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

O community of Muslims, how is it that you seek wisdom from the people of the book? Your book, brought down upon his prophet—blessings and peace of God upon him—is the latest report about God. You read a book that has not been distorted, but the people of the book, as God related to you, exchanged that which God wrote, changing the book with their hands

As many Muslims claim, and as the Hadith says, the Bible meant something else differently but Jews and Christians changed it over time. But archaeologists have found the earliest copy of the Bible in what is known as the Dead Sea scrolls. What did they find?

While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100

That
1) The original Hebrew Old Testament/Tanakh was virtually identical to the modern one 2) The Old Testament/Tanakh wasn’t even compiled before Jesus 3) Nothing in the Dead Sea scrolls directly supports Islam, as Muhammed claimed the original bible would
So... why is it, that Islam’s reason for why the Bible and Quran contradict, that the original bible was different, seemingly contradicts historical evidence? Am I missing something or do the Dead Sea scrolls prove Muhammed wrong?

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Matthew 5 part I - verses 1-26

“FIRST DISCOURSE, ADDRESSED TO THE DISCIPLES. THE NEW LAW, DESIGNED FOR THE COMMUNITY WHOSE MEMBERS WILL INHERIT THE KINGDOM (5:1-7:29)

“Matthew now introduces the most striking and characteristic feature of his entire Gospel. … his greatest interest is in the moral life of the Christian community. This discourse, which is put at the forefront of his Gospel, deals with the righteousness which exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees (5:20), and is appropriate for those who pray for the kingdom of heaven and will inherit it. This righteousness is prophetic rather than rabbinical… and it is worth noting that the last of the five discourses … concludes on the same exalted note of transcendent righteousness (25:31-46). Some of Matthew’s special material, which is often assigned to an M [Hypothetical source for Matthew] source, has an inverted rabbinical interest; i.e. [in other words], it is directed against the law as understood by the Pharisees. But the passages which are drawn from the sermon as it is found also in Luke (6:20-49), and also from other parts of Q [hypothetical source for the synoptics], deal with right action in the widest sense of the word. The Sermon on the Mount is a whole new Torah or teaching tradition and not merely a new halakha [ancient Jewish commentary] or lawbook.
“Jesus would not have given all this teaching on a single occasion. The sermon is made up of aphorism, maxims, and illustrations which were remembered and treasured out of many discourses.
…
“It is a curious fact that both Matthew (4:24-25) and Luke (6:17-19) begin their sermons after a summary of healings, and in each case the summary is based on Mark 3:7-12. Possibly Q introduced the sermon in a similar fashion. In any event, the sermon, like the preaching of John the Baptist in 3:1-12, is addressed to a group of people who have come away from their homes to hear the word.” (Johnson, 1951, pp. VII 278-279)

Chapter Five – The Sermon upon the Mountain
-1. As he saw the throng [of] the people he ascended in [the] ascent of the mountain and sat. And his students approached unto him.

“He went up on the mountain as he did when he was transfigured (17:1) and when he gave his parting commandment (28:16), and as Moses did to receive the law (Exod. [Exodus] 19).” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 279)
“The word μαθητης [mathytys] signifies literally a scholar.
“… the disciples form the corona fratrum [“ring of brethren”] (cf. [compare with] Neh [Nehemiah] 8:4), and the crowds the second concentric ring. the mountain: It is not named, but functionally it is a mount of revelation (as frequently in the Bible and in Matt [Matthew]), a symbolic Sinai … sitting: This is a posture of Oriental teachers.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 639)

-2. He opened his mouth to talk to them in his saying:

“A solemn introduction. The sermon is a Matthean construction, pieced together from material scattered in Q [Quelle - a hypothetical source] (cf. Luke 6:20-49), Mark, and other material… the sayings have undergone revision. …
“The Sermon on the Mount is the first of five major discourses in the Gospel … It is Matthew’s masterpiece and was early the most frequently cited section. Its literary genre remains disputed…The dominant themes of the sermon are the kingdom of God and justice. …
…
“… The sermon has been criticized as setting too high a standard, which remains unfulfillable (‘you cannot govern with the sermon’ [Bismarck]); but, understood against its Jewish background, it becomes a possible but still high standard of moral wisdom about life.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 640)

Fortunes ([compare with] Luke 6:20-23)

“BEATITUDES (5:3-12). Cf. Luke 6:20b-23. A comparison of the two versions shows that Luke has four … beatitudes and Matt eight… Probably only Luke’s first three are authentic; his fourth comes from the early church; Matthew’s additional beatitudes are his own expansion from the Psalms. The common source is Q, and beyond that Jesus’s use of Isa [Isaiah] 61:1-4. In form, a beatitude is an exclamation of congratulations that recognizes an existing state of happiness, beginning with the Hebr [Hebrew] noun ’ašrê or the Gk [Greek] adj. [adjective] makarios. Here the gospel begins with a cry of joy, based on the nearness of the kingdom of God. The original beatitudes about the ‘poor,’ the ‘mourners,’ and the ‘hungry’ express Jesus’ mission to the needy in Israel and the dawn of a new era of salvation history. … God was conceived of as an Oriental king, and a king’s duty was to protect the weak. The long last beatitude about the persecuted reflects the experience of martyrdom in the early church and is explicitly christological (vv [verses] 1-12). Matthew’s editorial additions may be seen in several places.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 640)

-3. “Fortunate are deprived of [אניי, ’ahNYaY] the spirit,

“Their poverty is real and economic, but with a spiritual dimension. In Matt the addition of ‘in spirit’ changes the emphasis from social-economic to personal-moral… In the Bible economic destitution is an evil to be corrected (Deut [Deuteronomy] 15:11), and wealth is not an evil in itself; indeed, it is a necessity for the well-being of the kingdom, but it risks neglect of God and of the poor. God’s first priority is the care of the poor.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 640)
“The Greek word rendered blessed is used in pagan literature to denote the highest stage of happiness and well-being, such as the gods enjoy. Here it stands for the Hebrew ’ashrê ‘how happy!’ as in Pss. [Psalms] 1:1; 32:1; 112:1. It is often used as a congratulatory salutation as in Luke 1:42; 11:27-28. … The poor, οι πτωχοι [oi ptokhoi], Hebrew ‘aniyyîm, primarily denotes their state of poverty, but they are the despised, oppressed, and pious poor of Pss. 9:18; 10:9; 12:5; 34:6; Jas. [James] 1:9; 2:5-6, who look to God for their vindication and for whom God cares. … they are afflicted in spirit (cf. Isa. 61:1) and ‘feel their spiritual need’ … The phrase in spirit, added by Matthew, is an accurate and happy gloss. (Johnson, 1951, pp. VII 280-281)

“for to them is kingdom [of] the skies.
-4. Fortunate are the mourners [האבלים, Hah’ahBahLeeYM],
for they will be comforted.

“Some rabbis gave the name ‘Comforter’ to the Messiah.” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 281)

-5. “Fortunate are the meek [הענוים, Vah'ahNahVeeYM], for they will inherit [את, ’ehTh], for they will inherit the land.

“Πραεις [“Praeis”] here means meek or humble-minded rather than gentle. It represents ‘the meek’ of Ps. [Psalm] 37:11, who are ‘the poor looked at from a different point of view. … The English word ‘meek’ now has unfortunate associations, but that was not always true: Moses was ‘very meek, above all men’ (Num. [Numbers] 12:3).” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 282)
“For they shall inherit the earth.] Or, την γυν [tyn gun], the land. Under this expression, which was commonly used, by the prophets to signify the land of Canaan, in which all temporal good abounded, Judg. [Judges] xviii. 9, 10.” (Clarke, 1832, p. I 52)

-6. “Fortunate are the hungry and the thirsty to righteousness,
for they will be satiated.

“… the word righteousness added …” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 282)
“[Matthew] adds ‘justice’ in vv 6 and 10, both as a formal divider and as one of the great themes of his Gospel.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 640)

-7. “Fortunate are the compassionate,
for they will be compassioned.
-8. Fortunate are [the] pure of heart,
for they will see [את, ’ehTh] Gods.

“Such people will see God, not merely in the metaphorical sense of worshiping in his house (Ps. 42:2), nor in a purely mystical sense, but rather in the sense that God will reward them by permitting them to see him face to face in the age to come (Rev. [Revelation] 22:4). This beatitude of Jesus is distinctive and we know of no rabbinical saying like it.” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 285)

-9. “Fortunate are pursuers of peace,
for sons of Gods they will be called.

“Hillel, Jesus’ contemporary, said, ‘Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace’ (Aboth¹ 1:2). Such person will be called sons of God. In the O.T. [Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible] the phrase ‘sons of God’ occasionally refers to angels or divine beings (Job 38:70, but it most often means the Hebrews whom God created (Deut. 32:6), who are the objects of God’s love and care and are under obligation to obey him. For example, Hos. [Hosea] 1:10 promises that the repentant Israelites, who have not been God’s people, will be called ‘sons of the living God’) see on 4:3). Vss. [verses] 44-45 furnish the best possible comment on this verse. Those who seek peace by loving their enemies are doing as God himself does, and are his true sons in every way.” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 286)
“The Rabbis had democratized the royal ideology of the king as peacemaker and enjoined it on everyone. In Matt peace-making is closely related to the love of neighbor and hence to the beatitude of the merciful. Matthew thus transforms a short messianic manifesto into a program of life, a list of desirable qualities or virtues.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 640)

-10. “Fortunate are the pursued because of [בגלל, BeeGLahL] the righteous,
for to them is [the] kingdom of the skies.
-11. Fortunate are you if they revile and pursue you,
and libel [ויעלילו, VeYah`ahLeeYLOo] upon you because of me.

“Falsely is probably an unnecessary gloss; some Western authorities and the Sinaitic Syriac omit it, as does Luke.” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 287)

-12. “Be happy and rejoice,
for your reward is multitudinous in skies;
see [הרי, HahRaY], thus they pursued [את, ’ehTh] the prophets that were before you.”

“… neither Jesus nor the rabbis hesitated to speak of reward, since God had promised it. … in the last analysis, it is a gracious gift, for ‘when you have done all that is prescribed for you, say, “We are mere slaves; we have only done what we ought”’ (Luke 17:10). … The O.T. tells how prophets like Amos and Jeremiah were persecuted. In the first century it was also believed that Isaiah had been martyred by being sawed in two …” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 288)

Salt and light (Mark 9:50, Luke 14:34-35)

-13. “You are salt [of] the land;
and if is lost to salt its saltiness,
how [כיצד, KaYTsahD] will you return it?
Lo, it is not fit [יצלח, YeeTsLahH] anymore to any thing,
except [כי אם, KeeY ’eeM] to send it forth the outside to be trampled [מרמס, MeeRMahÇ], to legs of the people.

The only sensible explanation I’ve heard is that salt scraped from salt pans contained impurities, and once the sodium chloride was leached the remainder was discarded.

-14.“You are [the] light of the world.
A city dwelling upon a mountain is not able to be hidden.
-15. Also, no lighting a candelabra and putting it under a vessel;
rather [אלא, ’ayLah’] upon a stand [כן, KayN] put it,
and thus [אז, ’ahZ] light all comers [to] the house.

“A bushel (μοδιος [modios] is more nearly a ‘peck-measure’ …” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 290)

-16. “Thus [כך, KahKh] light, if you please, your light before sons of ’ahDahM ["man", Adam],
so that [למען, LeMah`ahN] they see your deeds, the good,
and honor [את, ’ehTh] your father that is in skies.”

The Instruction and the Prophets

“These sayings, like 23:1-3, seem to teach a complete acceptance of the old religion, while in other passages the new and the old are sharply contrasted; see, e.g. [for example], 11:12-13 (=Luke 1:16); 15:11 (=Mark 7:15); Luke 13:10-17; Mark 3:1-6. The same apparent contradiction is found even in the sermon, for Jesus sweeps aside the law of oaths (vss. 33-37). … Jesus accepted the O.T. law in principle and assumed that it was the permanently binding revelation of God; but he made the ritual commandments subordinate to moral duties, opposed the development of purity laws, and went further than the Pharisees in relaxing the sabbath laws to meet human needs. In fact, his emphasis on the spirit of the law, and his occasional quoting of one passage against another, necessarily involved a new view of Torah.” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 291)
“… (5:17-20). These verses give the basic legal principles of the sermon. They are the most controversial verses in Matt and there is no consensus on their interpretation. The interpreter must try to state the problem clearly and to provide a historically honest judgment, even at the price of theological tidiness. The problem arises because the plain sense of the words is that Jesus affirms the abiding validity of the Torah; but this contradicts Paul (e.g., Gal [Galatians] 2:15, 16; Rom [Romans] 3:21-31). Moreover, no major Christian church requires observance of all 613 precepts of the OT law, ethical and ceremonial, but only the ethical commands such as the Decalogue and the commands to love God and neighbor. Thus, there is a gap between the teaching here and the teaching and practice of the churches. The position adopted here is the following: (a) There are contradictions with the NT on penultimate matters… (b) Historically Matt (and James) inclined more to the Jewish-Christian side of early Christian polemic… There are two common exegetical strategies for evading the plain meaning (a) reinterpretation, esp. [especially] through v 18d; but cf. 23:23; (b) denial of authenticity. This latter approach contains much truth. Apart from v [verse]18, the verses are probably postpaschal and reflect the outlook of Jewish Christianity, which, as a separate movement, was eventually defeated by Paulinism and died out (perhaps to be reborn in a different form as Islam)… But denial of the authenticity of vv 17, 19, 20 does not make Jesus hold the same view as Paul.
“Law in Matt. Jesus probably did not break in principle with Torah but only with Pharisaic halaka^2. Yet he was a free spirit who directly confronted and resolved life situation in his healing and parables without carefully citing texts. Matthew remains in the same line of basic fidelity to Torah but with a concentration on the more important values (23:23) and with a lawyerly concern to provide textual support for innovations. Paul prefers an ethics of values like faith, hope, love, and walking in the Spirit to a legal ethics, but he does cite the Decalogue as applicable to Christians (Rom 13:8-1) even though the ceremonial laws do not bind Gentile converts according to his gospel. As far as most modern Christians are concerned, Paul won this fight and they follow him. But Matthew, by exerting a powerful influence on church life, has acted as a moderating influence on radical Paulinism, which can easily become libertinism and antinomianism.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 641)

-17. “Do not think that I came to stop [לבטל, LeBahTayL] [את, ’ehTh] the Instruction or [את, ’ehTh] the prophets;
I did not come to stop; rather to revive [לקים, LeQahYayM]!

“Jews, in their second-century controversies with Christians, quoted it thus: ‘I, the gospel, am not come to take away the Torah of Moses, but to add to it.” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 291)
“Dot not imagine that I am come to violate the law – καταλυσαι [katalusai] from κατα and λυω, I loose, violate, or dissolve … But I am come, πλυρωσαι [plurosai] to complete …” (Clarke, 1832, p. I 55)
“In the background lies a pair of rabbinic expressions, qwm and bṭl. Qwm means to ‘confirm’ or ‘establish’ the law by putting it on a better exegetical footing… bṭl means to ‘void, abolish, suspend, neglect, cancel’ a law.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 641)

-18. “Truly [אמן, ’ahMayN] say I to you,
until pass the skies and the land,
even י [YooD] one or serif [תג, ThahG] one will not pass from the Instruction before revives the whole.
-19. Therefore [לכן, LahKhayN], any, the relaxer [of] one from the commandments the little the these and teaches thus [את, ’ehTh] the folks [הבריות, HahBReeYOTh],
little he will be called in kingdom of the skies.

“Whoever … relaxes …. refers to the rabbinical prerogative of declaring certain actions permitted or forbidden. One of the least of these commandments: The rabbis drew distinctions between ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ precepts … To teach men so is, if possible, worse than breaking the law oneself… The saying could easily have been used against Paul.” (Johnson, 1951, pp. VII 292-293)

-20. “Say I to you, if will not be your righteousness multiple from [the] righteousness of the recounters and the PROoSheeYM [Pharisees “pure, abstemious”],
you will not enter into [the] kingdom of the skies.”

“There was no finer standard of righteousness in the ancient world than the Pharisaic, with its emphasis on personal holiness and social responsibility. But, like most systems of ethics, it was adjusted to the capabilities of mankind, and it made allowances for the weakness of human nature and the demands made on man by his environment… Jesus, on the contrary, would have men aspire, not to what is socially expedient, but to that righteousness which will be perfectly manifest in the kingdom of God. His disciples are, so far as possible, to live in this age as though they were already living in the age to come.” (Johnson, 1951, pp. VII 293-294)
“This verse almost certainly comes from Matthew’s reaction and provides the thematic heading for the rest of the chapter, a ‘more abundant righteousness/justice.’ A sense of abundance (perisseuein) is characteristic of every level of early Christianity. For Matthew the essence of what Jesus brought is a superior ethic, a higher justice. His is a moral piety. His great opponents are the rabbinic heirs of the Pharisees at Jamnia. Note that he does not explicitly say that the Pharisees will not enter the kingdom. The verse is a warning to Christians.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 641)

Anger and reconciliation [והתפייסות, VeHeeThPahYaYÇOoTh]

“The first of six hypertheses. They are usually called antitheses, because interpreters were impressed by Jesus’ sovereign authority over the OT Torah and by the cases where his teaching seems to contradict the OT or be opposed to it, e.g., on divorce, which the OT presupposes and which Jesus prohibits (or restricts). The present interpretation emphasizes rather that Jesus seems to go beyond OT teaching by deepening and radicalizing it, by returning to the original will of God, but that he never moves in a lax direction, whence hyperthesis… Also to be noted is that the formula “It was said …, but I say’ is close to an exegetical formula common in the rabbinic schools: first a Bible quotation, then “You might think this means … but I say to you. …’ As a matter of fact, here in the sermon an OT text is followed by a false interpretation, which Jesus then corrects; see on 5:43. Yet the hypertheses, although exegetical in form, are materially revelation for Matthew.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 641)
“Contrasts … (vss. 21-26, 27-30, 33-37) are alike in that Jesus takes an O.T. maxim and surpasses it by forbidding not only the overt crime but the disposition behind it. But Contrasts … (vss. 31-32, 38-42, 43-47) are annulments of the existing code as it was popularly understood.” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 294)

-21. “You have heard that [כי, KeeY] it is said to [the] firsts,
‘Do not murder.’ and ‘Every murderer is required to judgement.’

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time] τοις αρχαιοις [tois arkhaiois] to or by the ancients. By the ancients, we may understand those who lived before the law, and those who lived under it…
“… Murder from the beginning has been punished with death; and it is, probably, the only crime that should be punished with death. There is much reason to doubt, whether the punishment of death, inflicted for any other crime, is not in itself murder, whatever the authority may be that has instituted it.” (Clarke, 1832, p. I 57)
“Biblical law comes in two forms: apodictic and casuistic. Apodictic takes the ‘Thou shalt not’ form familiar from the Decalogue; casuistic takes the forms, ‘If anyone…’ or ‘Whoever …’ or ‘In the case that. …’ Here we have an apodictic command followed by case law.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 642)

-22. “And say I to you,
every the angry upon his brother is required to judgment;
the sayer to his brother ‘empty-head’ [ריק, RaYQ], is required to justice [of] the ÇahNHehDReeYN [Sanhedrin], and he who says ‘fool’ [אויל, ’ehVeeYL] is required to [the] fire of GaY-HeeNOM [“Valley of Henna”].

“Without a cause is not found in some of the best MSS [manuscripts] and earliest fathers. It is a gloss which seriously weakens Jesus’ teaching. …
“… A first-century rabbi is quoted as saying, ‘He who hates his neighbor, behold he is one who belongs to the shedders of blood.’ …
“… A talmudic passage, however, reads: ‘He who says ‘slave’ to his neighbor shall be excommunicated; he who says ‘bastard’ to him shall receive the forty [lashes]; he who says ‘godless’ to him, is a matter of his life.’ …
“Raca has often been identified with the rabbinical rēqa’, ‘good-for-nothing’ or ‘wretch,’ which would mean about the same as ‘fool.’ But a Greek insult ραχας [rakhas], of which racha is probably a vocative, has been discovered in a papyrus… Its exact meaning is unknown.
“By the first century A.D. many Jews believed in the hell (Gehenna) of fire as a place where sinners were tormented, either after the final judgment or in the intermediate period before the judgment. The name is derived from the gê Hinnôm or valley of Hinnom (Josh. [Joshua] 15:8), southwest of Jerusalem, where human sacrifices had been offered and refuse was still burned. When this allusion was combined with the ideas of Isa. 31:9; 66:24, the conception of a fiery hell resulted (Enoch 54:1-2; 56:3-4; II Baruch 59:10; 85:13). The older idea had been that good and bad alike went to Sheol, where there was no punishment and no joy.” (Johnson, 1951, pp. VII 295-296)
“The council] Συνεδριον [Sunedrion], the famous council known among the Jews by the name of sanhedrin. It was composed of seventy-two elders, six chosen out of each tribe. This grand Sanhedrin not only received appeals from the inferior sanhedrins, or court of twenty three, … but could alone take cognizance, in the first instance, of the highest crimes, and alone inflict the punishment of stoning.” (Clarke, 1832, p. I 57)

-23. “Therefore, if you bring [את, ’ehTh] your offering unto the altar,
and there remember that [כי, KeeY] to your brother is a word against you,
-24. leave [את, ’ehTh] your offering there before the altar,
and go commence [תחלה, TheHeeLaH] to make acceptables [להתרצות, LeHeeThRahTsOTh], to your brother,
and after that [כך, KahKh] come and approach [את, ’ehTh] your offering.

“This case presupposes the Temple standing and must stem from before AD 70. It also presupposes that Jesus approves of the Temple and the sacrificial system. After the crucifixion some Christians would regard the Temple system (or administration) as spiritually bankrupt, as did the Qumran community, although others would continue to worship there. first ... then: This priority of ethics over cult reflects OT prophetic teaching: there can be no true worship of God without justice, a doctrine called ethical monotheism for short and often considered the center of the OT. Since perfect justice eludes us until the kingdom comes, we must worship imperfectly, trusting in God’s mercy.” (Viviano, 1990, p. 642)
“As the Mishnah says, ‘The day of Atonement atones for offenses of man against God, but it does not atone for offenses against man’s neighbor, till he reconciles his neighbor’ (Yoma 8:9).” (Johnson, 1951, p. VII 296)
“The original word, δωρον [doron], which we translate gift, is used by the rabbins in Hebrew letters דורון doron, which signifies not only a gift, but a sacrifice offered to God.” (Clarke, 1832, p. I 58)

-25. “Hasten to be reconciled with man, your contender while still you are [בעודך, Be`ODKhah] in [the] way with him,
lest he deliver you to justice,
and the judge deliver you to police,
and you are sent forth to house the enclosure [הסהר, HahÇoHahR, “prison”].

“Agree with thine adversary quickly] Adversary, αντιδικος [antidikos], properly a plaintiff in law …” (Clarke, 1832, p. I 58)

-26. “Truly, say I to you,
you will not go out from there until that you pay [את, ’ehTh] the pence [הפרוטה, HahPROoTaH] the last.”

“The uttermost farthing] Κοδραντην [Kodrantyn]. The rabbins have this Greek word corrupted into קרדיונטס kordiontes, and קינטריק kontarik [sic], and say, that two פרוטות prutoth, make a kontarik, which is exactly the same with those words in Mark xii. 42 … Hence it appears, that the λεπτον, lepton, was the same as the prutah. The weight of the prutah was half a barley corn, and it was the smallest coin among the Jews, as the kodrantes, or farthing, was the smallest coin among the Romans.” (Clarke, 1832, p. I 59)

An Amateur's Journey Through the Bible

Previous post.
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs is a constituent of the apocryphal scriptures connected with the Bible. It is believed to be a pseudepigraphical work comprising the dying commands of the twelve sons of Jacob. It is part of the Oskan Armenian Orthodox Bible of 1666. Fragments of similar writings were found at Qumran, but opinions are divided as to whether these are the same texts. It is generally considered apocalyptic literature.
The full testament is here.
Reuben, the first-born son of Jacob and Leah. The man of experience counsels against fornication and points out the ways in which men are most apt to fall into error.
THE Copy of the Testament of Reuben, even the commands which he gave his sons before he died in the hundred and twenty-fifth year of his life.
2 Two years after the death of Joseph his brother, when Reuben fell ill, his sons and his sons' sons were gathered together to visit him.
3 And he said to them: My children, behold I am dying, and go the way of my fathers.
4 And seeing there Judah, and Gad, and Asher, his brethren, he said to them: Raise me up that I may tell to my brethren and to my children what things I have hidden in my heart, for behold now at length I am passing away.
5 And he arose and kissed them, and said unto them: Hear, my brethren, and do ye my children, give ear to Reuben your father, in the commands which I give unto you.
6 And behold I call to witness against you this day the God of heaven, that ye walk not in the sins of youth and fornication, wherein I was poured out, and defiled the bed of my father Jacob.
7 And I tell you that he smote me with a sore plague in my loins for seven months; and had not my father Jamb prayed for me to the Lord, the Lord would have destroyed me.
8 For I was thirty years old when I wrought the evil thing before the Lord, and for seven months I was sick unto death.
9 And after this I repented with set purpose of my soul for seven years before the Lord.
10 And wine and strong drink I drank not, and flesh entered not into my mouth, and I ate no pleasant food; but I mourned over my sin, for it was great, such as had not been in Israel.
11 And now hear me, my children, what things I saw concerning the seven spirits of deceit, when I repented.
(...)
(Reuben here goes into explaining the 7 benevolent spirits given to us by God, and how they can be blossomed out to serve man and community)
20 The seventh is the power of procreation and sexual intercourse, with which through love of pleasure sins enter in.
21 Wherefore it is the last in order of creation, and the first in that of youth, because it is filled with ignorance, and leadeth the youth as a blind man to a pit, and as a beast to a precipice.
22 Besides all these there is an eighth spirit of sleep, with which is brought about the trance of nature and the of death.
23 With these spirits are mingled the spirits of error.
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24 First, the spirit of fornication is seated in the nature and in the senses;
25 The second, the spirit of insatiableness in the belly;
26 The third, the spirit of fighting, in the liver and gall.
27 The fourth is the spirit of obsequiousness and chicanery, that through officious attention one may be fair in seeming.
28 The fifth is the spirit of pride, that one may be boastful and arrogant.
29 The sixth is the spirit of lying, in perdition and jealousy to practise deceits, and concealments from kindred and friends.
30 The seventh is the spirit of injustice, with which are thefts and acts of rapacity, that a man may fulfil the desire of his heart; for injustice worketh together with the other spirits by the taking of gifts.
31 And with all these the spirit of sleep is joined which is that of error and fantasy.
32 And so perisheth every young man, darkening his mind from the truth, and not understanding the law of God, nor obeying the admonitions of his fathers, as befell me also in my youth.
33 And now, my children, love the truth, and it will preserve you: hear ye the words of Reuben your father.
34 Pay no heed to the face of a woman,
35 Nor associate with another man's wife,
36 Nor meddle with affairs of womankind.
37 For had I not seen Bilhah bathing in a covered place, I had not fallen into this great iniquity.
38 For my mind taking in the thought of the woman's nakedness, suffered me not to sleep until I had wrought the abominable thing.
39 For while Jacob our father had gone to Isaac his father, when we were in Eder, near to Ephrath in Bethlehem, Bilhah became drunk and was asleep uncovered in her chamber.
40 Having therefore gone in and beheld her nakedness, I wrought the impiety without her perceiving it, and leaving her sleeping departed.
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41 And forthwith an angel of God revealed to my father concerning my impiety, and he came and mourned over me, and touched her no more.
PAY no heed, therefore, my children, to the beauty of women, nor set your mind--on their affairs; but walk in singleness of heart in the fear of the Lord, and expend labour on good works, and on study and on your flocks, until the Lord give you a wife, whom He will, that ye suffer not as I did.
2 For until my father's death I had not boldness to look in his face, or to speak to any of my brethren, because of the reproach.
3 Even until now my conscience causeth me anguish on account of my impiety.
4 And yet my father comforted me much, and prayed for me unto the Lord, that the anger of the Lord might pass from me, even as the Lord showed.
5 And thenceforth until now I have been on my guard and sinned not.
6 Therefore, my children, I say unto you, observe all things whatsoever I command you, and ye shall not sin.
7 For a pit unto the soul is the sin of fornication, separating it from God, and bringing it near to idols, because it deceiveth the mind and understanding, and leadeth down young men into Hades before their time.
8 For many hath fornication destroyed; because, though a man be old or noble, or rich or poor, he bringeth reproach upon himself with the sons of men and derision with Beliar.
9 For ye heard regarding Joseph how he guarded himself from a woman, and purged his thoughts from all fornication, and found favour in the sight of God and men.
10 For the Egyptian woman did many things unto him, and summoned magicians, and offered him love potions, but the purpose of his soul admitted no evil desire.
11 Therefore the God of your fathers delivered him from every evil and hidden death.
12 For if fornication overcomes not your mind, neither can Beliar overcome you.
13 For evil are women, my children; and since they have no power or strength over man, they use wiles by outward attractions, that they may draw him to themselves.
14 And whom they cannot bewitch by outward attractions, him they overcome by craft.
15 For moreover, concerning them, the angel of the Lord told me, and taught me, that women are overcome by the spirit of fornication more than men, and in their heart they plot against men; and by means of their adornment they deceive first their minds, and by the glance of the eye instil the poison, and then through the accomplished act they take them captive.
16 For a woman cannot force a man openly, but by a harlot's bearing she beguiles him.
17 Flee, therefore, fornication, my children, and command your wives and your daughters, that they adorn not their heads and faces to deceive the mind: because every woman who useth these wiles bath been reserved for eternal punishment.
18 For thus they allured the Watchers who were before the flood; for as these continually beheld them, they lusted after them, and they conceived the act in their mind; for they changed themselves into the shape of men, and appeared to them when they were with their husbands.
19 And the women lusting in their minds after their forms, gave birth to giants, for the Watchers appeared to them as reaching even unto heaven.
20 Beware, therefore, of fornication; and if you wish to be pure in mind, guard your senses from every woman.
21 And command the women likewise not to associate with men, that they also may be pure in mind.
22 For constant meetings, even though the ungodly deed be not wrought, are to them an irremediable disease, and to us a destruction of Beliar and an eternal reproach.
23 For in fornication there is neither understanding nor godliness, and all jealousy dwelleth in the lust thereof.
(...)
31 And Reuben died, having given these commands to his sons. And they placed him in a coffin until they carried him up from Egypt, and buried him in Hebron in the cave where his father was.

"Down the ages, the highest stress has been laid on Brahmacharya or sexual abstinence in every religion. Throughout folklore runs the idea that second-sight and the vision of the supernatural are especially, if not solely, the privilege of the celibates. Westermack favours the explanation that pollution destroys holiness. A tribe on the Rio Negro enjoined celibacy upon their Shamans, because they believed that medicine would prove ineffectual if administered by a married man.
Lambichus states that the gods do not hear him who invokes them if he is impure from sexual connections. In Islam, strict continence is required on the pilgrimage to Mecca. It is required for the Hebrew congregation during the theophany at Sinai and before entering the temple. Ancient India, Egypt and Greece enforced the rule that the worshipper must abstain from intercourse during and before worship. In Christianity, continence was required as a preparation for both baptism and Eucharist.
The highest type of Christian was a celibate. Christian teachers praised celibacy, and marriage came to be, in their eyes, only a secondary good for those who were unable to serve continence. The bishops of the Greek Church are always celibates, being chosen from the monks.
The monk, who lowers himself to touch a woman’s person with corrupt thoughts, while he clasps her hand or clasps her hair or touches one part or another of her body, brings shame and degradation on the order. The present ordination vow is to abstain from all sexual intercourse as long as life shall last.
The Jains force on their Munis the rule to abstain from all sexual relations; not to discuss topics relating to women, not to contemplate the forms of women. Lust is thus condemned: "Of the myriad vices, lust is the worst."
There are other rules subsidiary to this, forbidding all actions of an unchaste kind, especially any act or word which might either lead to a breach of the principal rule or give rise to an impression that it was not being strictly observed.
A Bhikshu is not to sleep in any place where a woman is present, or to preach the sacred doctrine in more than five or six words to a woman unless a grown-up man be present, or to exhort the sisters unless specially deputed to do so, or to journey along the same route with a woman. On his round for alms, he is to be properly clad and he is to walk with downcast eyes. He is not to accept a robe from any woman not related to him, except under specified conditions. He is not to sit in a secluded place with a woman, much less to touch or speak to her with impure intent.
The Buddhist "Order of Mendicants" was governed by the 227 rules of the Patimokha. Of these, the first four were of specific gravity. A breach of any one of the four rules involved expulsion from the order; and they were, therefore, called the Parajika or the rules as to acts involving defeat.
The first rule says: "Whatsoever Bhikshu—who has taken upon himself the system of self-training and rule of life, and has not thereafter withdrawn from the training or declared his inability to keep the rule—shall have carnal knowledge of any living thing, down even to an animal, he has fallen into defeat, he is no longer in communion". "Withdrawn from the training" was the technical expression for throwing off the robes, retiring from the order, and returning to the world, a step which any member of the order was at liberty to take at any time.
Numa was said to have instituted the "Order of Vestal Virgins". They remained unmarried for thirty years. Burial alive was the penalty for breaking the vow of chastity. The Virgins were distinguished by extraordinary influence and personal dignity. They were treated with marks of respect usually accorded to royalty; thus, on the streets, they were preceded by a lictor and the highest magistrates made way for them. They enjoyed sometimes the exceptional privilege of riding in a carriage; at public games, a place of honour was assigned to them. And after death they, like the imperators, were allowed to be buried within the city, because they were above the laws. They enjoyed the royal privilege of mercy, for if they met a criminal on his way to execution, his life was spared.
In the large colony of Tibetans at Darjeeling, several hundreds of the men doing coolies’ work are ex-lamas who fled from Tibet, with their paramours or singly, in order to escape the severe penalties attaching to their breach of celibacy. The delinquent is denounced, and if caught, is subject to corporal chastisement in public, as well as to a heavy fine and expulsion from the order in disgrace.
The Peruvian "Virgins of the Sun"—a type of priests—were punished with living burial if detected in misconduct." - Swami Sivananda, The Practice of Brahmacharya
Next post.

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.

I've been reflecting on the idea of the biblical canon for some time. I used to assume that after God inspires the authors of Scriptures, the Bible becomes 'fixed' and should not be changed. I am starting to change my mind recently...
During Jesus’ time, Jews were split between those who lived in Palestine and those who lived in the wider Roman empire. Palestinian Jews have what is known as the Masoretic Text (MT), which is more or less similar to the Protestant Old Testament. The Jews in the rest of the Roman empire however, have the Septuagint (LXX) as their Scriptures.
There are notable differences between these two versions of the Old Testament

The LXX included more writings than the Masoretic Text, including Tobit and Judith, Sirach and 1-2 Maccabees.
Even for books that are similar, there are variations. E.g. both the LXX and the MT have Daniel and Esther. However, the LXX has additions to the book of Daniel and Esther. In the LXX, there is also an additional Psalm called Psalms 151 not present in the MT.

In other words, even by the time of Jesus, the Old Testament canon is not ‘fixed’. Even for books that were written centuries ago, the boundaries for what constitutes the ‘Bible’ is fluid to a certain extent. The clearest evidence of this fluidity comes from Jesus himself:
Jesus in the Gospels quote from both the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint.
He does not merely favour one version of the Bible as the ‘correct’ version. Instead, Jesus simply quotes from both versions despite their significant differences.
On a side note: Many early Christians used the LXX, which means that for many 1st century Christians, so-called apocryphal texts are indeed Scriptures.
More evidence can be found from the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the latter half of the 20th-century. These scrolls are part of a Jewish sect called the Qumran sect. Again, for them, the Bible is not a fixed entity, but can be evolved to some extent. For example the Qumran Temple Scrolls contain legal material from Exodus to Deuteronomy. Likewise, there is a psalm scroll that contains seven non-canonical poems intersperse among the canonical Psalms.
In both the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls, we see texts that are considered Scriptures by those communities, but nonetheless, they can be modified and supplemented. These actions are not the dishonest acts of ‘heretics’ trying to ‘destroy the Bible’, rather they are simply the community of God treating the Bible as a living Word, as a text that can be updated to speak to their contemporary situation. The canon is fluid to some extent during those times.

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.”

In part 2, we observed that the Old Testament evolved over centuries. Individual books were often written by more than one author over many decades or even centuries. This shows that the Bible has evolved to some extent. Scriptures is not a text that is fixed and unchanging.
Now let us fast forward to the Roman empire during the 1st century: did all Jews have the same ‘Bible’?
The answer is no.
During Jesus’ time, Jews were split between those who lived in Palestine and those who lived in the wider Roman empire. Palestinian Jews have what is known as the Masoretic Text (MT), which is more or less similar to the Protestant Old Testament. The Jews in the rest of the Roman empire however, have the Septuagint (LXX) as their Scriptures.
There are notable differences between these two versions of the Old Testament

The LXX included more writings than the Masoretic Text, including Tobit and Judith, Sirach and 1-2 Maccabees.
Even for books that are similar, there are variations. E.g. both the LXX and the MT have Daniel and Esther. However, the LXX has additions to the book of Daniel and Esther. In the LXX, there is also an additional Psalm called Psalms 151 not present in the MT.

In other words, even by the time of Jesus, the Old Testament canon is not ‘fixed’. Even for books that were written centuries ago, the boundaries for what constitutes the ‘Bible’ is fluid to a certain extent. The clearest evidence of this fluidity comes from Jesus himself:
Jesus in the Gospels quote from both the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint.
He does not merely favour one version of the Bible as the ‘correct’ version. Instead, Jesus simply quotes from both versions despite their significant differences.
On a side note: Many early Christians used the LXX, which means that for many 1st century Christians, books like Tobit and Judith were considered authoritative Scriptures.
More evidence can be found from the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the latter half of the 20th-century. These scrolls are part of a Jewish sect called the Qumran sect. Again, for them, the Bible is not a fixed entity, but can be evolved to some extent. For example the Qumran Temple Scrolls contain legal material from Exodus to Deuteronomy. Likewise, there is a psalm scroll that contains seven non-canonical poems intersperse among the canonical Psalms.
In both the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls, we see texts that are considered Scriptures by those communities, but nonetheless, they can be modified and supplemented. These actions are not the dishonest acts of ‘heretics’ trying to ‘destroy the Bible’, rather they are simply the community of God treating the Bible as a living Word, as a text that can be updated to speak to their contemporary situation.

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.

INTRODUCTION
The Interpreters’ Bible – W. A. L. Elmslie

Chronicles is … courageous and practical – a splendid achievement. But that high valuation depends on understanding that Chronicles is not what it appears to be. Anyone who supposes that it is a history of Judah, which its author wanted or expected his readers to accept as accurate, is almost certain to consider it for the most part dull and frequently incredible. That impression of its character is widely held, and in consequence these two great books [First and Second Chronicles] have become virtually deadwood in the Bible. They come alive when the real intentions of the Chronicler and the peculiar method which he used to make his purpose effective are apprehended… It is the only instance of Hebraic philosophy of history presented on an immense scale. It is theology, powerfully and persuasively inculcating three doctrines: that human life exists under the overruling of an immutable moral order ordained by God; that observance of rightful forms of worship is of paramount importance for the community; and that God’s revelation is given not only in the past time but in the present - a living word of truth. The Chronicler had to urge this philosophy and these doctrines, not by abstract argument, but by a method wholly strange to us although sufficiently clear to his contemporaries. The Chronicler taught by painting a picture of the past, in which sometimes he laid emphasis on the religio-moral causes and consequences of events that actually had happened and sometimes gave a freely imagine delineation of what ought to have happened. Even where he makes use of facts, his aim is to depict “truth of idea.” …
The Chronicler’s pictorial method was, of course, dramatic… Chronicles is essentially a vast and moving drama, ranging from Adam to the destruction of the Judean kingdom. We should see in its first nine chapters a prelude, subtly inviting us to feel that human history from its commencement led up to the radiant morning of David’s reign and the noonday splendor of Solomon, culminating in his dedication of the glorious temple for the rightful worship of God. Thereafter the drama unfolds its grim sequel in the succession of those kings of Judah to whom so much had been entrusted, from whom came so seldom good, so often evil. Again and again light shines, only to be swiftly quenched in darkness. … Toward the end of the drama there are two periods (the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah) when it seems as if victory may rest with good; but they are transient. At the last, black night descends on the tragedy of Jerusalem: the city is captured and destroyed and its temple burned. Its kings and people had persisted in wickedness until there was no remedy. …
… But they knew that, although seemingly final night had fallen when the Davidic kingdom had been destroyed, light had arisen in darkness. Their people had rallied on a religion purified and ennobled by the thoughts of God and duty which the prophets had demanded. Jerusalem’s temple had been rebuilt; their national consciousness had not ceased. …
Unless the purpose and method of the Chronicler are thus realized, a modern reader – especially if he compares Chronicles with Samuel and Kings – is likely to be of the opinion that very little of intellectual and spiritual value would be lost if this strange work had been omitted from the Bible … Chronicles on a superficial view seems to be for the most part unnecessary, uninteresting, defective in comparison with Samuel and Kings, and in many matters incredible. …
Unnecessary: At least to the extent that fully half of Chronicles copies verbatim, or with some adaptations, parts of Genesis, Samuel, and Kings. What advantage is there in being able to ready the same words in two places in the Bible?
Uninteresting: At least in part. Take a glance at the name lists which fill from end to end I Chr. [Chronicles], and at similar punctilious lists – most of them concerning ancestors of Levites serving the temple in various functions – which recur throughout the book. …
Defective: Chronicles is lopsided, an exclusive history of Judah which ignores the story of the northern kingdom of Israel, except for a few frowning side glances at times when the doings of certain kings of Israel affected Judah. … If we want to know fully about the Hebrew monarchies, who would not choose Samuel and Kings? … For example, in Samuel, David lives before us, an imperfect but very great and attractive personality. In Chronicles David is an almost perfect saint … there is in Chronicles a large number of passages – many complete chapters – purporting to give information not recorded in Samuel and Kings. … On scrutiny it appears indisputable that they furnish an absolute minimum (if any at all) of reliable new information about the kingdom of Judah. …
Incredible: Consider the unbelievable features in Chronicles. … For overwhelmingly strong reasons, based on other scriptures, what is related is not credible history. … the Chronicler exaggerates numbers and amounts out of all possibility … the Chronicler declares that between them they [David and Solomon] amassed for the building and decoration of a small temple treasure of such value that it would suffice to meet the modern world’s financial crises. … The Jews for whom the Chronicler wrote were shrewd men … they could, if they chose, compare Chronicles with the plain tale in Samuel and Kings. Obviously the Chronicler expected his readers to look beneath the surface and to perceive a deeper purpose than the attempt to write an accurate account of the past. …
Our initial difficulty in appreciating the purpose and value of Chronicles is that it is not history in our sense of the word at all. … he created a narrative so obviously idealized that his contemporaries could not fail to recognize it for what it was. … he is portraying the abiding meaning in human life – the reality of God and his righteousness, the continuity of the divine good purpose. …
…Here are the historical landmarks that would dwell in his own and his fellow’ thoughts. (a) In 721 B.C. the kingdom of Israel had come to an end when the Assyrians captured Samaria and removed into captivity some thirty thousand Israelites, replacing them by alien settlers. (b) In 586 ended the kingdom of Judah when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, broke down its walls, burned temple and palace, and departed to Babylonia its leading citizens and craftsmen, in number about thirty to fifty thousand persons. (c) In 538, when Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon, he permitted Jews to go back to Palestine … (d) in 520-516 a substitute temple was built … (e) Thereafter for about 150 years nothing in particular happened, until in 384 – perhaps not 444, as used to be thought – Nehemiah, coming from Babylonia with authority from its Persian king, rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls. (f) Shortly afterward a caravan of some 1,800 Jews led by Ezra (if the event is not exaggerated) returned to Jerusalem from Babylonia …
…
… In conquered Israel the Assyrians in 721 B.C. had prohibited sacrifice to Yahweh at the Hebrew sanctuaries. … Some years after 721 the Assyrians permitted sacrifices to Yahweh, but at one place only in the occupied land, at Bethel. Meantime, many bold Israelites … had accepted an invitation from the Judean King Hezekiah to go to Jerusalem to keep the Passover …
When the kingdom of Judah was overthrown in 586 its inhabitants were stunned for a time. But in Judah, as earlier in Israel, the mass of the population – perhaps four out of every five Hebrews was left in Palestine. …
In all probability not very long after 586, and certainly long before 538, worship of Yahweh was resumed at the sacred area in Jerusalem. … As the city revived, and when in 520 the temple was rebuilt, increase of clergy was needed, for the daily ritual required many ministrants and large augmentation was necessary at the times of the three great religious festivals. … One can infer that the permanent staff in Jerusalem began to assert superiority against the ‘occasional’ Levites, especially if they were from Israelitish territory. Against that cruel, narrow-minded, vested interest attitude the Chronicler set his face. …
Opposed to that horrid, petty antagonism the Chronicler wrote, showing in a picture the goodness of brotherhood and reunion. He urged as the will of God that there should be one Hebrew people. …
…
The outcome of clerical tension in Jerusalem during the fifth century was that certain Levitical families who could claim descent from Levi through Zadok, or, more widely, through Aaron, established themselves as having exclusive sacerdotal rights: they alone were priests unto God,”: in contrast to all other Levites (musicians, singers, custodians, porters) whose status was that of “ministers unto their brethren the priests … The superiority of the Aaronite Zadokites was solemnly documented as carrying the authority of Moses by those portions of the Pentateuch which are termed the Priestly Code, and when the whole Pentateuch was promulgated – apparently not earlier than 450 nor later than 350 B.C. – a final settlement had been reached: this, and neither more nor less, was the law of God given by Moses.
Prevailing opinion has been that the Chronicler wrote during the succeeding century, 350-250 B.C. This conclusion would follow if he were the compiler of the books of Nehemiah and Ezra, but the reason assigned for that opinion is not cogent … Linguistic features (discussed below) are deemed to imply no earlier period than late in the fourth century. If so, we have to think of the Chronicler as one who lived a long while after the establishment of the system of ritual set forth in the Priestly Code, after the Aaronite Zadokites had attained their supremacy … But if so, how incomprehensible and naïve was the Chronicler’s mentality! … If he did pen such heterodoxy, hoping to induce the entrenched priests to contravene the word of God and admit to their privileges numbers of the inferior clergy, how naïve he was! … If, further, he was the author of the entire text of Chronicles as it now stands, how weakly he advanced his astonishing plea! For whenever he alludes to Levites and ritual in a way not incompatible with the earlier Deuteronomic standpoint, but incompatible with the ultimate orthodoxy of the Priestly Code – always there we find qualifying and contradictory phrases and verses to the effect that nevertheless orthodox procedure had been observed on the occasion. There is, however, virtual unanimity that these phrases and verses were not part of the Chronicler’s original writing, but are corrective additions inserted into this text at a later date. …
On the other hand, consider whether the Chronicler’s original work may be dated in the circumstances of the fifth century; or, say, 450-350 B.C. It would then have been very relevant, and we could credit him with fine qualities and with making a sensible endeavor … If he wrote before the Aaronite Zadokites had won complete victory, and before the law as it stands in the Pentateuch had been finally written and declared, then his mode of referring to Levites does not perplex. And his idealizing picture of the past was a moving plea to the Judeans and men of Jerusalem to treat all loyalist Israelites … as brethren. This conception of the Chronicler’s purpose and period has been powerfully advocated by A.C. Welch [1939], and, in general, it seems that a date in the latter part of the fifth century, or very little later, should be accepted. It gives naturalness to the ‘Chronicler’s mind, and the great and complex perplexities which otherwise confront us in the basic characteristics of Chronicles vanish.
A conspicuous problem of style, however, remains to be considered. Chronicles contains many and lengthy quotations from the books of Samuel and Kings. Those books are written in what may be termed “classical” Hebrew, whereas all else in Chronicles – that is, the Chronicler’s own composition – differs startlingly in details of vocabulary and syntax from the Hebrew of Samuel and Kings. … Evidently he wanted his readers to realize without difficulty just when they were reading quotations and when his own idealizing presentation of affairs. The Chronicler’s own diction must be that of ordinary contemporary use, and admittedly it is similar to that found in the latest Hebrew writings in the Old Testament.
But even by the middle of the third century B.C. vernacular speech in Jerusalem had, it seems, ceased to be Hebrew and become Aramaic. Moreover, at about 400 B.C. a reference in Neh. [Nehemiah] 8:8 to a public reading from the Law probably signified that the people understood clearly only when they were given an interpretation in their everyday terms. It may reasonably be asked. How early did ordinary Hebrew diction begin to diverge from the “classical” literary idiom, and how rapid was the process of change? … Israelitish Hebrew differed in particulars from the Judean: there is evidence as far back as the compilation of the northern records concerning Elijah and Elisha. …
…
The view of the structure of Chronicles indicated above affords a consistent and reasonable criterion for distinguishing the original writing of the Chronicler from the numerous additions which, as all scholars are agreed, were in the course of time introduced into the manuscripts. When the final Law obtained, devout readers were sure to be distressed by passages and verses which conflicted with its provisions, or were ambiguous or perilously vague. … Attempts were therefore made to improve it. What seem to be the consequent corrections and amplifications will be pointed out in the Exegesis.
…
A subordinate and difficult problem is how far, if at all, the Chronicler for is new material availed himself of lost sources, and whether in consequence his work adds anything reliable to what Kings tells about the history of Judah,. In Chronicles there is a great parade of alleged sources, among them notably references to lost prophetic writings… But for the most part these references on investigation merge into one general question – whether the Chronicler had before him a large-scale document other than Kings about the history of Judah and Israel… If he did, it was an edifying rather than a historically trustworthy work; and he did not quote from it, as he does from Kings, but transmuted into his own style what he wanted to reproduce. Its existence is doubtful; its worth for reliable new information is certainly slender. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to feel that the Chronicler was able to avail himself of some written and oral minor sources of information other than Kings, and to some extent of pre-exilic date, which he used as a basis for numerous details regarding ancestors, places, building operations, and certain events and dates. And indeed, evidence to that effect has grown in recent years …
…
The text of Chronicles is in fairly good condition… we know that in the course of manuscript transmission the text in Chronicles was sometimes adjusted to that found in Samuel and Kings: sometimes the reverse process is to be detected.
…
The translators of the Septuagint placed Chronicles after Kings, and in consequence that is its position in our Bibles. But it was very nearly excluded from the Jewish scriptures and was set as the last book. … learned Jewish students would not miss the inner inconsistencies; and whereas Samuel and Kings were indispensable, Chronicles was highly debatable. When toward the end of the first century A.D. the rabbis at Jamnia reached decision as to which writings should be classed as sacred, there must have been anxious discussion about Chronicles. … (Elmslie, 1954, pp. III 341-348)

The New Jerome Biblical Commentary - Robert North, S.J.Chr

[Chronicles] is presumed to be the last book to be received into the Hebr [Hebrew] canon, since it is put after Neh [Nehemiah]… Not all Hebr mss. [manuscripts] assign this last place to Chr; the “Palestinian tradition” puts it immediately after the Psalms (whose organization it described) and puts Ezra-Neh at the end of the Writings… The LXX [the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible] preserves the natural order of Chr before Ezra … this may prove that Alexandrian Jewry had a canon in that order or that the notion of “canonicity” was of Christian origin before Jewish readers felt its need. Text study has been enriched by the discovery of Aleppo Codex 2 Chr 35:7-36:19 (M Beit-Arié … 1982 ) and of the masorah¹ 1 Chr 4-9 (G. Weil … 1984).
The Targum has been newly published and its editorial observation is that the theologizing and clarifying aims of the Targum continue those of Chr itself (R. Le Déut …). A special similarity of Chr with the Qumran Temple Scroll has been noted chiefly in the use of particles (T. Yohanan… 1983…). The Chronicles’ matres lectionis ^2] stem not from its author but from the Maccabee period when Jews were showing more interest in the study of Hebrew (… Willi…).
…
There is … general agreement that the author of Chr is a Levite cantor whose own genealogy is probably that given in 1 Chr 3:19-24 … (Robert North, 1990, p. 364)

FOOTNOTES
¹ Masorah - a vast body of textual criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures including notes on features of writing and on the occurrence of certain words and on variant sources and instructions for pronunciation and other comments that were written between AD 600 and 900 by Jewish scribes in the margins or at the end of texts - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/.
² matres lectionis (Latin “mothers of reading) - The usage of certain consonants to indicate a vowel in the spelling of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac languages is called. The letters that do this in Hebrew are א (aleph), ה (he), ו (waw) and י (yod). - http://biblicalhebrew.org
An Amateur's Journey Through the Bible

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/

Dead Sea -- Qumran Community - ibiblio

what is the qumran community

what is the qumran community - win

My reasons to believe (updated.)

Islam claims the Bible was corrupted away from its original meaning. The Dead Sea Scrolls prove this is impossible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Hit The Character Limit Edition - Electronic Literature, Community Discussions, Media, & Misc

ELECTRONIC LITERATURE

COMMUNITY DISCUSSIONS

MEDIA

MISC

Matthew 5:1-26; part one of the Sermon on the Mount

Testament of Reuben, the Bible and other scriptures down the ages on semen retention and celibacy

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

Is the canon of the Hebrew Bible fixed during the time of Jesus?

Two Articles by Shelly Matthews on Resurrection

James Dunn: The Bible as ‘living tradition’ (part 3)

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