/lit/ - Literature

Any annotated Bible written from a Christian perspective, I guess. They'll give their feeble justifications for every fucked up thing God does.

>>10779670
>They'll give their feeble justifications for every fucked up thing God does.

>>10779705

>>10779729
you didn't even make an argument, you gave nice advice and then followed it up with an unnecessary assertion phrased in the most euphoric way possible

Hard Sayings by Trent Horn. You'll be surprised at how ridiculous most of the biblical criticism from atheists are.

>>10779742

Here's an example. In The Skeptic's Annotated Bible, Steve Wells wrote that according to Leviticus 11:19, "Bats are birds to the biblical God." and he uses this as evidence of the bible being in error since bats are not in fact birds. The problem is that the word in Leviticus 11:19 translated as "bird," oph, is defined in Hebrew lexicons as "flying creature." Modern translators use the word "bird" instead of "flying creature" because every other animal on that list besides bats is a kind of bird.

Another one is from Jason Long in his book Biblical Nonsense:

>"The author of the first letter to Timothy advises his reader to drink wine instead of water (5:23). While researchers in the medical profession currently believe that alcohol is beneficial in moderation, consuming enough wine to remain hydrated for the rest of Timothy's life would certainly destroy his liver after a very brief period."

It's baffling why Long would interpret Paul's advice that Timothy "No longer drink water and only drink wine, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments" to mean that Timothy should drink only wine in the future. The Fundementalist tendency to read into text what a person wants to see can be found even among nonreligious fundementalists--including some atheists who are hell-bent on discrediting the bible.

>>10779753
very curious why there are so many books of the same name but from different authors and denominations

>>10779756

I'm pretty sure the term hard sayings goes back to the early church fathers and their defenses against critics

>>10779756
John 6:60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?

>>10779756
>>10779773
It’s a Biblical phrase. It’s used right before a ton of people leave Jesus at once.
>Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?…From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. (John 6:60, 66)

>>10779773
>>10779780
>>10779780
>>10779796
any opinion on the ff bruce edition? its 300 pages longer, I'm more familiar with his work, and its only 5 bucks on kindle

>>10779815

You should buy it and then upload it for us

>>10779815
Well if you look at the title, you'll notice that it's just the Hard Sayings of Jesus, so it doesn't cover the entire Bible. It's part of a series of books, each covering different parts of the Bible, that are all collected in this volume
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0830815406/

>>10779883
Actually now that I look at the price, I think this may be the book you were talking about anyway, rather than the volume specifically by Bruce. Oh well.

I don't know what "Biblical morality" is but if you are interested in moral theology I recommend The Sources of Christian Ethics by Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

It traces the history of Christian ethics to the modern day, and argues for a return to traditional virtue ethics.

>>10779729
In order for him to invalidate your argument you needed to have had an argument in the first place. You just made an edgy atheistic statement to which you got the proper response.

>>10779753
Those are the weakest arguments in the Skeptics Annotated Bible. And the Skeptics Annotated Bible itself is one of the weaker Atheist criticisms of the bible. And anyway the topic at hand is the morality of the bible and not scientific errors.

There are a huge amount of moral failings on this list.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/inj/long.html

>>10780835
"Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it."
>Why not? What's wrong with knowing right from wrong?

Holy fuck. That is beyond dense; I can't, anon...

>>10780835

They're all pretty dumb.

Look at this one. First of all, we shouldn't assume the author of Genesis was asserting that a worldwide flood took place. Modern readers may interpret passages in Genesis that describe water covering "the earth" as meaning the entire planet was inundated. But a resident of ancient Mesopotamia may have only understood "the earth" to mean "the land" or the region he knew. In fact, the Hebrew word for "earth" in this passage, eretz, can also mean "land," as in Genesis 41:57, where it says that "all the eretz came to Egypt to buy grain" when a famine struck the region. Of course, this doesn't mean that everyone on the planet went to Egypt to buy grain, just those people who inhabited the region the author was referring to went there.

Additionally, geologists have discovered that melting glaciers near the black sea could have caused the collapse of giant ice dams about seven thousand years ago. Such an event would have triggered sudden, massive flooding across a wide area and could have served as the historical basis for Genesis.

Second of all, approaching the bible with a scientific lens is not only dumb and obtuse, it's ultimately pointless because we're not limited to saying that every story in the bible is either literal history or poetic fictions. They could instead be non-literal accounts of actual historical events.

>>10780892
The snake is obviously the real God, and the other one is false, a fraud.

>>10780989
captivating info;

links, sources on this stuff?
I'm not denying, I've just never heard these points brought up before

>>10780835

I'm just hopping around. This is one of favorites that skeptics like to bring up because it just demonstrates their ignorance so well. The Hebrew word that is translated as "dragon" is tannin, which can mean "serpent" or "dragon." The word tannin comes from the root word tan, which means "jackal." Modern translations usually render the text based on the root word because it better fits the context of these passages. If an ancient city were destroyed we would expect scavenging animals like jackals to inhabit it and feast on the dead bodies left amidst the desolation. This is why the RSV renders the passage as "Behold, it comes!--a great commotion out of the north country to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a lair of jackals."

It appears the skeptic couldn't to be bothered to look at more than one translation or at least a modern one before writing his criticism.

>>10781022

The geological stuff comes from this

https://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Flood-Scientific-Discoveries-Changed/dp/0684859203

>>10780989
>>10781023
It sure makes christians upset, that's something at least.

>>10781035
I guess it makes laymen upset; but it certainly doesn't take the cake lol

>>10780835

Here's another common one just because I can.

It's true that camel bones discovered in Israel have been dated to the tenth century B.C., but this does not prove that camels were not domesticated in Israel before that point. The remains of nearly all animals used for human purposes during the second millennium B.C. have not survived to the present day. The discovery of domestic animal bones from one century does not preclude their existence in an earlier century.

Moreover, there is evidence from ancient cave drawings and pottery illustrations that camels were domesticated during the time if the patriarchs and even earlier. Camel petroglyphs near Aswan and Gezireh in Upper Egypt, for example, have been dated to the third millennium B.C. In his study on the domestication of the camel, Martin Heide concluded that the use of the word "camel" in the patriarch narratives "may refer, at least in some places, to the Bactrian camel," or a camel with two humps that migrated from the mountainous areas of Iran

>>10781079

This might help

>>10781031
thanks doode

What do you mean by biblical morality?

>>10781583
morality in the bible, duh

Has anyone read or heard of this? Any good?

>Hurr God does things that hurt my fee-fees (what do you mean that isn't an objective measure? That just means you're a sociopath!) therefore he is bad

>>10780064
>50 Euros
Wew! I put it on my list because it sounds interesting though.

>>10780892
>>10780835
Holy...

>>10781761
Does /lit/ have a chart on contemporary Christian Apologia?

SOUNDS LIKE DISCRIMINATION TO ME

>>10781792
Hmm!

>>10781788
>Does /lit/ have a chart on contemporary Christian Apologia?
probably but /lit/ christian charts are always some catholic/orthodox nonsense like "an exorcist tells his stories". I may be able to help you if you narrow down what exactly you want on apologia? Sometimes its better to just watch a lecture/debate than to buy a whole book on it though

>>10781801
I'm not even sure what I want. I'm not even Christian, but /lit/ has gotten me to read the Bible, Boethius/Augustine and more, and I've at this point probably also read a fair chunk of the Summa, and through this most philosophical Atheist arguments against Christianity seem rather silly to me (with the exception of a couple, mostly that aim to show why one might not WANT God to exist). But the historical ones I'm less familiar with, so something that tackles those would be interesting.

>>10781788
I think I have a better one saved on my other computer.

>>10779647
plato

>>10781840
for historical, I think the best argument is the "minimal facts" argument presented by Gary Habermas. very easy to find his lectures or debates on this on youtube if you just search "gary habermas resurrection", and some of his lectures run under an hour long. After that, you could check out "the canon of scripture" by FF Bruce, not apologetics persay but it builds upon what Habermas discusses.
For specific historical OT events, perhaps something like this would be more use
>>10779883

On the note of apologetics, James R White is good at historical topics (check out his debates with Agnostic former Christian Bart Ehrman), but he mostly debates heretical Christians on theology. William Lane Craig is a jack of all trades apologist, but never really delves into theology. He has a couple good books on apologetics, I think Reasonable Faith is considered pretty advanced but I've never read it. Hugh Ross is hands down the best Christian apologist I know of on topics in science, not what you asked for but still worth mentioning imo

>>10781849
Mere Christianity convert more people then all fathers of church all together.

>>10781892
Thanks! I was thinking more about AD-era criticisms of early Christians, Christendom and the Christian church. (Does that even go under Apologia?)
I will look into these.

>>10781849
Thanks too

>>10781912
>I was thinking more about AD-era criticisms of early Christians, Christendom and the Christian church
You'll find that very early criticisms of Christianity are few and far between. Narrow it down to "good/relevant criticisms" and I can't think of any. Probably because nonbelievers didn't even know what Christians believed at the time or cared to know, and Matthew records in Matt 28:11-15 that the Jewish argument at the time was that the apostles had stolen Jesus body. Weak argument from the Jews of course.
Early apologetics do exist, like Justin Martyrs apologies, but most early Christian documents focus on solving theological disputes.

>>10781930
>Weak argument from the Jews of course.
because resurrection is totally more plausible

>>10782707

When there's hundreds of witnesses and many of them hostile to the Christian cause it is

>>10783171
Source?

>>10783197

You could start with bible then move to Tacitus and Josephus

>>10781912
There's Porphyry's "Against the Christians" but it's not that early, and it was burned by the order of some emperor.

>>10783171
If you look at early Christianity all the gospel oral stories are allegories about rescuing the soul. So it's spiritually true, not necessarily historically, although it could be in parts. Even then the apostles and Paul had disagreements, and standardised Christianity through imperial authority only comes later.

>>10783215
Neither Tacitus nor Jesus mention any resurrection. By definition, not a single non-Christian source mentions the resurrection. The resurrected Christ should converted the whole city of Jerusalem at least to the cause if it actually happened.

>>10783215
Neither Tacitus nor Josephus mention any resurrection. By definition, not a single non-Christian source mentions the resurrection. The resurrected Christ should converted the whole city of Jerusalem at least to the cause if it actually happened.

>>10779647

I had to read this book for my apologetics class at a small conservative Christian college. It was so bad. It was comforting to me that all of us, students and the professor, felt free to tear into it. Gives me hope.

I wish something like it but better was written, too.

>>10783197
he is referring to 1 corinthians 15:6, though admittedly I don't know what he meant by hostile

Read the book of Job. That's probably where you absolutely should start, rather than reading modern books. Oh, and try to read it in one go. The longer you take to read it the less it all fits together.

>>10779670
>>10779729
Nobody gives a fedora post in response to an actually effortful post.

>>10781761
I have. Despite the edgy title, it's pretty good.

The title is misleading. The author was forced to title that against his will. He wanted the subtitle to be the main title.

Anyways, the book isn't about atheism being delusional. It's about modernity's misinformed view of Christian history. The book starts with him criticizing the New Atheist movement. Then he corrects a ton of examples of modern academics simplifying or misrepresenting controversial moments in Christian history. Then he talks about how Christianity rose and changed Roman society. He goes on tangents about the Arian controversy, Julian the apostate, and other topics. And he ends the book by critiquing a lot of secular/atheistic movements we see today.

It's very interesting, especially if you're interested in the history of Christianity. And even if you're not interested in the history, but more of the religion, you'll still learn a lot by hearing how the early Roman Christians practiced their faith.

>>10786574

Alright you sold it to me

>>10786589
I hope you enjoy it!

>>10786574
Thanks, this is the kind of post I keep coming here for. I put it on my list.

>>10780989
A flood covering mountains is not a local flood. The story is mythological, that doesn't invalidate any moral teachings, but it's clearly not based on a historical event.

>>10786835
>A flood covering mountains is not a local flood.
why not

Can Kierkegaard's taking on Christian moral be considered in any way relevant for modern Christianity? Because I like them very much, "Fear and Trembling" in particular, more than any religious text I've ever read.

>>10786850
Is that a joke? For the water level to be that high the Earth would have to be covered.

>>10786861
why
the earth is pretty big

>>10786878
The sea level rising a few metres would cause many small islands to be under water. A flood that causes "all the high mountains under the whole heaven [to be] covered" (Gen 7:19) would mean everything at a lower altitude than all the mountains would be under water.

>>10779647
>biblical morality

There's no such thing. The Bible is a compendium of abjection. Consider the atrocity of the Prodigal Son. The people onto which he exerted his depravity are never mentioned, not even as narrative formality, never mind as integral to a Moral lesson. The whole of humanity, potentially, simply fodder for personal gain, not even worth a footnote. It contains the full horror of atomized Contractualism further elaborated by Darwin or Rand, and its full realization here and now in the parable's readers' minds, ignorant of its horror.

>>10779729