amazon.com/Christ-Covenants-Palmer-Robertson/dp/0875524184

My understanding is that, theologically, there are two major groups of Jews today: Reform and Orthodox. The Orthodox are the fundamentalists who generally take the Jewish Bible as literally true. Reform Jews are much more numerous and much more liberal, and would not see the early chapters of Genesis as literally true.

I picked up a copy of The Jewish Study Bible a few years ago, when I started watching the Yale Online courses on the Old Testament (because that was the translation recommended by the professor). And the commentary in this version will tell you that these stories in Genesis are not literally true.

> 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.

I've found the OT background commentary to be a helpful place to begin. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament https://www.amazon.com/dp/0830814191

You could then move to Walton's Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801027500

This is much more in depth, but could be another good place to go if you end up looking for more. The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801039185/

I have been struggling with the same exact things...My eyes were opened by this article about Pauls perception of the Old Testament God. This is also a very common struggle amongst many Christians.
http://sojo.net/magazine/2012/01/way-peace-and-grace

Also, a really good recent book is out called "Is God a Moral Monster" by Paul Copan.
http://www.amazon.com/Is-God-Moral-Monster-Testament/dp/0801072751

Both of these are definitely worth reading.

This is interesting. I picked up the Grant Hardy edition of the BoM a little while ago, I might have to grab this one to compare.

How about this?

Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization

It covers from 4000 BCE to the conquest of Babylon by Cirus in 539 BCE.

Also:

The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures



A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323BC

I have all of them and I can't really recommend them because I haven't started them yet :P (they're still on my reading queue, tho)

EDIT: The last one seems pretty comprehensive. Just looked at its table of contents and remembered why I bought it.

EDIT 2: You could go to /r/AskHistorians and ask the same question.

O' Palmer Robertson's Christ of the Covenants is your best bet.

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.

Here's what I read in my grad school class. This is probably the best place to start IMO. Link.

I love the Reader's Edition.

For those not familiar with it, here is a description:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Mormon-Readers-Edition/dp/025207341X

>"Grant Hardy's new "Reader's Edition" has reformatted the complete, unchanged 1920 text in the manner of modern translations of the Bible, with paragraphs, quotation marks, poetic forms, topical headings, multichapter headings, indention of quoted documents, italicized reworkings of biblical prophecies, and minimized verse numbers."

Here's an example that shows the unobtrusive chapter markings and displays the poetic form, and Hardy's section headings: http://i.imgur.com/SrYHNZ8.png

John Walton is the best here. Check out his Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

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

Here is a good visual of Gerhardus Vos' two age eschatology:
http://learningandlivingtheword.com/documents/twoagemodel.pdf

Lots in this book as he outlines the development of God's kingdom through the Bible:
https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Big-Picture-Tracing-Storyline/dp/0830853642

Here is the most compact summary of covenant theology I have come across:
https://imgur.com/a/YHEJb

Edit 1:

Here is a good one on Christ's Humiliation and Exaltation: http://apostles-creed.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/exaltation-humiliation-1024x617.gif

This one is okay - Its the work of the Triune God in salvation: http://apostles-creed.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/trinity-salvation-saving-grace-plan-1024x617.gif

Christ's threefold office: http://apostles-creed.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/prophet-priest-king-1024x617.gif

>Exhibit A: The Flood
>Exhibit B: The Amalekites
>Satan makes good points.

I would primarily direct you to this book Is God a Moral Monster? by Paul Copan as it uses respected scholarly information to help explain the appearance of a wicked Old Testament God.

As for the flood, supposing that God is real and authoritative, doesn't he have the responsibility to be just? Sin requires punishment, so God as the righteous judge enacts that punishment when he deems fit. Every instance of judgment (including the flood) is preceded by many attempts by God to get people turn back from evil and trust in him.

>Inasmuch as "you have the 'free will' to prostrate yourself before God (the architect of exhibits A and B above) or be punished" goes, I suppose.

Hell is commonly described as punishment but it is simply God giving us exactly what we want, total separation from him.

These two are probably the most respected in academia. If you want to get just one, I'd go with the NRSV for both Jewish Bible and New Testament.

Just the TANAKH (Old Testament): The Jewish Study Bible: Featuring The Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation

TANAKH and New Testament (The Christian Bible): The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version

If it's textual criticism you're interested in and you're just starting out, I'd recommend the following two books to wet your appetite. They both will have bibliographies to get you deeper into the study as you wish.

David C. Parker. An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts. (ISBN: 978-0521719896)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521719895/

Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. Fourth Edition. (ISBN: 978-0195161229)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/019516122X/