Who Wrote the New Testament? by Burton Mack

by ithinkisee 19 Replies latest jw friends

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  ithinkisee

  Someone mentioned this book in another thread (GetBusyLiving I think), so I checked it out from the library.

  It is a decent enough book but was a little put off by the almost sarcastic/antagonistic tone throughout much of the book. He throws around the word "myth" as much as the Society throws around the word "truth".

  Even the title of the book "Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth" seems to reveal the author's agenda up front. I guess that is actually a good thing?

  I have enjoyed a couple other books though, lately. Two by a guy named Bart Ehrman. I am just a layperson when it comes to all this stuff and he writes in a concise and simple manner about the first 3 centuries after Jesus and how the bible came into existence.

  The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Hardcover)
  by Bart D. Ehrman
  Nice writing style helping to explain the politics of the first 300 years after Jesus and how the New Testament came into being. Really good.

  Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine (Hardcover)
  by Bart D. Ehrman
  This book was pretty cool because he actually like the book Da Vinci Code as a piece of fiction. He said he couldn't put it down once he started reading. But there were also many historical errors in the book and he helps clarify these issues, with sources and everything. He doesn't seem to have an agenda, other than he doesn't want people's view of history distorted by a work of fiction.

  -ithinkisee
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  Wasanelder Once

  It's ridiculous to think that Burton Mack wrote the New Testament. Where do we come up with these things?

  LOL

  W.Once
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  Midget-Sasquatch

  I've read those books by Ehrman too and also really enjoyed Lost Christianities. Our municipality's library is pretty decent but it lacks some other scholarly works on the NT and early christianity that I would also like to read.
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  glitter

  There was a fantastic documentary about the Apostle Paul and what Christianity would have been if he hadn't taken over. It was on Channel 4 in the UK about four years ago, and has perhaps made it over the pond too.
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  DannyHaszard

  Two stumbling blocks in the NT both from hardline Paul (1) "I forbid a woman to teach" (2) condemnation of Homosexuality Paul say's "those practicing homosexuality are deserving of death" very blunt. I don't approve of homosexuality and i cannot comprehend it but i have had many as workmates to condemn them as human beings.
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  Daunt

  paul just plain sucked in my opinion.
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  Undecided

  paul just plain sucked in my opinion.

  No he wasn't gay.

  Ken P.
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  Cygnus

  And then there's the opinion that Paul was "copying and pasting" and replying to personal letters written to him by particular church elders and all the material was grouped together into one epistle. First Paul says women and men are equals:

  ***

  Rbi8 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 ***

  In connection with [the] Lord neither is woman without man nor man without woman. For just as the woman is out of the man, so also the man is through the woman; but all things are out of God.

  ***

  Rbi8 1 Corinthians 14:33-36 ***

  As in all the congregations of the holy ones, 34 let the women keep silent in the congregations, for it is not permitted for them to speak, but let them be in subjection, even as the Law says. 35 If, then, they want to learn something, let them question their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in a congregation. 36 What? Was it from YOU that the word of God came forth, or was it only as far as YOU that it reached?

  Some say Paul was mocking the Corinthians here for their rules against women teaching or speaking in the church.
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  Leolaia

  Danny....Most scholars do not believe that Paul was the author of the Pastorals....which include the "I do not permit a woman to teach" statement. In fact, Paul elsewhere was rather pro-women....protecting women's prophesying role (which involves teaching) in church meetings, only requesting that they abide by certain decorum while they prophesy and pray (1 Corinthians 11:3-10, 14-15; compare 14:2-5, on the prestigious status of church prophets), the status of women as church prophets is elsewhere attested in Acts 21:8-9 and Revelation 2:20-24 (which describes a quasi-gnostic prophetess who espoused "heretical" teachings from the standpoint of John of Patmos). Moreover, many women played prominent roles in church affairs (hosting churches in their own homes, working as missionaries or "apostles", serving as deacons [= ministerial servants], etc.), and Paul thanked them for their labors (cf. Acts 12:12, 16:11-15, Romans 16:1-2, 5, 7, 1 Corinthians 1:11, 16:19, Colossians 4:15). The author of the Pastorals was likely against the role of female prophets for the same reason as the author of Revelation: because by the end of the first century AD female prophets tended to espouse a quasi-gnostic worldview that, among other things, forbade marriage and taught that female social roles (including motherhood) were evils perpetuated by an evil Creator (compare 1 Timothy 1:8, 2:15, 4:3-4, 6:20; 2 Timothy 2:18, and especially 2 Timothy 3:6-7 which refers to "silly women" who are obsessed about educating themselves about gnosis but never come to a knowledge of the truth). More on this in my thread:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/92014/1.ashx

  As regards the other statement, I think you are referring to Romans 2:18-32, that "those who behave like this deserve to die". But Paul was not talking about "those practicing homosexuality" per se....that is a gross oversimplification. He was talking about Gentiles who practice idolatry, who deny the God who created them, who as a result of their idolatry defile their bodies by engaging in "unnatural practices", and who go on to exhibit greed, malice, murder, spite, and treachery. Paul was not condemning homosexuals by saying that they are idolators, murderers, and so forth. His polemic was instead directed against Greco-Roman culture and its "philosophers" (v. 22), who engage in all sorts of profane idolatry and "irrational" behavior because they refuse to acknowledge God. He is talking about the Greek proclivity for same-sex relations (cf. Plato, Symposium), especially as part of their idolatrous cults. He is not talking about, for instance, people with same-sex feelings who do not practice idolatry. To be sure, Paul clearly did not like same-sex relations and regarded it as a perversion; it is along the same lines one finds in wider Jewish culture, which found non-Jewish norms abhorrent. But the people Paul thought as deserving of death (and whom he believed God has under judgment) were not homosexuals per se, but Greeks and Romans who profaned God.
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  jaffacake

  Good replies from Cygnus & Leolaia,

  There are many examples of where the Bible actually teaches something quite different to what might first appear to be the case, especially when it is read with proper interpretation principles applied.

  Its strange how you can read a text all your life, and know what it says, and what it means. Then someone suggests another approach, with a fuller understanding of interpretation principles, and wow - an opposite yet more compelling interpretation. It took me to age 47 to see some deeper spiritual meanings to many scriptures.