The best Christology books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Umm... yeah, that sounds about right. I started with this book:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802725643/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=36610448970&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1518573029937405177&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_9if7x9rkmb_b

As far as philosophy, CS Lewis' Mere Christianity was very helpful as well.

I'm glad ~~you~~ I finally figured that out. FIFY

...you also seem completely unaware that virtually all Historical Jesus scholars ~~uses~~ used to use it.

FIFY, again!

One criterion, that of dissimilarity, has fallen on hard times. this criterion excludes the likelihood of Jesus having a high degree of continuity with His Jewish contemporaries and the likelihood of his disciples having a high degree v with his teachings. From what we know of ancient teachers and their schools, however, is that the reverse is far more likely. The criterion is therefore useful only in its positive role; what later Christians would not have invented in authentic tradition [i.e. the criterion of embarrassment]

In recent years scholars in the discipline have thus seriously critiqued the negative use of the criterion and urged special caution regarding it. The rising dissatisfaction easily evident a decade ago [the 1990's] is currently a relatively strong consensus against the feasibility of this particular from-critical approach, and not surprisingly so. source

You are arguing with scholars, you cite no one for your view [except Erhman who has been debunked by the above posted books], it is apparently just your own.

>t's not "if it contradicts the early church it's authentic," but "if it's not something the authors would want to make up, then it's more likely to be historical."

You are confusing the criteria of embarrassment with criteria of dissimilarity!

Have him killed does not mean murder him in this context which should be pretty obvious since that's not what they actually do. It means put to trial, and the gospel is saying that they did not intend for it to be a fair trial. The reason that it would cause problems specifically on the feast day is because that would not have been allowed according to the law.

I think that we can, for a start, establish that no trial could take place on the Sabbath, no?

Finding sources for it not being allowed specifically on the Passover by searching on google is hard since it's very hard to get any relevant results at all. If you want to examine the claim further you can look at that book and it's sources.

This book

There's a really good book I read in college called Jesus: An Interview Across Time that delves into this question. It's a work of fiction and the author is a psychologist...his premise is that Jesus didn't know He was God from birth, but learned it over time. Like /u/TheChickening said, we can't tell...and by no means am I recommending this book as a replacement for Scripture...but it was an interesting take, and made Jesus seem somehow more human to me.

I'm not one of the scholars here, but I happened to read the magi chapter from Geza Vermes' "The Nativity: History and Legend" just last night so this is fresh in my mind. Overall, I think you would find the majority of NT scholars consider the story of the magi entirely fictional (it never says there were three, by the way, that's a tradition based on the number of gifts).

• Magi are typically shown in a negative light as sorcerers, except for Balaam who foretells about a star rising out of Jacob. This is in line with Matthew's tendency to incorporate "prophecies" at every turn (Numbers 24:17): > I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near—a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;

• Telling about celestial events signalling the birth of someone important was a common narrative element. > Eusebius: "In the case of remarkable and famous men we know that strange stars have appeared, what some call comets or meteors or tails of fire, or similar phenomena that are seen in connection with great and unusual events."

• Just prior to the time the gospels were written, King Tiridates of Armenia visited Rome to worship Nero, and coincidentally returned home by a different route.

• These are some of the many non-Jewish characters Matthew introduces in his story.

A guy in my ward wrote this book

I haven't read it but I've heard that it's a very informative book of Christ's life.