/lit/ - Literature

The Shorter Catechism
https://shortercatechism.com/

CS Lewis and GK Chesterton are basically for this exact purpose.

Read the New Testament. It's more accessible than you think. Then Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

>>14356217
what do I start with for each?

>>14356223
Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. Supplement it with The Screwtape Letters for a fun, fictional book that Lewis uses to reinforce his points. The Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton is a little tougher than those but still worth the read.

>>14356249
>>14356220
>>14356192
thank you!

A poll is being conducted right now, in order to choose the Top 100 books for /lit/ (2019 version). You can vote for 5 different books

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc1m0TvgssQ_4Xwf5K55aVx5q4vABCwOU6urwXOPsaTHedMhw/viewform?usp=sf_link

>>14354446

pic rel

>>14356301
>Sign in required
Fuck off

>>14356322
you just need to log in Gmail, nigga... And the person managing the thread and poll can't even see it.

>>14356345
I've been using this chart and it's pretty good though the one on the wiki is different from that one. I still recommend it though.

>>14356419
yeah, Idk why, there are 2 very similar to each one.

>>14356530
ew

Mere Christianity by CS Lewis is a short read that will already make you know more than 90% of Christians out there. Alternatively The Screwtape Letters is a very fun book that has 31 letters written from a demon to his underling, giving him advice on how to separate a specific man he is in charge of from God, but I am not sure how much you would understand from that book if you literally know zero about Christianity.

>>14356301
Will you fuck off already? We can see the fucking thread in the catalog.

Also one more thing, try to look for a Jewish translation of the Bible. It's a translation that keeps some words in Hebrew, because it is impossible to translate them to English (or any other language) without some loss of meaning. This includes the very name of the characters, so instead of Jesus you'll have Yeshua. The greater point of Jewish translations is also that they are usually translated by Jews who know a lot about Jewish culture. And since the Bible was written by Jews, it is relevant to know how Jewish culture works if you are reading the Bible and trying to understand it.
This applies especially if the Bible was written by Jews that were persecuted by the Romans, and that thus were forced to speak in "codes" and analogies that would go over the typical Roman's head and only be understood by the few Jews among the crowd. Which is basically almost the entire New Testament, and 100% of the parts with Jesus/Yeshua in it.
By the way, if you do this Catholics will hate you forever and call you a heretic. Some Protestants will too. For some reason nu-Christianity hates when people try to interpret the Bible by the Jewish perspective it was written from.

>>14356162
Bart Ehrman

>>14356636
The Greek Septuagint is older than the oldest surviving copy of the Masoretic text. The New Testament was written in Greek since everyone spoke Greek.
The fragments of the book of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal that the Masoretic text was edited so that it omitted multiple references to the Son of Man.

>>14356922
>Masoretic text was edited so that it omitted multiple references to the Son of Man
Which ones?

>>14356940
A few are named here:
https://www.jesuswordsonly.com/topicindex/516-masoretes-did-they-remove-christian-supporting-passages.html
Reject the edited texts of the Pharisees.
>The Masoretic Text (MT or M) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of Tanakh for Rabbinic Judaism.
>It was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Anno Domini (AD).
>The first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Torah or Pentateuch, were translated in the mid-3rd century BCE but did not survive as original translation texts into Greek from this time except as rare fragments.[2] The remaining books of the Greek Old Testament presumably are translations from the period between 200 BCE and 50 CE.[3][4][5]
There's almost a 700 year gap between the Greek and Masoretic texts. All Bibles translated from the Masoretic are not trustworthy.

>>14356922
>The New Testament was written in Greek since everyone spoke Greek.
Very debatable. First of all, not every Jew spoke Greek. Even if they did, they would speak Hebrew among themselves, especially if they did not want the Roman soldiers to understand what they were talking. So it makes no sense that the entirety of the New Testament happens with people speaking strictly Greek. There's also how several passages only make sense in Hebrew, such as when Jesus says "I am the way and the truth and the life" (if you interpret this as poetry, the true meaning will completely go over your head, Jesus is referencing the tabernacle here)
That's why many believe it was originally written in Hebrew. Alternatively, it could have been written in Greek to make the text spread faster, since Greek is much more spoken than Hebrew among non-Jews, but the fact the characters were actually speaking Hebrew is still significant to understand the text.

>>14356162

>>14357383
"Orthodox"