I know some of you have referenced excellent books but I am not sure where to find them. I am looking for some very good books to give me the other side of not believing the Bible. I am not sure where I stand at this point and would like to be informed. Someone gave me the name of two authors, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I want something easy to read yet informative. Thanks!
Books for making a choice to believe in the Bible or not
by Aunt Fancy 24 Replies latest watchtower bible
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jgnat
I am disinterested in any book that either tries to debunk or gorify the bible. What I did was investigate its origins.
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Larsinger58
I have read Dawkins' book. These are men with degrees who are expressing their disbeliefs and doubts.
But at this point, after the 2nd coming in 1992, the Bible has been confirmed to be true and reliable and God is definitely alifve, the God of the Bible. So these are just skeptics basing their belief system on what is not there to convince them God is real. But just because God is not talking to them personally doesn't mean he isn't talking to others! That's the issue! Some of us have direct proof of God and others are still guessing.
It's nice to know for sure, absolutely. It's nice to be an insider!
Frankly, I can't blame some for not believing if they don't have what I have.
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slimboyfat
Bart Ehrman's books, like Jesus, Interrupted, for example.
Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman, also good.
On the other side you've got old classics like F. F. Bruce's Are the New Testament Documents Reliable? or newer books like Faith Has its Reasons by Rob Bowman and Kenneth Boa.
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transhuman68
I would recommend books by Burton L. Mack, Elaine Pagels, John Dominic Crossan as a good read- with maybe Elaine Pagels as the favorite. But it really doesn't matter- any book about the Bible written by a non-fundamentalist author is good- or even pages from Wikipedia; or books written by the Catholic Church- the Bible is not sacred to them! What the Watchtower has been trying to hide is what almost everyone else knows- that the Bible is just a 'kind of' history from the Middle East- a collection of myths, songs, scraps of letters; and whatever else that seemed appropriate at the time to include.
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notsurewheretogo
Expressing their disbelief and doubts Lars? I think they go well beyond that, they actually prove referring to examples in nature and science to back up their belief...these men use sound logic and reasoning to prove theor points...you may want to try and emulate that as did Christ did 2,000 years ago...
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Black Sheep
Go to the library and look for books on critical thinking. After you have read them, you should be ok reading some of the recommendations you will get here.
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Witness My Fury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed
I also recommend: The Bible - The Biography, by Karen Armstrong.
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lydiacostume
I also recommend Elaine Pagels, and I have been reading some books by Bart Ehrman that have been very interesting and informative. These are just two authors that are scholars in their particular subjects, experts of ancient history that explain the origins of modern belief. If you want to know what the bible is really about and who actually wrote it you have to read some history, and thankfully there are people who spend their whole lives studying these things and share what they learn with us. I think it's very important to learn these things, to know the whys and whens and hows. The society quotes a lot of scriptures telling you to prove things to yourself and study up to make sure you've got things right, but if all you ever read is their publications you will never learn the whole truth. That was one thing that always bothered me. I know a lot of JWs that can quote a lot of scripture, but what they don't ever think about is how their translation of that scripture is not even accurate, it was just translated by some random men who had little to no training in biblical languages. Bart Ehrman has a couple of great books called Did Jesus Exist? and Misquoting Jesus where he mentions the problems of mistranslations. Larsinger I'm not sure how you know that the bible has been confirmed as "true" but if you do some historical reading you will quickly find that the bible is full of inaccuracies and contradictions, and there are many other "books" or "gospels" that are not included in the mainstream bible but that contain like stories and information.