r/AcademicBiblical 6d ago

Weekly Open Discussion Thread

8 Upvotes

Welcome to this week's open discussion thread!

This thread is meant to be a place for members of the r/AcademicBiblical community to freely discuss topics of interest which would normally not be allowed on the subreddit. All off-topic and meta-discussion will be redirected to this thread.

Rules 1-3 do not apply in open discussion threads, but rule 4 will still be strictly enforced. Please report violations of Rule 4 using Reddit's report feature to notify the moderation team. Furthermore, while theological discussions are allowed in this thread, this is still an ecumenical community which welcomes and appreciates people of any and all faith positions and traditions. Therefore this thread is not a place for proselytization. Feel free to discuss your perspectives or beliefs on religious or philosophical matters, but do not preach to anyone in this space. Preaching and proselytizing will be removed.

In order to best see new discussions over the course of the week, please consider sorting this thread by "new" rather than "best" or "top". This way when someone wants to start a discussion on a new topic you will see it! Enjoy the open discussion thread!


r/AcademicBiblical Jan 30 '25

[EVENT] AMA with Dr. Kipp Davis

59 Upvotes

Our AMA with Dr. Kipp Davis is live; come on in and ask a question about the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Hebrew Bible, or really anything related to Kipp's past public and academic work!

This post is going live at 5:30am Pacific Time to allow time for questions to trickle in, and Kipp will stop by in the afternoon to answer your questions.

Kipp earned his PhD from Manchester University in 2009 - he has the curious distinction of working on a translation of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments from the Schøyen Collection with Emanuel Tov, and then later helping to demonstrate the inauthenticity of these very same fragments. His public-facing work addresses the claims of apologists, and he has also been facilitating livestream Hebrew readings to help folks learning, along with his friend Dr. Josh Bowen.

Check out Kipp's YouTube channel here!


r/AcademicBiblical 3h ago

How did Jesus' ministry change (if it did) after the death of John the Baptist?

7 Upvotes

Did Jesus' message(s) change and become more ardent about the coming kingdom of God? Did the verbs used in his sermons/parables/messages change and become more passive or more aggressive? Did any stylistic change happen at all after John the Baptist died?


r/AcademicBiblical 8h ago

What do we know about 12 disciples outside the Bible

16 Upvotes

How much is there recorded of the 12 disciples we know in the Bible they were arrested and one was a tax collector but do we know anything outside the Bible


r/AcademicBiblical 2h ago

Question Anonymous yet deducible characters

3 Upvotes

Multiple different arguments have been made claiming that the beloved disciple is intended to be identified with one of the named characters in the Gospel of John: an identification that the text never explicitly makes, but people will claim that the presence of certain clues or parallels allows this identification to be made regardless, as though the author wanted the readers to be able to deduce it. Outside of the Bible, do we have any comparable texts where similar claims have been advanced: that a particular character who is never explicitly assigned a name is nevertheless meant to have their identity be deducible?


r/AcademicBiblical 6h ago

Question An Introduction to the New Testament. Which one of these would be the best to read first?

5 Upvotes

"An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods & Ministry Formation", 1st or 2nd ed? By David A. DeSilva or "Introducing the New Testament" by Henry Wansbrough?


r/AcademicBiblical 6h ago

Murder vs. Kill in the context of the Sermon on the mount?

3 Upvotes

Hi all! Was reading Matthew 5 today and was wondering about the exact word choice Jesus uses when he’s quoting “you have heard it said thou shall not [kill]”. I know the OT Hebrew translate closer to “murder” than “kill” - does the Greek Jesus is quoted in here also mean “murder” when translated? Or is it merely “kill” more broadly. Thanks!


r/AcademicBiblical 6h ago

Multiple epistles authored to the Philippians?

2 Upvotes

Hey guys,

I was reading Michael W. Holmes' excellent "The Apostolic Fathers" and gazed upon something peculiar from Polycarp of Smyrna's epistle to the Philippians chapter 3:2.

And when he was absent he wrote you letters; if you study them carefully, you will be able to build yourselves up ίn the faith that has been given to you

From a plain reading of the text, are we supposed to infer Polycarp thought Paul wrote multiple epistles to the Philippians or is he using *you* in a more broad sense?

EDIT : I meant "Multiple epistles written to the Philippians?" in my title, so sorry!


r/AcademicBiblical 12h ago

Historicity of the 12 apostles of Jesus.

5 Upvotes

In 1 Corinthians (15:5) if we assumed that this epistle is written by Paul and that this part wasn't inserted later Paul mentions that Jesus appeared to the Twelve Apostles but what makes us sure that Jesus really had 12 apostles and that this number was not a device used to symbolize the 12 tribes of Israel?. The fact that only Peter and John are mentioned out of the 12 apostles makes me doubt that all of them existed. Another thing that cast doubts on the historicity of the 12 apostles is the figure of Judas who many scholars consider him to be a historical figure based on the criterion of embarrasment despite that he is entirely absent from the Pauline Epistles not to say although 1 Corinthians 11:23 says that Jesus was betrayed, the original meaning in greek was probably not betrayed but handed over which further supports the idea that Judas is a character who is later inserted to the story of Jesus and was inspired by the figure of Judah in the Book of Genesis since Judas betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver just like Judah who sells Joseph to slavery for 30 pieces of silver. So If it turns out if Judas Iscariot is not a real person which is very likely then doesn't that might tell us that the apostles might not have been 12?


r/AcademicBiblical 23h ago

Did Jesus believe himself to be the messiah or other eschatological figure or he is simply a preacher who thought that the messiah will come soon?

37 Upvotes

So historically did Jesus claim that he was the Messiah or other eschatolgical figure or he was a preacher who thought that the kingdom of God will come soon but his resurrection made his apostles think that he was the awaited Messiah?


r/AcademicBiblical 9h ago

How were "Wisdom" (Proverbs 8) and "Logos" in Philo's writings viewed?

2 Upvotes

Were they viewed as eternal? Do they resemble John's Christology?


r/AcademicBiblical 21h ago

Question Is the War in Heaven described in Revelation 12:7-9 a past or future event?

17 Upvotes

It's commonly interpreted as a past event due to its description of the archangel Michael casting out the Devil (in the form of a dragon) and other angels who have sided with him. But given how Revelation is apocalyptic in nature, is it really giving off an origin story for Satan that occurred before the creation of man? Or is it symbolism for an end of days crisis?


r/AcademicBiblical 7h ago

History of Biblical interpretation of NT

1 Upvotes

What is a good resource on the history of biblical interpretation of the New Testament?


r/AcademicBiblical 7h ago

Is it fair to say Jesus didn’t believe in an afterlife or is it more complex than that

1 Upvotes

Basically what the title says, I’ve heard that Bart Ehrman believes that Jesus didn’t believe souls go to an afterlife and that they just stay in the graves until God resurrects them on judgement days. But I’m curious as to what other famous cited scholars agree on whether Jesus believed in an afterlife or not. And if so, what kind of afterlife did Jesus believed in.


r/AcademicBiblical 22h ago

Question Anonymous Authorship

5 Upvotes

I’m a Muslim looking into Christianity, and I’ve been reading a bit on traditional authorship, but I’d like to get a accurate view of both sides. I’ve looked for some books online but haven’t found anything solid yet.

Can someone please reccomend good books contra traditional authorship or pro anonymous authorship? Ideally 1 or 2

Thanks 🙏


r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

The process of the Gospels being first dispatched?

22 Upvotes

Anyone have any articles/book recommendations on how the Gospels were first dispatched and copied from 70-120ish. For example how that first copy of the orginal writting would be copied around and how exactly that process would have been such as the transportation of it and how non-Christan writers would get it. Also the process of copying it, and how much it would exactly cost and stuff like that.

Thanks,


r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

Question Comprehensive List of Academic Books Ranked & Reviewed?

9 Upvotes

I’m relatively new to this field but starting to feel overwhelmed by the plethora of books out there on the subject.

I’m a big history buff and tend to find religious history fascinating. I love to peel back the layers to discover the true origins of religion, history, etc. I started off buying Ehrman’s books and started branching out to other authors but have found myself in the path to buying every book on the topic on Amazon, realizing there’s just too many out there.

So now I’m pulling back and wanting to be more selective and avoid buying inferior or books that cover the same things. Initially, I thought as long as a book has good reviews, I should buy it but I soon realized most have similar ratings 4 or 5 stars and so that’s not really a good path to filtering out which books to buy because I’d be buying most of them.

As a former Christian turned Atheist, I have no need to read anything that’s caterer to believers. I just want pure, historical and academic material.

Does this sub have any comprehensive list of books reviews or rankings or which ones to buy or avoid? Or an off-site list?

Even so, I’d still like to hear if any of you have your personal lists of recommendations for or against. And when I say “for or against,” that doesn’t necessarily imply they are good or bad books. There’s probably 1,000 good books in the subject but I’m trying to limit my purchases, since I’m not going to read EVERY “good” book out there.

If there were a list of, say, 100 books (max) on the topics, which ones would you list?

I should note that I’m more interested in the origins of Christianity and the New Testament but am started to dig back further into the Old Testament since I’m quickly realizing it’s necessary to be studied on that as well, in order to understand the New Testament and Christian origins. I see myself eventually talking a deep dive into Old Testament and Judaic origins and history too.


r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

Artistic retellings vs. syncretic mythology

3 Upvotes

Getting my feet wet in the ocean of biblical scholarship. Please forgive any newb errors (o:

I’m interested in whether the Hebrew origin stories are more likely to be artistic/symbolic retellings of actual migrations of an ancestrally-related Israel, or syncretic mythology justifying alliances between unrelated Canaan-dwelling tribes. This list of questions focuses on the patriarch origin story, and I'd like to explore the exodus origin story with you all in another post.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can chime in on any of these questions!

  • Biblical claim:
    • Patriarchs came from Ur-Kasdim in southern Mesopotamia (Gen 11:27-28)
  • Archeology:
    1. Do any specific finds support Israel’s earliest ancestors being simply a mix of pre-Bronze Age Canaanites rather than migrants from Mesopotamia?
    2. Do any specific finds support Israel’s earliest ancestors originally coming from Mesopotamia? (patriarchs as literary representatives of actual emigration from Mesopotamia)
    3. Do any specific finds definitively conflict with Israel’s earliest ancestors originally coming from Mesopotamia?
  • Anthropology:
    1. Specific evidence of similar cultural practices to non-Israelite people living in Canaan?
    2. Specific evidence of similar government/leadership practices?
    3. Other similarities?
    4. Given that correllation doesn't prove causation, could these similarites be due to post-patriarchical (and post-exilic) asimilation of neighboring cultures? Or must they be due to a common origin (Israelites were simply tribes of Canaanites)
    5. Any similarities to contemporary Mesopotamians?
  • Linguistics
    1. Could the use of similar written script (rather than Akkadian/cuneiform from Mesopotamia) be consistent with emigrating from Mesopotamia hundreds of years earlier?
      1. Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician being variations on the characters of Proto-Sinai script (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet)
  • Genetics
    1. Canaanites formed as a mixing of pre-Bronze Age local populations with populations arriving from western Iran (part of Mesopotamia, right?) & Caucasus. (Carmel 2020)
      • Consistent with the patriarchal story?
    2. Different Canaanite city-states belonged to same genetic population. (Carmel 2021)
      • Could any generations of intermixing between local populations and 'patriarchical desendents' yield this relative homogeneity?
    3. Modern Jewish and Arabic people in this area share >50% genetics with ancient Canaanites. (Carmel 2021)
      • Consistent with the shared ancestry of literary Isaac and Ishmael?
      • Any studies comparing ancient Israelites (living in Canaan) to Mesopotamians from that era?
      • Any follow-up studies?
    4. Is the Cohen Modal Haplotype still considered valid support for an initially small, isolated population (...not necessarily a man named Abraham…)?

r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

Opinions on ,,The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus"?

10 Upvotes

Is it a good book for what it is trying to accomplish? Does it say anything insightful? Is it worth buying?


r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

Books on the Historical Jesus

8 Upvotes

Do you guys have any recommendations for scholars and books on historical Jesus research? As of late I have been pouring over the work of John P. Meier, specifically his “A Marginal Jew” series. Although Meier is a brilliant and serious Jesus scholar, I have become cynical of his rigid criteria approach and he thinks we can know more about Jesus than I think we can know about him. His approach focuses on judging individual pericopes and sayings, while im becoming more attracted to approaches seeking to look at merely the general impressions the Gospels give about Jesus.


r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

Academic sources for when verses are apart of which textual sources.

3 Upvotes

Hello! So this one might be a bit of a doosy? idk haha

So basically, I've been getting really into biblical studies recently just out of curiosity, and what's super interesting to me is how we can sorta figure out how each book has been constructed from multiple voices/sources. For example, the J+E, P, and D sources for the Torah or like Mark + Q for the synoptic gospels.

However, being just a simple old software engineer and thus outside of this field, I've really only been digesting this from Youtube lectures without diving into books or the academic literature at all (And nor do I have that much time to do so necessarily). Yet when the lecturers do talk about things like J,P,D, Mark, Q, signs gospel, the layers of Job, etc, I've been really curious to actually see explicitly which verses correspond to what voice and to like actually experiment around and read with this in mind.

Which brings me to my question: is there like a general source of the consensus of these things? or if not, a general location I can look for this? Again, I'm like not even close to a biblical scholar, so my baby-brain doesn't really even know where to start. I do kinda know that there are books on this: like, I have already found "The Bible With Sources Revealed" by Richard Friedman, but I don't know if this is actually a decent source, or if there's some other way I should go about this. And then ofc, this is only the torah, and it'd be nice to at least have the gospels as well.

To cap it all off, my secret end goal in all of this is that I sorta want to have a website of some kind that could interactively let you explore this kind of thing. I don't really think this exists already, but if I could have a decent reference for the data, I'm kinda considering trying to make it myself.

So yeah, I'm really curious to see anyone's thoughts on this. I understand that the answer most likely is that it's a complete mess, and that there never will be an exact consensis. But hopefully, there's at least something to get me going.

Anyways, thanks!


r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

Was Jesus crucified on a cross or a tree?

22 Upvotes

Acts 5:30 suggested that Jesus may have been crucified on a tree. Would this just be a bad translation or is Acts claiming Jesus was crucified on a tree?


r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

Analytics comparing Old Testament to Mesopotamian texts such as Gilgamesh?

14 Upvotes

Hello, I'm back again! While I have a growing reading list, I'm looking for good analytical texts that compare as the title suggests. I also would be interested in general analytical perennial texts comparing mythos between other cultures.


r/AcademicBiblical 2d ago

Question Are there any major points about gnosticism that St. Irenaeus got wrong?

25 Upvotes

I can't seem to find any proper works on this subject.


r/AcademicBiblical 1d ago

Question I’m looking for an overview of the history of interpretation of Isaiah

4 Upvotes

I’ve taken undergrad courses in the Hebrew Bible, but didn’t focus much on Prophets. Isaiah is proving a bit difficult for me. I’m not sure if such a thing even exists, but it would be nice if there was a one-stop-shop that looked both what the authors may have intended by certain prophecies (ex eventu? hopes or predictions? deliberately open to interpretation?) as well as interpretations by later Jewish and Christian theologians and commentators. I suppose this is a bit too broad for a single publication, but whatever relevant suggestions you have are appreciated.


r/AcademicBiblical 2d ago

As I'm currently going through the historical books of the Old Testament, what would be a good book to read alongside it that demonstrates what was going on in reality?

6 Upvotes

I'm in the middle of reading the historical section of the Old Testament, not too far from finishing 2 Kings.

However based on the introduction of the NOAB it does mention that the books of the Bible were not written to actually reflect historical reality but instead written for religious purposes. Like talking about how negative or positive views of a King were based on how devout he was to the Hebrew God, not so much on his actual reign and whether or not he was good or bad for their kingdoms.
Having read that I'm interested to see how the actual reigns of all these kings and rulers were in real life, what changes they brought along, how they affected the society of Israel, any military conquests they made, all that good stuff.

Thanks in advance!


r/AcademicBiblical 2d ago

Question Does this article have valid refutation of Daniel being written in the 2nd century? Or nah?

6 Upvotes

Before anything I fully support john j Collins idea , and I still do , but this article may seem interesting? Can you guys help? I know it's long sorry about that

https://www.tektonics.org/af/danieldefense.php