Reddit mentions: The best old testament bible study books

> How did you come to the conclusion that God doesn't exist?

The person making a positive claim assumes the burden of proof. Your Christian friend rejected the null hypothesis that {supernatural deities exist} and accepted the alternate hypothesis that {supernatural deities exists}. What evidence is there to support/justification of the null hypothesis and accept the alternate?

Ask your friend to please present the reasons they believe in the God Horus. If you have evidence to support Horus as your God, evidence that is verifiable and falsifiable, or a philosophical argument that can actually be shown to be linked to a natural physicalistic causality-limited universe, evidence that is not an emotional or feeling based subjective experience based upon confirmation bias from prior knowledge of what your "God" image may be, please feel free to present it.

How is that justification for belief in Horus coming along?

I don't think the Christian believes in Horus. And this is the basis for the atheism worldview.

It's not so much the evidence that one can provide (unless you will accept the 'lack of evidence' as evidence) for atheism. Rather it is such an overwhelming lack of any credible evidence that one can identify, or is put forth by others, to support a belief in supernatural deities. One cannot justify rejection of the null hypothesis that {supernatural deities do not exist} and accept/justify/support the alternative hypothesis that {supernatural deities do exist}.

It is possible to argue that this same position can be used for a theist to justify their belief structure over other differing theistic positions, as many theists claim that they believe based upon a feeling or emotion and/or have Religious Faith (i.e., religious belief without evidence) that supernatural deities are real and that their religious belief in supernatural deities is correct.

However, this position of Religious Faith for their own religious worldview is often the same reason they do not subscribe or believe in many other theistic worldviews - there is no evidence to support belief in the supernatural deities of other religious worldviews; they do not have Faith in other supernatural deities. For example, do adherents to any of the following example supernatural deity triads accept or propose belief in the existence of the other triads listed to which they do not have Religious Faith (or belief without evidence)?

• Egyptian: Osiris, Isis, Horus<br />

• Canaanite – Early Israelite: El the Father God, Asherah the Wife/Consort (depicted as a Serpent), Baal-Hadad
  
• Hindu Trimurti: Brahma - the Creator, Vishnu - the Maintainer, Shiva - the Destroyer
  
• Olympian Greek Religion: Zeus, Athena, Apollo
  
• Roman Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno, Minerva
  
• Sumerian: Anu, Ea, Enlil
  
• Babylonian: Shamash, Ishtar, Tammuz
  
• Christianity: Yahweh, Holy Spirit, Jesus
  
  Related statement concerning the belief in "God": We are all functionally atheists, there just is no evidence to justify support of one, or more, (depending on mono- vs. poly-theistic beliefs) supernatural deity(ies) than a Christian, a theist does.
  
  > Return and repent before its too late. Death may be around the corner...
  
  Pascal's Wager? But let's take that self-serving piece of shit statement at face value - What is the purpose of an infinite eternity in Heaven?
  
  Why? Or better, why strive for Heaven?
  
  What is Heaven? According to Christianity, heaven is the purpose of all things. Heaven is the reason we live. Heaven is the reason Christ came and the reason he died for our sins. Heaven is the motivator of all of the apostles. Nothing is more important than heaven. Family, love, money, all of these things come second to heaven. [Source]
  
  Then;
  
  What is the purpose of Heaven? Heaven is life in its perfected state. We, as creatures of God, are not designed to live in an imperfect world. We are designed to live in a world free from the corruption of sin. We are designed to live in the presence of God where we are free to worship, socialize, and discuss. This life is only a temporary existence. Heaven is where we can exist forever. The day heaven’s gates are opened is the day we begin our lives, not here on earth. The purpose of heaven is to provide a place for us to live. [Source]
  
  Then;
  
  What is the purpose of living for eternity in a perfected state with God? In a perfected state with God to provide all it would be Eternally Perfect (and ultimately, Undifferentiated) Bliss, all there is to be known would become known; eternal life in Heaven would quickly become static, unchanging, unremarkable and boring spent in worship of God. Eternal life is ultimately pointless and without merit.
  
  The real question is: Ultimately, what is the difference between heaven and hell?
  
  Nothing. Against an infinite eternity, Heaven and Hell are interchangeable.
  
  ----
  
  Here are some suggestions for Christian debate topics:
  
  
• The actions attributed to God in the bible are all of a positive morality
  
• Yahweh is and always been the one and only true God
  
• The purpose of an infinite eternity in heaven and why that purpose is good for those in heaven
  
• Evidence to support the mind-body dualism of a soul
  
• Evidence to support that the Christian God is the creator of the universe and still intervenes within the universe in a meaningful way
  
• Present a coherent definition of God and show how free will is possible (or impossible) under that construct
  
• Evidence to support the resurrection of Christ that is non-Biblical
  
• Why has prayer never resulted in the healing of an amputee to include at least one healed and fully finctional bone joint?
  
• How the conclusion of the parable of the Ten Minas concludes with a positive morality:
  
  Luke 19:27 But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them — bring them here and kill them in front of me.
  
  
• Genesis 3 (if you are a Genesis literalist) - Justify Christian morality against the Serpent (or Adversary) giving humankind morality (knowledge of good and evil) when God/Yahweh had decreed that humankind was not to have morality (forbid humans to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil).
  
• Why the divine or inspired word of God and Christ and the Spirit was so directed and appropriate for a small low-population tribe of desert dwellers with it's late bronze age/early iron age society applies to today's society.
  
• Why the overwhelming majority of Christians, in the one true religion for the one true and only God, seem to be only located in geo-political-socio-groups that they were born, and indoctrinated, into rather than distributed throughout other regions where other religions are prominent.
  
• Does God have free will?
  
• Why worship a God, Yahweh/YHWH, as the one true and only mono-theistic God when all historical documentation shows that Yahweh did not start out as anything more than a subordinate desert rain/fertility/warrior god to the Canaanite/Ugarit people that would later become known as Israelites (and hence to Jews and from there Christians and Muslims). During the period that Genesis and Exodus (1450-1410 BCE'ish) were (supposedly) being written, represented a time when the religion of the region was still in convergence, differentiation and displacement (synthesis and syncretism) of the polytheistic triad of the most prominent Canaanite and Ugarit Gods: El (the father God), Asherah (goddess, wife or companion to El), and Baal (storm/rain God, son of El) [though there is reference in Ugarit documents to Yahweh also being one of the sons of El] to the monolatry of the storm/rain God Yahweh and from there to monotheistic worship where Yahweh took the supreme position. References to Gods that predate, and are contemporary to, Yahweh can be found throughout the old testament.
  
  More online references with discussion the origin of the monotheistic God of Israel:
  
  
• Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel
  
• The Origins and Gradual Adoption of Monotheism Amongst the Ancient Israelites
  
• The evolution of God
  
• Ugarit and the Bible
  
  Other:
  
  
• The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark Smith
  
• The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith
  
• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  
• The Religion of Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel) by Patrick D. Miller
  
• Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches by Ziony Zevit
  
  

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.

----

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.

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

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

• Young Earth, 6-day creation: The Earth is only about 6,000-10,000 years old, and God created the universe and everything we see in 6 24-hr days.
  
• Old Earth, 6-day creation: The universe is 13 billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and God created it all in 6 days 13 billion years ago.
  
• Day-Age Theory: Each of the “days” of creation in Genesis aren’t literal days, but they represent long eras. For instance, the first “day” of creation (creation of light) could have been billions of years in the making. But each age follows the sequence as outlined in Genesis 1.
  
• Gap Theory: Genesis 1.1, like the first phase of creation, happened billions of years ago. Then something cataclysmic happened, and it was all turned “formless and void,” and God started the second phase of creation in Genesis 1.2, which happened more recently.
  
• Evolutionary Creationism: God created the universe and all that we see, but he used the processes of the Big Bang and evolution to created everything we see. If this is the position one takes, Genesis 1 is about how God ordered the universe to function (light functions to give us day, the Earth functions to bring forth vegetation, the heavenly bodies function to give us seasons, etc.), not about how He manufactured it. He certainly created (manufactured) it, but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about.
  
  At the same time, there are 6 different ways to define “evolution.” Only #6 is completely contrary to Christianity.
  
  
  
• The ancient earth thesis, some 4.5 billion years old
  
• The progress thesis: The claim that life has progressed from relatively simple to relatively complex forms. In the beginning there was relatively simple unicellular life. Then more complex unicellular life, then relatively simple multi-cellular life (seagoing worms, coral, jellyfish), then fish, then amphibia, then reptiles, birds, mammals, and human beings.
  
• Descent with modification: The enormous diversity of the contemporary living world has come about by way of offspring differing, ordinarily in small and subtle ways, from their parents.
  
• Common ancestry thesis: Life originated at only one place of earth, all subsequent life being related by descent to those original living creatures—the claim that, as Gould puts it, there is a “tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy.” According to this theory, we are all cousins of each other—and indeed of all living things (horses, bats bacteria, oak trees, poison ivy, humans.
  
• Darwinism: There is a naturalistic mechanism driving this process of descent with modification: the most popular candidate is natural selection operating on random genetic mutation, although some other processes are also sometimes proposed.
  
• Naturalistic origins thesis: Life itself developed from non-living matter without any special creative activity of God but just by virtue of processed described by the ordinary laws of physics, chemistry, and biology.
  
  So how can the Bible and evolution go together? Very easily if we take Christian position #5 and evolutionary positions #1-5. As long as we keep God as the central and necessary sovereign intelligence, power, person, and morality in the process, I don’t see where it’s a problem.
  
  I subscribe to the interpretation of Genesis 1-2 laid out by Dr. John Walton in “The Lost World of Genesis 1” (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=john+walton&qid=1564575785&s=gateway&sr=8-2). Briefly reporting, in it he asserts that Genesis 1 is about how God ordered the cosmos to function, not how He manufactured it. Certainly God created the universe (as taught in other verses in the Bible), but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about.
  
  The first "day" is clearly (literally) about a *period* of light called day, and a *period* of light called night. It is about the sequence of day and night, evening and morning, literally. Therefore, what Day 1 is about is God ordering the universe and our lives with the function of TIME, not God creating what the physicists call "light," about which the ancients knew nothing.
  
  
  Look through the whole chapter. It is about how the firmament functions to bring us weather (the firmament above and below), how the earth functions to bring forth plants for our sustenance, how the sun, moon, and stars function to order the days and seasons. We find out in day 6 the function of humans: to be fruitful and multiply, to rule the earth and subdue it. Walton contends that we have to look at the text through ancient eyes, not modern ones, and the concern of the ancients was function and order. (It was a given that the deities created the material universe.) The differences between cultures (and creation accounts) was how the universe functioned, how it was ordered, and what people were for. (There were large disagreements among the ancients about function and order; it widely separates the Bible from the surrounding mythologies.)
  
  
  And on the 7th day God rested. In the ancient world when a god came to "rest" in the temple, he came to live there and engage with the people as their god. So it is not a day of disengagement, but of action and relationship.
  
  
  In other words, it's a temple text, not an account of material creation. There was no temple that could be built by human hands that would be suitable for him, so God ordered the entire universe to function as his Temple. The earth was ordered to function as the "Holy Place," and the Garden of Eden as his "Holy of Holies." Adam and Eve were given the function of being his priest and priestess, to care for sacred space (very similar to Leviticus) and to be in relationship with God (that's what Genesis 2 is about).
  
  
  You probably want to know about the seven days. In the ancient world ALL temple dedications were 7-day dedications, where what God had done to order his world was rehearsed, and on the 7th day God came to "rest" in his temple—to dwell with his people and engage with them as their God. That's what the seven days mean.
  
  
  Back to evolution. Therefore Gn 1-2 make no comment on *how* the material world came about, or how long it took. We need science to tell us that. We need Gn 1-2 to tell us what it's there for (God's temple) and how it is supposed to function (to provide a place of fellowship between God and humans, and to bring God glory as an adequate temple for his Majesty).
  
  
  Feel free to discuss this. For those who have never heard these ideas, it takes a little adjusting. But they make a whole lot of sense to me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>> When God began to create heaven and earth—

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

>> God said, “Let there be light”;

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

>> When the Lord God made earth and heaven—

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

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

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

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

>> Enuma Elish, Babylon

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

> The new testament begins with the words biblos geneseos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

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

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

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

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

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


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

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

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

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

https://leavingjw.org

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

Here's another bunch of podcasts about JWs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's another side of the coin. Not necessarily to drag you out of the cult, but just some very awesome, beautiful truths. If you've seen me post this before, i apologize. I don't like to assume everyone reads every thread.

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

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

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

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

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

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

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


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

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that is where rainbows come from.

Young Earth Creationists start with the conclusion that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the inspired word of God, without any error, and absolutely true in all that it says. And they believe the whole of the Pentateuch is straight-forward history. In my opinion, they regard it that way because they honestly can't conceive of any other [legitimate] way to interpret it.

And I'll admit it's hard. It's hard because our culture (20th/21st Century, American/Western European, Post-Enlightenment) only has a couple of categories for things. Best to use the language of the new Common Core...we have "literature" and "informational texts". And "literature" equals "fiction". So, if anything is supposed to be "true" (that is, "factual") than it must be read like an informational text. That is, whatever it says must be read as "literal".

(I'm sorry for all the box-quotes, but a big part of the problem, apart from categories, is the words we use--like "literal". I think N.T. Wright says a mouth-full in this clip with Peter Enns, where he says that what people usually mean by "literal" is "concrete", vs. abstract.)

As I said, the YEC's read Genesis as straight-forward history, because they don't have any other way (I think) to be faithful to the witness of Scripture as the true word of God. They don't have any other category to interpret it in. They wish (they are impelled) to regard it as true, but in doing so, they suppose the inspired author must have meant it to be a dry recitation of facts; i.e. this happened then this happened, etc.

They're reading Genesis through post-enlightenment, 20th century eyes. There shouldn't be any doubt about this, since Young Earth Creationism, of the Ken Ham, Henry Morris, ICR variety only had its beginning in the last century.

There is a great deficiency in our schools, and there has been for a very long time. Most of us are unable to separate myth from fiction. Or literature from fiction.

So, what's my opinion of YEC's. I think they ought to be commended for their faith in God and for their defense of His inspired word. But they need to be marinated in the whole history of the Church and the people of God, in order that they may begin to understand what it was--what truth--it was that the inspired author of Genesis wished to communicate.

I think John Walton is an important read in this respect. He takes his reader back to the time, and the mindset, of the people by whom and for whom these texts were written. I particularly recommend his book, "The Lost World of Genesis One.

Another important point, though, has to do with when these texts were written. Or, to whom they were written.

What's interesting, as Fr. John Behr points out in one of his talks (maybe not the one I've linked to) is that Adam, Eve, Noah, etc, really aren't mentioned in the whole of the Old Testament after those first 11 chapters. Maybe a genealogy here or there, but there's more emphasis on these personages in the letters of Paul and Peter than there is in the whole sacred texts of Israel prior to the exile. And has been often pointed out, the stories in the first eleven chapters of Genesis seem to borrow from, and refer to, Babylonian motifs. Might it be (perhaps) that Israel knew nothing of these stories before the Babylonian captivity? Might it be that they were therefore written by and to Jews returned from Babylon in the middle of the first millennium B.C. with the intent that they teach a theological, rather than an historical, truth?

I say "perhaps" and I say it advisedly. Because I'm not ready to dismiss the historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis completely out of hand. But what I will say, is that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are literature, they are figurative, and they are meant to reveal deeper and more substantial truths than any bear recitation of historical facts could convey.

And I think that when YEC's interpret these chapters "literally", they do the inspired author (and themselves) a disservice, though their hearts may be in the right place.

Hello and welcome! Indoctrination in most cults can leave a person bitter about the world around them. Learning the actual facts about reality, the universe, and humanity is a good way to counter those negative feelings in my experience. Not sure how much of this applies to you, but here are my recommendations for de-indoctrinating yourself:

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

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The high God of Israel was accompanied by lesser Gods at the start of creation.^1

|Job 38:4-7

-------|:-----|:-----
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?|
Tell me, if you have understanding.|
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!|
Or who stretched the line upon it?|
On what were its bases sunk,|
or who laid its cornerstone|
when the morning stars sang together|
and all the heavenly beings^a shouted for joy?"|
^a Heb sons of God|

The Israelite religion is heavily based off of the pantheon of the Canaanites:

Excerpt from HarperCollins with added notes:

>“By a remarkable act of theological reduction, the complex divine hierarchy of prior polytheistic religion was transformed into the authority of a sole high god in classical Israelite religion. YHWH…was not, however, the only god in Israelite religion. Like a king in his court, Yahweh was served by lesser deities, variously called “the Sons of God,”^a “the host of heaven,”^b and similar titles. This “host” sometimes fought battles of holy war…^c and were also represented as stars…^d These lesser deities attended Yahweh is heaven…^e Another category of divine beings consists of the messenger gods or angels. The angels carry Yahweh’s messages to earth…^f In later biblical books, the sons of God and the angels merge into a single category and proliferate…^g ”^2

The high God of the Israelite religion by no means served alone. This triple hierarchy (YHWH, the Sons of God/heavenly host, and messenger gods/angels) “derives from the earliest structure of Canaanite religion.”^2

The differences: the Canaanites worshiped El and his wife Asherah as the high gods. YHWH took on most of the traits of El, and Asherah was no longer worshiped, “although there are hints in some texts that she was worshiped as a goddess in some times and places.”^2 While El was highest authority in the pantheon, some the children of El were prominent deities. On the other hand, the sons of God in the Israelite religion are “demoted to a class of relatively powerless beings.”^2

On the subject of polytheism, the text also seems “to acknowledge that gods of other nations exist.”^2 Each nation has its own God that it worships, "but Yahweh is Israel’s god and is the greatest god.”^2 See Deuteronomy 32

Deuteronomy 32:8⌂|

-------|:-----|:-----
When the Most High apportioned the nations,|
when he divided humankind,|
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples|
according to the number of the gods|

as an instance of God "delegating authority [to the heavenly beings] to govern other nations". ^3 The Israelites would then originally be monolatrists, meaning they worshiped one high God without denying the existence of others. Re-read the First Commandment

|Exodus 20:2-3⌂

-------|:-----|:-----
|I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before^a me.|
|^a Or besides

for a different understanding of God’s commandment. This is by far the greatest difference in my opinion between the early Israelites’ understanding of God and modern Jews and Christians.

---

Notes:

|^a see Gen 6:2-4; Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7; Psalm 29:1 (list here)

|^b see Deut 4:19, 17:3; 1 King 22:19; 2 King 17:16, 21:3, 21:5, 23:4; 2 Chr 18:18, 33:3, 33:5; Neh 9:6, 24:21; Isa 34:4; Jer 8:2, 33:22; Dan 4:25, 8:10, 1:15 (list here)

|^c see Josh 5:13-15⌂

|^d see Judg 5:20⌂; Job 38:7⌂

|^e “I saw YHWH sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him” (1 King 22:19⌂)

|^f see Gen 28:12⌂

|^g “a thousand thousands served him” (Dan 7:10⌂)

---
Works Cited:

|^1 H. W. Attridge, ed., The HarperCollins Study Bible, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p. 13, annotation to 6:1-4.

|^2 Ronald Hendel, "Israelite Religion, God and the Gods", The HarperCollins Study Bible. H. W. Attridge, ed., (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), p. xliv-lv.

|^3 B. M. Metzger, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible, (New York: Oxford UP, 1991), p. 261, annotation to 32:8.

---

Further Readings:

"Israelite Religion", HarperCollins Study Bible


A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman.


Canaanite religion (Wikipedia)

The notion of the Trinity is something that really has no analog in our experience. I think to understand this it requires, at minimum, a shift in thinking about what it means to be God. Typically when people hear that there is one God, the implicit assumption is that God exists as a singular instance. I think the shift is to think about God not as being equivalent with an instance, but an essence which can exist in multiple instances.

To be God means to partake in the essence of God; i.e., to have the attributes of God (eternality, aseity, omniscience, omnipotence, moral perfect, etc...) If you make this shift, it becomes more intelligible how there can be one essence that is God (monotheism) yet three persons who partake in that essence (the Trinity).

Just in the same way that the color red is a singular property, yet there are many instances of things which participate in having the property of being red. If I have three red chairs of exactly the same color, I would not say there are three colors among my chairs. I would say there is one color, red, and three chairs which are red. In the same way I believe when we say there is one God, we refer to the property, or set of properties that comprise the essence of what God is. It turns out that there are three persons who hold that essence. So there is one God (the essence), but three people (the instances) who are God.

It can still be hard for us to understand precisely what this means. I think it's helpful to think of a person in terms of consciousness. So when we say there are three people who are God, we are saying something like that there are three distinct conscious beings who each share God's essential properties, such that they are unified by that same essence. They are one God in the sense that they are united by the same attributes, the same will, the same personality features of love and justice, and so on. Yet they are distinct persons in that they do not share the same subjective experience, can be in community with one another, and can interact amongst each other in a way that is not equivalent to you talking to yourself alone in a room.

Ultimately because the Trinity has no earthly analog it will always be something of a mystery. I think if we had examples of such a tripersonal being in our earthly experience it would not be so much of a paradox. I don't believe that the notion is logically incoherent but it can be difficult to apprehend due to a lack of analogs.

I recommend you read The Deep Things of God by Fred Sanders.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​

Science fiction-

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

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

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

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

​

Fantasy-

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

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

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

​

Manga -

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

​

Non-Fiction-

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

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

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

​

Audiobooks -

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

​

Academic biblical studies-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use this to get legitimate sources.


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

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

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

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

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

Good Luck.

Well I think all kinds of sources are needed. "Enemies" of a religion might not be fair minded, but many intelligent critiques of religions are not by enemies. Also believers are highly unlikely to highlight (or even acknowledge) obvious problems with their religion.

The best sources are the original documents or as close to those as exist. I.e. the best critique of the Bible is the Bible, etc. Applying scientific and logical thinking (i.e. thinking which actually attempts to check itself against bias and coincidence) to original texts has left no good religion unsullied.

Or maybe the best source would always be a faithful graphic novel of the original sources. This seems to bring the wackiness of Genesis to life in a humorous way:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260227764&sr=8-4

> I think the Old Testament is invalid for numerous grave historical inaccuracies

It's not the topic here, but for the sake of discussion (not debate), I'll share that I researched the field for years and found enough scholarship to consider it to be plausible. I know the claims that you are saying, but my research found that there is something there.

See the www.patternsofevidence.com documentary if interested.

Also these books:

https://www.amazon.com/Reliability-Old-Testament-K-Kitchen/dp/0802803962
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Egypt-Evidence-Authenticity-Tradition/dp/019513088X
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Israel-Sinai-Authenticity-Wilderness/dp/0199731691

Christianity really rests on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ though. If that didn't happen, then nothing makes sense in the faith. He affirmed Adam, Noah, Abraham,Moses, Jonah and all of the Old Testament. He rose from the Dead after brutal public execution, like he said he would, so He is my ultimate source of authority. I was an atheist for over 30 years, and also had a supernatural conversion experience, so there is ZERO doubt for me. That experience was like meeting Him, but it is always best to test claims. It wasn't some vague thing that could be mistaken. It was the most real thing that I ever experienced, but I didn't know which Church was true. The facts of History and logic led me from Christianity to Catholicism.

> The church put it seal of approval on those terrible practices at the time. How can you say then that this is the church that is guided by a divine power?

Sorry, but you are sadly misunderstanding about what is sealed or not. Catholic Doctrine is sealed with approval and Doctrines can never change. People and their malpractices change. It's like Math. Math is always true, but there are a lot of bad Mathematicians. Scientists invented the Atomic bomb, but that doesn't mean the Science is evil.

>> Indulgences

Indulgences are in the Bible and were practiced by Israelites. See link below for scripture references. The Catholic Church was founded by Jews and is continuing the practice, but it is prone to abuse. The Israelites abused it too. For example, instead of offering a Lamb for sacrifice, people would buy favors. Good priests know better, and God will hold everyone accountable.

https://www.catholic.com/tract/myths-about-indulgences

>> Spanish Inquisition

That is mostly British and German protestant propaganda. Lies from King Henry, spread for centuries into the English speaking world, because he went to war against Catholics (France, Spain). To the credit of the British, the BBC produced this Documentary admitting the facts : https://youtu.be/qhlAqklH0do

> burning witches/ heretics

Those were Pagan practices, and more protestant Propoganda. The Catholic Church defeated Pagan practices, but had to live within their cultures for centuries.

The Catholic Church didn't execute people. The Civil authorities did. Catholic Churchmen were Judges, like the Supreme court, who were asked by Civil Authorities to verify (inquire) whether or not someone was lying about being Catholic or not. The "inquistion" was really about finding fake Catholics during civil war. Islam was raping Spain, and the Church had to aggressively weed it out.

The Puritans and other heretics were ones who did things like throw people in water.

> challenging the work of scientists.

The Catholic Church has been the greatest champion of Science in world history. See list below. The Galileo thing is a myth. I read his own letters. He loved the Church, and did his best work after he was under house arrest. He was trying to teach Theology, which he wasn't qualified for. The Church put him under house arrest, which meant free room and board in an Italian Villa for the rest of his life. Again, he went on to do his best work afterwards.

https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy

Clergy-scientists include Nicolaus Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Roger Joseph Boscovich, Marin Mersenne, Bernard Bolzano, Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, Robert Grosseteste, Christopher Clavius, Nicolas Steno, Athanasius Kircher, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, William of Ockham

Catholic scientists:
Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Louis Pasteur, Blaise Pascal, André-Marie Ampère, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Pierre de Fermat, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Alessandro Volta, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Pierre Duhem, Jean-Baptiste Dumas, Alois Alzheimer, Georgius Agricola, and Christian Doppler.

Also Catholic Musicians:.
Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak, Joseph Hayden, Franz Liszt,
Claudio Monteverdi, Gioachino Rossini, Franz Schubert, Antonio Vivaldi.

Artists:
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Donatello,
Gaudenzio Ferrari, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Salvador Dalí,Antoni Gaudí, James Tissot

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

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

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

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

> Lastly, your argument is essentially that the Church can’t be wrong on its doctrine due to divine intervention. Don’t you see an issue with this logic?

There have been some who abused their authority, but the Church itself is against such abuses. Therefore, the Church itself is the primary victim of malpractioners.

Regarding the truthfulness, everything is based on whether or not God exists, and whether or not He incarnated into His own creation as Jesus. If you don't believe in God, then I contend that nothing could make sense or have meaning. The material universe would just be a bunch of atoms that bump into each other before the Universe dies Heat Death in a blink of Cosmic time. Anything divided by infinity is ZERO.

I was an atheist for most of my life, and spent over 10 years researching every step between atheism, theism, judaism, christianiity and catholicism. Eventually, by the grace of God, and to my shock, I found that the Doctrines and Dogmas of the Catholic Church are true. It all would be too much to go into here on a reddit comment, but if you want to discuss a particular sticking point topic, let me know. I hope you can see already that you have a lot of misconceptions.

There are very good answers for everything. Seek and you shall find. Atheism is a dead end, literally and for eternity.

> What would it take for you to say that the catholic church is objectively wrong and not the correct religion?

As a start, you would have to prove that God doesn't exist, the Holy Spirit didn't inspire the Bible, that most of the facts of history are false, that my own life experience is false, that the Universe created itself, that Life created itself, and that Consciousness is "natural".

If God exists, then truth exists. If truth exists, then that God knows we are here. If God knows we are here, then He would know what we are going through. If He knows what we are going through, then He would do something about it. Within the Ontological argument, everything that Jesus did makes perfect sense to me now, to win our Hearts and Minds to get back to Heaven. This Earth is a spiritual battlefield. Virtues are the way to Truth. Vices are the way to Death. Choose wisely my friend.

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.

The first question one would have to answer is is the account of the Exodus accurate, historically.

There is much debate about this and scholars fall on varying sides from 'didn't happen at all' (Finkelstein and Silberman) to 'probably happened but was not the same in number' (Friedman and some others).

The most interesting book I have read on this recently is Friedman's Exodus^1 which argues for the arrival of 2 main groups inside the 'Holy Land' the second later group being the Levites who were in Egypt/From Egypt although whether they were slaves is still some debate. Which Friedman goes into, and notes examples of items like they had knowledge of Egyptian brickmaking techniques compared to Canaanite techniques. Moses is an Egyptian name, he gives some other examples however I don't have the text in front of me at the moment.

The early tribes in Israel would have come (or risen to power) and conquered/Mixed with the tribes already in Canaan and taken on some of their deities, some of the early types would have been El and Baal, for example, we note that some of the early creation stories map to Canaanite creation stories.

The earliest person we know of to accept the Israelite religion was Abraham as per the Torah itself, and there is evidence for someone like an Abraham around 1800 B.C.E. But there's no direct connection. What we can see is the common earliest reference to Israel as a unique entity which is in the Merneptah Stele, which dates to around 1200 BCE, although some scholars have identified a possible reference to Israel (the text is not complete, however) on a pillar in Egypt going back as far as 1400 BCE.^1.

So we know that the Israelites spread out and mixed with Canaanite cultures and were a part of them but eventually, the culture (and religion) of the Israelites eventually won out and developed into its own distinct religion. This would have been in the time of the Iron Age I (1200-1000 BCE). Going back to Friedman here, he shows genetic and historical evidence that the Levites come in and adapted themselves as another Tribe and planted the Exodus story among the existing (forming) Israelites. This Iron Age I would have been when this happened. This Yahewism would have been the basis for monotheism. This could have been from the Levites who brought the YHVH diety with them from the Midianites and supplanted it over the others.

However, there were pockets of idolatrous worship especially on the North for some time. Statuettes of different home or hearth goddesses have been found near Tel Dan for example in the Temple there. This Temple in Northern Israel would not have been condoned by the people in Judea and would have been in a contest with it (Schiffman^3) as the Priests in Judea (First Temple) would have felt the only true Temple was the one in Jerusalem. Really some forms of idolatry continued into the First Temple period and in the Second Temple period, it would have most likely been Monolatry (accepting that others deities could exist along theirs). The clearest case for this is the changes to the Shema (Duet 6:4) which at that time read: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” this statement defines the deity YHVH as the one for Israel although it allowed for other cultures to have theirs as well. This is shown in sources such as the Septuagint and in the Nash Papyrus in the Second Temple period. An amulet found in Halbturn, Austria called The Halbturn amulet shows the current version (in Greek) as we now know it to be “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

So to sum all that up, the historical evidence points to a polytheistic culture that developed into a monotheistic culture.

>Because in between the Exodus and the Promised Land it wasn't strictly Judaism yet, was it?

Which type of Judaism? Current Judaism is Rabbinic Judaism which takes the written tradition (Torah) plus the Oral Tradition (Talmud/Mishna) this developed most notably in the Babylonian Exile, prior to that there was the Temple Cult.

The scholar who best unpacks these questions is professor John Walton
from Wheaton. I really think you should read his books or listen to his lectures.

Professor Tim Mackie from The Bible Project is really good at communicating biblical scholarship. Please check out The Bible Project on Youtube if you haven't yet. It's literally the best Bible resource I've found, either for new Christians or mature. Here is a relevant, incredible podcast episode on Genesis, science, and faith.


For questions of science and faith, [Biologos](
https://biologos.org/) is the best place for you to be. Check out the contributers there. My favorite is N.T. Wright. He is the leading New Testament scholar in the world, and tackles all sorts of questions with the appropriate nuance and wisdom. The Ask N.T. Wright Anything podcast is a great start.

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


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

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

I know I already answered this when you posted the same question over at /r/Reformed, but I wanted to answer here as well, so that others could potentially benefit.

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

• The Literal Meaning of Genesis by Augustine of Hippo.
  
• Commentary on Genesis - Volume 1 by John Calvin.
  
• What is Darwinism? by Charles Hodge.
  
• The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis Collins.
  
• The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design by Ronald Numbers.
  
• Is Creation Science Reformed? by Tony Jelsma (short article)
  
• The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John Walton.
  
• Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design by Deborah and Loren Haarsma.
  
• Also get a few good commentaries on Genesis. The rule of thumb on Genesis commentaries is that the author's name should start with W: Wenham, Waltke, or Walton

Sure thing!

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

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

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

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

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

>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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sure, so apart from a lack of reason to accept those extraordinary claims I listed before, I would also defend the statement that we have firm evidence that Christianity is a human invention, a simple product of human culture.

This should not be too outlandish a claim, as even Christians can probably agree that most of the worlds religions are creations of our changing society (after all, Christians probably would disagree that Hinduism, paganism, Nordic, Hellenistic, aboriginal religions were divinely inspired/authored).

By looking back into the origins of Christianity, and the origins of the Judaic system from which it is derived, we can very clearly see changes in religious deities and stories, as the religion began incorporating myths from surrounding areas and as general patterns of beliefs changed. From what we can currently understand, it appears the the origin of Christianity started as a polytheistic pantheon with at least Yahweh, El, Baal and Asherah. It then moved slowly from polytheism to henotheism to monaltry to monotheism, as was relatively common in the Axial Age.

All of this points to the religion not representative of singular divine inspiration, and instead being representative of being a product of human culture, changing along with society.

This is a rather large topic of course, and if you want further reading, I recommend:

• [The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel](http://www.amazon.com/The-Early-History-God-Biblical/dp/080283972X) by Mark Smith<br />

• The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith
  
• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  
• The Religion of Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel) by Patrick D. Miller
  
• Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches by Ziony Zevit
  
• Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (Library Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies) by John Day
  
• God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World by Mark S. Smith
  
• Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism? Toward an Assessment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible, by Michael S. Heiser, PhD
  
• The Ascension of Yahweh: The Origins and Development of Israelite Monotheism from the Afrasan to Josiah by Andrew Halladay
  
• Are Yahweh and El the same god OR different gods?
  
• Ugarit and the Bible
  
• Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel By David Steinberg
  
• The evolution of God

My main recommendation here is usually James Kugel's How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now. I do like Ehrman, I really enjoyed his dissection of NT studies, but Kugel definitely covers areas that Ehrman does not.

>are there perhaps any in-depth commentaries that are widely accepted that would make a good starting point for someone like me?

I guess that depends on what sort of commentary you are looking for.

One fantastic one I can recommend is The Jewish Annotated New Testament which gives both a lot of sorely needed context to NT texts with essays from many important scholars of Jewish studies, but also provides numerous cross-references in Rabbinic literature (probably only relevant for scholars more like myself) on relevant ideas.

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

1. The snake is just a snake. It's never mentioned that it was Satan, anywhere in the Bible. Theologians went through some great lengths to conclude that The Lucifer and King of Babylon passages in the Bible were talking about Satan. The idea is terribly convoluted and a lot of the details (armor of jewels, admired and respected in the garden of Eden and so on) are ignored.
   
   
2. The reason humans were made. We were to tend to the garden. Nothing else. It's says it directly in Genesis 2. There's plenty of mythology from that era that describes the creation of life out of mud (golems). It's a great part of ancient Jewish mythology and that region in general.
   
   
3. Genesis specifically says that the tree of life is used to make sure that the animals and man live forever. It's a fountain of youth. Plenty of myth surrounding items that do just this.
   
   
4. Genesis also says that the forbidden tree is the food for the gods, in this case, the god in Genesis 2 (different from the god in Genesis 1). It is meant for the superior beings. The creators.
   
   Put all these things together, and what you have is a classic myth with your typical "servant takes from the master and gets into deep shit" plot.
   
   So Yaweh creates a garden. Calls it Eden. It's not the world, because Genesis 2 tells us exactly what land on earth it covered, which was somewhere around where Iraq currently is. He makes man, specifically so that he can tend to his brand new garden that he's making. Then he starts churning all these animals out from the ground, and Adam is naming them as they come out from the mud. Yaweh then realizes that Adam needs a helper, so he makes him one.
   
   Then the part that we all were frequently reminded about happens (snake, tree, Eve, Adam, fig tree loincloths, etc.) but here is the best part:
   
   Gen 2: 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
   
   Two things here: First, the snake wasn't lying. Adam and Eve did become like gods. Second, the fruit on the tree of life sustains the gods, as is indicative by the very words of Yaweh himself.
   
   So a quick summary of the whole second and third chapter: Yaweh made a garden for himself to hang out. The tree of life kept his minion gardeners (man and woman) alive for as long as he wanted to maintain his weekend getaway, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil was Yaweh's tree to eat from. It wasn't put there to give us some freedom of choice as we so frequently hear about. So the minions decide to eat what the gods eat and they are kicked out, doomed to fade into nothing. To turn into the dust they once were (or I guess specifically what Adam was. It never really tells what happens to Even except for wanting to have a man and having painful births). Also notice that there's no mention of hell. The story was written long before hell was even a concept in early Jewish beliefs. The only people that actually lived forever where those that were taken up by Yaweh in a chariot to chill with him. The rest of us just stop existing.
   
   This, and the rise of dualism during the Babylonian Exile are my two favorite things to discuss with Christians, if I ever have the chance. I also find the Documentary Hypothesis to be extremely fascinating. I recommend checking out Who Wrote the Bible if you get a chance. It actually makes the Bible fascinating, for a change.

WARNING: Long post ahead!

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

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

However:

>>I will follow the evidence wherever it leads.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Verse 16 is a little odd. It says that the Sun and Moon are affixed to the solid dome of the sky (which also holds back the waters of the primeval ocean). And then it says "and the stars too". It's almost like the author was thinking "I better say something about the stars, but I'm not really sure what they are. I'll just casually toss them into this sentence and hope someone else can figure out where they should go."

And yes - verse 26 is a reference to the ancient Canaanite pantheon. This is especially clear when you compare Genesis 1 to the other Mesopotamian creation myths, especially the Babylonian Enuma Elish. When the text says "let us make man" is is a reference to the sons and daughters of El, the father of the gods. Note that verse 26 specifically says "in the image of the gods, male and female".

This is a really good book on the origin of the Old Testament. It totally changed my view of the Bible. Reading the OT now is actually quite fun, because it is so easy to see how the various sources were stitched together over the centuries.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You might consider checking out /r/AcademicBiblical for a non-theological approach to the bible. (TBH, most of the recommendations you've received here are theologically based) I know there was a thread there a couple of months ago where they were trying to consolidate resources, but I'm not finding it at the moment.

My go-to resources are these Religious Studies courses available from Yale University. They both do an outstanding job of presenting the texts from a historical-critical approach.

You can also check out this list of resources.

My most trusted recommendations for the OT are How to Read the Bible by James Kugel and Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Friedman.

If you could narrow down your interests a little more - "Bible" is a pretty broad topic - I'd be happy to brainstorm some more ideas.

You might find this book interesting if you want to learn more about it.

Archaeological record clearly shows a diversity of deities being worshipped in the area. Inscriptions like the one found in Kuntillet Ajrud or the countless figurines that pop up in excavations confirm that polytheism was the norm pre-exilic Israel and Judah.

Whether Jewish monotheism is a development that emerged from this (and, most importantly, how and when) or if there has always been the case of a priestly caste advocating YHWH as the only true God even though the population clearly failed to adhere to it as portrayed in the Bible is where you'll find some debate. To clarify: the important distinction here is that the first view argues that deities like Asherah or Haddad were autochthonic gods that were originally worshipped alongside El/YHWH while the latter argues that they were later imports that were syncretised with the YHWH cult in popular religion.

As for the golden calf, in the book I mentioned above (forgot which article or author, it has been ages since I read it and I don't have it with me anymore), it is suggested that it is a symbol for a nameless lesser (or false) deity. In Israelite and Canaanite iconography, El/YHWH is often equated to the figure of a bull. So in that specific passage you have Moses coming down the mountain bringing the words of YHWH (the bull) only to find his people worshipping a calf.

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

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

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

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

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

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. . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Views on Creation and Evolution.

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

The Cell's Design - Fazale Rana

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

Some good Young Earth Creationist books:

Understanding the Pattern of Life - Todd Wood

Thousands, Not Billions, ed. Don DeYoung

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

-----

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


-----

A good Old Earth Creationist book is John Lennox's

"The Seven Days Which Divide the World".

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

No worries, David, I totally remember what it was like being a student; the last couple weeks of any quarter were always the hardest.

I would want to add that this isn't "my position" so much as "the scholarly consensus". I'm not a theologian or a biblical scholar, I rely on those who are more educated in these matters to inform me. You'll find this is the case with most atheists you meet; we place a lot of value on the words of scholars, particularly specialists in the field we're studying.

But yes, the documentary hypothesis is fascinating. There's an excellent book on this by Richard Friedman, a preeminent scholar on this hypothesis. I highly recommend it! (because I know as a college student you've got loads of free time to read, lol!)

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

Good luck on finals!

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

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

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

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

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

Here's a link: The Exodus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

____

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

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

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

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

> The Bible was still legit

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

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

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

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

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

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

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

'The Book of Genesis Illustrated' by R. Crumb is very good.

Reviews

“Starred Review. Crumb’s vivid visual characterizations of the myriad characters, pious and wicked, make the most striking impression. His distinctive, highly rendered drawing style imparts a physicality that few other illustrated versions of this often retold chronicle have possessed. The centenarian elders show every one of their years, and the women, from Eve to Rachel, are as solidly sensual as any others Crumb has so famously drawn.” (Booklist)

“To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement.... stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.” (Paul Buhle - The Jewish Daily Forward)

“It’s a cartoonist’s equivalent of the Sistine Chapel. It’s awesome. Crumb has done a real artist’s turn here—he’s challenged himself and defied all expectation. ... I’ve read Genesis before. But never have I found it so compelling. By placing it squarely in the Middle East—and populating it with distinctively Semitic-looking people—Crumb makes it come alive brilliantly.” (Susan Jane Gilman - Morning Edition, NPR)

“[A] beautifully drawn and relentlessly faithful rendition of the first 50 chapters of the Bible by an apostle of the 1960s and sometimes profane progenitor of underground comics. Crumb has produced what could be the ultimate graphic novel.” (David Colton - USA Today)

>Don't listen. I think I'm a fairly good writer

No doubt.

>For the OT, which isn't my wheelhouse, I'd look into ....

Thanks for the suggestion. I already have a book by Michael D. Coogan (Oxford University Press) so I think I'll stick with that one for now. Not much money :).

>For example, Yale University's course on the New Testament is available as a free recording. While that's going to be secular and focused on critical scholarship, it should give you a lot of info about the book.

Sounds great. I've downloaded iTunes U stuff on the Bible before.

> Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book, which really changed my view on a series of documents that I had devoted years to digging into. In fact, if you'd like, PM me your address and I'll Amazon you a copy.

That's incredibly kind. I'll PM if I decide to take advantage of your generous offer but I will more likely look into the other things you listed first and continue to take advantage of what is free. The Kindle version is also less expensive so I may just buy that one day. Still, thanks for offering!

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

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

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

1. (flat) expanse (as if of ice), as base, support.
   
2. the vault of heaven, or ‘firmament,’ regarded by Hebrews as solid, and supporting ‘waters’ above it.
   
   First, there's a few places in the Bible where the firmament is shown as clearly solid:
   
   http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job%2037:18;%20Job%2022:14&version=HCSB
   
   (Note the verb translated "spread out" is the verb form of the word translated as firmament. In every use in the OT it means to beat out a solid thing. Here's two other uses of the verb form.)
   
   A bunch of guys got to go up there and see God on top of the firmament:
   http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ex%2024:9-10&version=HCSB
   
   Also Ezekiel's vision clearly shows his views of the solid dome God lives above:
   http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%201:22-25;%2010:1-2&version=HCSB
   
   At minimum this makes the claim that they didn't know of this cosmology seem silly. The same is true of the claim that it wasn't a common cosmology. We have good evidence for the summerian and canaanite and other groups.
   
   One of your other sources claims the Bible has birds fly in the firmament. That's not true, and it doesn't read that way in any modern translation, only those derived from the KJV. The verse in Genesis literally says "flies in front of the face of the firmament of the heavens". The word face is also used for the surface of the earth and other solid things, and a better translation is really "flies in front of the surface of the firmament of the heavens."
   
   
   Consider also where the fire comes from to burn up Elijah's offering, where the chariot of fire goes up to, Jacob's ladder, etc.
   
   There's tons more evidence, and if you want a book by a conservative Christian scholar on the issue, check out this one.
   
   He also wrote The Lost World of Genesis One where he deals with how he thinks this information should be used to change our understanding of the goal of the writers of Genesis. An essay version of the main points of his book is here.

Absolutely friend :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

When my daughter started hearing religious stories from her aunt, I bought R. Crumb's comic-book-style illustrated version of Genesis. I treated Noah's Ark and the talking snake just like other fun stories, you know, like Curious George and The Hungry Caterpillar. (You might want to dodge the part where Lot's daughters sleep with him.)

I also started telling Greek myths, like about how winter was caused because Demeter's daughter Persephone went into the underworld, and that made Demeter (goddess of all growing things) sad. I looked up a few so that I could tell them as bedtime stories.

There are so many silly, harmless, fictional stories we tell kids. Throw religion right into that mix and it dilutes it. Don't make it scary or different. Make it part and parcel of the rich fantasy life that kids have. Then when you bring reality in on all of those stories, as your child gets old enough to think about story fiction versus real and true, religion will wash away with the rest.

That's my theory anyway, and I feel it's worked well on my now seven-year-old.

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 was an evangelical for 27 years, from age 18 to 45. I wouldn't say that there's one profound argument against Christianity; I would say that Christians and atheists are not even talking the same language. And most of that has to do with Christians having their conclusions in mind when they investigate, whereas atheists are willing to be led wherever the evidence and reason lead them. The end result is that atheists and Christians have completely different mindsets about what constitutes evidence and what they are willing to consider.

The first book I would recommend is Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman. Friedman is, himself, a Christian. The book deals with what scholars know about the construction of the first few books of the Bible.

Second book I would recommend is The Bible Unearthed by Neil Silberman and Israel Finkelstein. Have you ever wondered what the archaeological support is for the stories of the Old Testament? Dr. Finkelstein is one of the leading archaeologists in Israel today. This is an excellent place to start. (Here's a 90 minute video if you prefer.)

Third, pretty much any book by Bart Ehrman. Here's a good one, though -- Jesus, Interrupted. Dr. Ehrman is very respected in the scholarly community, and what he writes here, for the most part, represents where the majority of scholars are.

Fourth is A History of God by Karen Armstrong. Ms Armstrong tells the story of how the God the Jews, Christians, and Muslims got his start in Canaan. There is a quick summary of the book here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Historians aren't merely considering the Old Testament narrative, for example, the call of Abraham, when they conclude that Yahwism (ancient Judaism) was henothesitic. The Pentateuch/Torah, while comprised of several early textual sources, did not reach its final form until late into Israel's nationhood, and maybe not until after the return from Babylonian captivity (537 BCE). So, most of what you're reading in the Old Testament was written much later than the period it depicts and that, as such, the writers/editors often shape the narrative to fit their own theological persuasions. In this case, the writers/editors would have been part of a more thoroughly monotheistic Judaism and this perspective would have shaped the way they brought the stories together.

On the other hand, earlier texts incorporated into the whole still reflect the latent henotheism of ancient Judaism, as I listed above. There's no real difference between identifying ancient Judaism as henotheistic and saying that "a lot of Israelites had a hard time holding to this concept [monotheism]." Henotheism doesn't even require worship of other deities only an assumption that other deities exist. The text assumes this (“You shall have no other gods before me”) and the common people believed it (as suggested by their frequently idolatry). You write, “…by the time Moses was on the scene, God had weaned them enough to give them the solid decree that he was the one and only God.” The only way you can draw this conclusion - since the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law do not declare that Yahweh is the one and only God; only that no other god is to be worshipped – is that you assume the Bible to be homogenous and feel free to impose the perspective of later writers onto the early Israelites.

You assume that the disparate documents compiled in the Bible are coherent, theologically consistent, and somehow point to an overarching divine plan, placing the Bible in a unique position among literature. That’s a lot to assume and awfully hard to defend. Since I consider ancient Judaism to have been henotheistic, you conclude that I “have not taken the time to really dive in and attempt to understand how it all fits together, nor understand that there were processes involved in accomplishing God's plan for the people group in question.”

If you’re interested in this, I’d suggest one or more of the following:

The Bible with Sources Revealed, by Richard Friedman

The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, by Michael Coogan

How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature--Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference and What It Means for Faith Today, by Steven McKenzie

How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, by James Kugel

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.

>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.

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

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

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.”

I read your edit about becoming an evolutionary creationist. Welcome to the club! You should check out BioLogos, a friendly website for exploring the harmony of modern science and Christianity. I also recommend reading The Lost World of Genesis One, by John Walton, and The Language of God, by Francis Collins. They were super helpful for me when I started down the path you're on.

> I was thinking on how some have tried to get me to believe that no good experiences can come from "friendship with the world",

Yes, all JWs have been hammered so thoroughly for so long with that insanely wrong message that it's no surprise that was your first response.

>I'm heading back from break tomorrow so that'll be nice for a few weeks before the longer winter break.

Maybe pick up a few books to read during your winter break? I'm recommending these (usually available in used paperback for a few books - or at your library thru inter-library lending?) because these books give people an accurate view of the REAL origins of the bible:

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

That link has a couple of other good books, too - The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts & Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? by William G. Dever - another excellent author who addresses the question of the bible's origins from the perspective of the archaeologist.

Then there's the works by Francesca Stavrakopoulou:

Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah

If you can get your hands on this book, it might be a mind-blowing read:

King Manasseh and Child Sacrifice: Biblical Distortions of Historical Realities