Reddit mentions of The Bible As Literature: An Introduction

The fact that you said "I follow some things in the Bible" and that people to tell you "to follow the Bible to a 'T'" shows me that you haven't been presented with decent exegesis. The Bible isn't an instruction booklet - so while people shouldn't be telling you to treat it as such, you shouldn't discount it because it's been presented to you that way. Instead of just saying that the authors of Scripture "had no idea what the fuck they were taking about", you could consider digging into it a little deeper.

Check this out if you really think the authors were just loonies who didn't know what they were writing:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bible-As-Literature-Introduction/dp/0195179072/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1343109255&sr=8-2&keywords=bible+as+literature

The Bible as Literature. This is a good book to read along with a Bible if you want to learn more about what you're reading--for instance, you'll learn about the J and P authors of Genesis 1, that the two creation stories/flood stories in Genesis I were written about 400 years apart (if I remember right) by these two different authors etc. Lots of great information.

Spiritually, yes. Physically, most likely not.

If my memory serves correct Paul was persecuting Christians right before his conversion about 40 years after Jesus' death. It's been a while since I read the history, but he most def did not meet him face to face.

The religion course I took was embedded deep with historical understandings of what we knew for sure and what was specifically ideology and belief. I suggest reading the book required for the course which was fascinating and a great introduction to the Bible as a history text.

The Bible as Literature: An Introduction

Though the title suggests an analysis as a "fiction book" or something like that, it's actually a great overview as to how the Bible came to be the book we know today--going back to scripts of the Jews in Roman times, and long before that. Later, it expands how it was translated and how the earliest translations into Greek (which were later used for the King James translation) misunderstood a lot of Jewish culture, hence adding to more bad translations.

It can be a little dry if you're not that big on the subject, but that's because it is a scholarly book and well-researched; it's not looking to preach that Christians are bad or wrong, it's a piece searching for an understanding of the Bible as a historical document.

> "what things in the Bible are corroborated by other historical sources."

That wasn't the original question. It was/is "What FACTS are IN the Bible" Key word is IN the Bible.

1. It is 100% fact that the Catholic church believes they owe their doctrine to Peter. Whether he lived or not isn't the question or the fact that I was pointing to. It was that he is the ROCK of the church.
   
   
2. In This book you will find proof that scholars agree that the letters to Corinthians were all written by the same person in the same era. Whether it was Paul or not is unknown. Once again I only said they were written by the same person.
   
   
3. Saul changing the path to Christianity by not enforcing circumcision is the hardest to find no religious documentation on. However, just like #1 (Peter) you just have to ask the millions of Christians and "THEY believe" this to be a factual history of their faith.
   
   I wasn't pointing to any arbitrary facts. These were all as provable as evolution. We've never actually seen a bird change its body or features (without human interference) to adjust to its new environment. We've only come to the conclusion based on the evidence presented to us in fossils and by comparing like specimens. We've seen dominant genes take hold in plants and animals, but this was through human interference only. So, we take these "facts" as truth because we are told that is what science tells us. Well Religious history tells us that these three are facts also. And we all know that the winners write the history books. Christianity won for many eons. Just because people have lost any faith in them as a whole doesn't make the history less true. Well at least until we find something to disprove its truth.
   
   To back that last statement I can point to accepted facts on dinosaurs and Lucy specifically. Both 50 years ago were thought to be one fact. Since then they have become a new reality. Why? Not because they were inherently wrong, but because scientists proved the original doctrine to be false. We may find that about Christian history, but until we do that is all we have to go on. Find facts that 2000 years of historical FACT is wrong and people will follow you to the new promise land.