Guide to the Bible
Haven't read the Bible? Don't want to read it? Refuse to read it? Well, fear no more! RationalWiki's Guide to the Bible will provide you with summaries and analysis of each book of the Bible! This guide uses the Old Protestant version of the Old and New Testament.
This guide is meant to be accurate and cited, but will still contain extreme anti-fundamentalist commentary, especially in regards to apparent contradictions.
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[edit] Significance of Dead Sea Scrolls
Many rationalists such as ourselves pointed out that until the DSS, the earliest manuscripts of Isaiah were 1,000 years old and had probably been changed since the time of Jesus to include prophecies of him retrospectively. We were largely wrong about this.
The DSS showed that Isaiah, for example, had not been changed since 200 BCE at least. Christians will continually point to the DSS as proof, using carbon dating, to show that vast swathes of the Bible have not been changed when compared to manuscripts found hidden in a cave.
Christians often claim that the Dead Sea Scrolls prove the Jesus tales; however, "Dead Sea Scroll writers—contemporaneous to Christ and a mere twelve miles from Bethlehem—recorded absolutely nothing of Jesus. Those scrolls were retrieved unadulterated, and first century Qumran writings quite readily disprove the historical Jesus..."[1] and "Contrary to claims made by a few scholars, no copies of the New Testament (or precursors to it) are represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls."[2]
[edit] Some sources
You will, of course, need a Bible, for starters.
There are lots of versions nowadays. The King James Version (1611) is the most widely known. While modern scholarship has shown that some of its translations are inaccurate, it remains popular amongst hardline traditionalists as well as others who recognize its flaws but admire its elegant language. The two most common translations in present-day mainline Christianity are the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and the New International Version (NIV). The NRSV strives to be as close as possible to a literal translation while being written in sensible English; a well-known description of the NRSV approach is "as literal as possible, as free as necessary". The NIV leans more toward a "dynamic equivalence" in which the translated text emphasizes the meaning and context of the original even if this means straying from word-for-word literalism.
We've provided a few links to online versions below:
- Bible Gateway, including translations in various languages (Even in Koine Greek and Hebrew, for the needs of the non-wimps)
- Oremus Bible Browser, including the King James and NRSV translations. The latter even includes all of the apocrypha used by the Eastern Orthodox churches.
- The Skeptic's Annotated Bible includes the text of the King James Version, along with much commentary specifically geared towards refuting Biblical inerrancy.
- The New International Version -- The International Bible Society presents the most popular translation of Anglophone Protestant Christianity.
- The NET Bible -- a translation from the original sources, under a liberal copyright.
- The New American Bible is a favorite of the US Catholic Church, and includes the Apocrypha that are part of the Catholic canon.
- King James Version Bible. Searchable, with pretty artwork next to it.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ http://nomeekmessiah.com/NMM-MysterySilent.htm Paulkovich, Michael, No Meek Messiah, 208.
- ↑ Magness, Jodi, The Archaelogoy of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 34.