Monday, May 12, 2008

Back to the books!

I just ordered Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. I'm so excited to read it!

It's kind of weird that I haven't read any of the books one might have expected a de-convert to pick up (you know, the Dawkins etc stuff out there). I bought and started Karen Armstrong's The Bible but I only made it 75 or 100 pages before I got distracted by other stuff. To be sure, what I read was great and really blew away any remaining notion I might have had that there might be a 'right' interpretation of the scriptures. But mostly I've been wrasslin' this stuff out online.

So I'm excited to see what Ehrman has to say. Has anyone read Misquoting Jesus and/or have other titles to recommend?

3 comments:

lowendaction said...

I just bought the Audio Book, looks very good.

I know I'm going to peg myself as one-trick-pony here, but on this subject these are some of the best books I've read (listened to, I strongly suggest the Audio books read by the author):

Rob Bell

I look forward to "Misquoting Jesus" (that would be on damn funny sentence without quotation marks).

I'm also very much looking forward to Rob's new book: "Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile".

Here's a list of books I intend to tackle:

God Was in This Place and I, I Did Not Know: Finding Self, Spirituality and Ultimate Meaning by Lawrence S. Kushner

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers

A Tale of three Kings: A Study in Brokenness by Gene Edwards

Glittering Images by Susan Howatch

Honest to God by John A. T. Robinson et al.

U2: At the End of the World by Bill Flanagan

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J. Palmer

Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses by Bruce Feiler

Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus by Thomas Cahill

Walking The Bible : A Journey By Land Through
The Five Books Of Moses ( Bruce Feiler )

Jewish Spirituality, A Brief Introduction For
Christians ( Lawrence Kushner )

The Jewish New Testament Commentary : A
Companion Volume To The Jewish New
Testament ( David Stern )

Excavating Jesus : Beneath The Stones, Behind
The Texts ( Crossan and Reed )

Biblical Literacy : The Most Important People,
Events, and Ideas Of The Hebrew Bible
( Joseph Telushkin )

Understanding The Difficult Words Of Jesus : New
Insights From A Hebraic Perspective
( Bivin and Blizzard )

Desire Of The Everlasting Hills : The World Before
And After Jesus ( Thomas Cahill )

Everyman's Talmud : The Major Teaching Of The
Rabbinic Sages ( Abraham Cohen )

Sketches Of Jewish Social Life ( Alfred Edersheim )

Jewish Sources In Early Christianity
( David Fleusser )

The Five Books Of Moses : Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
( The Schocken Bible Volume 1 )
( Everett Fox )

The Women's Torah Commentary : New Insights
From Women Rabbis On The 54 Weekly
Torah Portions ( Elyse Goldstein )

God In Search Of Man : A Philosophy Of Judaism
( Abraham Joshua Herschel )

The Bible As It Was ( James L. Kugel )

good times.

Anonymous said...

Slapdash,

I've read it and I loved it. He was a Moody Bible student when he modified his views on the bible. It's VERY interesting and convinced me that all this infighting about inerrancy and infallibility is ridiculous because it's based on perception, nothing else.

Zeke said...

I am halfway through Misquoting Jesus, and it is enlightening. The fact is, every word in the Bible is true and inerrant only if God engineered the Bible we have today through a manifest number--at least 200,000 in the NT alone--of mistakes over the centuries. Oh, and if he saw to it that scribes added verses to the Bible several centuries later than the earliest manuscripts.

Not. Bloody. Likely.