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A literary history of our most influential book of all time, by an Oxford scholar and Anglican priest In our culture, the Bible is monolithic: It is a collection of books that has been unchanged and unchallenged since the earliest days of the Christian church. The idea of the Bible as "Holy Scripture," a non-negotiable authority straight from God, has prevailed in Western society for some time. And while it provides a firm foundation for centuries of Christian teaching, it denies the depth, variety, and richness of this fascinating text. In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be read in its historical context--from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries. It is a book full of narratives, laws, proverbs, prophecies, poems, and letters, each with their own character and origin stories. Barton explains how and by whom these disparate pieces were written, how they were canonized (and which ones weren't), and how they were assembled, disseminated, and interpreted around the world--and, importantly, to what effect. Ultimately, A History of the Bible argues that a thorough understanding of the history and context of its writing encourages religious communities to move away from the Bible's literal wording--which is impossible to determine--and focus instead on the broader meanings of scripture.
In Did Jesus Exist? historian and Bible expert Bart Ehrman confronts the question, "Did Jesus exist at all?" Ehrman vigorously defends the historical Jesus, identifies the most historically reliable sources for best understanding Jesus’ mission and message, and offers a compelling portrait of the person at the heart of the Christian tradition. Known as a master explainer with deep knowledge of the field, Bart Ehrman methodically demolishes both the scholarly and popular “mythicist” arguments against the existence of Jesus. Marshaling evidence from within the Bible and the wider historical record of the ancient world, Ehrman tackles the key issues that surround the mythologies associated with Jesus and the early Christian movement. In Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, Ehrman establishes the criterion for any genuine historical investigation and provides a robust defense of the methods required to discover the Jesus of history.
An engaging series of essays, originally given at the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism. The aim of the colloquium was to make available the results of recent archaeological work to a wider interested public, and specifically to bring science to bear on the early history of the Jewish people.
Modern biblical scholarship's commitment to the historical-critical method in its efforts to write a history of Israel has created the central and unavoidable problem of writing an objective and critical history of Palestine through the biblical literature with the methods of Biblical Archaeology. 'Biblical Narrative and Palestine's History' brings together key essays on historical method and the archaeology and history of Palestine. The essays employ comparative and formalistic techniques to illuminate the allegorical and mythical in Old Testament narrative traditions from Genesis to Nehemiah. In so doing, the volume presents a detailed review of central and radical changes in both our understanding of biblical traditions and the archaeology and history of Palestine. The study offers an analysis of Biblical narrative as rooted in ancient Near Eastern literature since the Bronze Age.
This text investigates the Biblical justification for Zionism & charts the historical rise of Zionism since its 19th century roots. Providing a contribution to the argument for a single democratic & secular Israeli state, it shows how the biblical language of 'chosen people' & 'promised land' is used to justify ethnic division & violence.
Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James
Did Jesus speak Greek? An affirmative answer to the question will no doubt challenge traditional presuppositions. The question relates directly to the historical preservation of Jesus's words and theology. Traditionally, the authenticity of Jesus's teaching has been linked to the recovery of the original Aramaic that presumably underlies the Gospels. The Aramaic Hypothesis infers that the Gospels represent theological expansions, religious propaganda, or blatant distortions of Jesus's teachings. Consequently, uncovering the original Aramaic of Jesus's teachings will separate the historical Jesus from the mythical personality. G. Scott Gleaves, in Did Jesus Speak Greek?, contends that the Aramaic Hypothesis is inadequate as an exclusive criterion of historical Jesus studies and does not aptly take into consideration the multilingual culture of first-century Palestine. Evidence from archaeological, literary, and biblical data demonstrates Greek linguistic dominance in Roman Palestine during the first century CE. Such preponderance of evidence leads not only to the conclusion that Jesus and his disciples spoke Greek but also to the recognition that the Greek New Testament generally and the Gospel of Matthew in particular were original compositions and not translations of underlying Aramaic sources.
The exciting field of biblical archaeology has revolutionized our understanding of the Bible -- and no one has done more to popularise this vast store of knowledge than Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, who revealed what we now know about when and why the Bible was first written in The Bible Unearthed. Now, with David and Solomon, they do nothing less than help us to understand the sacred kings and founding fathers of western civilization. David and his son Solomon are famous in the Bible for their warrior prowess, legendary loves, wisdom, poetry, conquests, and ambitious building programmes. Yet thanks to archaeology's astonishing finds, we now know that most of these stories are myths. Finkelstein and Silberman show us that the historical David was a bandit leader in a tiny back-water called Jerusalem, and how -- through wars, conquests and epic tragedies like the exile of the Jews in the centuries before Christ and the later Roman conquest -- David and his successor were reshaped into mighty kings and even messiahs, symbols of hope to Jews and Christians alike in times of strife and despair and models for the great kings of Europe. A landmark work of research and lucid scholarship by two brilliant luminaries, David and Solomon recasts the very genesis of western history in a whole new light.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, this collection of erudite essays concentrates on the archaeology of ancient Israel, Canaan, and neighboring nations.
Throughout the history of European imperialism the grand narratives of the Bible have been used to justify settler-colonialism. "The Zionist Bible" explores the ways in which modern political Zionism and Israeli militarism have used the Bible - notably the Book of Joshua and its description of the entry of the Israelites into the Promised Land - as an agent of oppression and to support settler-colonialism in Palestine. The rise of messianic Zionism in the late 1960s saw the beginnings of a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the militant land traditions of the Bible and justifying the destruction of the previous inhabitants. "The Zionist Bible" examines how the birth and growth of the State of Israel has been shaped by this Zionist reading of the Bible, how it has refashioned Israeli-Jewish collective memory, erased and renamed Palestinian topography, and how critical responses to this reading have challenged both Jewish and Palestinian nationalism.