Pendaric

I'm currently halfway through 'The Bible Unearthed', which would seem to give a fairly comprehensive treatment to the OT.

Are there any similar books available regarding the NT to act as a primer for those of us just starting to get to grips with the basic positions?

Julian

Not really. The best you can do is to get a fairly reasonable introduction to the new testament. Although I have not read Bart Ehrman's Introduction to the New Testament, I couldn't imagine that it is anything other than excellent. I have read Helmut Koester's two volume Introduction to the New Testament, which is quite good and packed with information. You might also want to consider Raymond Brown's Introduction but be warned that while he is very fair and comprehensive he does fall somewhat on the christian believer side. I am reading Brown's Birth of the Messiah and am finding it excellent but probably only because I am already well-versed with most of the material.

Julian

yalla

I preferred "Archaeology and the Bible" J.Laughlin Pub. Routledge London 2000.
Also interesting was "Testament-The Bible and History" J.Romer Michael O'mara Books London 1988 and "Canaanites" J. Tubb... British Museum Press London 1998.

Diogenes the Cynic

There aren't really any NT books similar to The Bible Unearthed in the way of an archaeological examination of the evidence, but here are a couple more books on HJ which are some of the most familiarly known and referenced on this forum.

The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. This is Robert Funk's presentation of the Jesus Seminar's conclusions about what Jesus really said and didn't say.

The Acts of Jesus is the Seminar's examination of what Jesus really did and didn't do.

The Historical Jesus by John Dominic Crossan is a standard.

Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography is basically the same material streamlined for a more popular audience.

I'd also recommend pretty much anything by Bart Ehrman.

Barefoot Bree

Can one of you give me a brief rundown of the other ancient "biblical" writings that are NOT part of the current bible? You've mentioned Q, and I've heard mention of the Gospel of Thomas and a couple of other things, but I'm not at all sure what they are.

Julian

There are quite a few. For example, we have more than 20 different gospels. A more or less complete list can be found here: www.earlychristianwritings.com

It is worth mentioning that many of those writings were at one time or another part of the 'bible', before the canon became properly defined.

Julian

RUmike

Technically, Q is in the canon - preserved in both Matthew and Luke, although in a somewhat modified form.

TomboyMom

Just to show all that your efforts are not wasted, I will now try to recapitulate what I have learned so far from this thread. Please correct me where I'm wrong.
The majority, mainstream view of the majority of scholars is that:
There was a real man named Jesus, who was born in ? possibly Bethlehem around 4 B.C., who taught, had followers, and was crucified by the Romans around 30 A.D.
No follower who was alive during this period wrote anything about him that survived.
The first person to write about Jesus was Paul, who wrote some letters around 50-60 A.D. As far as the life of Jesus, these letters start right before his death, and do not talk about his allegedly miraculous birth, miracles, or much of his teaching.
Between the time of Jesus' death and the appearance of the gospels, some people in present-day Israel relayed oral stories of his teachings and deeds. The first time that we know of that these were collected/embellished in in the gospel of Mark, which is believed to have been written after 70 A.D. Most scholars believe that Mark did not himself speak to any eye-witnesses or apostles. Mark may have integrated 2 different traditions, Q, which was one or more people talking about an actual guy, and Paul's hallucination. (or, to a Christian, revelation.) After Mark, Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels, which are pretty close to Mark, and it looks like they read Mark and probably copied from him. Matthew and Luke added the virgin birth and some other nice juicy classic hero type details. Then John wrote his, which differs from Matthew.
Marcion collected Paul's letters a few decades later.
Over the decades these were combined with the gospels, and a lot of other things thrown out, till we got the prototype new testament, by vote of committee, in 367 C.E.

That brings us to some other interesting but still basic questions.

I understand that there are only 2 non-biblical references to Jesus, one of which (Josephus) is thought to be a forgery. What do most scholars conclude from this silence?

Another thread was trying to drive through my thick head about the history of the New Testament--could any kind person run through that for me again, from say 4th century to KJV? Thank you! Thank you!

Hey, I just thought, I was raised Jewish, and they just hand you the Old Testament and say here it is, the book God gave us--I supposed that's all way too old of history for anyone to have any reasonable idea where any of that came from, true?

Julian

Paul's letters start after Jesus' death, not before.

No Robots

She means that the only events in Jesus's life that Paul mentions are those that immediately precede his execution.