(April 26, 2015 at 10:11 pm)nicanica123 Wrote: Hello, I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I have started a couple of threads already but I want help with one subject in particular...
The bibles lack of credibility.
I have heard many charges against the bibles lack of credibility. Such as, it is a collection of fairy tales, it is historically inaccurate, it borrowed from surrounding religious lore, etc.
I would recommend reading almost anything by Bart Ehrman on biblical criticism or the history of early Christianity. His books aren't about the bible's lack of "historical" credibility in terms of the claims it makes, but they talk about the formation and the problems with the New Testament, specifically how anyone can be certain of what the NT actually "originally" said and how problems of translations and with scribal hand-copying have influenced the NT. His books on early Christianity show how there was probably never a time when there was just one form of Christianity; there have always been variations, and Ehrman's works show how the traditions of orthodoxy arose from among the masses of Christian sects of the first, second and third centuries. I'd particularly recommend Lost Christianities and Jesus, Interrupted
If your looking for how the bible has borrowed its myths from surrounding cultures, I'd recommend 101 Myths of the Bible which talks about how biblical stories parallel the myths of the larger, more powerful cultures that were prevalent in the ancient middle east, and how ancient Jews modified those myths to conform to their own religious doctrines.
And I second Min's recommendation of The Bible Unearthed which gives a good idea of what sorts of claims in the bible have actually been archaeologically substantiated. (Spoiler: There aint' much.)
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
