Users regularly ask why Christians believe in God/Jesus. Sorry for the wall of text but these are my reasons to copy/paste when I’m on my mobile. I get they aren’t mic drop empirical evidence; they’re reasons.
1. Religiosity in humans is natural. Humans don't need convinced to be religious. Cognitive scientists are aware that metaphysical outlooks may be deeply ingrained in human thought processes. Religion is vastly more “natural” than the “sleep of reason” argument suggests. Why is Religion Natural?
I believe this is God’s “thumbprint” on man due to being made in the image of God.
2. I'm convinced evil exists and that we know it when we see it. If life and existence where solely the product of a natural mechanism, then "evil" is would just be an adjective; a subjective value we assigned to entirely natural actions and behaviors. The term “evil” isn’t in nature’s vocabulary. In solely natural world humans are simply biological creatures much like apes, ants and fungus. Intrinsic rights, both human and animal, don’t exist in nature. Nature is metal; not moral.
I find the argument, “But we’re social animals with empathy and …” to be lacking:
A. Morality and empathy should not be used interchangeably. You can’t assert a natural world in which all life is simply biological matter, and then turn around to assert humans are different than animals. To biologists – humans are animals. Period.
B. Empathy in social species is a subjective social construct built through subjective social interaction and differs between generations, cultures and societies. Very often in history human empathy produces social preferences that can in fact conflict with morality. For instance the Nazi’s empathized with the Arian race and acted accordingly. In a natural mechanism empathy is not a direct avenue to moral behavior. In fact it can interfere with moral decision-making by introducing partiality (aka discrimination and bias.) Empathy is not in our genes.
C. You could perhaps support that our brains are bigger, and as a result we have a relatively more powerful biological computer than other animals – but you cannot say our biological computer is different. At best you can perhaps say humans are social; cooperative animals have a sense of fairness. Even so, in a natural mechanism, our human sense of fairness is a highly subjective social construct too.
D. “But other primates are social and demonstrate empathy and fairness ….”

Chimps are highly social and are killers just like us. Chimps regularly kill other chimps for territory and natural resources, with entire chimp tribes going at it. In fact, female chimps practice infanticide and cannibalism. “… it's a common practice to kill and eat the babies of other females.
Dolphins are highly social too and among the smartest things on Earth. They share another characteristic with humans: they're the only other animal that will kill for fun.
Lions are highly social too. Here’s a male lion systematically killing the cubs sired by another male.

3. Personally I find atheism untenable. It’s not a belief system but a deficiency of belief due to a deficiency of evidence. Drawing a conclusion based on a lack of evidence makes no sense to me. It suits me better to hold a positive view supported by evidence.
4. I am not by any means anti science but relatively speaking I find the “but science …” replies lacking in a religious context. Here’s why:
A. Science isn’t in the business of proving or disproving gods. Science investigates the natural world, gathers data about the natural world, makes models and draws probable conclusions from them about the natural world.
B. Science doesn’t assert capital “T” truth. Many confuse the relationship between Truth and scientific consensus.
C. Science isn’t the only source of human knowledge or the only source to discern what should be believed. Claiming it is, is a philosophical position (aka scientism) that cannot be verified, or falsified, by science itself. It is, in a word, unscientific. – AAAS article What is scientism?
5. Historically Christianity focuses on concerns outside of the individual Christian, such as loving your neighbor, helping others and serving. Potentially self-sacrificing virtues such as forgiveness, love, and gratitude are typically highly valued within religious communities. When people become deeply involved in religious faith, they may be committing to a value system that may bring some costs to the self – albeit with the hope of benefiting others. Christianity is a major factor to alleviate poverty and suffering in our communities and around the world. In fact the role of Christianity in civilization has been instrumental in who we are today. The Christian church has been a major source of social services, education, literacy, science, philosophy and arts & culture.
I love history and am a lifelong student of history. I totally understand that Christianity has at times been an agent of great human tragedy but historically it’s been an agent of positive influence. It suits me to want to be a part of something bigger than me.
6. Jesus was a historical person. Credible secular and academic historians do not dispute that Jesus was a historical person. No one reasonably doubts Jesus was baptized, was a teacher with disciples and was killed for insurrection by the Roman authorities. "If you got a different opinion you better have pretty good piece of evidence yourself.” Bart Ehrman
7. Belief that Jesus rose from the dead was very early, and the “good news” spread relatively quickly. This shows the early Jesus followers were convinced and motivated to spread their message throughout the region. Within a few short decades their movement had effectively spread from Galilee into several cities, from Galatia, to Thessalonica, Corinth and Rome.
8. Paul was a historical person. We know Paul’s letters are among the most highly attested manuscripts in biblical and historical scholarship. Paul's testimony is unprecedented in history. We know: who he was, where he was, what time he lived and that he associated with the right people. This places Paul in a credible position to be right. Gary Habermas, UCSB
9. Paul’s letters were the first New Testament documents in final form and we know his letters were copied and collected very early during the lives of the apostles. Based on Paul’s writing style and arguments, scholars are convinced he was well-educated and of a first-rate philosophical mind. His written testimony is from primary sources and the provenance of
10. Paul is a credible witness who historically is in a good position to be right. Paul was entirely convinced that Jesus resurrected from the dead and that it “has not been done in a corner” (Acts 26:26).
11. We know from Paul’s letters that he returned to Jerusalem several times and interacted at length with Peter, James and other leaders. We know there are a series of texts in Paul’s letters in which he records the earliest creedal traditions of the earliest Jesus followers written a short time after Jesus’ death and resurrection. These Pre-Pauline Creeds of early Christian beliefs possibly date as early as 35-40 C.E or before.
12. There’s also evidence that there were written accounts about Jesus within the Apostolic Era. Luke’s gospel begins by saying, “In as much as many have undertaken to draw up a narration concerning the matters having been accomplished among us, as delivered to us they from the beginning eyewitnesses …”. (Luke is written to Theophilus who many believe was a Gentile convert and high ranking official of some sort. Luke refers to him as kratiste optime meaning "most excellent".) We find this title several times applied to high Roman officials, such as Felix and Festus (Acts 23:26; Acts 24:3; Acts 26:25).
13. Based on the findings at Qumran, it is highly probable that notebooks were used by the disciples of Jesus and by later adherents in the early church to assist in memory retention by functioning as an aide-mémoire.” – The Jesus Tradition and Notebooks
14. When I read the Gospels I can be confident to a high degree that they accurately convey his ministry and teaching. When I read them I can hear his voice and his words. Did Some Disciples Take Notes During Jesus’ Ministry?
15. We know from the writings of early Church fathers of the Patristic Era supported an early four-fold gospel canon consisting of: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Irenaeus (130-202AD): records that he listened to the sermons of Polycarp who was a disciple of John. (Jerome corroborates Polycarp was a disciple of the apostle John.) In his letter to Florinus Irenaeus writes, “I can even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse – his going out, too, and his coming in-his general mode of life and personal appearance, together with the discourses which he delivered to the people; also how he would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord; and how he would call their words to remembrance. Whatsoever things he had heard from them respecting the Lord, both with regard to His miracles and His teaching, Polycarp having thus received [information] from the eye-witnesses of the Word of life, would recount them all in harmony with the Scriptures. These things, through, God's mercy which was upon me, I then listened to attentively …”
In Against Heresies (180AD) Irenaeus provides the first explicit witness to a four-fold gospel canon listing the authors as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He also testifies he had access to early copies of Revelation. Irenaeus also writes, “When the blessed apostles had founded and built up the Church, they handed over the ministry of the episcopate to Linus. Paul mentions this Linus in his Epistles to Timothy. Anencletus succeeded him. After him Clement received the lot of the episcopate in the third place from the apostles. He had seen the apostles and associated with them, and still had their preaching sounding in his ears and their tradition before his eyes -- and not he alone, for there were many still left in his time who had been taught by the apostles.”
Tertullian (197-220AD): in his Prescription against Heresy references “evidence traceable to apostolic sources”. He suggests that original New Testament manuscripts were still around when he was writing at the end of the second century. Chapter 35: “Our system is not behind any in date; on the contrary, it is earlier than all; and this fact will be the evidence of that truth which everywhere occupies the first place.” and chapter 36: “[*the apostolic churches] in which their own authentic writings are read uttering the voice and presenting the face of each of them severally.”
16. Historical criticism attempts to verify the historicity of and understand the meaning of an event that is reported to have taken place in the past. Textual criticism is a tool bible scholars use to discern the accuracy of the originals; the more manuscripts; the more accurate they are in reconstructing the originals. The New Testament accuracy in context of textual criticism is 99.5% accurate. The Reliability of the New Testament (Introduction)
17. In context of other ancient documents, the New Testament is by far the most widely attested. In the variants between existent copies: 75% are simply spelling errors, 15% are variations in Greek synonyms/transpositions, 9% are late changes and 1% does affect the meaning of the text. None of these variants actually challenge or affect essential Christian doctrines.
Disclaimer: Again, I am not claiming these are mic drop proofs. They’re the reasoning, reasons and evidence I find compelling and have merit. Faith isn’t unreasonable, it is not opposed by reason; it’s opposed by fanaticism, which is an abuse of reason.
edit; fixed links

Komarinsky notes the Diversity present amongst second temple Jews regarding their beliefs around bodily resurrection, but nowhere does he note belief in bodily resurrection in continuity with the corpse of a single isolated individual as the world went on as normal. As Wright notes, the bodily resurrection expected by Jews was an eschatological resurrection expected by the Pharisees, which has no relevance to the belief of the apostles in the isolated case of the resurrection of Jesus as his was an isolated event. It is important to note that while some Jews believed it the end to imminent, if Jesus was being raised, so to would all the rest of the pious Jews if we are following the logic of eschatological resurrection.
Komarinsky also notes the existence of the belief in the assumption of specific individuals - namely specific prophets such as Elijah, Enoch and by some groups at some times, Moses - to heaven. Again, this has nothing to do with what the apostles claimed, that Jesus had been resurrected in bodily continuity with his corpse. So where, then, did this truly unique belief come from? And to what extent can we call it plausible?
If we grant the disciples were dissonant, which is plausible, why resolve it via bodily resurrection when there was no precedent for such a conclusion within the second temple period? This is a very potent point when one realizes that there was more precedent in second temple Judaism to resolve it in another way, such as claiming Jesus hadn’t died yet or would be raised in the future as the sabbateans and the followers of the Lubavitcher rebbe claimed, or simply that he had been assumed to heaven directly without spending a period of time on earth resurrected in bodily continuity with his corpse. That crucial last detail seems rather superfluous to resolving their dissonance, and yet is a necessary component of the cognitive dissonance hypothesis. Even if we grant the existence of the ’suffering servant’ Interpretation of the messiah as put forward by Dr. Israel Knohl, who contends that the belief in a messiah who suffer and rise again in three days existed within the confines of the Qumran community, this doesn’t change the fact there was innumerable ways the dissonance of the apostles could have been resolved, and yet they still insisted on bodily resurrection. It could be claimed that the apostles themselves expected Jesus to be the ‘suffering servant messiah’, which seems itself implausible because of the fact that this interpretation appears to have been limited to the Essene sect, which was fairly insular and idiosyncratic. Moreover, the many references to Jesus’ predictions of his death and resurrection (which most scholars do not grant historicity to for the very reason that such an interpretation of the messiah didn’t exist, or if it did it was incredibly rare), the apostles act at best confused, and at time’s outright dismayed. This reaction is scattered throughout all three synoptic gospels (Matthew‬ ‭16:21-22, Matthew‬ ‭17:22-23‬, Luke‬ ‭9:44-45‬, Luke‬ ‭18:31-34, Mark 8:31-33 and Mark‬ ‭9:31-32.). It fulfils the ‘criterion of embarrassment’ and it seems very plausible given rarity of the notion of the suffering messiah within second temple Judaism that they would be perplexed by the very notion of the suffering servant. Thus, we can conclude that it is implausible that the apostles were expecting a suffering servant as the messiah.
Could they have used this Essene Interpretation to resolve their dissonance? Again, there were many ways dissonance could have been resolved - such as concluding Jesus hadn’t died or had been exalted to heaven. Even if we conceded that the Apostles knew of the suffering servant, it seems that visions in addition to dissonance would have been necessary to conclude Jesus had already appeared to them. Given the additional implausibility of adding on the foreknowledge of the suffering servant, it would seem that tactile hallucinations specifically would be necessary to resolve their dissonance if they previously were not expecting the suffering servant (which as we’ve already established is almost certainly the case). With this knowledge in mind, what can we draw from the field of psychology to determine the plausibility of tactile grief hallucinations?
Around 2.7% of widows and widowers have tactile hallucinations (Rees, 1971) If we go with the very liberal scholars who only concede visions to Peter, James and John, this would require compounding probabilities, ie (2.7% X 2.7% X 2.7%), resulting in an overall probability of approximately 0.002%, and that’s rounding up. If we want to go with the ultra liberals who only concede a vision to Peter, then the fact that hallucinations are individual experiences poses problems. The insistence upon bodily resurrection, and the numerous more likely ways this dissonance could be resolved without it mean that if John, for example, had a visual hallucination instead of a tactile one, he would insist Jesus had simply been exalted to heaven, not raised bodily from the dead. The relative homogeneity of the insistence on bodily resurrection seems to pose an issue. Moreover, this hypothesis is still implausible, as the rate of visual hallucinations is still a mere 14% (Rees, 1971). Even if we grant that the apostles were expecting a suffering servant as their messiah, which is itself impalusible, to conclude that Jesus had appeared to them would still necessitate at least visual hallucinations. Even here, the compounding probabilities (ie 14% X 14% X 14%) would still work out to under a third of a percent. If it is claimed that only Peter had the hallucination, the Explantory scope of hypothesis plummets. What produced the belief of James and John? Did they lie? Did they also have less intense hallucinations? As we’ve already established, even the fairly prominent visual hallucinations would result to sub 1% probabilities, and thus can only fairly be called implausible.
And if we grant the group appearances, then the Chances plummet further. Group hallucinations are not known in modern psychiatry, and bereavement hallucinations don’t fair much better, with the chances of 11 individuals all having even a visual bereavement hallucination independently resting at a mere 4.1 X 10^-8%, while Tactile hallucinations are even lower, at 5.6 X 10^-18%.

I am aware that most scholars agree that second temple Jews, by in large, were expecting a king, a warrior or perhaps a rabbi as the messiah. How do we know that this is what second temple Jews were expecting? What sources do we have regarding the messianic interpretations of second temple Jews? How do we know that, for example, 2 Samual 7:11-16 was crossed with 1 Chronicles 17:10-14? Or that the Maccabean revolt and Hasmonean dynasty of kings helped reinforce and add to the belief in a political messiah, as E. P. Sanders suggests (Sanders, 1995)? Were these messianic interpretations fairly homogeneous across sects? (ie the Pharisees had a ‘Pharisee Interpretation’ and the Sadducees had a ‘Sadducee Interpretation’ and so on) Or is there not really any way to generalize regarding messianic interpretations? What evidence do we have that Isiah 53 was interpreted to mean Israel and not the messiah himself? And what evidence do we have that the melchizedek scroll doesn’t have Daniel 9:26 which says the Messiah will be Cut Off (ie Die)?
Moreover, what can we say about the Qumran community in particular? What were the interpretation(s) offered by the Essenes, and how did they differ from the ‘mainstream’ (if you can call it that) interpretation(s) offered by the Pharisees and Sadducees?
I am aware of the Dead Sea ‘scroll’ (really a stone tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew) discovered and studied by Israel Knohl who claims it depicts a suffering servant before Jesus. What is the evidence for the existence of a suffering and dying messiah apart from this single Dead Sea scroll, and would this interpretation have been known outside of the Qumran community, if indeed it was known within it?
Thanks!

Komarinsky notes the Diversity present amongst second temple Jews regarding their beliefs around bodily resurrection, but nowhere does he note belief in bodily resurrection in continuity with the corpse of a single isolated individual as the world went on as normal. As Wright notes, the bodily resurrection expected by Jews was an eschatological resurrection expected by the Pharisees, which has no relevance to the belief of the apostles in the isolated case of the resurrection of Jesus as his was an isolated event. It is important to note that while some Jews believed it the end to imminent, if Jesus was being raised, so to would all the rest of the pious Jews if we are following the logic of eschatological resurrection.
Komarinsky also notes the existence of the belief in the assumption of specific individuals - namely specific prophets such as Elijah, Enoch and by some groups at some times, Moses - to heaven. Again, this has nothing to do with what the apostles claimed, that Jesus had been resurrected in bodily continuity with his corpse. So where, then, did this truly unique belief come from? And to what extent can we call it plausible?
If we grant the disciples were dissonant, which is plausible, why resolve it via bodily resurrection when there was no precedent for such a conclusion within the second temple period? This is a very potent point when one realizes that there was more precedent in second temple Judaism to resolve it in another way, such as claiming Jesus hadn’t died yet or would be raised in the future as the sabbateans and the followers of the Lubavitcher rebbe claimed, or simply that he had been assumed to heaven directly without spending a period of time on earth resurrected in bodily continuity with his corpse. That crucial last detail seems rather superfluous to resolving their dissonance, and yet is a necessary component of the cognitive dissonance hypothesis. Even if we grant the existence of the ’suffering servant’ Interpretation of the messiah as put forward by Dr. Israel Knohl, who contends that the belief in a messiah who suffer and rise again in three days existed within the confines of the Qumran community, this doesn’t change the fact there was innumerable ways the dissonance of the apostles could have been resolved, and yet they still insisted on bodily resurrection. It could be claimed that the apostles themselves expected Jesus to be the ‘suffering servant messiah’, which seems itself implausible because of the fact that this interpretation appears to have been limited to the Essene sect, which was fairly insular and idiosyncratic. Moreover, the many references to Jesus’ predictions of his death and resurrection (which most scholars do not grant historicity to for the very reason that such an interpretation of the messiah didn’t exist, or if it did it was incredibly rare), the apostles act at best confused, and at time’s outright dismayed. This reaction is scattered throughout all three synoptic gospels (Matthew‬ ‭16:21-22, Matthew‬ ‭17:22-23‬, Luke‬ ‭9:44-45‬, Luke‬ ‭18:31-34, Mark 8:31-33 and Mark‬ ‭9:31-32.). It fulfils the ‘criterion of embarrassment’ and it seems very plausible given rarity of the notion of the suffering messiah within second temple Judaism that they would be perplexed by the very notion of the suffering servant. Thus, we can conclude that it is implausible that the apostles were expecting a suffering servant as the messiah.
Could they have used this Essene Interpretation to resolve their dissonance? Again, there were many ways dissonance could have been resolved - such as concluding Jesus hadn’t died or had been exalted to heaven. Even if we conceded that the Apostles knew of the suffering servant, it seems that visions in addition to dissonance would have been necessary to conclude Jesus had already appeared to them. Given the additional implausibility of adding on the foreknowledge of the suffering servant, it would seem that tactile hallucinations specifically would be necessary to resolve their dissonance if they previously were not expecting the suffering servant (which as we’ve already established is almost certainly the case). With this knowledge in mind, what can we draw from the field of psychology to determine the plausibility of tactile grief hallucinations?
Around 2.7% of widows and widowers have tactile hallucinations (Rees, 1971) If we go with the very liberal scholars who only concede visions to Peter, James and John, this would require compounding probabilities, ie (2.7% X 2.7% X 2.7%), resulting in an overall probability of approximately 0.002%, and that’s rounding up. If we want to go with the ultra liberals who only concede a vision to Peter, then the fact that hallucinations are individual experiences poses problems. The insistence upon bodily resurrection, and the numerous more likely ways this dissonance could be resolved without it mean that if John, for example, had a visual hallucination instead of a tactile one, he would insist Jesus had simply been exalted to heaven, not raised bodily from the dead. The relative homogeneity of the insistence on bodily resurrection seems to pose an issue. Moreover, this hypothesis is still implausible, as the rate of visual hallucinations is still a mere 14% (Rees, 1971). Even if we grant that the apostles were expecting a suffering servant as their messiah, which is itself impalusible, to conclude that Jesus had appeared to them would still necessitate at least visual hallucinations. Even here, the compounding probabilities (ie 27% X 27% X 27%) would still work out to approximately 2%, and this is in addition to the already low probability that the apostles were expecting a suffering servant. If it is claimed that only Peter had the hallucination, the Explantory scope of hypothesis plummets. What produced the belief of James and John? Did they lie? Did they also have less intense hallucinations? As we’ve already established, even the fairly prominent visual hallucinations would result minuscule probabilities, and thus can only fairly be called implausible.
And if we grant the group appearances, then the Chances plummet further. Group hallucinations are not known in modern psychiatry, and bereavement hallucinations don’t fair much better, with the chances of 11 individuals all having even a visual bereavement hallucination independently resting at a mere 4.1 X 10^-8 %, while Tactile hallucinations are even lower, at 5.6 X 10^-18 %.
Edit: I miscalculated one small detail.

Matthews, Shelly (2016) Elijah, Ezekiel, and Romulus: Luke’s Flesh and Bones (Luke 24:39) in Light of Ancient Narratives of Ascent, Resurrection, and Apotheosis
Proclamation of a future resurrection, as well as claims of resurrection accomplished, serve a multitude of purposes among Jews and Christians in the ancient Mediterranean world. Instances of resurrection proclamation sometimes answer to the problem of “unfinished lives,” in their insistence that untimely and violent deaths cannot be the last word on these persons’ fate. Such proclamations challenge the existing social order, and the ruling powers responsible for unjust killing, by positing a larger divine, cosmic order in which the suffering righteous are restored and recompensed ...
As has been demonstrated in the scholarship of Elaine Pagels and John Gager, early Christian claims of fleshly resurrection in the second century and beyond came to take on a more conserving function, with assertions of continuity of flesh in this world and the next serving as justification for, rather than as challenge to, the existing social order.
Pagel’s contribution, made some 40 years ago, was framed as distinguishing between Orthodox and Gnostic Christians on resurrection teaching. She demonstrated how the Orthodox authors Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian insisted that only the successors to the twelve apostles who had seen the resurrected Jesus in the flesh on the earth had legitimate authority, while Gnostics held to a less restrictive mode of legitimation, linking authority to claims of visionary contact with Jesus. For the Orthodox, this led to the privileging of Peter as the one possessing the keys to the kingdom and the power to bind and loose, along with the argument that ecclesial leadership rightly belongs to those in the apostolic succession. In Gnostic literature, Mary Magdalene’s prominence suggests a less hierarchical ecclesial structure.
Following Pagels, Gager situated fleshly resurrection claims within a Durkheimian structural-functionalist framework to argue that in early Christian communities belief in future but indefinite, bodily resurrection correlated with Christians rising in the hegemonic social order and becoming more at home in this world.
This article contributes to the question of resurrection meanings in early Jewish and Christian texts by mapping out how the vision of the dry bones come to life in Ezek 37:1–14 was employed in resurrection claims, both by those who challenge and by those who conformed to the existing social order in the early centuries of the Common Era. It considers the use of the dry-bones passage from Ezekiel in the 4Q Pseudo-Ezekiel scroll from Qumran, as well as allusions to Ezekiel in resurrection narratives of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It focuses especially on one verse in the story of Jesus’s resurrection told in the final chapter of Luke, where Jesus invites the disciples to “touch and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39).
Matthews argues that the Lukan phrase “flesh and bones” is an illusion to Ezekiel’ s Dry Bones Vision: while 4Q Pseudo-Ezekiel and Gospel of Matthew 27:52 employ the Ezekiel vision to proclaim the imminent vindication of the suffering righteous, Luke 24:39 serves a different purpose. In line with early Christian apologists, the Third Gospel asserts that Jesus was resurrected in flesh and bones as a means to establish continuity between life before death and life after death, signalling the postponement of restoration into the distant future.

Matthews, Shelly (2017) Fleshly Resurrection, Authority Claims, and the Scriptural Practices of Lukan Christianity Journal of Biblical Literature, 136, no. 1: 163–183.
Classic arguments concerning the question of ﬂeshly resurrection and apostolic authority in early Christianity have been framed in terms of orthodoxy and heresy. Nearly forty years ago, Elaine Pagels identiﬁed “two lines of theological tradition” with respect to questions of resurrection and authority, one linked to emerging orthodoxy and one linked to gnostic sources. In this framing, Lukan resurrection accounts stand in line with the writings of Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus,and Tertullian—and thus with emerging orthodoxy—in their insistence that only the successors to the twelve apostles, who had seen the resurrected Jesus on the earth before his ascension, had legitimate authority. The other line of theological tradition traced by Pagels was drawn from gnostic sources and valued continual revelation in the form of visions of the resurrected Jesus as a means of authorization.
Matthews identifies ﬁve speciﬁc passages that invoke the ﬂeshly resurrection of Jesus (Luke 24:36–53, Acts 1:4, 2:31, 10:40–41,and 13:37) share thematic continuity and are all shaped by Luke’s distinctive concern to tie the appearance of the resurrected Jesus in the ﬂesh to the exclusive authority of the twelve male apostles. Matthews departs from "the classic model of orthodoxy and heresy employed by Pagels and [Walter] Schmithals, and situate[s] this text in a more variegated context of early Christian religious pluralism."

In making this departure, [Matthews] builds on the scholarship of Karen King [who] has been at the forefront of scholars critiquing the tendency to categorize early Christian texts according to the orthodox/heretical binary.

Matthews notes that David Brakke has also "move[d] away from the language of orthodoxy and heresy, along with the categories of canonical and non-canonical, to...describing what he refers to as the scriptural practices of textual communities."

The models proposed by King and Brakke might have their biggest payoﬀs for the study of late antiquity, when early Christian communities are represented by identiﬁable authors and larger corpora. These models also serve as a useful lens for studying a particular set of biblical texts and the communities that produced them.

Matthews finishes -

... References to eating with the resurrected Jesus pertain to apostolic privilege, with the ﬁnal such reference underscoring the exclusive nature of that privilege. Both the speeches of Peter and those of Paul concerning incorruptibility include reminders that the twelve, and the twelve alone, were witnesses to the resurrection. Luke makes no explicit argument that Jesus appeared in the ﬂesh on the Emmaus road or that he bore his ﬂesh into the heavens ...
Luke’s resurrection teaching stands at odds with the teaching of Paul and seems to include an intentional rewrite of Pauline teaching. Luke’s peculiar understanding of the resurrected Jesus’s incorruptible ﬂesh aligns more closely with the impassive Christology often associated with “docetism” than with “anti-docetic” polemic. Details of Luke’s resurrection narrative, including Luke’s assertions pertaining to Jesus’s resurrected body, do not diﬀer dramatically from those found in Marcion’s Evangelion. Luke is neither orthodox nor “proto-orthodox.”

Apart from the Gospels themselves, the most important book of the New Testament in the Acts of the Apostles.
Like all historical documents issuing from a partisan source, not counting that the Book of Acts has more than 6000 discrepancies in the manuscripts we have discovered, it must, of course, be handled sceptically and with caution. One must be aware of whom the text was written for, who it might have served, and what was the end to be achieved by its writing. But it is Acts, much more than the Gospels, which has given us the most informative account of the first years of the Jesus Messianic Movement or "Early Christianity". Since Acts contains so much basic information not readily found elsewhere, it has established itself as a basic text for understanding the Messianic Movement within the time after Jesus which would later be called "Christianity".
Upon thorough examination of the book of Acts one can see that it is heavily biased. Luke, the author of the text, was clearly drawing on a number of different sources, editing and reworking material to suit his own purposes. Even Church historians and scholars will tell us that Acts was extensively tampered with by later editors (Catholic Monks). In an effort to establish their own authority (Rome) against the authority of Jerusalem, much of the book of Acts was tampered and re-written to achieve certain purposes. Although there is bias, the bias is highly personal, and this, to some extent, enables the modern reader to read between the lines.
Although focusing primarily on Paul, who monopolizes the latter part of its narrative, Acts also tells the story of Paul's relationship with the Messianic Community in Jerusalem consisting of Jesus’ immediate disciples under the leadership of James, “the Lord's brother”. It would be this group who would later come to be called the first Christians and are now regarded as the early or original church. The "original church" was the church in Jerusalem. They set the pattern and standards for all others that followed in their wake.
We must realize if we are to correctly see the whole picture in Acts, that in recounting Paul's association with this community that the Book of Acts offers only Paul's point of view of the events of Acts! Acts is essentially a Pauline document without the balance needed which could only come from James and the other apostles. It is this "Pauline Picture" which has, unfortunately, become "NORMATIVE CHRISTIANITY". Paul, in other words, is always the "hero"; whoever opposes him, whether it be the authorities or even James, is automatically cast as a villain. We must never forget that God placed James and the Apostles as leaders in the "original church" and not Paul.

LET ME ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS

Answer for yourself: Where are the Jewish writings of the momentous events that transpired in Acts?
Answer for yourself: Why do we lack their perspectives, after all, they were in charge?
Answer for yourself: Could their writings possibly have been destroyed by Christians of later centuries (Constantine, etc.)?
There is data to substantiate the destruction of many of such documents by the "Early Gentile Church". Gone forever is the balance needed to understand the events of Acts and God's working among His Hebrew Church and His Gentile Church.
Acts open shortly after Jesus, referred to as "the Nazarene" (in Greek "Nazoraion") has disappeared from the scene. The term "Nazarene" has nothing to do with the city of Nazareth, which was built long after Jesus' birth. It refers to "keepers of the Covenant"; Jesus and his followers kept the laws and covenants!
Answer for yourself: As a typical Christian are you being taught by your Pastor to keep the laws in the covenant?
Acts then proceed to describe the organization and development of the community or "early church" in Jerusalem and its increasing friction with the authorities. The community is vividly portrayed in Acts 2:44-46: "The faithful all lived together and owned everything in common; they sold their goods and possessions and shared all the proceeds among themselves according to what each one needed. They went as a body to the Temple every day but met in their houses for the breaking of bread (Sabbath services)". Notice that the early followers of Jesus adhered to the Temple ritual. Jesus and his immediate followers are usually incorrectly portrayed as hostile to the Temple, where, according to the Gospels, Jesus upset the tables of money changers and incurred the passionate displeasure of the priesthood. Despite the picture given by the Roman slant in the New Testament Jesus is not rejecting his religion!
Acts 6:8 introduces the figure known as Stephen, the first official "Christian martyr", who is arrested and sentenced to death by stoning. In his own defence, Stephen alludes to the murder of those who prophesied the advent of the "Righteous One", or "Just One". This terminology is specifically and uniquely Qumranic in character (Dead Sea Scrolls people). The "Righteous One" occurs repeatedly in the Dead Sea Scrolls as "Zaddik". The "Teacher of Righteousness" in the scrolls, "Moreh ha-Zedek", derives from the same root. As portrayed in Acts, then, Stephen uses nomenclature unique and specific characteristic of Qumran. This shows us the hidden Qumran influence in New Testament theology.
Nor is this the only Qumranic concern to figure in Stephen's speech. In his defence, he names the persecutors (Acts 7:53): "You who had the Law brought to you by angels are the very one who has not kept it."
The New Testament reader never stops to notice that this statement is a contradiction of the Torah for the Laws was given by God and not Angels: this angelic belief is a sign of the hidden Gnosticism in the New Testament. As Acts portrays it, Stephen is obviously intent on adherence to the Law. Again, there is a conflict here with the orthodox adherence to the Law. According to later Christian tradition, it was the Jews of the time who made an austere and puritanical fetish of the Law. The "early Christians" are depicted, at least from the standpoint of that stringency to the Law, as "mavericks" or "renegades", advocating new freedom and flexibility, defying custom and convention, and being "free from the Law". Yet it is Stephen, the first "Christian martyr", who emerges as an advocate of the Law. This strikes me as strange since the majority of Christians today feel that they are no longer under the "Law".
Answer for yourself: Was Stephen wrong?

It makes no sense for Stephen, a self-proclaimed adherent of the Law, to be murdered by fellow Jews who also exalted the same Law.

Answer for yourself: But what if those fellow Jews were acting on behalf of a Sadducee priesthood which was collaborators in league with the Roman authorities?
It was such Jews who wanted to live a simple and quiet life that feared an agitator and resistance fighter in their midst that might lead to Roman reprisals. So understand, that the "Early Church" of which Stephen is a member constantly stressed its own orthodoxy and its zealousness and adherence to the Law.
Answer for yourself: Does your church profess a zealousness and adherence to the Law?
Answer for yourself: If not why not since this is the picture of the early church before Paul?
The "Early Church's" persecutors are those who contrived to remain in league with Rome and, in so doing, were willing to lapse in relation to adherence to the Laws of God. Thus they betrayed the Law. In this context, Stephen's denunciation of them makes sense, as does their murder of him. And we also see James "the Just", the "Zaddik" or "Righteous One" who also best exemplifies rigorous adherence to the Law. It is even more incredible that such a man could lead a group of believers who wished to be delivered from the Law. It would be for his adherence to the Law that he would suffer the same fate as Stephen. You can easily see that we have misunderstood the early church, thus we misunderstand what the church is to be today!
According to Acts, it is at the death of Stephen that Paul makes his debut.
He entirely approved of the killings and would later engineer precisely the same kind of attack on the "Early Church". Saul, at this stage of his life, is fervent, even fanatic, in his enmity towards the "Early Church." In travelling to persecute believers & totally destroy the church, Paul undergoes some sort of traumatic experience, which commentators have interpreted as anything from sunstroke, to an epileptic seizure, to a mystical revelation (Acts 9:1-19, 22:6-16). Paul interprets the experience as a true manifestation of Jesus, whom he never knew personally. After a three-year apprenticeship in Damascus, he returns to Jerusalem to join the leaders of the "community" there. Not surprisingly, most of them are suspicious of him, not being wholly convinced by his conversion. In Galatians 1:18-20, he speaks of seeing only James and Peter. Everyone else, including the Apostles, seems to have avoided him. He is obliged repeatedly to prove himself, and only then does he find some allies and begins to preach. Arguments ensue, however, and, according to Acts 9:29, certain members of the Jerusalem community threaten him. As a means of defusing a potentially ugly situation, his allies pack him off to Tarsus, the town (now in Turkey) where he was born. He is, in effect, being sent home, to spread the message there. This was tantamount to exile!
By the time Paul travels to Antioch, a community of the "Early Church" (a Gentile church) was already established there. It is important to remember that this church originally, as were all the other churches, were under the leadership of James and reported back to the Apostles in Jerusalem. Some five or more years later, Paul is teaching in Antioch when a dispute arises over the content of Paul's missionary work. As Acts 15 explains, certain representatives of the leadership in Jerusalem arrive in Antioch.
They, as well as Peter, arrive there with the specific purpose of checking on Paul's activities. They stress the importance of strict adherence to the Law and accuse Paul of laxity. They notice that Paul had been teaching both the Jews that in Christ it was no longer necessary to circumcise your children or follow the Law of Moses. To the non-Jews that in Christ Paul was teaching the complete cessation of the law of Noah as seen in his relaxation of the commandments concerning idolatry which were enforced for example in refusing to eat sacrificed to idols. Paul in I Cor. tells us that this is permissible and only to refrain when in the presence of a weaker brother. Paul and his companion, Barnabas, are ordered back to Jerusalem for a personal consultation with James and the leadership. From this point on, a schism will open and widen between Paul and James; and the author of Acts as he become Paul's apologist (defender). Acts is written to defend Paul by his close friend Luke.
Answer for yourself: But let me ask you...who did God give oversight to and put in charge...Paul or James and the Apostles?
Answer for yourself: "Who" called "who" back to answer charges?

James is the authority and leader of the Messianic Community and not Paul. We fail to balance the accounts and only see a "defence" of Paul in Acts.

It is incredible to believe that Jesus gave all authority to his followers and Apostles and is ready now for Paul to correct them all!

Surely we interpret Acts by what we have been taught today by pro-Pauline Churches. We should rather let the events of Acts lead us to what we should believe today!

In all the events that follow, Paul is a "Christian heretic" in the eyes of James and the Apostles. James and the Apostles considered many of his teachings (which sadly became the foundation of later Christianity) a flagrant deviation from the "ORIGINAL APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE" as taught by the leadership of the Jerusalem church. Let us never forget that James "the Lord's brother" and the other members of the Apostolic leadership of the "Early Church" not only remembered Jesus but knew him personally, having lived with him during his three-year ministry. When these leaders spoke, they did so with first-hand authority. Paul had never had such personal acquaintance with the figure he'd begun to regard as his "Savior". He had only the quasi-mystical experience in the desert and the sound of a voice. For Paul to claim authority to himself on this basis is, in my opinion, to say the least, presumptuous. It also leads him to distort some of Jesus' teachings beyond all recognition in some areas. This mystical religious experience would lead Paul to formulate his own individual and idiosyncratic theology which he would later legitimize by spuriously ascribing it to Jesus.

THERE IS ONLY ONE PROBLEM...

Jesus never believed or taught many of the things that Paul is credited within the New Testament! Upon study in this area, you will see for yourself that often Paul is guilty of preaching "another Gospel" in spite of his own warnings not to do so (or the text was changed and attributed to Paul as original with him).
This is little more than a clever literary ploy on Paul's part among the non-Jews who never knew Jesus’ true gospel but only's Paul's account of it. They never had the Jewish background necessary to spot the false "gospel." Any of Paul's teachings that contradicts the teachings of Jesus or the Jerusalem Apostles are wrong!
Remember, at the first of the article I told you that the book of Acts has been tampered with more than another book. Not that I wish to blame Paul, but I am confident upon examination through the years that many of Paul's followers altered words and phrases to suit their purposes. Paul could never have disagreed with Jesus nor every preached another Gospel and be led by the Spirit of God to do so.
In accordance with the instructions given to him, Paul returns to Jerusalem and meets with Apostolic leadership around AD 48-49. Not surprisingly, another dispute arises. If Acts is to be believed as it stands, James, for the sake of peace, agrees to compromise, thereby making it easier for "pagans" to join the congregation of Israel. Somewhat improbably, he consents to relax certain aspects of the Law for Gentiles, while remaining adamant on others. This is an example of "binding" and "loosing". No longer is circumcision to be required of the non-Jew for inclusion into the Israel of God by the Jesus Movement but that, of course, did not apply outside the Jesus Movement.
Paul pays lip service to the leadership. He still, at this point, needs their endorsement; not only to legitimize his teachings, but to legitimize & ensure the survival of the communities he has founded abroad. He is already, however, bent on going his own way. He embarks on another mission of travel and preaching, punctuated (Acts 18:21) by another visit to Jerusalem. Most of his letters date from this period, between AD 50 and 58. It is clear from the letters that he has, by that time, become almost completely estranged from the leadership in Jerusalem and from their adherence to the Law.
In his epistle to the Galatians (AD 57), he alludes scathingly to the Jerusalem Apostles: "these people who are acknowledged leaders-not that their importance matters to me" (Gal 2:6). His theological position has also deviated irreparably from those who adhere rigorously to the Law. In the same letter to the Galatians (2:16), he states that "faith in Messiah rather than fidelity to the Law is what justifies us, and ...no one can be justified by keeping the Law. Writing to the Philippians (3:9), he states: "I am no longer trying for perfection by my on own efforts, the perfection that comes from the Law..." These are the provocative and challenging statements of a self-proclaimed renegade. "Gentile Christianity", as it will subsequently evolve from Paul, has by now severed virtually all connection with its Hebrew roots by discarding obedience to the commandments of the Torah, and can no longer be said to have anything to do with Jesus, only with Paul's image of Jesus.
Following Paul's exposure of his total rejection of Judaism in Antioch we find that by AD 58, Paul is again back in Jerusalem to answer charges again made against him with James despite pleas from his supporters who, obviously fearing trouble again with the Apostle hierarchy, have begged him no to go. Again, he meets with James and the leadership of the Jerusalem community where they express their worry they share with other "zealots of the Law" that Paul, in his preaching to Jews living abroad, is encouraging them to forsake the Law of Moses. It is, of course, a justified accusation, as Paul has made clear in his letters. Acts do not record his response to it. The impression conveyed is that Paul lies, perjures himself and denies the charges against him. When asked to purify himself for seven days (thereby demonstrating the injustice of the allegations and his continued adherence to the Law) he readily consents to do so.
A few days later Paul again runs foul of those "zealous for the Law", who are rather less temperate than James. On being seen at the Temple, he is attacked by a crowd of the pious. "This", they claim in their anger, "is the man who preaches to everyone everywhere...against the Law" (Acts 21:28).
Answer for yourself: Don't you find it a little preposterous to believe that there was no merit to the charges against Paul in light of the abundant testimony otherwise?
A riot ensues, and Paul is dragged out of the Temple, his life in danger. In the nick of time, he is rescued by a Roman officer who, having been told of the disturbance, appears with an entourage of soldiers. Paul is arrested and put in chains on the initial assumption that he is a leader of the Sicarii, the Zealot terrorists. It would be shortly thereafter that a group of angry Jews, forty or more in number, vow not to eat or drink until they have brought about Paul's death. The sheer intensity & ferocity of this anger is worth noting. One does not expect such animosity, not only violence, from ordinary Pharisees and Sadducees. Those who display it are obviously "zealous for the Law."
What we end up with is two factions within the original community in Jerusalem, the "Early Church". One of these factions consists of "hardliners", who echo the teachings of Qumranic texts and insist on the rigorous observance of the Law. The other, exemplified by Paul and his immediate supporters, want to relax the Law and, by making it easier for people to join the congregation, to increase the number of new recruits. The "hardliners" are less concerned with numbers than with doctrinal purity and seem to have only a passing interest in events or developments outside Palestine. They do not display any desire for accommodation with Rome. Paul, on the other hand, is prepared to dispense with doctrinal purity. His primary objective is to spread his message as widely as possible and to assemble the largest body of adherents. In order to attain this objective, he goes out of his way to avoid antagonizing the authorities and is perfectly willing to come to an accommodation with Rome, even to seek favour; even discard or bend the Law if need be. The "end" justifies the "means." Remember, he said that he would become all things (compromise) to win men.
Answer for yourself: Truly admirable, but at what cost?

Today we have churches that carry the name "Jesus" who are so influenced by Paul (misunderstanding him of course) that they discard not only the Old Testament, the Bible Jesus used, but the Law and commandments and live in libertinism and unchecked grace. This is not the Gospel of Jesus.

The "Early Church", then, as it appears in Acts, is rent by internal schism, the instigator of which is Paul. Paul's chief adversary is James, "the Lord's bother". It is clear that James is the acknowledged leader of the community in Jerusalem that becomes known to later tradition as the "Early Church". For the most part, James comes across as a "hardliner", though he does display a willingness to compromise on certain points concerning the Gentile believers. James' role in the proceedings could not have been excised from the text because his role was too well known. Thus, Luke, in defence of his friend (Paul), plays down James and portrayed him as a conciliatory figure occupying a position somewhere between Paul and the extreme "hardliners" (Zealots).
So you can now see Acts in a new light. What we have is a clash between two powerful personalities, James and Paul. Paul gets all the press and no one shares with us such depth concerning the perspective of the head of the first church which was James!
Answer for yourself: What should be our first consideration before evaluating Acts?
• 1) James, not Paul, was given custody of the original body of teachings of the "Early Church".
• 2) It was James and not Paul who God made responsible for doctrinal purity and the teaching of adherence to His statutes (Law).
• 3) The last thing James would have had in mind was founding a "new religion" that would stand separate from the mother faith.
• 4) Paul did exactly that. In the conflict between James and Paul, the emergence and evolution of what we call Christianity stood at a crossroads.

Had the mainstream of its development conformed to James' teachings, there would have been no Christianity at all as we know it today, only a particular species of something akin to Judaism which would have emerged as dominant with Jesus as it's Messiah. This, in my opinion, is as God would have had it. As things transpired, however, the mainstream of the new movement gradually coalesced, during the next three centuries, around Paul and his teachings. Thus, to the horror of James and Jesus, an entirely new religion was indeed born; a religion which came to have less and less to do with its supposed founder.

So for a while now, I've been compiling a bibliography of scholarly publications that I'm familiar with, and which present some sort of serious challenge to various aspects of traditional Jewish and Christian theology — especially the historicity of Biblical claims, their ethics, and so on.
I've just about filled up the character limit for this post, so I'll just say a couple of things before jumping right into the bibliography.
First, because of the character limit, I've listed works in the shortest form possible: just the author and title — no further publisher info. I'm sure you won't have trouble finding anything, though.
Second, I've placed works into different categories. There's some sort of logic to the ordering of the categories, in terms of starting with more general or "meta" issues, and then going chronologically from the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament. But really, at a certain point all logic goes out the window; and there are some works which just as easily could have fit into another category, too.
Perhaps most importantly, I've tried to limit myself to works by scholars and publishers that can be said to fall squarely within the mainstream of academic Biblical studies, history and theology, and which aren't particularly radical or implausible. So this not only means excluding things that aren't published in established scholarly presses and journals — e.g. Michael Alter's The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry (as useful as it may be) — but also avoiding the work of those like Nissim Amzallag, Robert M. Price, or Richard Carrier, or studies like Russell Gmirkin's Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus. Trust me, there's still an enormous amount of critical material without these.
About the closest I come to border-line material is something like Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions; and I've made some parenthetical notes about a few other publications which offer particularly controversial and perhaps untenable views, too.
Finally, this bibliography is a work in progress, and I'm often adding new stuff to it. Suggestions are appreciated, too.
Without further ado, the bibliography:

Classics, from the 18th century up to ~mid-20th century

The Wolfenbüttel Fragments (Hermann Reimarus)
David Strauss, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (especially in conjunction with something like Thomas Fabisiak, The "Nocturnal Side of Science" in David Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus Critically Examined)
John William Colenso, The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined (1862)
Johannes Weiss, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (1892)
C. G. Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul: Two Essays; Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, "The Essential Heresy: Paul's View of the Law According to Jewish Writers, 1886-1986" (dissertation)

Late 20th and 21 century

(Moving on to later 20th and 21st century works, I've almost completely skipped over works that explore broader philosophical issues of theism in general and its viability — though an enormous amount of this literature actually does focus on Christian/classical theism in particular.)
On the epistemology of religious and Christian belief: various essays in the volume The Right to Believe: Perspectives in Religious Epistemology. (See also various responses to the work of Alvin Plantinga on warranted Christian belief: the volume Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief: Critical Essays with a Reply by Alvin Plantinga; Sarah Bachelard, "'Foolishness to Greeks': Plantinga and the Epistemology of Christian Belief"; Jaco Gericke, "Fundamentalism on Stilts: A Response to Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology"; Evan Fales, "Reformed Epistemology and Biblical Hermeneutics," etc.)
Add Andrew Wright, Christianity and Critical Realism Ambiguity, Truth and Theological Literacy?
On historical methodology, the supernatural, miracles: David Henige, Historical Evidence and Argument; C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions; Van Harvey, The Historian and the Believer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief; several essays in vol. 47, no. 4 of the journal History and Theory (Tor Førland, etc.); Joseph Levine, The Autonomy of History: Truth and Method from Erasmus to Gibbon; Jens Kofoed, Text and History: Historiography and the Study of the Biblical Text; V. Philips Long, The Art of Biblical History; Robert Cavin, "Is There Sufficient Historical Evidence to Establish the Resurrection of Jesus?"; Frank Schubert, "Is Ancestral Testimony Foundational Evidence For God's Existence?”; Daniel Pioske, Memory in a Time of Prose: Studies in Epistemology, Hebrew Scribalism, and the Biblical Past; Glen Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian; essays in the volume Truth and History in the Ancient World: Pluralising the Past; Aviezer Tucker, "Miracles, Historical Testimonies, and Probabilities";
Miracles and the supernatural: Joe Nickell, Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures; Daniel Klimek, Medjugorje and the Supernatural: Science, Mysticism, and Extraordinary Religious Experience; Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary: From La Salette to Medjugorje; Terence Hines, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal; Larry Shapiro, The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified; the volume Questions of Miracle edited by Robert Larmer; Jason Szabo, "Seeing Is Believing? The Form and Substance of French Medical Debates over Lourdes"; Sofie Lachapell, Investigating the Supernatural: From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metapsychics in France, 1853-1931
Philosophical issues around the Hebrew Bible and the existence of YHWH: Jaco Gericke, The Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion, along with myriad other publications by Gericke: “YHWH and the God of philosophical theology”; "'Brave New World' — Towards a Philosophical Theology of the Old Testament"; "Does Yahweh Exist? A Philosophical-critical Reconstruction of the Case against Realism in Old Testament Theology," etc.
General works on historical criticism and its challenge to faith: Jon Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism; C. L. Brinks, "On Nail Scissors and Toothbrushes: Responding to the Philosophers' Critiques of Historical Biblical Criticism"; Van Harvey, "New Testament Scholarship and Christian Belief"; George Wells, "How Destructive of Traditional Christian Beliefs is Historical Criticism of the Bible Today Conceded to Be?"; Gregory Dawes, "'A Certain Similarity to the Devil': Historical Criticism and Christian Faith"; Gerd Theissen, "Historical Scepticism and the Criteria of Jesus Research: My Attempt to Leap Over Lessing's Ugly Wide Ditch"; John Barton, "Biblical Criticism and Religious Belief" (chapter in his The Nature of Biblical Criticism); R. W. L. Moberly, "Biblical Criticism and Religious Belief"
Broad and general works on Biblical problems: Thom Stark's The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals when it Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It); Robert Carroll, Wolf in the Sheepfold: The Bible as a Problem for Christianity; Gregory Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God (touches on a wide range of Biblical problems: of theology, historicity, ethics); Dennis Nineham, The Use and Abuse of the Bible: A Study of the Bible in an Age of Rapid Cultural Change;
The historical emergence of early Israelite mythology and religion: the forthcoming volume Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes; David Aiken, "Philosophy, Archaeology and the Bible: Is Emperor Julian's Contra Galilaeos a Plausible Critique of Christianity?" — in conjunction with the work of Mark S. Smith (The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts; The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel, etc.) and others; Ellen White, Yahweh's Council: Its Structure and Membership; various essays in the volume The Origins of Yahwism edited by Jürgen van Oorschot and Markus Witte; Thomas Römer, The Invention of God; E. Theodore Mullen, The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature (and the entry "Divine Assembly" in the Anchor Bible Dictionary); Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4: Analysis and History of Exegesis; Patrick Miller, The Religion of Ancient Israel; Benjamin Sommer, "Monotheism and Polytheism in Ancient Israel" (the appendix in his The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel); Johannes C. de Moor, The Rise of Yahwism: The Roots of Israelite Monotheism; John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan;
David Penchansky, Twilight of the Gods: Polytheism in the Hebrew Bible; Samuel Shaviv, "The Polytheistic Origins of the Biblical Flood Narrative" (questionable proposal, but still worth including for the sake of comprehensiveness)
Ethical problems in the Hebrew Bible, and other theological problems: Eryl Davies, The Immoral Bible: Approaches to Biblical Ethics; Eric Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God and The Violence of Scripture: Overcoming the Old Testament's Troubling Legacy; the volume Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham; Whybray, "The Immorality of God: Reflections on Some Passages in Genesis, Job, Exodus and Numbers"; the volume Ethical and Unethical in the Old Testament: God and Humans in Dialogue; John Collins, "The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence"; Ronald Veenker, "Do Deities Deceive?"; J. J. M. Roberts, "Does God Lie? Divine Deceit as a Theological Problem in Israelite Prophetic Literature"; James Barr, "Is God a Liar? (Genesis 2–3)—and Related Matters"; Gili Kugler, "The Cruel Theology of Ezekiel 20"; Andreas Schüle, "The Challenged God: Reflections on the Motif of God's Repentance in Job, Jeremiah, and the Non-Priestly Flood Narrative"; Christian Hofreiter, Making Sense of Old Testament Genocide: Christian Interpretations of Herem Passages; Johannes Schnocks, "When God Commands Killing: Reflections on Execution and Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament"; Ed Noort, "A God Who Kills: Deadly Threat and Its Explanation in the Hebrew Bible"; Reinhard Kratz, "Chemosh's Wrath and Yahweh's No: Ideas of God's Wrath in Moab and Israel"; Lowell Handy, "The Authorization of Divine Power and the Guilt of God in the Book of Job: Useful Ugaritic Parallels"; Edward Greenstein, "The Problem of Evil in the Book of Job"; "Truth or Theodicy? Speaking Truth to Power in the Book of Job"; various publications by David Penchansky on Job and other things; Anthony Gelston, "The Repentance of God"; W. L. Moberly, "God is Not a Human That He Should Repent: Numbers 23:19 and 1 Samuel 15:29"; Kenneth Ngwa, "Did Job Suffer for Nothing? The Ethics of Piety, Presumption and the Reception of Disaster in the Prologue of Job"; Alan Cooper, "In Praise of Divine Caprice: The Significance of the Book of Jonah"; Troy Martin, "Concluding the Book of Job and YHWH: Reading Job from the End to the Beginning" (probably also a stretch, but creative nonetheless); Carey Walsh, "The Metaprophetic God of Jonah"; Catherine Muldoon, In Defense of Divine Justice: An Intertextual Approach to the Book of Jonah;
Ethical problems in the Hebrew Bible, continued (on Biblical child sacrifice in particular): various essays in the volume Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition edited by Finsterbusch and Lange; Heath Dewrell, Child Sacrifice in Ancient Israel; John Van Seters, "The Law on Child Sacrifice in Exod 22,28b-29"; "From Child Sacrifice to Pascal Lamb: A Remarkable Transformation in Israelite Religion"; Jon Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity; essays in the volume Not Sparing the Child: Human Sacrifice in the Ancient World and Beyond; the chapter "Fathers and Firstlings: The Gendered Rhetoric of Child Sacrifice" in Nicole Ruane, Sacrifice and Gender in Biblical Law;
Problems of prophetic prediction: Robert Carroll, When Prophecy Failed: Reactions and Responses to Failure in the Old Testament Prophetic Traditions; "Ancient Israelite Prophecy and Dissonance Theory"; "Prophecy and Dissonance: A Theoretical Approach to the Prophetic Tradition" (also his "Eschatological Delay in the Prophetic Tradition?"); Michael Satlow, "Bad Prophecies: Canon and the Case of the Book of Daniel"; Maurice Casey, "Porphyry and the Origin of the Book of Daniel"; Matthew Neujahr, Predicting the Past in the Ancient Near East: Mantic Historiography in Ancient Mesopotamia, Judah, and the Mediterranean World; Brian Doak, "Remembering the Future, Predicting the Past: Vaticinia ex eventu in the Historiographic Traditions of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East";
The earliest Christian origins and the historicity of the resurrection: Stephen Smith, "‘Seeing Things’: ‘Best Explanations’ and the Resurrection of Jesus"; several essays in the volume Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: e.g. István Czachesz, "The Emergence Of Early Christian Religion: A Naturalistic Approach" and Ilkka Pyysiäinen, "The Mystery Of The Stolen Body: Exploring Christian Origins"; David Aune, "Christian Beginnings and Cognitive Dissonance Theory"; and various works which also focus on the historicity of the resurrection: Dale Allison, Resurrecting Jesus (in particular the title essay); Alexander Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection; Robert Cavin, "Is There Sufficient Historical Evidence to Establish the Resurrection of Jesus?"; H.J. DeLonge, "Visionary Experience and the Historical Origins of Christianity." See also Daniel Smith, Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter; James Crossley, "Against the Historical Plausibility of the Empty Tomb Story and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus"; Matti Myllykoski, "What Happened to the Body of Jesus?"; H.J. de Jonge, "Visionary Experience and the Historical Origins of Christianity"; Bruce Chilton, "The Chimeric 'Empty Tomb'"; Richard Miller, "Mark's Empty Tomb and Other Translation Fables in Classical Antiquity"; Adela Yarbro Collins, "Ancient Notions of Transferal and Apotheosis in Relation to the Empty Tomb Story in Mark"; Barnabas Lindars, "The Resurrection and the Empty Tomb"; Roy Kotansky, "The Resurrection of Jesus in Biblical Theology: From Early Appearances (1 Corinthians 15) to the 'Sindonology' of the Empty Tomb"; Kathleen Corley, "Women and the Crucifixion and Burial of Jesus"; Carolyn Osiek, "The Women at the Tomb: What Are They Doing There?"; Claudia Setzer, "Excellent Women: Female Witness to the Resurrection," etc.
Santiago Guijarro Oporto, "The Visions of Jesus and His Disciples"; Jan Bremmer, "Ghosts, Resurrections, and Empty Tombs in the Gospels, the Greek Novel, and the Second Sophistic"; Pieter Craffert, "Re-Visioning Jesus' Resurrection: The Resurrection Stories in a Neuroanthropological Perspective"
Stephen Patterson, "Why Did Christians Say: 'God Raised Jesus from the Dead'? (1 Cor 15 and the Origins of the Resurrection Tradition)"; Robert Fortna, "Mark Intimates/Matthew Defends the Resurrection"; Alan Segal, "The Resurrection: Faith or History?"; Roger David Aus, The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, and the Death, Burial, and Translation of Moses in Judaic Tradition; Dag Endsjø, "Immortal Bodies, before Christ: Bodily Continuity in Ancient Greece and 1 Corinthians"; Paul Fullmer, Resurrection in Mark’s Literary-Historical Perspective; John Cook, "Resurrection in Paganism and the Question of an Empty Tomb in 1 Corinthians 15";
The Lukan resurrection narrative in particular: Shelly Matthews, "Fleshly Resurrection, Authority Claims, and the Scriptural Practices of Lukan Christianity" and "Elijah, Ezekiel, and Romulus: Luke’s Flesh and Bones (Luke 24:39) in Light of Ancient Narratives of Ascent, Resurrection, and Apotheosis"; Daniel Smith, "Seeing a Pneuma[tic Body]: The Apologetic Interests of Luke 24:36–43" (and perhaps also something broader like Richard Dillon, From Eye-Witnesses to Ministers of the Word: Tradition and Composition in Luke 24); Matti Myllykoski, "On the Way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35): Narrative and Ideological Aspects of Fiction"; Turid Karlsen Seim, "Conflicting Voices, Irony and Reiteration: An Exploration of the Narrational Structure of Luke 24.1–35 and Its Theological Implications"; Craig McMahan, "More than Meets the 'I': Recognition Scenes in the Odyssey and Luke 24" (and also Bruce Louden's "Luke 24: Theoxeny and Recognition Scenes in the Odyssey"?); Max Whitaker, "Is Jesus Athene or Odysseus? Investigating the Unrecognisability and Metamorphosis of Jesus in his Post-Resurrection Appearances" (dissertation), etc.
Problems with messianic prophecies of Jesus (see also the later bibliography on Isaiah 53)? Robert Miller, Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy; Richard Mead, "A Dissenting Opinion about Respect for Context in Old Testament Quotations"; M. J. J. Menken, "Fulfilment of Scripture as a Propaganda Tool in Early Christianity"; S. Vernon McCasland, "Matthew Twists the Scriptures"; Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations (or in shorter form, "The Place of the Old Testament in the Formation of New Testament Theology"); several of the studies discussed in the section "Key Authors and Arguments that Alter or Eliminate the Traditional Approach to Predictive Prophecy" in Douglas Scott's Is Jesus of Nazareth the Predicted Messiah?: A Historical-Evidential Approach to Specific Old Testament Messianic Prophecies and Their New Testament Fulfillments; Maurice Casey, "Christology and the Legitimating Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament." Along with these, there are many other works which may or may not be quite so similarly critical, but still raise vexing issues: M. D. Hooker, "Beyond the Things That are Written? St. Paul’s Use of Scripture"; David Jeremiah, "The Principle of Double Fulfillment in Interpreting Prophecy"; Edward Lipinski, "Études sur des Textes 'Messianiques' de l'Ancien Testament"; Walter Moberly, "What Will Happen to the Serpent?" (esp. the section "Testing the Protoevangelium"); Jack Lewis, "The Woman's Seed (Gen 3:15)"; Peter Enns, "Apostolic Hermeneutics and an Evangelical Doctrine of Scripture: Moving Beyond the Modern Impasse"; Stephen Snobelen, "The Argument over Prophecy: An Eighteenth-Century Debate Between William Whiston and Anthony Collins"; Ulrich Lehner, "Against the Consensus of the Fathers? Isaiah 7:14 and the Travail of Eighteenth-Century Catholic Exegesis"; A. Kamesar, "The Virgin of Isaiah 7:14: The Philological Argument From the Second to the Fifth Century"; J. B. Payne, "So-Called Dual Fulfillment in Messianic Psalms"; Gregory Beale, "Did Jesus and the Apostles Preach the Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts?"; some briefer relevant comments and references in David Jeremiah, "The Principle of Double Fulfillment in Interpreting Prophecy."
Problems in the eschatology of the historical Jesus and early Christians: Dale Allison, Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet — in conjunction with things like The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism and the volume Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy. Also the volume When the Son of Man Didn't Come: A Constructive Proposal on the Delay of the Parousia; Jürgen Becker, Jesus of Nazareth; Werner Kümmel, Promise and Fulfilment: The Eschatological Message of Jesus; "Eschatological Expectation in the Proclamation of Jesus"
Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, "The Process of Jesus’ Deification and Cognitive Dissonance Theory"?
Prominent publications that offer theological criticisms of orthodox Christology and other facets of the NT and orthodoxy: the well-known volume The Myth of God Incarnate, as well as the follow-up volume Incarnation and Myth: the Debate Continued. Other issues of (unorthodox?) Christology in the NT: Javier-José Marín's The Christology of Mark: Does Mark's Christology Support the Chalcedonian Formula “Truly Man and Truly God”?; T. W. Bartel, "Why the Philosophical Problems of Chalcedonian Christology Have Not Gone Away"; Morna Hooker, "Chalcedon and the New Testament"; C. K. Barrett, "'The Father is Greater Than I' (Jo. 14:28): Subordinationist Christology in the New Testament"; Thomas Gaston, "Does the Gospel of John Have a High Christology?"; Michael Kok, "Marking a Difference: The Gospel of Mark and the 'Early High Christology' Paradigm"; J. R. Daniel Kirk, A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels; Thomas Weinandy, "The Human 'I' of Jesus"; several publications by Kevin Madigan, e.g. "Christus Nesciens? Was Christ Ignorant of the Day of Judgment?" (among other essays in The Passions of Christ in High-Medieval Thought: An Essay on Christological Development); Oliver Crisp, "Compositional Christology without Nestorianism"; Stephen T. Davis, "Is Kenotic Christology Orthodox?"; Joseph Weber, "Dogmatic Christology and the Historical-critical Method: Some Reflections on their Interrelationship"
Problems in the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, and problems with the apostle Paul’s theology in particular: Jacob Neusner, Jews and Christians: The Myth of a Common Tradition; Amy-Jill Levine, "Jesus, Divorce, and Sexuality: A Jewish Critique"; Thomas Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity?; William Loader, Jesus' Attitude Towards the Law: A Study of the Gospels; Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law (and also refer back to the publications by C. G. Montefiore that I cited near the beginning); "A Controversial Jew and His Conflicting Convictions: Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People Twenty Years After"; Craig Hill, "On the Source of Paul’s Problem with Judaism"; Peter Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law: Halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the Gentiles; Michael Bird and Preston Sprinkle, "Jewish Interpretation of Paul in the Last Thirty Years"
Works on broader issues of historicity (and fiction) in the New Testament gospels and Acts: Joel Marcus, "Did Matthew Believe His Myths?"; Lawrence Wills, The Quest of the Historical Gospel: Mark, John and the Origins of the Gospel Genre; Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah and The Death of the Messiah (and Gregory Dawes' "Why Historicity Still Matters: Raymond Brown and the Infancy Narratives"); Edwin Freed, Stories of Jesus' Birth: A Critical Introduction; Andrew Lincoln, Born of a Virgin? Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition, and Theology; Adam Winn, Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative: Considering the Practice of Greco-Roman Imitation in the Search for Markan Source Material; M. David Litwa, How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths (forthcoming in August 2019); Matti Kankaanniemi, "The Guards of the Tomb (Matt 27:62–66 and 28:11–15): Matthew’s Apologetic Legend Revisited" (dissertation); E. Randolph Richards, "Was Matthew a Plagiarist? Plagiarism in Greco-Roman Antiquity"; Mogens Müller, "The New Testament Gospels as Biblical Rewritings: On the Question of Referentiality"; Brad McAdon, Rhetorical Mimesis and the Mitigation of Early Christian Conflicts; the volume Early Christian Voices: In Texts, Traditions, and Symbols (especially Brock, "Luke the Politician: Promoting the Gospel by Polishing Christianity's Rough Edges," etc.); Eve-Marie Becker, "The Gospel of Mark in the Context of Ancient Historiography"; Dale Miller and Patricia Miller, The Gospel of Mark as Midrash on Earlier Jewish and New Testament Literature; John Morgan, "Make-believe and Make Believe: The Fictionality of the Greek Novels"; Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions (?)
Gospel authorship and sources: A bibliography of responses to Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
Problems of historicity in the book of Acts in particular: Marianne Bonz, The Past as Legacy: Luke-Acts and Ancient Epic; Loveday Alexander, Acts in its Ancient Literary Context (e.g. "Fact, Fiction and the Genre of Acts"; "The Acts of the Apostles as an Apologetic Text," etc.); Charles Talbert, "What is Meant by the Historicity of Acts?"; Clare Rothschild, Luke-Acts and the Rhetoric of History; the volume Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman Discourse; Samson Uytanlet, Luke-Acts and Jewish Historiography; Richard Pervo, "Acts in the Suburbs of the Apologists"; "Israel's Heritage and Claims upon the Genre(s) of Luke and Acts: The Problems of a History"; Arie Zwiep, Christ, the Spirit and the Community of God: Essays on the Acts of the Apostles; Daniel Marguerat, Paul in Acts and Paul in His Letters; Sean Adams, "The Relationships of Paul and Luke: Luke, Paul’s Letters, and the 'We' Passages of Acts"; Rieuwerd Buitenwerf, "Acts 9:1-25: Narrative History Based on the Letters of Paul"; R. Barry Matlock, "Does the Road to Damascus Run through the Letters of Paul?"; Heikki Leppä, "Reading Galatians with and without the Book of Acts"; Alexander Wedderburn, "The 'We'-Passages in Acts: On the Horns of a Dilemma"; Paul Holloway, "Inconvenient Truths: Early Jewish and Christian History Writing and the Ending of Luke-Acts"; Thomas Brodie, "Greco-Roman Imitation of Texts as a Partial Guide to Luke's Use of Sources"; Craig Evans, "Luke and the Rewritten Bible: Aspects of Lukan Hagiography"
Problems in Jesus’ and the New Testament’s ethics (and beyond)? Hector Avalos, The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics (and articles like "Jesus as Whippersnapper: John 2:15 and Prophetic Violence"); A. E. Harvey, Strenuous Commands: The Ethic of Jesus; J. Harold Ellens, "The Violent Jesus"; Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, "Jesus and the Anti-Roman Resistance: A Reassessment of the Arguments" and "(Why) Was Jesus the Galilean Cruciﬁed Alone? Solving a False Conundrum"; Jeremy Punt, "'Unethical' Language in the Pauline Letters? Stereotyping, Vilification and Identity Matters"; Margaret Davies, "Stereotyping the Other: The 'Pharisees' in the Gospel According to Matthew"; Raimo Hakola, "Social Identity and a Stereotype in the Making: Pharisees as Hypocrites in Matthew 23?"; John D. Crossan, Jesus and the Violence of Scripture; several essays in the volume Christianity and the Roots of Morality: Philosophical, Early Christian and Empirical Perspectives;
David Aune, "Luke 20:34-36: A 'Gnosticized' Logion of Jesus?"; [the essay of Seim;]
Ethical and theological/philosophical/metaphysical issues of sex and gender: the volume Image of God and Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition; the volumes Women and Christian Origins (eds. Kraemer and D'Angelo) and Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions; Frances Gench, Encountering God in Tyrannical Texts: Reflections on Paul, Women, and the Authority of Scripture and Back to the Well: Women's Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels; Pablo Alonso, The Woman who Changed Jesus: Crossing Boundaries in Mk 7,24-30; David Rhoads, "Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark: A Narrative-Critical Study"; Ruth Edwards, The Case for Women's Ministry
On pseudepigraphy: the volume Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion in frühchristlichen Briefen; Terry Wilder, Pseudonymity, the New Testament, and Deception: An Inquiry into Intention and Reception; Jonathan Klawans, "Deceptive Intentions: Forgeries, Falsehoods and the Study of Ancient Judaism"

Other categories and supplementary material

On sacrifice, atonement, substitution and blood ritual in ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean religion: Daniel Ullucci, "Sacrifice in the Ancient Mediterranean: Recent and Current Research"; Gunnel Ekroth, "Animal Sacrifice in Antiquity"; JoAnn Scurlock, "Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Mesopotamian Religion"; Isabel Cranz, Atonement and Purification: Priestly and Assyro-Babylonian Perspectives on Sin and its Consequences; Yitzhaq Feder, Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual: Origins, Context, and Meaning; William Gilders, Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power; Jan Bremmer, "The Scapegoat between Northern Syria, Hittites, Israelites, Greeks and Early Christians"; various essays in the volume Sacrifice in Religious Experience; various essays in the volume Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique
On sin in general — its source and how it was dealt with: Jay Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement: The Priestly Conceptions; Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism; Miryam Brand, Evil Within and Without: The Source of Sin and Its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature
On the "suffering servant" in Isaiah 53 (which has often served as the primary prophetic prooftext for Jesus' sacrificial death, etc.): Fredrik Hägglund's Isaiah 53 in the Light of Homecoming after Exile; Frederik Poulsen's The Black Hole in Isaiah: A Study of Exile as a Literary Theme; Ulrich Berges' "The Literary Construction of the Servant in Isaiah 40-55: A Discussion About Individual and Collective Identities"; Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer's For the Comfort of Zion: The Geographical and Theological Location of Isaiah 40-55; Kristin Joachimsen's Identities in Transition: The Pursuit of Isa. 52:13-53:12; Hans-Jürgen Hermisson, "The Fourth Servant Song in the Context of Second Isaiah"; R. E. Clements, "Isaiah 53 and the Restoration of Israel"; Joseph Blenkinsopp, "The Servant and the Servants in Isaiah and the Formation of the Book" (see also Jaap Decker's "The Servant and the Servants in the Book of Isaiah"); Ulrich Berges' The Book of Isaiah: Its Composition and Final Form; various essays in the volume Continuity and Discontinuity: Chronological and Thematic Development in Isaiah 40-66 (especially for broader context about Isaiah 40-55, etc.); Antti Laato's The Servant of YHWH and Cyrus: A Reinterpretation of the Exilic Messianic Programme in Isaiah 40-55 and Who is the Servant of the Lord?: Jewish and Christian Interpretations on Isaiah 53 from Antiquity to the Middle Ages; Hans Barstad, The Babylonian Captivity of the Book of Isaiah: ‘Exilic’ Judah and the Provenance of Isaiah 40–55; relevant sections in Jacob Stromberg's Isaiah After Exile: The Author of Third Isaiah as Reader and Redactor of the Book (especially in the third section, "The Author of Third Isaiah as Redactor of the Book"; see also his essay "Deutero-Isaiah's Restoration Reconfigured"). Any number of other studies could be mentioned here, too: Harry Orlinsky, The So-called "Servant of the Lord" and "Suffering Servant" in Second Isaiah; various essays in the volume The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (e.g. Spieckermann's "The Conception and Prehistory of the Idea of Vicarious Suffering in the Old Testament"); John Walton, "The Imagery of the Substitute King Ritual in Isaiah's Fourth Servant Song," etc.
Applying Mediterranean and other models of sacrifice and atonement to Jesus and the gospels: Henk Versnel, "Making Sense of Jesus' Death: The Pagan Contribution"; various publications by Stephen Finlan, e.g. Sacrifice and Atonement: Psychological Motives and Biblical Patterns; Maclean; "Barabbas, the Scapegoat Ritual, and the Development of the Passion Narrative"; Nicole Duran, The Power of Disorder: Ritual Elements in Mark's Passion Narrative; David Seeley, The Noble Death: Graeco-Roman Martyrology and Paul's Concept of Salvation; Marinus de Jonge, "Jesus' Death for Others and the Death of the Maccabean Martyrs"; the work of Jarvis J. Williams
On the context of Jesus as a miracle worker and exorcist: various essays in the volume Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period; Eric Eve, The Jewish Context of Jesus' Miracles; Wendy Cotter, Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook for the Study of New Testament Miracle Stories; Ida Fröhlich, "Demons, Scribes, and Exorcists in Qumran"; Loren Stuckenbruck, "The Demonic World of the Dead Sea Scrolls"; Eric Sorensen, Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity; Todd Klutz, "The Grammar of Exorcism in the Ancient Mediterranean World"; Dennis Duling, "The Eleazar Miracle and Solomon’s Magical Wisdom in Flavius Josephus’s Antiquitatae Judaicae 8.42-49; "Solomon, Exorcism, and the Son of David"; Mary Mills, Human Agents of Cosmic Power in Hellenistic Judaism and the Synoptic Tradition; Archie Wright, "Evil Spirits in the Second Temple Judaism: The Watcher Tradition as a Background to the Demonic Pericopes in the Gospels"; Emma Abate, "Controlling Demons: Magic and Rituals in the Jewish Tradition from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Cairo Genizah"; John Thomas, The Devil, Disease and Deliverance: Origins of Illness in New Testament Thought
Prayer in philosophy of religion, and in early Judaism and beyond: Michael Murray and Kurt Meyers, "Ask and It Will Be Given to You"; Scott Davison, Petitionary Prayer: A Philosophical Investigation; Zeba Crook, "Religion's Coercive Prayers" (?); Nicholas Smith, "Philosophical Reflection on Petitionary Prayer"; Shane Sharp, "When Prayers Go Unanswered"; Wendy Cadge, "Possibilities and Limits of Medical Science: Debates Over Double-Blind Clinical Trials of Intercessory Prayer."
Various essays in the volume Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World; the multi-volume SBL Seeking the Favor of God collection (volume 1: The Origins of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism; volume 2: The Development of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism; volume 3: The Impact of Penitential Prayer beyond Second Temple Judaism); Jeremy Penner, Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Period Judaism; Simon Pulleyn, Prayer in Greek Religion; Mark Kiley (ed.), Prayer From Alexander To Constantine: A Critical Anthology; Esther Eshel, "Apotropaic Prayers in the Second Temple Period";
Various other general works on the historical Jesus, Paul, the New Testament and the emergence of Christianity: Jans Schröter, From Jesus to the New Testament: Early Christian Theology and the Origin of the New Testament Canon (e.g. "New Testament Science beyond Historicism: Recent Developments in the Theory of History and Their Significant for the Exegesis of Early Christian Writings"); Per Bilde, The Originality of Jesus: A Critical Discussion and a Comparative Attempt; Alexander Wedderburn, Jesus and the Historians; the volumes Whose Historical Jesus? (eds. Arnal and Desjardins), Christian Origins and the Establishment of the Early Jesus Movement, and From Jesus to his First Followers: Continuity and Discontinuity; Heikki Räisänen, The Rise of Christian Beliefs: The Thought World of Early Christians; Sean Freyne, The Jesus Movement and Its Expansion: Meaning and Mission; E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism; Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People; various publications by Burton Mark (The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy, etc.); Gerd Theissen, The New Testament: A Literary History; The Gospels in Context; Lauri Thurén, Derhetoricizing Paul: A Dynamic Perspective on Pauline Theology and the Law; Mark Given, Paul's True Rhetoric: Ambiguity, Cunning, and Deception in Greece and Rome
Various studies on the early apostolic interactions and missions; the general/pastoral epistles; "early orthodoxy," etc.: a few essays in the volume Redescribing Christian Origins (Dennis Smith, "What Do We Really Know about the Jerusalem Church? Christian Origins in Jerusalem According to Acts and Paul"; Luther Martin, "History, Historiography, and Christian Origins: the Jerusalem Community"; Christopher Matthews, "Acts and the History of the Earliest Jerusalem Church"); the volume The Missions of James, Peter, and Paul: Tensions in Early Christianity; Nicholas Taylor, Paul, Antioch and Jerusalem: A Study in Relationships and Authority; Jack Gibson, Peter Between Jerusalem and Antioch: Peter, James, and the Gentiles; Arie Zwiep, "Putting Paul in Place with a Trojan Horse"; Michael Goulder, Paul and the Competing Mission in Corinth; Kari Syreeni, "James and the Pauline Legacy: Power Play in Corinth?" (and a few other essays in the volume Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity — Essays in Honour of Heikki Räisänen); Edward Ellis, History and Interpretation in New Testament Perspective; Carey Newman, "Jude 22, Apostolic Authority, and the Canonical Role of the Catholic Epistles"; Denis Farkasfalvy, "The Ecclesial Setting of Pseudepigraphy in Second Peter and its Role in the Formation of the Canon"; F. Lapham, Peter: The Myth, the Man and the Writings; David Nienhuis, "'From the Beginning': The Formation of an Apostolic Christian Identity in 2 Peter and 1-3 John" (and his monograph Not by Paul Alone: The Formation of the Catholic Epistle Collection and the Christian Canon, though I think this has some too-radical conclusions); Finn Damgaard, Rewriting Peter as an Intertextual Character in the Canonical Gospels; Brevard Childs, The Church's Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus; Richard Pervo, The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity; Christopher Mount, Pauline Christianity: Luke-Acts and the Legacy of Paul; "Luke-Acts and the Investigation of Apostolic Tradition: From a Life of Jesus to a History of Christianity"; Paul Holloway, "Inconvenient Truths: Early Jewish and Christian History Writing and the Ending of Luke-Acts"; Margaret Mitchell, "The Letter of James as a Document of Paulinism?" (?)
Anti-Judaism in the New Testament and early Christianity? The volumes Anti-Judaism and the Gospels (ed. Farmer) and Jesus, Judaism, and Christian Anti-Judaism: Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust; Luke Johnson, "The New Testament's Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic"; the two-volume Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity (volume 1: Paul and the Gospels; volume 2: Separation and Polemic); Abel Bibliowicz, Jews and Gentiles in the Early Jesus Movement: An Unintended Journey; Michael Bachmann, Anti-Judaism in Galatians? Exegetical Studies on a Polemical Letter and on Paul's Theology
Various publications on Biblical theology and other things: John J. Collins, "Is a Critical Biblical Theology Possible?"; Niels Lemche, The Old Testament Between Theology and History: A Critical Survey; Heikki Räisänen, Beyond New Testament Theology: A Story and a Programme; Challenges to Biblical Interpretation: Collected Essays, 1991-2000 (and The Bible Among Scriptures and Other Essays); Timo Eskola, Beyond Biblical Theology: Sacralized Culturalism in Heikki Räisänen’s Hermeneutics; Gerd Theissen, Biblical Faith: An Evolutionary Approach

Misc.

Continued here: https://www.reddit.com/UnusedSubforMe/comments/dklfsj/notes8/fksqod8/

It seems like some authors claim that the early Christians originated from a type of Essenes, but other authors say that claim is false. Yet both authors present their position as though the vast majority of other scholars are in agreement.
I suspect that the different claims can be explained by differing definitions of "Essene". Some scholars see the Qumran sect as the model for Essenes, and other scholars see them as schismatics. Is my suspicion correct? Also I would be curious to hear what people here think on the relationship between the Essenes and the Early Christians.

Today we will be talking about the Ebionites:
Ebionites is a patristic term referring to a Jewish Christian movement that existed during the early centuries of the Christian Era. They regarded Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah while rejecting his divinity and his virgin birth and insisted on the necessity of following Jewish law and rites. They used only one of the Jewish–Christian gospels, the Hebrew Book of Matthew starting at chapter three; revered James, the brother of Jesus (James the Just); and rejected Paul the Apostle as an apostate from the Law. Their name suggests that they placed a special value on voluntary poverty. Ebionim was one of the terms used by the sect at Qumran who sought to separate themselves from the corruption of the Temple. Many believe that the Qumran sectarians were Essenes. Since historical records by the Ebionites are scarce, fragmentary and disputed, much of what is known or conjectured about the Ebionites derives from the Church Fathers who wrote polemics against the Ebionites, who they deemed heretical Judaizers. Consequently, very little about the Ebionite sect or sects is known with certainty, and most, if not all, statements about them are conjectural. At least one scholar distinguishes the Ebionites from other Jewish Christian groups, such as the Nazarenes. Other scholars, like the Church Fathers themselves from the first centuries after Jesus, consider the Ebionites identical with the Nazarenes. The early Christians called themselves preferably "Ebionim" (the poor; comp. Epiphanius, l.c. xxx. 17; Minucius Felix Octavius, ch. 36), because they regarded self-imposed poverty as a meritorious method of preparation for the Messianic kingdom, according to Luke vi. 20, 24: "Blessed are ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God"; and "Woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation" (=Messianic share; Matt. v. 3, "the poor in spirit," is a late modification of the original; comp. Luke iv. 18, vii. 22; Matt. xix. 21 et seq., xxvi. 9 et seq.; Luke xix. 8; John xii. 5; Rom. xv. 26; II Cor. vi. 10, viii. 9; Gal. ii. 10; James ii. 5 et seq.). Accordingly they dispossessed themselves of all their goods and lived in communistic societies (Acts iv. 34 et seq.). In this practise the Essenes also were encouraged, partly by Messianic passages, such as Isa. xi. 4, xlix. 3 (comp. Ex. R. xxxi.), partly by Deut. xv. 11: "The poor shall never cease out of the land"—a passage taken to be a warning not to embark upon commerce when the study of the Law is thereby neglected (Ta'an. 21a; comp. also Mek., Beshallaḥ, ii., ed. Weiss, 56; see notes).
The reconstructed Ebonite gospel using ancient citations done by judaizer scholars: https://www.jesuswordsonly.com/images/stories/JWOBook/ogm2012.htm
Name:
The term Ebionites derives from the common adjective for "poor" in Hebrew, which occurs fifteen times in the Psalms and was the self-given term of some pious Jewish circles (e.g. Psalm 69:33 ("For the LORD heareth the poor") and 1 QpHab XII, 3.6.10). The term "Ebionim" was also a self description given by the people who were living in Qumran, as shown in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The term "the poor" was at first a common designation for all Christians, a reference to their material and voluntary poverty. The hellenized Hebrew term "Ebionite" (Ebionai) was first applied by Irenaeus in the second century without making mention of Nazarenes (c.180 CE). Origen wrote "for Ebion signifies 'poor' among the Jews, and those Jews who have received Jesus as Christ are called by the name of Ebionites." Tertullian was the first to write against a heresiarch called Ebion; scholars believe he derived this name from a literal reading of Ebionaioi as "followers of Ebion", a derivation now considered mistaken for lack of any more substantial references to such a figure. The term "the poor" (Greek ptōkhoí) was still used in its original, more general sense. Modern Hebrew still uses the Biblical Hebrew term "the needy" both in histories of Christianity for "Ebionites" (אביונים) and for almsgiving to the needy at Purim.
History:
The earliest reference to a group that might fit the description of the later Ebionites appears in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (c. 140). Justin distinguishes between Jewish Christians who observe the Law of Moses but do not require its observance upon others and those who believe the Mosaic Law to be obligatory on all. Irenaeus (c. 180) was probably the first to use the term "Ebionites" to describe a heretical judaizing sect, which he regarded as stubbornly clinging to the Law. Origen (c. 212) remarks that the name derives from the Hebrew word "evyon," meaning "poor." Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 310–320 – 403) gives the most complete account in his heresiology called Panarion, denouncing eighty heretical sects, among them the Ebionites. Epiphanius mostly gives general descriptions of their religious beliefs and includes quotations from their gospels, which have not survived. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Ebionite movement "may have arisen about the time of the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (AD 70)." The tentative dating of the origins of this sect depends on Epiphanius writing three centuries later and relying on information for the Ebionites from the Book of Elchasai, which may not have had anything to do with the Ebionites. Paul talks of his collection for the "poor among the saints" in the Jerusalem church, but this is generally taken as meaning the poorer members of the church rather than a schismatic group. The actual number of groups described as Ebionites is difficult to ascertain, as the contradictory patristic accounts in their attempt to distinguish various sects sometimes confuse them with each other. Other groups mentioned are the Carpocratians, the Cerinthians, the Elcesaites, the fourth century Nazarenes and the Sampsaeans, most of whom were Jewish Christian sects who held gnostic or other views rejected by the Ebionites. Epiphanius, however, mentions that a group of Ebionites came to embrace some of these views despite keeping their name. As the Ebionites are first mentioned as such in the second century, their earlier history and any relation to the first Jerusalem church remains obscure and a matter of contention. There is no evidence linking the origin of the later sect of the Ebionites with the First Jewish-Roman War of 66–70 CE or with the Jerusalem church led by James. Eusebius relates a tradition, probably based on Aristo of Pella, that the early Christians left Jerusalem just prior to the war and fled to Pella beyond the Jordan River, but does not connect this with Ebionites. They were led by Simeon of Jerusalem (d. 107) and during the Second Jewish-Roman War of 115–117, they were persecuted by the Jewish followers of Bar Kochba for refusing to recognize his messianic claims. According to Harnack, the influence of Elchasaites places some Ebionites in the context of the gnostic movements widespread in Syria and the lands to the east. After the end of the First Jewish–Roman War, the importance of the Jerusalem church began to fade. Jewish Christianity became dispersed throughout the Jewish diaspora in the Levant, where it was slowly eclipsed by gentile Christianity, which then spread throughout the Roman Empire without competition from "judaizing" Christian groups. Once the Jerusalem church was eliminated during the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135, the Ebionites gradually lost influence and followers. According to Hyam Maccoby (1987), their decline was due to marginalization and "persecution" by both Jews and Christians. Following the defeat of the rebellion and the expulsion of all Jews from Judea, Jerusalem became the Gentile city of Aelia Capitolina. Many of the Jewish Christians residing at Pella renounced their Jewish practices at this time and joined to the mainstream Christian church. Those who remained at Pella and continued in obedience to the Law were deemed heretics. In 375, Epiphanius records the settlement of Ebionites on Cyprus, but by the fifth century, Theodoret of Cyrrhus reported that they were no longer present in the region.
Last days of the Ebionite sect
Some scholars argue that the Ebionites survived much longer and identify them with a sect encountered by the historian Abd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad around the year 1000. There is another possible reference to Ebionite communities existing around the 11th century in northwestern Arabia in Sefer Ha'masaot, the "Book of the Travels" of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, a rabbi from Spain. These communities were located in two cities, Tayma and "Tilmas", possibly Sa`dah in Yemen. The 12th century Muslim historian Muhammad al-Shahrastani mentions Jews living in nearby Medina and Hejaz who accepted Jesus as a prophetic figure and followed traditional Judaism, rejecting mainstream Christian views. Some scholars argue that they contributed to the development of the Islamic view of Jesus due to exchanges of Ebionite remnants with the first Muslims.
Views and practices:
Judaic and Gnostic Ebionitis:
Most patristic sources portray the Ebionites as traditional Jews who zealously followed the Law of Moses, revered Jerusalem as the holiest city and restricted table fellowship only to Gentiles who converted to Judaism. Some Church Fathers describe some Ebionites as departing from traditional Jewish principles of faith and practice. For example, Epiphanius of Salamis stated that the Ebionites engaged in excessive ritual bathing, possessed an angelology which claimed that the Christ is a great archangel who was incarnated in Jesus and adopted as the son of God, opposed animal sacrifice, denied parts or most of the Law, practiced Jewish vegetarianism and celebrated a commemorative meal annually on or around Passover with unleavened bread and water only, in contrast to the daily Christian Eucharist. The reliability of Epiphanius' account of the Ebionites is questioned by some scholars. Shlomo Pines, for example, argues that the heterodox views and practices he ascribes to some Ebionites originated in Gnostic Christianity rather than Jewish Christianity and are characteristics of the Elcesaite sect, which Epiphanius mistakenly attributed to the Ebionites. Another Church Father who described the Ebionites as departing from Christian orthodoxy was Methodius of Olympus, who stated that the Ebionites believed that the prophets spoke only by their own power and not by the power of the Holy Spirit. While mainstream biblical scholars do suppose some Essene influence on the nascent Jewish-Christian Church in some organizational, administrative and cultic respects, some scholars go beyond that assumption. Regarding the Ebionites specifically, a number of scholars have different theories on how the Ebionites may have developed from an Essene Jewish messianic sect. Hans-Joachim Schoeps argues that the conversion of some Essenes to Jewish Christianity after the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE may be the source of some Ebionites adopting Essene views and practices, while some conclude that the Essenes did not become Jewish Christians, but still had an influence on the Ebionites. Epiphanius of Salamis, in his book Panarion, 30:17:5, said, "But I already showed above that Ebion did not know these things, but later, his followers that associated with Elchasai had the circumcision, the Sabbath and the customs of Ebion, but the imagination of Elchasai." Epiphanius made it clear that the original Ebionites were different from those heterodox Ebionites that he described.
Ebionite views on John the Baptist:
In the Gospel of the Ebionites, as quoted by Epiphanius, John the Baptist and Jesus are portrayed as vegetarians. Epiphanius states that the Ebionites had amended "locusts" (Greek akris) to "honey cake" (Greek ekris). This emendation is not found in any other New Testament manuscript or translation, though a different vegetarian reading is found in a late Slavonic version of Josephus' War of the Jews.Pines (1966) and others propose that the Ebionites were projecting their own vegetarianism onto John the Baptist. Robert Eisenman suggests that the Ebonim followed the Nazirite Oath that was associated with "James the brother of Jesus"
Jesus:
The majority of Church Fathers agree that the Ebionites rejected many of the precepts central to Nicene orthodoxy, such as Jesus' pre-existence, divinity, virgin birth, atoning death and physical resurrection. On the other hand, an Ebionite story has Jesus eating bread with his brother, Jacob ("James the Just"), after the resurrection, which indicates that the Ebionites, or at least the ones who accepted this version of the Gospel of the Hebrews, believed in a physical resurrection of Jesus. The Ebionites are described as emphasizing the oneness of God and the humanity of Jesus as the biological son of Mary and Joseph, who, by virtue of his righteousness, was chosen by God to be the messianic "prophet like Moses" (foretold in Deuteronomy 18:14–22) when he was anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism. Origen (Contra Celsum 5.61) and Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica 3.27.3) recognize some variation in the Christology of Ebionite groups; for example, that while all Ebionites denied Jesus' pre-existence, there was a sub-group which did not deny the virgin birth. Theodoret, while dependent on earlier writers, draws the conclusion that the two sub-groups would have used different Gospels. Of the books of the New Testament, the Ebionites are said to have accepted only a Hebrew (or Aramaic) version of the Gospel of Matthew, referred to as the Gospel of the Hebrews, as additional scripture to the Hebrew Bible. This version of Matthew, Irenaeus reports, omitted the first two chapters (on the nativity of Jesus) and started with the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. The Ebionites believed that all Jews and Gentiles must observe the commandments in the Law of Moses in order to become righteous and seek communion with God.
James and the Ebionites
One of the popular primary connections of the Ebionites to James is that noted by William Whiston in his edition of Josephus (1794), where he notes regarding the murder of James, the brother of Jesus, "we must remember what we learn from the Ebionite fragments of Hegesippus, that these Ebionites interpreted a prophecy of Isaiah as foretelling this very murder." That Hegesippus made this connection from Isaiah is undisputed; however, Whiston's identification of Hegesippus as an Ebionite, while common in 18th and 19th century scholarship, is debatable. The other popularly proposed connection is that the Ascents of James in the Pseudo-Clementine literature are related to the Ebionites. The Book of Acts begins by showing Peter as leader of the Jerusalem church, the only church in existence immediately after the ascension, though several years later, Paul lists James prior to "Cephas" (Peter) and John as those considered "pillars" (Greek styloi) of the Jerusalem Church. Eusebius records that Clement of Alexandria wrote that Peter, James and John chose James, the brother of Jesus, as bishop of Jerusalem, but Eusebius also subjects James to the authority of all the apostles. Peter baptised Cornelius the Centurion, introducing uncircumcised Gentiles into the church in Judea. Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, established many churches and developed a Christian theology (see Pauline Christianity). At the Council of Jerusalem (c 49), Paul argued to abrogate Mosaic observances for non-Jewish converts. When Paul recounted the events to the Galatians (Galatians 2:9-10), he referred only to the remembrance of the poor rather than conveying the four points of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:19-21). James Dunn notes the conciliatory role of James as depicted in Acts in the tension between Paul and those urging the Law of Moses upon Gentiles. According to Eusebius, the Jerusalem church fled to Pella, Jordan after the death of James to escape the siege of the future Emperor Titus. After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jerusalem church was permitted to remain in the renamed Aelia Capitolina, but notably from this point onward all bishops of Jerusalem bear Greek rather than evidently Jewish names. Scholars such as Pierre-Antoine Bernheim, Robert Eisenman, Will Durant, Michael Goulder, Gerd Ludemann, John Painter and James Tabor argue for some form of continuity of the Jewish Jerusalem church into the second and third centuries and that the Ebionites regarded James, the brother of Jesus, as their leader. Scholars, including Richard Bauckham, distinguish the high Christology practiced by the Jerusalem church under James with the low Christology later adopted by the Ebionites. Tabor argues that the Ebionites claimed a dynastic apostolic succession for the relatives of Jesus. Epiphanius relates that the Ebionites opposed the Apostle Paul, who they saw as responsible for the idea that gentile Christians did not have to be circumcised or follow the Law of Moses, and named him an apostate. Epiphanius further relates that some Ebionites alleged that Paul was a Greek who converted to Judaism in order to marry the daughter of a high priest of Israel, but apostatized when she rejected him. As an alternative to the traditional view of Eusebius that the Jerusalem church simply became integrated with the Gentile church, other scholars, such as Richard Bauckham, suggest immediate successors to the Jerusalem church under James and the relatives of Jesus were the Nazoraeans who accepted Paul, while the Ebionites were a later offshoot of the early second century.
Writings
Few writings of the Ebionites have survived and they are in uncertain form. The Recognitions of Clement and the Clementine Homilies, two third century Christian works, are regarded by general scholarly consensus as largely or entirely Jewish Christian in origin and reflect Jewish Christian beliefs. The exact relationship between the Ebionites and these writings is debated, but Epiphanius's description of some Ebionites in Panarion 30 bears a striking similarity to the ideas in the Recognitions and Homilies. Scholar Glenn Alan Koch speculates that Epiphanius likely relied upon a version of the Homilies as a source document.[25] Some scholars also speculate that the core of the Gospel of Barnabas, beneath a polemical medieval Muslim overlay, may have been based upon an Ebionite or gnostic document. The existence and origin of this source continues to be debated by scholars. John Arendzen (Catholic Encyclopedia article "Ebionites" 1909) classifies the Ebionite writings into four groups.
Gospel of the Ebionites:
Irenaeus stated that the Ebionites used Matthew's Gospel exclusively. Eusebius of Caesarea wrote that they used only the Gospel of the Hebrews. From this, the minority view of James R. Edwards (2009) and Bodley's Librarian Edward Nicholson (1879) claim that there was only one Hebrew gospel in circulation, Matthew's Gospel of the Hebrews. They also note that the title Gospel of the Ebionites was never used by anyone in the early Church. Epiphanius contended that the gospel the Ebionites used was written by Matthew and called the Gospel of the Hebrews. Because Epiphanius said that it was "not wholly complete, but falsified and mutilated", writers such as Walter Richard Cassels (1877) and Pierson Parker (1940) consider it a different "edition" of Matthew's Hebrew Gospel; however, internal evidence from the quotations in Panarion 30.13.4 and 30.13.7 suggest that the text was a Gospel harmony originally composed in Greek. Mainstream scholarly texts, such as the standard edition of the New Testament Apocrypha edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, generally refer to the text Jerome cites as used by the Ebionites as the Gospel of the Ebionites, though this is not a term current in the Early Church.
Clementine literature:
The collection of New Testament apocrypha known as the Clementine literature included three works known in antiquity as the Circuits of Peter, the Acts of the Apostles and a work usually titled the Ascents of James. They are specifically referenced by Epiphanius in his polemic against the Ebionites. The first-named books are substantially contained in the Homilies of Clement under the title of Clement's Compendium of Peter's itinerary sermons and in the Recognitions attributed to Clement. They form an early Christian didactic fiction to express Jewish Christian views, such as the primacy of James, the brother of Jesus; their connection with the episcopal see of Rome; and their antagonism to Simon Magus, as well as gnostic doctrines. Scholar Robert E. Van Voorst opines of the Ascents of James (R 1.33–71), "There is, in fact, no section of the Clementine literature about whose origin in Jewish Christianity one may be more certain". Despite this assertion, he expresses reservations that the material is genuinely Ebionite in origin.
Symmachus:
Symmachus produced a translation of the Hebrew Bible in Koine Greek, which was used by Jerome and is still extant in fragments, and his lost Hypomnemata, written to counter the canonical Gospel of Matthew. Although lost, the Hypomnemata is probably identical to De distinctione præceptorum mentioned by Ebed Jesu (Assemani, Bibl. Or., III, 1). The identity of Symmachus as an Ebionite has been questioned in recent scholarship.
Elkesaites:
Hippolytus of Rome (c.230) reported that a Jewish Christian, Alcibiades of Apamea, appeared in Rome teaching from a book which he claimed to be the revelation which a righteous man, Elkesai, had received from an angel, though Hippolytus suspected that Alcibiades was himself the author. Shortly afterwards, Origen recorded a group, the Elkesaites, with the same beliefs. Epiphanius claimed the Ebionites also used this book as a source for some of their beliefs and practices (Panarion 30.17). Epiphanius explains the origin of the name Elkesai to be Aramaic El Ksai, meaning "hidden power" (Panarion 19.2.1). Scholar Petri Luomanen believes the book to have been written originally in Aramaic as a Jewish apocalypse, probably in Babylonia in 116–117.
Religious and critical perspectives:
The mainstream Christian view of the Ebionites is partly based on interpretation of the polemical views of the Church Fathers who portrayed them as heretics for rejecting many of the central Christian views of Jesus and allegedly having an improper fixation on the Law of Moses at the expense of the grace of God. In this view, the Ebionites may have been the descendants of a Jewish Christian sect within the early Jerusalem church which broke away from its mainstream theology.
Islam
Islam charges Christianity with having distorted the pure monotheism of Jesus through the doctrines of the Trinity and through the veneration of icons. Paul Addae and Tim Bowes (1998) write that the Ebionites were faithful to the original teachings of Jesus and thus shared Islamic views about Jesus' humanity and also rejected the redemptive death, though the Islamic view of Jesus may conflict with the view of some Ebionites regarding the virgin birth, respectively denying and affirming, according to Epiphanius. Hans Joachim Schoeps observes that the Christianity Muhammad was likely to have encountered on the Arabian peninsula "was not the state religion of Byzantium but a schismatic Christianity characterized by Ebionite and Monophysite views." Thus we have a paradox of world-historical proportions, viz., the fact that Jewish Christianity indeed disappeared within the Christian church, but was preserved in Islam and thereby extended some of its basic ideas even to our own day. According to Islamic doctrine, the Ebionite combination of Moses and Jesus found its fulfillment in Muhammad.
Modern movements:
The counter-missionary group Jews for Judaism favorably mentions the historical Ebionites in their literature in order to argue that "Messianic Judaism", as promoted by missionary groups such as Jews for Jesus, is Pauline Christianity misrepresenting itself as Judaism. Some Messianic groups have expressed concern over leaders in Israel who deny Jesus' divinity and the possible collapse of the Messianic movement due to a resurgence of Ebionitism. In a 2007 polemic, a Messianic writer asked whether Christians should imitate the Torah observance and acceptance of rabbinic understanding of "neo-Ebionites", who are defined as those who accept Jesus as Messiah, reject Paul and claim Moses as the only guide for Christians.
Sources:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5411-ebionites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_the_Ebionites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish%E2%80%93Christian_gospels

I am a bot! Please send NotListeningItsABook a private message with any comments or feedback on how I work.
EDIT: As of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020, the post is at [22pts|20c]

About Post:

---	---	Notes
Submission	CULT
Comments	CULT
Author	Tchalla144
Subreddit	/Bible
Posted On	Mon Feb 24 11:05:22 UTC 2020
Score	22	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Total Comments	47

Post Body:

Why are some Christians so quick to call other Christians cult when they can't even biblically explain why they are a cult and they themselves are not? What is the standard of Cult and not a Cult?
Things i hear as a Christian from other Christians is heartbreaking and sometimes i wonder if we say Love is at the core of our beliefs why do we selectively use such harsh words 😔😔😔

Related Comments (20):

---	---	Notes
Author	username-K
Posted On	Wed Feb 26 03:48:36 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:39 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	1
Body	link

Well I don't know how I can elaborate on something I didn't talk about. I know you guys like switching subjects.
Not all cults are christian, not all cults are even religious.
This is going to sound like a dig, but it's actually a serious question, those are some awful big words for a JW. Does your elder know you are here using those words?
Also, I can go rounds with textual criticism, exegesis and hermetics with JWs all day. But not here and not today. The heart of the OP is not battling JW theology. It was a question about identifying cults. If you want to rip into that stuff, i'd be happy to do it in another time and place more specifically for that.

---	---	Notes
Author	Ayiti79
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 21:36:09 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:40 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	12
Body	link

So what you are saying is that what Jesus had entrusted the Christian Congregation regarding binding and loosening is cultish and or cult like warning? Biblical, excommunication in practice early on in the first century.
Likewise, I heard and had seen and have spoken. Reasons why I mentioned before in varies. As in toxic, can you elaborate?
Being part of the world means to take up a political standpoint by means of taking sides, hence in this case, we are no part of the world in this aspect because we are neutral. We know that only God can solve the world's biggest problems such as death, sickness and ending wars. We are no part of the world when we ignore and avoid brazen conduct and activities that today's society deems normal, for example, gay marriage in a Christian Congregation. Of course, we do not accept or partake in such things, hence at being part of the world that accepts such with open arms. The list goes on. In this case, with the examples posed, choosing not to participate in such things doesn't deem someone as cultish, as with what it means to not be part of the world. We, as with others are often bullied or attack for it, but we rather side with God in terms of such principles instead of accepted ideologies of the world.
Further isolation? Can you elaborate on this more? If anything, an example of total isolation is an actual cult known as the followers of Christ, who not just believe Jesus to be a woman, but kidnap and or force members for their cause. As for Cults, again, small groups, and they are not the types to expose themselves to a great degree. Another example is Vissarion, who believes he is the Christ, and has literally isolated people in a small town in Sybria.
Also, I don't mean to test you, but 4 times I alluded to marginal Scriptural points, of which you deemed cultish. Out of curiosity, do you deem even what Jesus had said to be cultish, if not, most of what he said?
For, even outside of Jehovah's Witnesses, several points made are absolute, but then again, no one has made an effort to delve into it, let alone Hermenutics of anything said in Scripture.

---	---	Notes
Author	Sinner72
Posted On	Mon Feb 24 20:02:50 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	26
Body	link

True for for the other two languages
Groves, Asherah, Tammuz... all of the religions of the Table of Nations that Israel become involved with is the reason for God scattering them across the world, for them being trodden under foot by various kingdoms of the Gentiles. God (Yahweh) said Israel had played the harlot for becoming involved in those systems of idolatry.
Jeremiah 3:6 (KJV) The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen [that] which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot These religions were not Yahweh’s wife.
No I’m not a JW, I believe much like the Puritans did when they arrived in America... when Christ Mass was outlawed.

---	---	Notes
Author	abner25
Posted On	Mon Feb 24 23:07:43 UTC 2020
Score	2	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	4
Body	link

What about verses in the Bible where Jesus is indirectly called God? Look at Isaiah 9:6 for example, and Mark 5:19-20, among so many others. It's verses that Jehovah Witnesses delete or change and makes us wonder why. What is the possibility that references to Jesus as God gets "mistranslated" every single time? As opposed to a plethora of verses in the bible that have really big "accuracy issues" that aren't heavily debated or looked at by JWs like the validity of the Psalms, or which apostle wrote Revelation, or if Moses really wrote Job, or conversations around Mary Magdalene, or Jesus half siblings and Salome etc. However with JWs everything about the Godhead--regardless of whether that specific verse had more validity than any other--gets expunged. It's the same concept that the Pharisees back then and Jews today do with Jesus being Messiah. Whole verses and even chapters get omitted and are not even taught in Yeshiva, even the ones in the Tanakh.

---	---	Notes
Author	username-K
Posted On	Wed Feb 26 03:28:07 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	3
Body	link

Well I hate to tell you this, but Jehovah's witnesses score extremely high on every standard. Even on the BITE model which has absolutely nothing to do with religious doctrines. That's one of the reason's it's popular. And as someone that has studied many cults with JWs probably being in my top 5 of study, some of your statements contradict what is "allowed" in your organization from what I have researched and experienced, much of which is there own materials.

---	---	Notes
Author	arachnophilia
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 15:23:49 UTC 2020
Score	0	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	0
Body	link

JW's are a branch of an apocalyptic cult that failed to predict the second coming...

christianity is too.

Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. (Mat 16:28)

in the oldest form of christianity, jesus's resurrection was supposed to herald the resurrection of all the righteous dead -- bringing the end times quickly afterwards.

except the JW's believe it actually happened. They just think Jesus is invisible.

if you ask most christians, they will come up with all kinds of rationalizations for why christianity persisted after it became clear that jesus hadn't returned soon.

This goes against the words of Jesus himself and other scripture which proves they do not follow scripture.

i don't think i've ever met a christian that followed scripture entirely. you can't. it contradicts itself. everyone picks and chooses. some more than others, and some more honestly than others. from all of the various sects i've talked to, JWs in general have a better grasp of what scripture actually means in its historical contexts. though obviously that's not without problems, like the whole 144,000 thing.

Sola-scriptura is not a tradition, it's a necessity.

no, it's a tradition. and it's a not very well thought out one, at that. how do you think religious texts come to be? they do not fall out of the sky in modern english. they're not hand delivered to the church by winged messengers from heaven.
people write them based on tradition, people collect them, people construct the critical manuscripts, people translate them, and people tell you what they mean. all sola scriptura does is deny that this is going on. it doesn't prevent it from going on -- the pastor's still up on the pulpit telling you what to think about the bible. if anything, he's just doing it with less information at his disposal, and less education. but you cannot remove tradition from this equation.

---	---	Notes
Author	Iceman_001
Posted On	Mon Feb 24 16:15:44 UTC 2020
Score	7	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	7
Body	link

https://apostles-creed.org/confessional-reformed-christian-theology/ecclesiology/cult-non-christian-cult-christianity/
Basically, the beliefs of Christianity can be summed up in the Apostle's Creed or the Nicene Creed namely:

There is only one God in Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit
Christ was born of a Virgin
Christ is sinless, 100% God and 100% Man
Christ died for our sins
Christ rose from the dead in 3 days in His literal body
Christ ascended to heaven
Christ sits at the right Hand of God
Christ will come to judge the living and the dead.

These are absolutely essential for someone to claim Christianity. Anything different, even though they say they follow Christ, are labeled as Non-Christian cults.
Why Jehovah witnesses are a Non-Christian cult
Jehovah Witnesses are Non-Christian cult because they teach the Holy Spirit is just a force and that Christ was created by God.

Is the firstborn Son equal to God, as some believe? That is not what the Bible teaches. As we noted in the preceding paragraph, the Son was created. Obviously, then, he had a beginning, whereas Jehovah God has no beginning or end.

-Who is Jesus Christ – jw.org

The holy spirit is God’s power in action, his active force.

-What is the Holy Spirit – jw.org
To deny the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit is against Christianity. Nobody will be accepted as a Christian if they deny these teachings. They are some other religion.
Why Mormon ( Latter Day Saints ) are a Non-Christian cult
The Mormons claim that Christianity is Apostate and the LDS church is the only true church. They teach that The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate gods.

The true doctrine of the Godhead was lost in the apostasy that followed the Savior’s mortal ministry and the deaths of His Apostles. This doctrine began to be restored when 14-year-old Joseph Smith received his First Vision (see Joseph Smith—History 1:17).
The Church’s first article of faith states, “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.” These three beings make up the Godhead. They preside over this world and all other creations of our Father in Heaven.

-Godhead – lds.org
Mormons also teach that believers will become gods.

Latter-day Saint beliefs would have sounded more familiar to the earliest generations of Christians than they do to many modern Christians. Many church fathers (influential theologians and teachers in early Christianity) spoke approvingly of the idea that humans can become divine.

-Becoming Like God – How have ideas about divinity shifted over Christian history ? – lds.org
Any teaching that there are multiple gods and that humans can become God is completely opposed to Christianity. No Christian will ever accept this teaching. In fact, these teachings are Antichrist.

---	---	Notes
Author	Ayiti79
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 20:34:49 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	14
Body	link

It comes down to what a cult actually is, and often times cults and sects are small groups of a couple 100,000s. Legitimate cults are dangerous however, and I had ran into some by accident during my early Bible years, other times unavoidable due to the area I was in.
We encourage people to follow Bible Principles and to apply good judgment on all things, to some extent, even greater when culture is involved. We do shun apostasy. For apostasy any who adhere to a teaching that is true and preach it in the community that it is true. So any of the sort we keep away from.
There are dangers in today's world, but it doesn't make sense for us to avoid people totally, the Great Commission of gospel truth is something that Jesus commanded Christians to do. Plus that wouldn't make sense for anyone in everyday life. You are constantly among people, always, be it in or outside of your community, no different from other groups, firms, etc, or even one's household.
We do practice excommunication. It was entrusted to the Apostles and on to the Christian Congregation. When someone is excommunicated or in this case disfellowship, they're unable to partake in meetings regarding reading and or commenting. They can attend meetings any time. Congregation ties are cut, yes, but the individual still is within their household. If the person chooses to return they can be reinstated if they wish. Often times, we do visit the ones who are excommunicated, some of us do so to uplift and or encourage them, especially if they want to return. I cannot speak for all JWs, however in my culture's case, it is a bit different, especially if something big happens in a family, JW or not, there is a bit of things that do take place.
To be not of the world is to not partake in anything that would alienate us or draw us away from God. As for cutting off, it's in the Bible regarding excommunication, especially when it is dealing with Apostates.
As for the last bit can you elaborate on it more? Often times if I am not mistaken, this may be the case when met with a JW who doesn't know an answer to something, or has made an attempt to answer something regarding Scripture or some form of reasoning. Then again, not all of us are the same, I think of it like this, we're all students in the same school or college, but each and everyone of us has a different action, approach, or intent regarding something or someone.

---	---	Notes
Author	arachnophilia
Posted On	Mon Feb 24 14:29:43 UTC 2020
Score	3	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	19
Body	link

but there will be that 'something else' that will make things more controversial if that makes sense?

to be clear, all sects have something else. sola-scriptura is not really a thing in actuality, even among sects that claim to hold to it and eschew traditional frameworks (it is itself a tradition).

I agree that churches can behave like cults at times but the fact that we can look into whether there is a figure or book taking the place of the Bible helps us with our understanding of what a cult is.

JWs place the bible front and center (regardless of the allegations evangelicals will make regarding the watchtower, it's just a magazine and not scripture to them). they do not have a central figure other than jesus, though obviously at one point they had a charismatic leader.
they also exert controlling behavior, shun apostates, and treat the outside world as dangerous and hostile to enforce the in-group/out-group dynamic.
there is frequently a complicated relationship between scripture and application; you might argue that the "blood" thing or the "not celebrating christmas" thing are "something else", but they would argue that those are based directly on the bible.

but there are definitely tell tale signs that I would look out for.

i would argue that the behavior is the tell-tale sign. are they controlling? do they control behavior? do they limit information or misinform? do they tell you there's a correct way to think? do they manipulate your emotions?
the thing that i imagine is giving you some pause here is that this kind of definition pegs a number of mainstream christian churches as cult-like. i have personally been to several evangelical churches that may as well have been cults -- a lack of organizational oversight in unaffiliated churches tends to lead to behavior like this.

---	---	Notes
Author	Revelasti
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 02:27:37 UTC 2020
Score	3	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	1
Body	link

JWs place the bible front and center

JW's are a branch of an apocalyptic cult that failed to predict the second coming... except the JW's believe it actually happened. They just think Jesus is invisible. This goes against the words of Jesus himself and other scripture which proves they do not follow scripture.
Sola-scriptura is not a tradition, it's a necessity. People are often afraid to call a church a cult or express specific doctrine as necessary but we need to be direct about the truth. There is one way and one gospel. The lack of unity on this drives people away.

---	---	Notes
Author	Ayiti79
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 19:39:44 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	0
Body	link

I hope you do realize that before the Apostle's Creed, Christians had existed before Constantine and later Theodosius II became involved.
The very root or primitive belief of Christianity is believing in the one True God - YHWH, and we also believe in the one he has sent, Jesus, of whom he made the Christ (Messiah).
Now as for your points...

There is only one God in Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit

In the very beginning, even to the First Century Christians, they believe in the one True God and that he has sent a savior. I haven't seen anywhere in Scripture that the Holy Spirit is spoken of as "God", and using Greek Grammar Forms doesn't justify it either.

Christ was born of a Virgin

Yes. This is agreeable. Jesus was born of the Jewish Woman named Mary. We can also agree with the facts in terms of what was said to Mary by means of God's message spoken by means of an Angel, Gabriel.

Christ is sinless, 100% God and 100% Man

Jesus was indeed a man and was sinless. But he is God's Son (bene elohim). God himself is distinct from Jesus due to the fact that [A] God is incorruptible meaning cannot die or be susceptible pain, hunger, etc, in addition, God is a Spirit, according to Jesus, and 3 times in the Old Testament, it is said that God cannot die and is not a man at all. We have to be careful in knowing the difference between the anointed (God) and the anointed (Christ).

Christ died for our sins

Agreed. His death opens a door for us to seek redemption, and forgiveness of sin. For God gave his only begotten for us men, women and children who are imperfect due to the actions of our earthly parents, Adam and Eve.

Christ rose from the dead in 3 days in His literal body

This may be the case, but we must not forget the first interaction the 11 discples had with Jesus, for it was though they saw a Spirit. And Jesus appeared to Thomas after the discples had told him about Jesus' return.

Christ ascended to heaven

Agreed. A very obvious event in Scripture.

Christ sits at the right Hand of God

Yes. Jesus is indeed at the right had of God. If you read Hebrews, God also exalted Jesus.

Christ will come to judge the living and the dead.

Yes. Because God has given Jesus that authority and power to do so. God has chosen Jesus to sit at the throne of David, son of Jesse, after all.
With all that said. Jehovah's Witnesses are Christians. If you're forgetting, a Christian is A God-given name for the followers of Jesus Christ, Acts 11:26; 26:28. Christians believe in the Christ and take up his teachings and they religious worship the same God that Jesus worshipped as a child among the Jews.
Yes, we don't believe the Holy Spirit to be a person, but we believe that it is a force and or power that emits from God himself, and there are many reasons as to why we believe such, and if we are to go back further, some instances of early Christians, agrees with this too.
That is also true, God has no beginning, but we believe that Jesus has a beginning, for him being the Firstborn of Creation, as well as the most underrated second term referring to Jesus, The Firstborn out of death (or the dead).
Now we have to really be careful of what a cult or a Sect actually is because shooting from the hip blindly gets people nowhere.
As for your other point...
To deny the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit is against Christianity. Nobody will be accepted as a Christian if they deny these teachings. They are some other religion.
I'll have to agree with what the Bible says, which I am sure the early Christians did as well
John 20:31 But these have been written down so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and because of believing, you may have life by means of his name.
1 John 5:20 But we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us insight so that we may gain the knowledge of the one who is true. And we are in union with the one who is true, by means of his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and life everlasting.
As far as Mormons go, they Semi-Trinitarians. Parts of their ideology doesn't originate with the early Christians however from around the 3rd or 4th century. They started off with the basic basis of the Christian Teachings, but not sure how they got into the other stuff.

---	---	Notes
Author	arachnophilia
Posted On	Mon Feb 24 16:36:17 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	28
Body	link

The inspired written word of God wasn’t written in English in 1611, it was written in the koine Greek over 2,000 years ago...

don't forget hebrew and aramaic!

that’s why it’s important to understand what they meant when they said things like “communion” “love” “high places” “every green tree” “grove”.

"groves" and such typically refer to asherah, who was regarded in ancient judea as yahweh's wife.

Because I do not partake of - Christ - Mass - And all of the festivities, I’m labeled hateful and a cult follower, because I uncover the objective truth of it’s origins.

are you a JW? because there are, uh, other reasons they tend to get labelled a cult.

---	---	Notes
Author	Ayiti79
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 20:11:53 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	0
Body	link

I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses myself. I am unfazed by a claim that cannot be proven, but when it comes to the Bible or Christological history, those same persons cannot speak. 🤔

---	---	Notes
Author	Ayiti79
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 19:45:19 UTC 2020
Score	2	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	4
Body	link

I don't know. For me, I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses. One thing it helped me do is go into in depth research and study of the Bible. More so, I've dived deep into Religious History and history of the Scriptures.
I know what cults are and had witnessed even ran into some, some very dangerous groups, even worse, those who practice ritualistic magic and so forth, this was when I was still a novice in Bible Study, by means of God and his Christ, I was able to move away from such things even helping people get out of it.
Lastly, what some people fail to do when it comes to saying who is Christian and who is not - They don't even apply what the Bible says, specifically 1 John 4:1.
Which begs the question, how can you say someone isn't a Christian if without knowing where they stand? Let alone what form of Christianity they apply, 1st century, 3rd century, 4th century (which is the majority).

---	---	Notes
Author	arachnophilia
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 14:57:38 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	0
Body	link

What about verses in the Bible where Jesus is indirectly called God? Look at Isaiah 9:6 for example,

if you're looking for verses about jesus's relation to god, you should look to the new testament where texts are obviously talking about jesus, and not the old testament where you have to read into things to even make them about jesus.
regardless, symbolic naming in isaiah shouldn't be taken too literally, especially since hebrew lacks a present tense passive verb "is". that is, "god is mighty" and "mighty god" are the same.

and Mark 5:19-20,

this is probably a bad example. the greek reads:

καὶ οὐκ ἀφῆκεν αὐτόν ἀλλὰ λέγει αὐτῷ ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου πρὸς τοὺς σούς καὶ ἀπάγγειλον αὐτοῖς ὅσα ὁ κύριός σοι πεποίηκεν καὶ ἠλέησέν σε

"lord", which is frequently used of jesus, and doesn't particularly imply that he is god. the WT translation reads:

However, he did not let him but said to him: “Go home to your relatives, and report to them all the things Jehovah has done for you and the mercy he has shown you.”

which actually implies that jesus identical to god more strongly than the greek. this is actually one of the major problems with the Wt translation -- it's not that it separates jesus and god, it's that it inserts "jehovah" into new testament texts that do not contain the name of god (which, btw, is not "jehovah").

As opposed to a plethora of verses in the bible that have really big "accuracy issues" that aren't heavily debated or looked at by JWs like the validity of the Psalms, or which apostle wrote Revelation, or if Moses really wrote Job, or conversations around Mary Magdalene, or Jesus half siblings and Salome etc.

i have no idea what you mean by any of this.

It's the same concept that the Pharisees back then and Jews today do with Jesus being Messiah. Whole verses and even chapters get omitted and are not even taught in Yeshiva, even the ones in the Tanakh.

lots of the apparent "changes" to the jewish texts are, in fact, because the christian texts are based on greek translations, which have some variations from the hebrew texts. many of the common things you'd expect in your old testament as referring to jesus are a bit different in jewish translations, because they're translating the the hebrew, not the greek.
for instance, we consider isaiah 7:14. the hebrew simply doesn't read "virgin". and we know this wasn't changed in the hebrew because of jesus -- if you can read hebrew, you can find the reference yourself on the great isaiah scroll from qumran, which is at least 100 years before jesus. it reads almah, young woman, same as the masoretic manuscripts.
other issues are a bit more complicated, like psalm 22:16, where both the masoretic and greek seem to be corrupted in different ways, and scholars have to guess at what the original said.

---	---	Notes
Author	Ayiti79
Posted On	Wed Feb 26 03:32:08 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	2
Body	link

Can you elaborate more please regarding Christian Restorationism (Primitivty) as a whole? Granted that is what predates JWs, Unitarians and modern day Subordinationism. Granted all 3 do stems from all things prior to the 3th-4th century, before the Creeds and the Latinizaton. Granted - not everyone is strong in that aspect regarding history of the Bible, and Christianity.
Also that is your top 5.... I focus on critical information regarding Hermenutical and or the Christological side if things, for it holds a bit more water in this sense.

---	---	Notes
Author	ntcplanters
Posted On	Mon Feb 24 14:40:20 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	4
Body	link

A cult is anything that strays from the tenets of Scripture.
The Roman Catholic church is the largest and most popular of them. The JWs and Mormons are probably the most recognized as being cults.
Any church can become one (and thereby cease to be a church), if it departs from Scripture.

---	---	Notes
Author	arachnophilia
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 21:16:28 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	13
Body	link

We do shun apostasy. ... We do practice excommunication.

yes, and this is a common cult warning sign; controlling relationships.

Congregation ties are cut, yes, but the individual still is within their household.

in many cases, no. i've heard many, many stories about family relationships that have been shattered because someone lost faith. that's always difficult, but add a policy of not associating with apostates on top of it, and it adds to something far more toxic.

To be not of the world is to not partake in anything that would alienate us or draw us away from God.

yes, and this is another common cult warning sign. cults will typically find ways to mark their followers -- some specific cultural signifier that will drive a wedge between the cultists and the outside world. something that makes them different, sometimes ridiculed, and sometimes bullied for their beliefs. the cult then provides a safe-haven, telling the cultists they are justified in turning away from the world... and more into the control of the cult.
note that this is a matter of degrees though, not just a binary whether or not the practice happens. all cultures have their cultural signifiers. the question is if its used to enforce and increasingly insular group further into isolation.

---	---	Notes
Author	arachnophilia
Posted On	Tue Feb 25 20:11:50 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	15
Body	link

The reality is, we aren't a cult,

the thing is, i don't really hold a clear cut definition of the word. in the historical and archaeological sense, all religions are cults (and this word is used without negative connotations). in the modern social sense, "cult" behavior is kind of on a spectrum. very few organizations go to the full extreme, but there is cult-like behavior in a lot of religious sects.
JW included. for instance, what i mentioned above:

they also exert controlling behavior, shun apostates, and treat the outside world as dangerous and hostile to enforce the in-group/out-group dynamic.

these are things that cults do, and JWs tend to be a bit more extreme in things like "disfellowshipping" than other christian sects i've seen. many evangelical sects will advise to not associate closely with "the world" or become "unequally yoked" in a relationship, but they also don't have an official doctrine of cutting off all communication with apostates. this particular feature is a cult warning sign, because it's used to prevent those who have found reasons to doubt from spreading that doubt.

---	---	Notes
Author	Ayiti79
Posted On	Wed Feb 26 04:01:33 UTC 2020
Score	1	as of Wed Feb 26 11:00:42 UTC 2020
Conversation Size	0
Body	link

I'm not jumping subjects. This is true not all Christians are cultist, and not all cults are seen as religious. Big? What is wrong with my wording? Can you elaborate? My elder? Why does an elder, or any for that matter need be concern of my vocabulary?
Textual Criticism/Basis and Hermenutics is indeed important, especially when it comes to manuscript evidence and the like. Moreover, these things help when diving deep into Scripture.
No one is battling haven't even brought up theological points besides Christianity before and after the 4th century (known things by all, not just JWs alone), just points made in a discussion to pave a way to the conclusion.
Ok, we can focus on that, but you would need to have strong credible evidence to Restorationism being a cult, granted going far back to Christian Primitive practices, an err can be pointed out and or misconceptions.
That being said, I know quite a bit about cults and sects myself, some being hard to believe by the common folk (in my case, being in their area was unavoidable).
We can focus on Restorationism, for that is what I coined and alluded to.

The Qumran Community - cambridge.org

qumran community beliefs

qumran community beliefs - win

My reasons to believe (updated.)

Revisiting the Appearance to Cephas and the Twelve

What sources do we have regarding the messianic expectations of second temple Jews?

Revisiting the Appearance to Cephas and the Twelve

Two Articles by Shelly Matthews on Resurrection

I've copied the below from an article on a website. I'd like to hear your opinions on it. And if this is correct: Paul and James in Open Conflict in The Book of Acts

LET ME ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS

It makes no sense for Stephen, a self-proclaimed adherent of the Law, to be murdered by fellow Jews who also exalted the same Law.

James is the authority and leader of the Messianic Community and not Paul. We fail to balance the accounts and only see a "defence" of Paul in Acts.

It is incredible to believe that Jesus gave all authority to his followers and Apostles and is ready now for Paul to correct them all!

Surely we interpret Acts by what we have been taught today by pro-Pauline Churches. We should rather let the events of Acts lead us to what we should believe today!

THERE IS ONLY ONE PROBLEM...

Today we have churches that carry the name "Jesus" who are so influenced by Paul (misunderstanding him of course) that they discard not only the Old Testament, the Bible Jesus used, but the Law and commandments and live in libertinism and unchecked grace. This is not the Gospel of Jesus.

I've compiled a huge list of scholarly publications (mainly Biblical studies) that offer significant criticisms of the Bible and the claims of Judaism and Christianity more broadly

Classics, from the 18th century up to ~mid-20th century

Late 20th and 21 century

Other categories and supplementary material

Misc.

Essenes and Early Christians

Daily Gnostic movement: The Ebionites

/r/Bible - "CULT"

About Post:

Post Body:

Related Comments (20):

qumran community beliefs video

qumran community beliefs top

Qumran National Park - Home of the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Tour guide: Zahi Shaked