Toto

You can read his CV here.

Religious skeptics are not a niche audience.

semiopen

Thanks for this Toto, I think I've seen your link before.

There is very little academic crticism of Kitchen that I've found. I've been assuming it is because he is (or was, he's retired I think) such an asshole.

Not that I've read anything by him, but I think he goes on about the price of a slave in Joseph's time (whenever that was) being 20 pieces of silver (shekels I guess). The thing is that this was a reasonable price for a slave for many hundreds of years even well into post exilic times.

The historical price of slaves has exceptionally good documentation and is quite fascinating in its own right. For example sometimes women were more valuable than men, sometimes not. The price was always pretty cheap, I assume it's because it was difficult for a person to produce much more than an individual's subsistence level.

DrJim

Zeba Crook (Carleton University, Ottawa) is an atheist NT scholar. He has been approached to write secular intro the NT. He did a wonderful paper at the last Society of Biblical Literature meeting critiquing how miracles are treated with kid gloves in most other biblical introductions. It is being published somewhere, but I can't remember where or when it will be available.

You might also look up the work of Willi Braun (University of Alberta) who does a lot on methodology of Religious Studies and Early Church.

Not sure if either of these guys has anything easily available online.

stephan huller

All you Canadians stick together. I don't trust you guys. Besides you've still got 'God' in your national anthem and your 700 page constitution. How 'atheist' can you be over there? Is the government still funding Catholic schools in the provinces?

Just joking ...

Toto

Zeba Crook publications lists "Parallel Gospels: A Synopsis of Early Christian Gospels (tentative title; forthcoming from Oxford University Press, Sept 2011)" among other works, some online

Toto

Willi Braun

Toto

I think it might be because he is outside of his specialty. He is an Egyptologist, so the Biblical Studies guild treats him like an amateur commentator on Biblical matters, not worth their while. Besides, his biases are obvious.

andrewcriddle

Kitchen is a very good Egyptologist The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (or via: amazon.co.uk) is the main modern work on the chronology of the period.

Andrew Criddle

Chocky

I've seen criticism of Kitchen in journal articles. I would post a Google Books link to John J. Collins' attack in The Bible After Babel, but my post count isn't high enough... "his own views are too blatantly apologetic to warrant serious consideration as historiography" (p.34)

To the OP: as a postgrad in Biblical Studies, I find the majority of scholars are "critical" to some extent. The main reason Ehrman is well-known as a "critical" scholar is because he's actually written accessible books with the general reader in mind. Conservative/Evangelical scholars who defend broad biblical historicity are in the minority in the field, though if you're at a 'Christian university' in America that's probably not what it feels like!

shalak

Well I will readily admit I am a COMPLETE newcomer to this field so I am essentially in the middle of a lake without knowing how to swim. The only thing I do know for certain is that I am probably going to have to read a lot of material and that I am going to need to be equally skeptical of just about everyone until I get a more solid understanding of what is actually available.

It would of course be nice if there was some centralized location for the sources which basically said, "Here are both sides best scholars, have at it!" but things are rarely if ever that simple. I think I will probably be pointed to the supporting side by the professors at the Christian university so I am not terribly worried about finding those. The university I attend is a conservative Church of Christ university so conservative and quite possibly evangelical scholarship will be what is on the table. However I am still going to be pressing for mostly contemporary historical sources so I can see what extra-biblical evidence there actually is.

I understand many people will tell me that there simply isn't any real evidence but taking peoples word at its face value is what got me into trouble in the first place.

By the way back to Ehrman. Among the many criticisms out there I am particularly interested in the claim that he doesn't seem to be up to date on what has happened in scholarship since 1985. In addition to this supposedly a lot of his contradictions have been answered for years by multiple authors etc. Again I am sure I will have to dive deeper into that to assess that problem but I am just wondering, since I don't hear any real opposition to Bart here, what you guys thought of that.

Let me make sure that I am communicating exactly what I am trying to do so that I don't just run off in random directions like I so often do. Currently I am an atheist who lost my faith about a month ago due to not really having any reason I could defend to still believe. I have read with and pondered Teleological, cosmological, moral arguments (I hate ontological and will not even bother talking about it here) and I did not think these arguments were convincing. The Bible is the only supposed evidence of the divine( As far as Christianity) that can be directly measured, weighed, tested, etc. So I feel that it is the only thing really left that would cause me to gain my faith back or never get it back. The Bible for my purposes is the last thing to examine before I can move on with relative certainty from this issue.

I know that there are not many, if any, on this forum who think the Bible is divine in any way and I am not saying I can defend it as such. However I am trying to investigate it sufficiently enough to where I can say with relative certainty that I do or do not believe it. I am not interested in floating between belief and non-belief for the rest of my life so I am trying to drive the nail in the coffin. I basically want to see the best evidence of those who think that the Bible is divine and the best of evidence of those who do not think it is divine. I would be intellectually dishonest of me to not due so in my opinion based on how I think and where I stand on the issue. Again I know many of you already believe it is not but I have not examined a lot of evidence for or against it so I feel a bit ignorant in taking a stand on either side.

Some of you may wonder if I am really agnostic then but in truth the reason again I am an atheist right now is I have nothing to explain why I should believe because I have no evidence that has convinced me so far. I hope this may give better insight into what I am trying to do and may alleviate any confusion if there has been any.