Reddit mentions: The best christian biographies

> The hypothesis is "God exists". If that is incompatible with Abrahamic theology, then I've been way off track for a long time.

I would say that is possible. I know I was off track for a long time in the past wrt/ this subject. Because as a Westerner, I first learned a lot about Middle Eastern philosophy from Westerners. but there are a lot of misconceptions abound.

If you are truly interested in understanding Abraham's philosophy, I highly recommend this book. It's both educating and entertaining. Also, it provides a fairly unbiased view, by interviewing experts from all 3 of the main branches of Abrahamic theology.

http://www.amazon.com/Abraham-Bruce-Feiler/dp/0060518634

> If you mean by "independent" that God is not created by his creation, that is surely true, but it has no relevance to the problem of evil.

"Good" and "evil" are man-made ideas, they are arbitrary qualities you can ascribe to something. They don't have independent existence of their own.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the forbidden tree in the "garden" of eden was named the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil".

There's a great book that will get you started:

https://www.amazon.com/Abraham-Historical-Biography-David-Rosenberg/dp/B000W91DAU/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501000421&sr=1-7&keywords=abraham&refinements=p_n_feature_browse-bin%3A2656020011

Awesome read.

As one who has read a good bit about this topic, your assessment of corruption of our New Testament is incorrect.

I will direct you to a great resource: The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by FF Bruce

What FF Bruce shows is that the basis of our NT text, the Greek critical text is beyond a shadow of a doubt, incredibly accurate to what the original texts said. We know this through a number of scientifically proven methods for determining copyist errors, and comparing older vs. newer texts for accuracy.

>I’m not positive about that, as I have never read the Septuagint, Dead Sea scrolls, or various unabridged gospels of Jesus’ friends. Have you?

I have read much of the Septuagint in comparison to the OT, as well as a decent amount from the Dead Sea scrolls. One of my professors in college was the guy responsible for getting the DSS released to the public.

>Secondly, like making a copy of copies, the details and nuances get lost over time/translations.

See the book I referenced. This is not true of what we have with the NT documents. They represent some of the most accurate documents we have, unparalleled for centuries after.

You should read the book.
https://www.academia.edu/39351777/The_Book_of_Knowledge_The_Keys_of_Enoch_by_J._J._Hurtak_Hardcover

The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch https://www.amazon.com/dp/0960345035/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_t-UVDbRWQRTAE

Passover was a huge party/family reunion for the Jewish people in Jesus's time. Pilate wanted to get through his time as Governor of Judea without too many problems. Trouble was, Pilate had problems over Passover in the past. A couple years prior to Jesus coming into town there was a person who was presented as the Messiah. The Jewish people started rioting and Pilate sent Roman Centurions to calm down the people. A few of the Roman Soldiers got killed. That was not a good thing to happen in Pilate's Province. He decided he was not going to let that happen again. In order to avoid the riots Pilate decided to be more proactive and he would have Jesus arrested before he stirred up the people too much.

If you are interested, this book gives you a good bio of Pontius Pilate and is an easy read.