This Should Be A Good Read

[Minimalist]

http://www.bartdehrman.com/books/forged.htm

Forged - Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Should annoy the piss out of xtians.

[Nitsuj]

I wish I could get that. My dad would never let me, though. It would be so fun to be reading that at school in front of the god freaks.

[theVOID]

Oooooooh Nice find Min I've already read (and loved) "Misquoting Jesus" and "Jesus, Interrupted" So i'll definitely be getting this one.

[Minimalist]

See if you can get hold of "Lost Christianities" Void. Another good one.

I have an e-version somewhere although I hate reading books on computers.

[thesummerqueen]

I wish I could get that. My dad would never let me, though. It would be so fun to be reading that at school in front of the god freaks.

Got access to an online account of some sort?

Download it in e-book form. You'll lose the ability to show off in front of others, but if you got it on your computer and used a kindle or nook app to view it, you'd at least get the information.

Min, I'd love a list of books you'd recommend about both religion and history, if you have time to jot one down.

[Minimalist]

I tend to favor archaeological books because they deal with tangible items rather than the somewhat endless prattle of religious assholes debating the wording in their fucking bible. Ehrman is an exception to that. He deals with actual texts and examines the differences between them....a tactic which pisses off fundies no end.

The trouble with archaeology books is that they can be fucking sleep inducing because archaeologists are not Indiana Jones. They can write pages on a pottery shard that they found. Still, there are some that are exceptions and I will give you those.

1 The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman. Finkelstein is the archaeologist and I suspect Silberman put it into layman's terms. The premise of the book is that the OT is a pile of shit...right up to the 7th century, BC.

2. In Search of Ancient Israel by Philip R. Davies. The premise of this book is that the OT is a pile of shit concocted in the aftermath of the Persian conquest of Babylon. Davies is a bit heavier to wade through than Finkelstein-Silberman but compensates by writing a much shorter book.

3. Who Were The Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From by William G. Dever...who loves long titles. Dever is an odd duck but his writing style is better than most archaeologists. He mainly agrees with Finkelstein on the issues although he quibbles a bit about the founders.

4. Did God Have A Wife by Dever, again. This is a good one once you have a background from the others. Dever's argument...which actually fits in with Finkelstein...is that while the "Israelites" may have arisen in the Eastern Hill Country at the close of the Late Bronze Age there is nothing that suggests they were "Jewish" as we understand the term. In fact, they seem to have been similar to other Canaanites of the period worshipping Yahweh as a kind of local head god with Asherah as his consort. Dever has inscriptions and fertility statuettes to support his theory.

5. David and Solomon by Finkelstein and Silberman. Fills in some of the details left out of Book I. For example... the bible claims that the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak ( Sheshonq I, apparently) invaded Palestine for the express purpose of attacking Jerusalem. Finkelstein points out that Sheshonq's account of the campaign fails to mention attacking Jerusalem but does clearly lay out a campaign to the north (which was always far wealthier than Judah). Sheshonq's campaign also seemed to have been little more than a raid with no lasting effect but that is beside the point. IN any case, there is a clear break between the biblical account which has Jerusalem as the target and Sheshonq's account in which he does not even seem to know he attacked the town.

6. The View from Nebo by Amy Dockser Marcus. Marcus is not an archaeologist herself but has compiled a nice little book of recent archaeological finds in particular some recent evidence about how well the "Jews" were doing in Babylon. It does tend to support Davies' vision.

That should keep you busy for a while on the OT.

On the New Testament, in addition to Ehrman, try The Myth of Nazareth by Rene Salm. Like Marcus, he is not an archaeologist but seems willing to wade through archaeological studies to support the notion that Nazareth did not exist in the early first century AD.

If you don't mind reading on computers, PM an e-mail address and I'll send you the 3 books of Ehrman's that I've got.

Then....in a completely unrelated field....there is 1491 by Charles Mann and discusses the situation in the Americas prior to Columbus' landing.

[thesummerqueen]

thank you thank you thank you

I don't mind dry. Information on the Celts, as well as the history of textiles and agriculture, gets... sawdusty. I like having real information to piece together, not someone else's exciting story.

---

Also (I was too busy wishlisting everything else to notice) I have 1491 - I highly recommend it.

[Ashendant]

Then....in a completely unrelated field....there is 1491 by Charles Mann and discusses the situation in the Americas prior to Columbus' landing.

South america was found on 1500 by the portuguese, but we already know of it before columbus since we pulled quite a impressive gambit, by secretly putting brasil on our territory agreement with spain around 1494.

I wish my country bet more on the americas than India and africa anyway

[thesummerqueen]

And Greenland was settled by these guys way before that...I think...

[The Skeptic]

I tend to favor archaeological books because they deal with tangible items rather than the somewhat endless prattle of religious assholes debating the wording in their fucking bible. Ehrman is an exception to that. He deals with actual texts and examines the differences between them....a tactic which pisses off fundies no end.

The trouble with archaeology books is that they can be fucking sleep inducing because archaeologists are not Indiana Jones. They can write pages on a pottery shard that they found. Still, there are some that are exceptions and I will give you those.

1 The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman. Finkelstein is the archaeologist and I suspect Silberman put it into layman's terms. The premise of the book is that the OT is a pile of shit...right up to the 7th century, BC.

2. In Search of Ancient Israel by Philip R. Davies. The premise of this book is that the OT is a pile of shit concocted in the aftermath of the Persian conquest of Babylon. Davies is a bit heavier to wade through than Finkelstein-Silberman but compensates by writing a much shorter book.

3. Who Were The Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From by William G. Dever...who loves long titles. Dever is an odd duck but his writing style is better than most archaeologists. He mainly agrees with Finkelstein on the issues although he quibbles a bit about the founders.

4. Did God Have A Wife by Dever, again. This is a good one once you have a background from the others. Dever's argument...which actually fits in with Finkelstein...is that while the "Israelites" may have arisen in the Eastern Hill Country at the close of the Late Bronze Age there is nothing that suggests they were "Jewish" as we understand the term. In fact, they seem to have been similar to other Canaanites of the period worshipping Yahweh as a kind of local head god with Asherah as his consort. Dever has inscriptions and fertility statuettes to support his theory.

5. David and Solomon by Finkelstein and Silberman. Fills in some of the details left out of Book I. For example... the bible claims that the Egyptian pharaoh Shishak ( Sheshonq I, apparently) invaded Palestine for the express purpose of attacking Jerusalem. Finkelstein points out that Sheshonq's account of the campaign fails to mention attacking Jerusalem but does clearly lay out a campaign to the north (which was always far wealthier than Judah). Sheshonq's campaign also seemed to have been little more than a raid with no lasting effect but that is beside the point. IN any case, there is a clear break between the biblical account which has Jerusalem as the target and Sheshonq's account in which he does not even seem to know he attacked the town.

6. The View from Nebo by Amy Dockser Marcus. Marcus is not an archaeologist herself but has compiled a nice little book of recent archaeological finds in particular some recent evidence about how well the "Jews" were doing in Babylon. It does tend to support Davies' vision.

That should keep you busy for a while on the OT.

On the New Testament, in addition to Ehrman, try The Myth of Nazareth by Rene Salm. Like Marcus, he is not an archaeologist but seems willing to wade through archaeological studies to support the notion that Nazareth did not exist in the early first century AD.

If you don't mind reading on computers, PM an e-mail address and I'll send you the 3 books of Ehrman's that I've got.

Then....in a completely unrelated field....there is 1491 by Charles Mann and discusses the situation in the Americas prior to Columbus' landing.

Some of my favorite books on Bible scholarship and Bible history are :

The Atheist's Introduction To The New Testament by Mike Davis

Anything by Bart Ehrman

and another good one is Christianity: The Origins of A Pagan Religion by Phillipe Walter.

Elaine Pagels is a good scholar to go to as well.