/lit/ - Literature

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

The Bible

Everything I need to know about Christianity I learned on 8/5/2012.

>Preferrably one which approaches him from a neutral perspective, not from a religious one.

So a discussion on Jesus as a philosopher?

>>2905518
What did you learn about Christianity last week?

>>2905519

Yes that would be perfect.

>>2905515

Thank you, based anon.

>>2905519
>no line from Aristotle to Jesus
NOPE.

>>2905531
Well I'm not sure of any books that refer to Jesus specifically as a philosopher and not God or a prophet, but I'm sure they're out there

And even among the books that refer to him as God or something, some may look into his teachings from a somewhat secular perspective, as philosophical teachings and not divine revelation.

By "not a religious perspective" I mostly meant not from a dogmatic point of view. Theological books are welcome, but I want to read something that is actually scientifically informed, not something bigotted.

It's just hard to access the vast amounts of Jesus-literature that is out there.

That being said, has anyone read the Jesus/New Testament books by Ratzinger, the current pope? He used to be a professor of theology and his books sell like crazy here in Germany. I'm just not sure how dogmatic they are.

>>2905581
From what I've heard Ratzinger is a great scholar. And what do you mean by "dogmatic?" Like Ratzinger saying "this is what Jesus said that this is what he meant and this is what you have to believe?" I would assume that his stuff isn't like that. Theology is supposed to be open to questions.

>>2905535
Jesus had most probably never heard of Aristotle. Ever.

>>2905591
I wouldn't say that. Just because people didn't have automobiles and airplanes in ancient times doesn't mean that people and ideas didn't get around.

And here was a fairly active community of Greek Jews around the time of Jesus, wasn't there? Which is why Greek was one of the main languages the books of the New Testament were written in.

>>2905591

Is there actually any basis for speculation that Greek culture could have influenced Judaism? I mostly mean mythological themes or philosophical ideas.

Their societies were not that far apart after all, geographically speaking. Some of the ideas could have gotten to Israel due to trade routes and maybe influenced some of the authors of the Tanakh?

>>2905584
What Ratzinger?

The pope?

>>2905603

Yes. Josef Ratzinger is his real name, under which he published plenty of books and essays before becoming Pope Benedikt XVI. He used to be an actually quite renowned professor of catholic theology in Freising and Munich (both in Bavaria).

>>2905584
>Ratzinger is a great scholar

I'm sure he is, but I find it hard to take seriously an old virgin who likes cats, wears a dress and looks like Emperor Palpatine.

The Historical Figure of Jesus by E P Sanders

The Historical Jesus: Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant by John Crossan

For a historical perspective.

>>2905621
>likes cats

Does he really? Rome is famous for it's cats and I've wondered if they'd let cats into the Papal apartments.

If the Pope wants cats I guess that no one is going to be able to stop him but I can just imagine some cat running around Vatican city, sharpening its claws on some centuries old tapestry or peeing on an extremely valuable painting or something.

>>2905632
Yeah, didn't you know? He's addicted to cats.

He's cat-holic.

>>2905632
it's cats

er, its cats

>>2905632
>it's cats

er, its cats

>>2905643

>>>/r/reddit

>>2905654
I was correcting my own grammatical error. What's that got to do with the kids over at reddit?

>>2905635
clapclapclapclapclap

>>2905621
>fails to mention the papal tiara

I find such ignorance hard to take seriously

>>2905665

The Life of Christ
by Giuseppe Riciotti

http://books.google.com/books?id=_itP-1V5kzYC&printsec=frontcover&hl=cs&source=gbs_ge_su
mmary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

>>2905665
No one's worn the Papal tiara in ages. Benedict XVI actually had it removed from his personal coat of arms. It's not fashionable with the Popes anymore because they don't want to be seen as royalty.

Just pick one of the four gospels and start reading. Mark is a good starting point. Some number of years ago, Ian McKellen sold out an auditorium at the Kennedy Center by sitting in a chair and read Mark out loud.

>>2905763
I thought that he was an atheist.

>>2905682
oh shi-
someone said the papal tiara was the same thing as the pope's hat (I like the name "triple tiara" tho)
is it also a lie that they removed all the dicks from nude statues in the Vatican so there's a bag of marble dicks in the Vatican?

>>2905820
By Pope's hat do you mean mitre? Because that's not exclusive to the Pope, all Bishops wear one. The triple crown is exclusive to the Pope.

And I've heard that at some point people in the Vatican were fairly sensitive about all the nudity on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and whatnot but I wouldn't think that anyone actually got as far as disfiguring any of the artwork.

I don't know, but I have this picture.

>>2905856
Is this a joke or did a creationist paint it? I can't tell if it's a shop or not.

>>2905861

I'm pretty sure it's a joke, but I can't say with certainty.

Zeitgeist bullshit aside, what does /lit/ think of the "Jesus didn't exist" argument?

I think that it sets a bad precedent. If we can't believe that Jesus existed because nothing was written about him during his own lifetime, then we can go ahead and discount the existence of quite a lot of figures from antiquity.

And anyway, I think that it's fairly unremarkable that nothing was written about Jesus for like 70 some years after his death. He lived in a Semitic culture that recounted everything orally, and the only people who could write, the priests and the scribes, didn't like him very much.

Occam's razor would suggest that Jesus were an actual philosopher and religious leader around whom an entire religion developed, rather than a fictional character that a bunch of people decided had actually existed a generation before them.

>>2905882

>Zeitgeist bullshit aside, what does /lit/ think of the "Jesus didn't exist" argument?

It's retarded.

>>2905889
I concur. It's just an easy way to discredit Christianity without having to get bogged down in actual theology and philosophy and whatnot.

>>2905763

OP here. I have read all the gospels. I want interpretations or scientific/academic interpretations.

>>2905882
I thought it was the general historical consensus that Jesus existed.

>>2905882

There is plenty of evidence that a guy named jesus existed who thought of himself as the messiah or a prophet and was crucified. Every scholar acknowledges it.

>>2905912
Some people argue that he didn't. I saw a book recently entitled "The God Who Wasn't There.

There are actually several non-christian writings that mention Jesus that show up as early as the first century. I think he was a philosopher whose followers went a little overboard.

>>2905898

This, so much.

The general consensus of even non-Christian scholars of ancient history and biblical history is that the historical existence of Jesus is a guaranteed fact, even if the exact events of his life are hard to pinpoint and decipher. Saying Christ wasn't a historical figure at least and didn't exist is almost as dumb as saying Muhammad didn't exist. And if Jesus didn't exist for the reasons some of these radical amateurs of scholarship say he didn't, then fuck, I guess Alexander the Great doesn't exist either.

>inb4 "apologist" "apologist"

facts are facts, homie. Guys like Alexander and Ceasar occupied just as much of a religious status as they did political figures. Check Alexander's biographies and you'll see biblical style miracles attributed to him, but everyone agrees he existed even though we have less written records of his life close to his lifetime than we do Jesus of Nazareth.

Then you also have the fact that no record of any Roman historian of the early Christian era among the pagans questioning the historical existence of Jesus. You would think that with how much suspicion, distrust and bigotry there was towards the Christians by the Roman authority figures, the Roman pagans would be like "We didn't kill dis nigga, he ain't even real! Yur crazy!"

>>2905936
>a guaranteed fact
Niggas don't know SHIT about history

>>2905912
>>2905920

Following Zeitgeist a string of nu-atheists latched onto the idea because they thought it made them so much smarter than teh dum xrishans lol xD I fucking hate that movie.
>implying any Norse tale has Odin Twelve disciples, or any Egyptian tale saying the same with Osiris
>mfw

>>2905938

>Odin WITH twelve disciples

polite sage

>>2905938

I hate to be a devout pagan and watch that shit.

>>2905938
Why is he smoking a big black dick?

The Quest: The Historians' Search for Jesus and Muhammad by F.E. Peters is pretty good if anyone wants an intro-level on this.

>>2905936
>Then you also have the fact that no record of any Roman historian of the early Christian era among the pagans questioning the historical existence of Jesus. You would think that with how much suspicion, distrust and bigotry there was towards the Christians by the Roman authority figures, the Roman pagans would be like "We didn't kill dis nigga, he ain't even real! Yur crazy!"

This.

>>2905944

>>2905938

I'd hate to be a devout pagan and watch that

>>2905920

The vast majority of scholars to accept that Jesus existed. Now the gospel portrayal and the miracles is another matter. The only widely facts accepted about his life is that he was baptized and crucified.

>>2905936
>>2905938
> "We didn't kill dis nigga, he ain't even real! Yur crazy!"
>they thought it made them so much smarter than teh dum xrishans lol xD

Both posts make great points, but are ruined a bit by this silliness.

>>2905485
Jesus: The Teenage Years by John Farman

I heard that the Zeitgeist stuff about Osiris and Attis and Mithras having twelve disciples and rising from the dead is based off of stuff the soviets made up to discredit Christians. Is that true or is it something that the Zeitgeist filmmakers pulled straight out of their asses?

And does Zeitgeist really say that myths about Odin influenced the stories about Jesus? Because nothing was actually written about Odin until the 13th fucking century.

>>2905949

If anything, the Roman pagans were all to willing to accept the guy as a god or at least a servant of the gods (which probably helped encourage some of the Christian heresies like Marcionism).

Eusebius, an early church historian recorded his arguments with a pagan scholar who criticized the Christians' making Jesus a god based on his miracles instead of just a servant of the gods.

And all the historians who speak negatively of the Christians or make mention of the Christians do not deny Jesus' historicity and even speak of Jesus or "Christus" as a historical figure as though knowledge of him were common. And these are historians of this time, educated elites patronized by aristocrats and royalty (who were usually not Christian and even opposed to the new religion), if Jesus didn't exist in Roman Judaea at all, these guys would know.

captcha: st.Mous the

>>2905967

The movie gets almost all it's religious info from a book "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold." Which was pulled out of the authors ass.

Someone pointed out in an earlier thread on /int/ that Romans were typically very tolerant of other religions, that's why they assimilated so many, but they objected to Christianity because Christians refused to recognize the Emperor as some sort of semi-divine figure. The Jews wouldn't do that either I guess but they weren't trying to proselytize in the capital city.

Doesn't that Zeitgeist movie have lots of bollocks about 9/11 and other conspiracy theories in it? It shouldn't really be taken seriously enough to continually refute its long-disproven arguments.

>>2905982

It's just annoying when people who watch Zeitgeist comes into an argument acting like the know something special. It doesn't happen as often as it use too, fortunately. 3-5 years ago the internet was swarming with Zeitgeist idiots.

>>2905980

The Jews kinda got off because the Christians were a common opponent of them and the pagans and, even though the Jews did have a rebellious streak in some circles (see the revolt in Jerusalem and Destruction of the Second Temple) there were many who were willing to submit to authority or who were avarice enough to be easily bought. They also weren't known for proselytism, they kept to themselves most of the time. Also, by this time, Jews had become a mainstay in many parts of the Hellenized world and were Hellenized enough to where suspicion of them as a class was not very warranted, even if their co-religionists back in Palestine caused trouble. Christianity actually started in the Jewish communities around the Roman world, and it was partly the interest of the Gentiles in Jewish culture and religion that led to the Gentile's steady acceptance of the "Jesus movement."

As Gentile Christianity spread and started forming its own religious and political identity apart from Judaism and spread to places more unfamiliar with Jewish religion in general, it garnered suspicion and hate.

>>2906000

I also should mention that Paul of Tarsus is another reason that Christianity spread to the Gentiles, as he provided most of the Christianity we see today, a religion that was easier for the pagan gentiles to accept. However, it is a misconception that all Gentiles who converted to Jesus' teachings embraced Pauline doctrine, many had already embraced the more "Jewish" forms that Paul condemned.

>>2905982
Last year there were posters all over my campus about it.

Jesus: The King and His Kingdom by George W Buchannan.
Its exactly what you're looking for. Kind of rare. Try interlibrary loan or amazon.

So... what does /lit/ think of Jesus as a philosopher? His teachings were fairly revolutionary, weren't they? There doesn't seem to be much of a precedent for what he taught, even if he was influenced by Aristotle.

>>2906005
> I also should mention that Paul of Tarsus is another reason that Christianity spread to the Gentiles, as he provided most of the Christianity we see today, a religion that was easier for the pagan gentiles to accept.

I think that is a misconception. Paul's writings make up a significant chunk of the New Testament, but that doesn't mean that he 'provided most of the Christianity we see today'. Most likely it just means that the rest of the early Christian writing was destroyed around 70 A.D. when Old-Testament Jews were wiped out.

>>2906229
Old Testament Jews weren't ever wiped out, what are you saying?

>>2906231
> Old Testament Jews weren't ever wiped out, what are you saying?

No temple, no priesthood, no promised land: all check. Yeah, they were wiped out. Those three things defined the Old Testament Jews as being Old Testament Jews, not language or religious philosophy.

>>2906271
>Those three things defined the Old Testament Jews as being Old Testament Jews, not language or religious philosophy.

Ah, I see what you're saying.

>>2906271

There's no such thing as "Old Testament Jews" what you are speaking of is the end of the Second Temple era and the beginning of the pre-Zionist exilic era. The Old Testament or the "Hebrew Bible" as it is known to Jews who reject the New Testament is still the leading authority of texts in modern Judaism. Sorry to be a sucker for the specifics.

>>2906229

>I think that is a misconception. Paul's writings make up a significant chunk of the New Testament, but that doesn't mean that he 'provided most of the Christianity we see today'.

Actually, it does. Most of the New Testament is writings attribute to Paul and most Christians in the world follow Paul as a religious authority on the true teachings of Christ. The vast majority of Christianity we see today is "Pauline doctrine," Paul was a huge influence on the religion for the Gentiles as he was the one who said Christians didn't need to follow Jewish law. He's the one who essentially broke the chains of Jewishness wrapped around Christianity.

Even many of the heretics among the Gentiles were in agreement with the emerging Orthodoxy in their admiration for Paul. Marcion, arguably the most influential heretic to emerge in the entire church in the post-Apostolic era, who claimed that the separation between Christianity and Judaism was to the extent that the god of the Old Testament and the god of the New were two completely different gods, considered Paul to be the best and most guided apostle, the others were either false or fundamentally inferior. Marcion was the first to develop a closed canon of scripture for the Church, in which the only letters of the Apostles he included were Paul's.

To underestimate Paul's influence when discussing early Christianity would be a great folly.

There aren't any eyewitness or even contemporary accounts of his existence, so even considering the strength of subsequent historical evidence there is room for legitimate doubt. That being said it seems petty to dis-believe in a historical Jesus, and the existence of a historical person (who may not have actually been Jesus) who at least used the Jesus narrative in his teaching.

>>2906406

>There aren't any eyewitness or even contemporary accounts of his existence

You can say the same for most influential historical figures before medieval times

>>2906416

That and most scholars agree the four gospels were written in the late first century/early second century at the earliest in some form or another, when memory of the guy was still very much fresh. They may not be reliable in every regard as to his life, but to discount them would be a grave error.

>>2906416
But not all of them claim to be sons of a deity, who you must follow or end up in eternal fire, which makes existence of Jesus(as described in Bible), to say at least, implausible.

>>2906416
You really can't. Relevant to this discussion: there are contemporary accounts of Pontius Pilate's life in addition to archaeological evidence. Now I wouldn't expect there to be any for someone like Jesus (although, if I believed I was talking to the Son of God I would probably not want to trust my memory about what exactly it was he had to say and would write it down during my own lifetime, not wait for my grandchildren to do it) but that doesn't actually refute the point; the evidence is sparse and of low reliability even if we would expect it to be very good.
>>2906436
Actually a great many of them claimed to the sons of deities. Was very common in Greece.

>>2906422
Sixty-ish years is quite a while. Most people who were alive in the 30s would have been dead by then, and it's more than enough time for people to start taking a very moving, insightful narrative more literally than it was meant.

Jesus was probably real but to treat his existence as a historical fact on par with Alexander's is abuse of the facts.

>>2906446
>Actually a great many of them claimed to the sons of deities. Was very common in Greece.

I said not all of them. What is your point?

>>2906446
>even if we would expect it to be very good
even if we would NOT expect it to be very good

>>2906436
>But not all of them claim to be sons of a deity,

That's completely irrelevant though in determining whether or not he actually existed. How people interpreted his existence or the kind of existence he claimed for himself is besides the point.

Plenty of historical records of events and persons are covered in legends of miraculous deeds or phenomena, some of which are written a century or more later. That doesn't mean we discount that the general events, such as the battle of such and such, or this or that person didn't historically happen/exist just because of the social memory of these events.

Whether Jesus was remembered as the son of God or claimed to be the son of God or lesser/greater doesn't matter when we are trying to determine whether he existed on earth.

^ ^ ^cont'd

>>2906453
>>2906446
>although, if I believed I was talking to the Son of God I would probably not want to trust my memory about what exactly it was he had to say and would write it down during my own lifetime, not wait for my grandchildren to do it

Considering most people during this time period didn't know how to read and writing materials were fairly expensive, I'd say that was the case. It's likely that Jesus' most educated disciples did write down the things he said or did, if not as a continuous narrative, then as a collection of crude notes which were later refined into the gospels we know today ( the scholars' Q Document) by succeeding Christians. But since most people in the ancient world, particularly most of early Christians, didn't know how to read or write, you wouldn't see very much in the way writing at all in the early church until more time passed the church became more established, more educated. It's perfectly understandable why the gospels we know today wouldn't have been put to paper until a little bit later by whomever (they're anonymously written). This doesn't mean there were no other writings before them, however, nor does this mean they are 100% correct in their telling of the events in question, but the point is you have sets of documents writing down the traditions of a man and a group of his disciples within only a few generations (the last of Jesus' twelve apostles is said to have died somewhere around 70-90 CE) after these people were killed and that's not something to scoff at when trying to determine whether that particular man at least existed to walk and talk to people to have this memory of him develop.

Sixty-ish years is still enough to establish whether someone existed. Again, the social memory of the person in question by his followers is not important.

You might like Anne Rice's books.
After he daughter died and the catholics wouldn't bury her she lost faith, which is what "Memnoch" is all about.
Now she does her own thing.

>>2905485
OP i'm not sure if any books of that nature exist
at least not in mainstream literature
perhaps you could attempt to filter through all of the pretentious garbage in a book with religious bias, or perhaps try searching for a documentary film instead?
Jesus is a very interesting historical figure in my eyes as well

Gospel in Brief by Tolstoy. It's a book about jesus as philosopher. an interpretation of the gospels from the original greek, collated into one retelling, omitting emphases of faith and miracles, and instead highlighting deeds, words, and the meanings of them. Also very /lit/ related.

>>2906375
> There's no such thing as "Old Testament Jews" what you are speaking of is the end of the Second Temple era and the beginning of the pre-Zionist exilic era. The Old Testament or the "Hebrew Bible" as it is known to Jews who reject the New Testament is still the leading authority of texts in modern Judaism. Sorry to be a sucker for the specifics.

I don't think modern Jews have _any_ claim whatsoever to being the descendants of the Jews of the Second Temple. Yes, they revere the Tanakh, but then so do a whole bunch of other unrelated people, i.e. Mormons and Muslims.

What made the Jews of the Old Testament Jewish was their exclusive worship of God (i.e. the Temple and priesthood) and their status as the chosen people. (I.e. the promised land).

After around 70 A.D. both of those ceased to exist, so whoever claims to be Jewish after 70 A.D. really isn't.

> Even many of the heretics among the Gentiles were in agreement with the emerging Orthodoxy in their admiration for Paul. Marcion, arguably the most influential heretic to emerge in the entire church in the post-Apostolic era, who claimed that the separation between Christianity and Judaism was to the extent that the god of the Old Testament and the god of the New were two completely different gods, considered Paul to be the best and most guided apostle, the others were either false or fundamentally inferior. Marcion was the first to develop a closed canon of scripture for the Church, in which the only letters of the Apostles he included were Paul's.

Just because Paul happened to write down the first accounts of orthodox Christian doctrine doesn't mean he invented it. Most likely he was one of many, but other accounts didn't survive for random historical reasons.

>>2906509
That is true but it's unlikely all twelve were illiterate or too poor to manage to write something; Matthew was a tax collector after all, it's difficult to imagine producing something was beyond his means and yet we have nothing. And that's not the point, that point is that we don't have anything from anyone who even could have been an eyewitness; every existing narrative is based on hearsay produced after all of the alleged eyewitnesses were dead. You have an entire generation pass between the supposed events and their first recording, that's plenty of time for exaggerations to become distortions to become outright fiction. We know that there was some sort of historical basis for the Jesus narrative but the texts simply aren't reliable enough to determine his historicity beyond reasonable doubt. John (whose existence is much better established) could have just made him up as an excuse for his own inability to make prophecies or perform miracles and put his own teachings in the mouth of his fictional dead brother; we just don't know.

>>2906638
*cousin

>>2906630
>What made the Jews of the Old Testament Jewish was their exclusive worship of God

which they still do. at least the religious jews

>and their status as the chosen people.

According to (orthodox) Jewish belief from the time of the Temple's destruction, they still are the chosen people, but are being punished by God with exile from their land until the Messiah returns.

This also isn't the first time this has happened to them. As long as Judaism as a religion survives and there is a ethnic group that keeps Israelite customs and culture, there are still Jews. Temple or no Temple. A Jew is still a Jew, temple or not and this has always been the case.

>>2906659
>>2906630

cont'd

>Just because Paul happened to write down the first accounts of orthodox Christian doctrine doesn't mean he invented it. Most likely he was one of many, but other accounts didn't survive for random historical reasons.

Paul was from the first-second generation, there's not very "many" who could have been before him except for Jesus and the other apostles.We see that he actually butts heads with the leaders of the church: Jesus' closest friends and disciples in Jerusalem, over his doctrine. Now, if we want to talk about everything he said, yes certainly some of what he taught theologically was taught by other Christians before he came along, but as far as the whole "you don't need to get circumcised and eat pork and all that stuff" deal the theological implications behind it, all the records we have of Paul's life point to him being the one to introduce that doctrine and he certainly seems to claim as much (albeit as divine inspiration from Christ).

Sure, questions had been asked before on Gentiles in relation to Jewish law, but as far as the question in regards to Christianity and Jewish Law, Paul is the first one on record to have said "No, you as a Christian don't need to follow it," which got him some flak with Jesus' friends who were given charge of his church (Peter, James, etc.) And he shows no shame in admitting this.

>>2906508
I was making a point about his existence as described in Bible, not in general. and I clearly noted that in parentheses. Pay attention when reading.

>>2906638

>That is true but it's unlikely all twelve were illiterate or too poor to manage to write something

They probably did. But saying we need a first edition of their work or even a particular record written by their hands to confirm that Jesus was born is not true. We have plenty of evidence to substantiate that a man named Jesus was born in the Middle East and gathered religious followers already.

>You have an entire generation pass between the supposed events and their first recording, that's plenty of time for exaggerations to become distortions to become outright fiction.We know that there was some sort of historical basis for the Jesus narrative but the texts simply aren't reliable enough to determine his historicity beyond reasonable doubt.

I never said otherwise, but to claim we cannot prove that Jesus was at least born and preached something that got people to like him is just not true. We have more than enough to do at least that. I'm not talking about his specific teachings, whether he was born to a virgin, whether he rose from the dead, or whether he was a prophet/god. I'm talking about his historical existence. We have plenty to have at least that certainty.

>John (whose existence is much better established) could have just made him up as an excuse for his own inability to make prophecies or perform miracles and put his own teachings in the mouth of his fictional dead brother; we just don't know.

But we do know and we know that John didn't do that, nor could he have done that and the religion to be successful and influential as it was.

>>2906662
>I was making a point about his existence as described in Bible, not in general.

then your post was pointless if it wasn't implying as much as I had already stated before that while the Bible can't be relied on necessarily for all the specifics of Jesus' life, including some of his alleged miracles and teachings, we can still rely on it as evidence for his historical existence in conjunction with other written works outside of it.

>wants a good book
>can't be religious in nature
well that's not contradictory at all

it's not like he claimed to be god or anything

>>2906680

>it's not like he claimed to be god or anything

That actually is an ongoing debate. Nowhere in the gospels does he ever say he's a god and early Jewish-Christian sects kept out of the Roman church accepted him as just a prophetic/messianic figure.

>>2906675
My bad.

This thread and the discussion that followed is one of the reasons why I love /lit/. We actually 'discuss' things in a calm (for 4chan) manner.

In regards to Ratzinger
>>2905581

His books on Jesus of Nazareth are fantastic from a theological perspective. They are also incredibly dense. I know quite a few Dominicans who admit that they struggle with the book because he writes in such a scholarly/academic style so that every paragraph is pretty much packed with layers of meaning. It's not what you want if you're looking at a 'balanced/neutral' life of Jesus type thing as it's mostly Pope Benedict's personal theological reflection on the life of Jesus Christ, kind of like Bl.Fulton J.Sheen's 'Life of Christ'. As an aside if anyone in the thread is looking for a very good academic introduction to Christianity Ratzinger's 'Introduction to Christianity' is very good and I recommend picking it up.

And for anyone who runs into a myther, this is a fantastic blogpost:
http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2011/05/nailed-ten-christian-myths-that-show.html

OP could also look into some introductory books on the Nag Hammadi Library. Anything by Elaine Pagels or Bart D. Ehrman on the subject is a good start.

>>2906708
Was gonna say, Bart Ehrman is a respected scholar, skeptic, former evangelical, and pretty funny author who has written a great textbook on the new testament, as well as several popular theological and historical examinations of jesus and the apostles.

I would recommend any of his works

Not a book, but I recommend these lectures (of which, to be honest, I've only seen the first couple): http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

>>2909965
I listened to all of them at work. Guy is funny and really knows his stuff.

>>2910304
>I listened to all of them at work.
What is your job?