misterjingo

In my Christian days I actually went to college and earned a degree in theology. A funny thing happened on the way-I got burned out, didn't want to go to grad school, and ended up an atheist. Well after a 20 year hiatus, I've found a renewed interest in the subject. Unfortunately I had gotten rid of most of my books so I'm starting from scratch. I checked out the stickied post at the top.

I bought the NRSV Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha. I already own Finkelstein's "The Bible Unearthed." I ordered Earl Doherty's latest book on Jesus. I ordered Raymond Brown's Intro to the NT. I'm about ready to get started.

Is it as simple as starting at Genesis and working my way through the Bible?

I'm planning on getting commentaries. Is the Jerome Biblical Commentary "good enough" or should I try to get separate volumes for each Book of the Bible?

There is so much material out there that it is a bit overwhelming. Can anyone share a study plan they used or know of one that is on the Internets?

rob117

I'm going to use this opportunity to shamelessly plug the Anchor Bible commentaries. They're secular, the translations are done directly by the commentator, and they give a ton of historical and extrabiblical background information. If you have access to a university library, get them from there. Otherwise they're expensive.

ApostateAbe

I think I would be more likely to help you if you could specify your reason for regaining an interest in the subject. Is it to be an activist against religion? Is it just a geeky interest in Christianity? A mix of both? Something else?

I gained much of my knowledge on the New Testament by reading books by Bart Ehrman, including Misquoting Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk), Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet (or via: amazon.co.uk), and Lost Christianities (or via: amazon.co.uk). For the Old Testament, I would recommend Who Wrote the Bible? (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Richard Friedman. By far, most of my knowledge has come from investigative debate on this forum. If you spend four years in the BC&H forum writing a few posts a day talking about a diversity of subjects in depth, then you will probably come out better than spending four years at a Bible college.

I have focused on just a few topics that I find important. If you spread yourself out over the whole Bible, then it will have about the same effect as learning about the world by reading an encyclopedia, starting with Aardvark. Think of the Bible as an anthology of many books, because that is really what it is. I am not too impressed with people who have read the whole Bible and do not show any more knowledge about it than anyone else. How can any of the points be expected to stick?

aa5874

These are some of the material I recommend available at http://www.newadvent. org.

"Church History" by Eusebius.

Tertullian's "Against Marcion"

The works of Josephus at http://wesley.nnu.edu

The writings of Philo.

Irenaeus' Against Heresies.

Minucius Felix "Octavius"

The works of Justin Martyr at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com

Theophilus "To Autolycus"

Athenagoras "Plea for the Christians"

Hyppolytus "Against all Heresies"

Julian's "Against the Galileans"

Origen's "Against Celsus"

Tatian's "Discourse to the Greeks"

neilgodfrey

I find it easiest and more relevant to be citation-driven. Start with something like Doherty or Price or works they review (on their websites) and/or a Jesus Seminar or other liberal Christian scholar and mark any citations linked to points that raise questions or are of potential special interest and follow those up. One soon sees a core of regulars cited, and that leads to more follow-ups.

As for the Old Testament, start with Philip Davies "In Search of Ancient Israel" -- the book that is reputed to have got the whole "minimalist" thing rolling. That will lead you to Lemche, Thompson, Dever and others.

arnoldo

You might want to try the Skeptic's Annotated Bible.

misterjingo

Thanks for the info guys. I've a college just down the interstate so I can swing by their library and see what they have.

Abe, its more of a geeky interest in Christianity and the time period than anything else. I love ancient history, and reading the various threads here lately had got me interested in this stuff again.

And perhaps a small piece of "knowing my shit" so if/when I get into a discussion with my Baptist stepmom (or anyone else) I can rattle off some info and not feel like I'm making it up. I know it won't change her mind, but it would make me feel better about myself. I get tired of people here (I live outside of Atlanta) making pronouncements about Christianity and me pretty much having to shut up about it because I haven't looked at this stuff since 1990.

show_no_mercy

You can go to http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com and http://www.earlychristianwritings.com and check out which books they use in their citations.

Doug Shaver

I'm going to second what neilgodfrey said, maybe because that's the way I've been doing it. In general, the best authorities get cited a lot by other scholars, at least within the mainstream. To find those who are doing useful work outside the mainstream, you need to stay in touch with forums like this one.

archaeologist

This is funny. You have renewed your interest in the Bible yet you go to all the worng sources to help you on the way? You might as well just not try and save yourself the time and energy. The book syou are reading certainly will not help you and will continue to lead you away from God.

I would suggest reading: K.A. Kitchen's book On the Reliability of the OT, Walter Kaiser's The Old Testamnet Documents, F.F. Bruce's The New Testament Documents, Craig Evans' Fabricating Jesus and Ravi Zacharias' The End of Reason

if you want to be give yourself a balanced and proper view. As it stands you are ensuring that you will fail.