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Good idea for a thread, I had thought about making a religious books thread myself. I'm not a Bible expert per se but I do study religion so I'll add what I can. Who Wrote This Thing? The scholarly answer to this is somewhat complicated. The first five books of the Bible are usually attributed to Moses in the Jewish tradition and most Christian traditions. Starting in the nineteenth century in Germany a mode of looking at the Bible called the historical critical approach developed, which tried to examine the Bible as a text produced in a particular historical circumstances (rather than say, written directly by God). An idea called the Documentary Hypothesis emerged, and is still pretty widely accepted, that the first five books were written by around 4 different authors between around 1000 BCE and 500 BCE. The New Testament is another can of worms. If I recall correctly the general consensus among religious studies scholars was that Paul's letters were largely authentic. The gospels though are out of sequence and have a lot of changes. Mark is the earliest Gospel probably written between 65-70 CE, John is the latest written around 90-95 CE. Matthew and Luke rely on a shared source that we don't have, which scholars have called Q, which seems to predate either of those Gospels. The names attached to the Gospels was a later addition, so we really have no clear idea of authorship. Bart Ehrman's work on this is both accesiable and well researched if you want an agnostic, academic take on this stuff. What version should I be reading? I'd just mention that the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is pretty much the academic standard in religious studies. Both Oxford and Harper Collins have good annotated study bible if you have any interest in Biblical scholarship. I actually have been meaning to read the Book of Mormon at some point soon, so perhaps that can be a thread in the future. It would be good to talk Nephites with other folks.
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Aug 22, 2014 07:12
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Zogo posted:Sometime ago I was thinking about getting the free book out of curiosity (been reading a lot of different religious texts as an academic exercise) http://www.mormon.org/free-book-of-mormon
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Aug 22, 2014 07:16
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mdemone posted:If I have time later today, I can write up the authorship of the NT books as surveyed by Carrier in On the Historicity of Jesus
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Aug 26, 2014 02:21
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mdemone posted:If you've read it, I'd be interested in a critique. Almost every thread we get here now on Christianity gets bogged down with arguments about mythicism. I will profess a kind of visceral annoyance that a community that prides itself on thinking rationally about climate change, vaccinations and 9/11 truth assumes that some casual internet based research lets them understand the New Testament better than scholars who spend decades working with Greek and Aramaic texts. I'll stop before I start ranting on this.
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Aug 27, 2014 08:42
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Anyone have any idea how the English Standard Version is as a translation? I noticed that there was a "readers edition" which had verse numbers removed, which is something I really like in a Bible and I was tempted to get it.
Barlow fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Jan 27, 2015 |
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Jan 27, 2015 03:52
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