/lit/ - Literature

>>17582749
KEK probably Genesis, because I dunno, I just like it. I also love Paradise Lost.

They're all shit. The history books are kinda interesting.

Matthew because it has Hippie Jesus and it's also the only one I could stomach all the way through.
Genesis is probably the most important and is one of very few truly foundational pieces of literature

just here to say if it's ecclesiastes you are an athiest or cryptoathiest.

>>17582905
What about Job?

>>17582749
BOOK OF WARS OF THE LORD if it was ever released form the Vatican vaults

I absolutely love 1 Kings 2. It's basically Godfather in one page.

That sounds like a good one

I fapped to the Song of Songs, rate.

>>17582749
I'm in the middle of psalms right now. Samuel 1/2 and Job are probably my favorites. Everyone already knows Job but I really liked Samuel because I never knew David's story was so much more intricate and interesting than the Goliath story everyone knows.

>>17583355
>I'm in the middle of psalms right now.
The same here. They sure repeat themselves a lot.

Genesis

I like how basic it is, how its basically metaphors for everything. And the idea of just living in Eden was nice I guess - there shoulda been more of that in there, before all the death and destruction and horrible shit that follows after for 1000s of pages

Judges, because of the dismembered girl story. Imagine a story which is pretty bad, and then it gets worse again... and again... and again...

Genesis because it's the only one I've read before getting bored

Does anyone know if there's a pornographically illustrated version of the bible? I think it'd hold my attention far more that way.

>>17582749
John, because he was one of the incarnations of Chico Xavier.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PX8.HTM

Testaclees

Job, Ecclesiastes.
Two of the few books that are relatable in the 21st century.

>>17583488
>>17582905
>>17582922
common cryptoathiest choice but not always

>>17582749
Nephi
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WX5QC9Y

>>17582749
96:7.3.No collection of religious writings gives expression to such a wealth of devotion and inspirational ideas of God as the Book of Psalms. And it would be very helpful if, in the perusal of this wonderful collection of worshipful literature, consideration could be given to the source and chronology of each separate hymn of praise and adoration, bearing in mind that no other single collection covers such a great range of time. This Book of Psalms is the record of the varying concepts of God entertained by the believers of the Salem religion throughout the Levant and embraces the entire period from Amenemope to Isaiah. In the Psalms God is depicted in all phases of conception, from the crude idea of a tribal deity to the vastly expanded ideal of the later Hebrews, wherein Yahweh is pictured as a loving ruler and merciful Father.

96:7.4.And when thus regarded, this group of Psalms constitutes the most valuable and helpful assortment of devotional sentiments ever assembled by man up to the times of the twentieth century. The worshipful spirit of this collection of hymns transcends that of all other sacred books of the world.

Tobias is comfy

The one with the bears killing the kids for making fun of the old bald Jew.

>>17582749
John. Beautiful language, still based in history while also incorporating early Christian theology to make more sense of Jesus' identity, purpose, and ministry from the perspective of the developing church.

Ecclesiastes could be a pick for crypto-atheists, but it was created for a religious people. Ecclesiastes is a book about what you do and how you deal with the world when it isn't presenting supernatural/super-meaningful events, which is most of the time.

Job

I like when Jews suffer

>>17584151
> still based in history while also incorporating early Christian theology
I got bad news for your buddy. It's all myth. All the way down.

john obviously, or corinthians

Can’t pick one. I’ll pick 5

Genesis
Judges
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
Ecclesiastes

>>17583355
Yeah in popular memory people think David was the underdog but actually Goliath was the underdog because David was basically Naruto and had god magic on his side

>>17585649
Christ denial is the retardedest historical position (except Muhammad myth theory?), hope that's not what you're implying bro.

John is not a first generation account of Jesus, but it was written as part of the early Christian tradition. It provides a bridge between earlier first and second hand accounts, and the later developing body of belief and doctrine.

>>17582749
I haven't read all of it yet but I really like Psalms. Lots of good messages. Genesis is nice for the creation story too.

I want to read the bible but I don’t want to spend time reading the bible. Will an audio book version be good enough?

>>17585986
Christ mythicism is not retarded because it's guaranteed you have no idea what the arguments they use are. I am just saying the gospels are not historically reliable and this is the consensus of a lot of scholars.

>>17586064
Atheist here. The overwhelming scholarly consensus is also that Jesus was certainly a real person. Let's not get carried away saying something absurd like "myths all the way down."

>>17586170
> Dipshit here
So what if you're a dipshit. Consensus means nothing. Christ mythicism is a new idea, and most scholars of Jesus studies are Christians, the majority are of a liberal bent and are happy to jettison the historicity of the OT narratives, Moses and Abraham (most OT scholars agree that the last two didn't exist) but can't bring themselves to entertain the idea of Jesus who is central to their theology. Many aren't even properly trained in history but NT studies which involves taking some history classes.

>>17586354
>Consensus means nothing
Interesting because over here you say
>and this is the consensus of a lot of scholars.

So consensus means nothing when I cite it but it means something when you do? Poo poo.

>>17583234
It’s impossible to read without getting at least a half chub

>>17586377
I used it as point against your consensus driven thinking.

>>17586397
In some subjects, consensus is the closest thing you'll ever get to something you can hold to be true. Whether Jesus existed or not is one of those. No, I'll never know it to be true the way I know my 10 toes to be, but I'm fairly certain he existed.

>>17586407
Consensuses are overturned all the time. I think a layman is justified in trusting the consensus of any field until he has the acquired knowledge and possesses the requisite intelligence to parse both sides of the argument and come to a conclusion by himself. I think the consensus is wrong in this case.

>>17586426
In order for this consensus to be overturned we would need some landmark archeological find. Like, a letter from Paul saying "lol they fell for it" kind of shit. Face it, we know just about all we're going to know about it.
I agree with your argument in principle but it's important not to deviate from the topic which is specifically about Jesus.

Now, you say something along the lines of Christian scholars being unwilling to overturn this stone. Hogwash. All atheist scholars come to the same conclusions. Christ myth theory is fringe of fringe. There's no agenda behind saying "everything supernatural about Jesus is bullshit. but he did exist." It's simply ridiculous to assume there is a Christian bias behind a naturalistic understanding of historical Jesus. What kind of Christian would ever conclude he wasn't supernatural? They wouldn't be a Christian at all.

>>17583369
Wait till you read the Quran

>>17586438
The reasoning behind Christ mythicism is perfectly captured by (and I am paraphrasing) Robert M. Price's comment: "why assume that there is a city of Oz just because there is a yellow brick road?"

Christ mythicism is just an interpretation of commonly accepted facts in the field of Jesus studies:

1. The Gospels aren't independent witnesses (Matthew and Luke borrow heavily from Mark)
2. The Gospels are anonymous. There are contradictory ascriptions of authorship to some of the books.
3. The complete copy of the NT appears in the 3rd century, hundreds of years the time when the events are purported to have occurred.
4. The Gospels aren't historically reliable nor were they intended to be historical documents.
5. We only have a handful of manuscripts from the 1st century.
6. There is good reason to think the Gospels were written after the 1st century, and Acts too.
7. There was forgery and Christians altered the text to win theological arguments (see Bart Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture).
8. Paul never says he met a physical Jesus
9. A good case can be made that less than 7 (this is consensus that only 7 of the 13 epistle are genuinely Pauline) were written by Paul
10. Josephus's attestation to Jesus was very likely a later Christian interpolation and even then is not evidence of Josephus having seen him.
11. Tacitus was not referring to Jesus Christ (of Joseph) but another Jesus.
12. There are multiple other gospels written in the 1st century that weren't classified as canonical that depict Jesus completely differently. Which tells us the oral tradition of Jesus was a mess with many embellishments and falsehoods being propagated and bought into existence.

>>17586504
>Christ mythicism is just an interpretation
It's a bunk interpretation and one that I will never entertain until some miraculous new find appears. And please don't think I have any love for Christianity. If you want to get an idea a realistic depiction of what Jesus would have been like try EP Sander's The Historical Figure of Jesus. Short and sweet.

>>17586016
better than never reading it, go for it

>>17586542
Read The Quest for the historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer and On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier.

>>17582749
Samuel. It's something of a prose epic. Very fun read.

>>17586354
>Christ mythicism is a new idea
No it isn't, it goes back to at least Thomas Paine's Age of Reason part III, published 1807.

As the other anon said the vast majority of scholars, including non-christians, think there was a historical Jesus. I assume you are thinking about Richard Carrier but his argument using Bayes theorum is a classic example of "garbage in garbage out". The priors that he puts into the formula aren't based on any quantitative data but are his own subjective judgements on whether certain pieces of evidence count as for or against Jesus' historicity. They rely on his assumptions such as "James the brother of the Lord" not referring to a biological brother of Jesus, while most scholars think it does. But he presents his views as objective and scientific which is plain wrong.