That looks really interesting, thank you! For anyone else reading this, if you are looking for a digital copy, it has an alternative title: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
Ah, seems like you had a somewhat interesting job there, I'm like a collection box of vague and useless information myself. Also, since you mention Josephus, I think the opinion of most scholars today is that that minor mention of Jesus was added by later Christian monks. The region at the time was full of cranks who claimed to be the messiah so perhaps Josephus made a slight mention of one and later christian writers jumped on that and 'corrected' it to be about Jesus. If you're still interested in this sort of thing I'd recommend Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman
What's really great about this guy is that he started out as a born-again christian who took everything said about Christianity as a given, so much so that he studied to be a biblical scholar so he could handle the oldest texts we have and read them in their original languages. However, over time, the amount of inconsistencies and pure fabrications that his scholar's eye saw began to clash so much with his faith that he finally gave it up, his faith I mean.
You're so right. I have "Misquoting Jesus" which goes into detail on just what "literacy" meant 2000 years ago. They didn't have printing presses, and even scribes weren't necessarily able to read the words they copied.
Next time hand him a Bart Ehrman book - there are about 30. All of them refute what is in the New Testament with historical and linguistic mastery to show what is wrong with Christianity.
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This is the speech he gave at the Commonwealth Club in California
First off, there's a great deal of literature that has been recommended across these threads. Getting into one of those books is going to serve you better than reframing similar questions across multiple places. There are a few "classic" books on all of these topics that I think most of us have read.
For your historicity questions, the works of Bart Erhman have been suggested. He often fails to meet his own standards but either: * "Misquoting Jesus" * "Jesus Before the Gospels"
would be a good places to start. Though there are many of his books that would apply here and I'm sure other Redditors have varying opinions.
For questions of morality and logic, Richard Dawkins (the inventor of the "meme" concept, haha) and Christopher Hitchens have been perennial favorites for good reason. Dawkins, being a long time evolutionary biologist critical of religion, and Hitch (RIP) being adroit with language and in some ways more logically strict have so many great works (and Hitch's decade long roasting of Dinesh D'Souza in debates still bring a tear to my eye) but these are the most popular:
After that, Sam Harris (who subscribes to the Mythicist aka "mythical Jesus" aka there was no historical Jesus argument) has a lot of books on topics regarding "living without religion". I enjoyed "Spirituality Without Religion".
Just googling articles and videos from any of these authors will probably get you some answers without having to create all these semi-related posts.
Secondly, if you continue to ask questions on one post, that would be far more useful than creating multiple posts under two accounts (and if you run these through sentiment analysis, the language, writing style, et cetera in these indicates the same author).
The biggest thing that folks are feeling is that you're not really doing any legwork. It sounds like you have questions, but reading any books that have been suggested is somehow too much work. Instead you are relying on and monopolizing all the well meaning redditors time and it's starting to become a bit... concerning. These subreddits are for others to share thoughts and ask questions too.
> If you could provide sources for further reading on the topic [the end of the Gospel attributed to Mark, starting at Mark 16:9] from a non Christian standpoint
I'll let Dr. Bart D. Ehrman (an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. wiki) speak to this issue regarding the potential of non-original text in Mark.
From the section on: RECONSTRUCTING THE TEXTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Last Twelve Verses of Mark
The second example that we will consider may not be as familiar to the casual reader of the Bible, but it has been highly influential in the history of biblical interpretation and poses comparable problems for the scholar of the textual tradition of the New Testament. This example comes from the Gospel of Mark and concerns its ending.
In Mark's account, we are told that Jesus is crucified and then buried by Joseph of Arimathea on the day before the Sabbath (15:4247). On the day after Sabbath, Mary Magdalene and two other women come back to the tomb in order properly to anoint the body (16:12). When they arrive, they find that the stone has been rolled away. Entering the tomb, they see a young man in a white robe, who tells them, "Do not be startled! You are seeking Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has been raised and is not here—see the place where they laid him?" He then instructs the women to tell the disciples that Jesus is preceding them into Galilee and that they will see him there, "just as he told you." But the women flee the tomb and say nothing to anyone, "for they were afraid" (16:48).
Then come the last twelve verses of Mark in many modern English translations, verses that continue the story. Jesus himself is said to appear to Mary Magdalene, who goes and tells the disciples; but they do not believe her (vv. 911). He then appears to two others (vv. 1214), and finally to the eleven disciples (the Twelve, not including Judas Iscariot) who are gathered together at table. Jesus upbraids them for failing to believe, and then commissions them to go forth and proclaim his gospel "to the whole creation." Those who believe and are baptized "will be saved," but those who do not "will be condemned." And then come two of the most intriguing verses of the passage:
>> And these are the signs that will accompany those who believe: they will cast out demons in my name; they will speak in new tongues; and they will take up snakes in their hands; and if they drink any poison, it will not harm them; they will place their hands upon the sick and heal them. (vv. 1718)
Jesus is then taken up into heaven, and seated at the right hand of God. And the disciples go forth into the world proclaiming the gospel, their words being confirmed by the signs that accompany them (vv. 1920).
It is a terrific passage, mysterious, moving, and powerful. It is one of the passages used by Pentecostal Christians to show that Jesus's followers will be able to speak in unknown "tongues," as happens in their own services of worship; and it is the principal passage used by groups of "Appalachian snakehandlers," who till this day take poisonous snakes in their hands in order to demonstrate their faith in the words of Jesus, that when doing so they will come to no harm.
But there's one problem. Once again, this passage was not originally in the Gospel of Mark. It was added by a later scribe.
In some ways this textual problem is more disputed than the passage about the woman taken in adultery, because without these final verses Mark has a very different, and hard to understand, ending. That doesn't mean that scholars are inclined to accept the verses, as we'll see momentarily. The reasons for taking them to be an addition are solid, almost indisputable. But scholars debate what the genuine ending of Mark actually was, given the circumstance that this ending found in many English translations (though usually marked as inauthentic) and in later Greek manuscripts is not the original.
The evidence that these verses were not original to Mark is similar in kind to that for the passage about the woman taken in adultery, and again I don't need to go into all the details here. The verses are absent from our two oldest and best manuscripts of Mark's Gospel, along with other important witnesses; the writing style varies from what we find elsewhere in Mark; the transition between this passage and the one preceding it is hard to understand (e.g., Mary Magdalene is introduced in verse 9 as if she hadn't been mentioned yet, even though she is discussed in the preceding verses; there is another problem with the Greek that makes the transition even more awkward); and there are a large number of words and phrases in the passage that are not found elsewhere in Mark. In short, the evidence is sufficient to convince nearly all textual scholars that these verses are an addition to Mark.
Without them, though, the story ends rather abruptly. Notice what happens when these verses are taken away. The women are told to inform the disciples that Jesus will precede them to Galilee and meet them there; but they, the women, flee the tomb and say nothing to anyone, "for they were afraid." And that's where the Gospel ends.
Obviously, scribes thought the ending was too abrupt. The women told no one? Then, did the disciples never learn of the resurrection? And didn't Jesus himself ever appear to them? How could that be the ending! To resolve the problem, scribes added an ending.19
Some scholars agree with the scribes in thinking that 16:8 is too abrupt an ending for a Gospel. As I have indicated, it is not that these scholars believe the final twelve verses in our later manuscripts were the original ending—they know that's not the case—but they think that, possibly, the last page of Mark's Gospel, one in which Jesus actually did meet the disciples in Galilee, was somehow lost, and that all our copies of the Gospel go back to this one truncated manuscript, without the last page.
That explanation is entirely possible. It is also possible, in the opinion of yet other scholars, that Mark did indeed mean to end his Gospel with 16:8.20 It certainly is a shocker of an ending. The disciples never learn the truth of Jesus's resurrection because the women never tell them. One reason for thinking that this could be how Mark ended his Gospel is that some such ending coincides so well with other motifs throughout his Gospel. As students of Mark have long noticed, the disciples never do seem to "get it" in this Gospel (unlike in some of the other Gospels). They are repeatedly said not to understand Jesus (6:5152; 8:21), and when Jesus tells them on several occasions that he must suffer and die, they manifestly fail to comprehend his words (8:3133; 9:3032; 10:3340). Maybe, in fact, they never did come to understand (unlike Mark's readers, who can understand who Jesus really is from the very beginning). Also, it is interesting to note that throughout Mark, when someone comes to understand something about Jesus, Jesus orders that person to silence—and yet often the person ignores the order and spreads the news (e.g., 1:4345). How ironic that when the women at the tomb are told not to be silent but to speak, they also ignore the order—and are silent!
In short, Mark may well have intended to bring his reader up short with this abrupt ending—a clever way to make the reader stop, take a faltering breath, and ask: What?
Conclusion
The passages discussed above represent just two out of thousands of places in which the manuscripts of the New Testament came to be changed by scribes. In both of the examples, we are dealing with additions that scribes made to the text, additions of sizable length. Although most of the changes are not of this magnitude, there are lots of significant changes (and lots more insignificant ones) in our surviving manuscripts of the New Testament.
....
I would like to end this chapter simply with an observation about a particularly acute irony that we seem to have discovered. As we saw in chapter 1, Christianity from the outset was a bookish religion that stressed certain texts as authoritative scripture. As we have seen in this chapter, however, we don't actually have these authoritative texts. This is a textually oriented religion whose texts have been changed, surviving only in copies that vary from one another, sometimes in highly significant ways. The task of the textual critic is to try to recover the oldest form of these texts.
This is obviously a crucial task, since we can't interpret the words of the New Testament if we don't know what the words were. Moreover, as I hope should be clear by now, knowing the words is important not just for those who consider the words divinely inspired. It is important for anyone who thinks of the New Testament as a significant book. And surely everyone interested in the history, society, and culture of Western civilization thinks so, because the New Testament, if nothing else, is an enormous cultural artifact, a book that is revered by millions and that lies at the foundation of the largest religion of the world today.
Please read Misquoting Jesus by Bart Erhman
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why Kindle Edition
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEGJF8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Here is his interview on Fresh Air https://freshairarchive.org/segments/bart-ehrmans-misquoting-jesus
You'll find it interesting.
Bart D. Ehrman sure has . Read his misquoting jesus
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEGJF8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?\_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Not really. I really suggest reading Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart Ehrman, who is a biblical scholar https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEGJF8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?\_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
I already cited Bart Ehrman, who you said you were familiar with. All those claims come from his scholarly works. Would you like me to cite his books or some of my favorite YouTube presentations? Son of god isn't the nail in the coffin you think it is either. Multiple human men are called son or sons of god in the Bible and also in antiquity. It doesn't inherently mean what you want it to mean. In the context of the rest of Mark there is a case to be made that Jesus didn't become the son of god until his baptism or his resurrection. But that is a debate that is literally as old as Christianity.
Hilariously, your second citation is literally a forged verse that doesn't exist in the oldest copies. So thanks for literally quoting the perfect example. I laughed quite hard. Why would someone add those verses? Oh right, to help them make a point just like you tried to use them. The question then becomes what else was added in the earlier copies that we will never know about. We know that even the earliest samples are fragments or a copy, of a copy, of a copy, of a copy for decades and decades. We also know that the legend was growing after Jesus died for decades, who knows what was made up even before the original text of Mark was written (again by someone we know wasn't a direct witness of Jesus). In case you weren't aware none of the Gospels were written by the people they are named after. That is just church tradition.
So whose ignorance is showing?
Again I ask, so which is it? Is it unblemished, and preserved by god or is it changed and full of known forgeries and lies by men?
Part of the problem may be that people wrongly think atheists just go around saying "religion is bad" over and over, like a broken record. It's a bit more nuanced than that. Sam Harris for example, though he has been accused of just being anti-religious, has openly said that religion is not the problem, and even fundamentalism isn't the problem. The more extreme Jains get, he points out, the less you have to worry about them. He addresses specific beliefs, which he feels that Islam has a disproportionate burden of.
On the larger scale, yes, skeptics argue that the religious way of looking at the world is bad. But there are many arguments for that, many approaches. One person may point to the impact religiosity has on social health, while another will argue over human rights, another will argue epistemology, another will argue over the provenance of Biblical doctrine, another will use humor to point out absurdity, and then there is advocacy for a scientific worldview. This list could, of course, be a lot longer.
If someone dismisses the diversity of these approaches, I have trouble believing they're paying attention. But I'd say the same of those who think that religion is "really" about stories in which we frame our morals, and not about sincere belief in supernatural claims about Gods that really exist, really love and punish, rose from the dead, sent prophets, and so on.
Much of what the atheists get chided for is just listening to the fundamentalists and taking them seriously as to their beliefs and motivations. Then we're finger-wagged for missing the point of what religion "really" is.