Stephen L. Harris (1) (1937–)

To get details about how the Bible came to be and the various academic debates about its origins and authors, you are going to need a textbook. The textbook I have read and am recommending is Harris's Understanding the Bible. However, I do not think that it is particularly special. I chose it because it covers both testaments in one volume, was well rated on Amazon, and was available at my local library. Any textbook that meets those criteria will probably meet the needs of a basic student show more of the Bible as an ancient text.

The text includes some chapters of overview and some chapters providing historical background. However, the bulk of the text is devoted to a discussion of each book of the Bible plus the Old Testament apocrypha. Although you will certainly get more out of this book by reading the whole thing, these core chapters are structured so that each can be read on its own. For each book, there is a discussion of the historical circumstances surrounding the composition, the date (or possible dates) of composition, a discussion of authorship, a discussion of literary genre (where appropriate), and a discussion of the content of the book. Harris provides some justification for why scholarly opinion has settled as it has, and he provides an extensive bibliography for each chapter that can be used for those who want to examine the different views in more depth.

One of the most useful things I got out of both of my studies was the overview of Jewish thought, especially how it evolved after the Hebrew canon was closed. I think that people who have not been educated otherwise often assume that Jewish thought stopped after what was recorded in the Bible. I know that people who use the New Testament as their main reference on Jewish thought at the time of Jesus have an unfairly negative view of the Jews of the time. Learning a little about the actual history of Jewish thought shows how many of the tenants of Christianity which people now claim were novel innovations actually followed quite directly from the thoughts of the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus and his followers. show less

I'd agree with some learned people that Paul's writings were elaborated in the sense that some of the so-called letters of Paul are fakes, and of course, there were plenty of tall tales told about him in, e.g. "The Acts of Paul and Silas". But it becomes very hard to explain why Christians wrote fake letters of Paul, and why they told tall tales about him if he hadn't existed and done some pretty impressive things to begin with (impressive to the early Christians, that is). People who defend show more this are not familiar with the history of Christianity outside the Roman Empire. When we, Portuguese, came as the first Europeans to Malabar Coast (present day Kerala State) in India, they found an ancient community of Christians who had had nothing to do with Rome or Roman Catholicism. So some people’s theory that the quick wider geographical spread of Christianity was from Rome alone, defies historical testimony which shows otherwise. The Portuguese were the first European explorers of the East. The Portuguese came to Malabar Coast (present day Kerala) in 1500. The ancient Christian community there were under the Patriarch of Babylon and claimed to be evangelized by Apostle Thomas. Thus they had been Christians from the Apostolic era, at the same time Apostle Paul was preaching in Rome and elsewhere.

Put it another way, if we say that Jesus was invented by Paul, but then Paul was invented by Ignatius of Antioch, we are likely to end up saying that Ignatius of Antioch was invented by Athanasius. ROTFL!

Why is Paul accorded such respect by the Christian Church? This can be explained, I think, by the version of Christianity that ultimately emerged triumphant from the petri-dish of different opinions that constituted the Church in the pre-Constantinian era. As I argue elsewhere, the key figure is probably Marcion, a theologian who wanted to bin the entire Old Testament as the work of an inferior deity, and who enshrined Paul as the authentic interpreter of Christian truth. This so alarmed other Christian leaders that - to simplify a complicated story - it prompted them to canonise what is now the Christian Bible - keeping the Old Testament, but also doing as Marcion had done, and enshrining Paul's letters as the key guide to Christian doctrine.

What about the historicity of Paul? No serious scholars of whom I aware doubt this. At least seven of the biblical epistles are universally accepted as having been written by him - and it is also pretty universally accepted that the oldest of them can be dated to within twenty years of the crucifixion. This, by the standards of ancient historiography, is pretty remarkable - the foundational texts of most religions are much, much later than the events they purport to describe. The Pentateuch, for instance, was written hundreds of years after the supposed events of the Exodus; the earliest surviving life of Muhammad almost two centuries after his death; even the Gospels whole decades after the life of Jesus. But with Paul's letters, you are within touching distance of Jesus. Have a look at 1 Corinthians 15.1-9 - this seems to me irrefutable evidence that already, by the time Paul wrote his letter, there was a settled Christian tradition about the resurrection. Which is not, of course, to say that the resurrection actually took place. Whether it did or not is a matter of faith, not of history. But what seems to me very important to bear in mind is that St Paul, even though he is in the Bible, is no less a product of the world of the 1st century AD Roman empire than, say, Caligula or Nero - and the context of history, I think, does indeed provide a way of understanding what it was about him that was so startling and so revolutionary.

You have this guy, Paul, who goes around persuading people to join this new movement, Christianity. After he has set up a Christian church in a town, he keeps in touch by sending letters. So, these churches only exist because some people in the town liked what he had to say, the message that inspired them to become Christians was the message that Paul preached. So of course the preserve his letters, which thus became the first Christian scriptures - authoritative written statements about the Christian message. From their perspective, if Paul had Christianity wrong, what would be the point in being a Christian?

Of course, we know that there were people in the Church who did think that Paul had got things wrong, and they looked to the church in Jerusalem for leadership. However, Jerusalem was destroyed and, over time, the version of Christianity associated with churches that accepted the authority of Paul's letters became the dominant one. Indeed, there was so much reverence for Paul's letters that, as Harris notes, some people created fake letters of Paul. Since many people were persuaded by these fakes, they were included in the New Testament.

One reason it is easy to idealize Jesus is that we have no documents written by him. So whenever anyone encounters something said by Jesus that they don't like, they can always say "Well, how do we know he said that? It sounds like the sort of thing someone would have made up." This is why studying the historical Jesus is hard work, and often reveals more about the scholar, book reviewer, or book blogger than it does about Jesus. On the other hand, knowledge of the context in which Jesus lived means that the scholars do have more grounds to go on than "I like that, so Jesus said it." They can ask whether it is plausible that a 1st Century Jew would have said such words and, if so, what he would have meant.

With Paul though, it is different. There are conservatives who insist that all the letters in the New Testament ascribed to Paul were written by him. But most scholars can agree which letters were definitely written by Paul, which were definitely not by him, and that leaves a few in dispute. Any good introduction to the New Testament - e.g. Stephen L. Harris "The New Testament: A Student's Introduction" will give you a guide as to which is which. So, the chances are that one reason why our picture of Paul is more attractive than our picture of Jesus is simply that it is we’ve got a thing for snake-oil priests (warts and all). We have Jesus as remembered by his followers, but Paul in his own words, FAKES AND ALL. Paul was a salesman, selling his religion that had almost nothing to do with the life of Jesus and his teachings. It was cobbled together from a range of Gnostic, Greek and pagan faiths, and his goal was to make it as Un-Jewish as possible. Hence his so-called inclusiveness. Did I need to say more? ROTFL! show less

Great background information on the geology and natural history of the Cascades. On a recent trip to Oregon, this provided loads of interestingly-written information both for casual travelers (my friends) and for more ardent geology enthusiasts (like me). I'll be hanging onto this for future forays to non-Oregonian Cascade volcanoes.

Actually, a very useful book. It is not exhaustive, however, it was not so intended to be. It does give good introductions to the books of the bible and also gives some good insight into scripture.