Well after reading some of the reviews, I'm not at all impressed with
your recomendations.

The authors have twisted biblical archeology to question or deny many aspects of the Hebrew Scriptures. The book's

contents are given away by the front jacket summary: The authors explain "how and why the Bible's historical saga differs

so dramatically from the archeological finds. They explain what the Bible says about ancient Israel and show how it (the

Bible) diverges sharply from archeological reality."

This is nothing more than two "experts" trying to show that the Bible is not God's inspired Word. NOT WORTH

WASTING TIME READING!
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This authors of this book realize the Bible is historically accurate, even bringing up ancient evidence which shows the Bible
(which is a detailed historical record thousands of years old which over and over has shown itself to be true) shows the
Bible to be true, but get this, that's not good enough for the authors, they can't allow themselves to be astonished at that
fact, no they've got to push their own opinions and take the evidence they find out of the context of all the other evidences.
They attempt to show that the Bible is not true in all it says, BECAUSE THEY CAN'T FIND EVIDENCE FOR EVERY
SINGLE STATEMENT. Well big surprise, not everything lasts forever, deal with it and get over your arrogant selves.
More examples of the author's con artistry, check out this review:
"Most of the Bible is found to be legend or propaganda favoring that party or its agenda. [O.K., now what is this statement
based on? Nothing!] The Israelites did not come from somewhere else, neither Ur nor Egypt, but are the same people who
had been living there for millennia, not much different from any of their neighbors, like the Canaanites. This is pretty much
accepted as fact by most experts." And what was that last statement based on? It was based on "most experts" huh? Sure,
but who are "most experts"? Saying "most experts" said so IS NOT SCIENTIFIC REASONING OR EVIDENCE and is
not logical evidence. "Most experts" claimed blacks were inferior and that brain size determined intelligence, and were they
right? Furthermore, what about the other experts? Do they not count merely because they are fewer in number?
Here's the rest of that review:
"The authors add to this, however, the more controversial position that in fact there was never even a united monarchy:
according to their view, this was a deliberate invention serving the interests of some of the kings of Judah (spearheaded by
the ambitious Josiah, whom the Bible depicts actually 'discovering' the book of Deuteronomy) who dreamed of conquering
the northern territory of Israel."
Guess who made the review I quoted? Neil Asher Silberman: one of the authors.
Another reviewer who rated this book four stars made this stupid claim (which shows you how much intelligence and
knowledge the people have who are wallowing in the stupidty of this book):
"Excellent Primer on Current Biblical Archeology, February 20, 2003 Reviewer: hominuslupus "hominuslupus"
(albuquerque, nm USA)
The 'Bible' held an unexamined position of absolute authority for much of the past two millenia. Only in the past century
has it undergone a methodogical and undogmatic scrutiny."
Why did he put Bible in quotes lol? The word bible means "a collection of books" so why the quotes? Is there something
suspicious about the usage of the word Bible lol? And the bible hasn't been methodically challenged for 2000 years and
before that time because 1) The majority of Jews who had it hated hearing the truth 2) When they did challenge it were
hammered by God for their rebellion which shut them up for long periods of time and a few times even got them to admit
the truth 3) As for the whole Bible not being methodically challenged, that's because there wasn't a whole lot of the
conveniences we have today like the internet, printers, wealth, etc., and 4) It WASN'T ALL PUT TOGETHER YET 5)
Was hard to get a hold of and 6) was written in an uncommon language: Latin.
And people wonder why Christians get mad.
Anyways, see The Bible as History which was written FIFTY YEARS AGO and proves this book to be garbage and
Before the Flood (which I also reviewed) which like the Bible Unearthed attempts to refute the Bible's EXACT story while
ironically bringing up evidence which shows the Bible IS HISTORICALLY ACCURATE.
_____________

The evidence for this is simply the lack of evidence. It is sort of tantamount to saying since we don't have evidence as to
when the Native Americans came to America then apparently they never came. Well then who are all those people? Its
almost like saying that since we don't know how the pyramids were built, then apparently they were never built. But they
got there somehow? If Josiah created the history of the Israelitenation, then where did Josiah come from? If King Solomon
is fake then why is his presence confirmed in other traditions throughout the ancient world, throughout Africa and the
middle east. If ancient Israel didn't exist and they never believed in one God then who built the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem, and who fought the Romans in 70 A.D and who was Jesus born to. The problem here is that archeological
evidence does actually date all the digging in Israel to the time of David and Solomon. Evidence exists from Persia and
from Egypt of diplomatic dealings with an Israelite and even a Canaanite state. Thus the Bible is accurate in many of its
time line descriptions, it is simply inaccurate in its descriptions of Miracles. This book is revisionism and should not be
read by anyone interested in the accuracy of the Bible.
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The book's main idea is that the Torah was propaganda designed to unite a nation.
When the Bible authors wrote about meditating on God's teachings, were they naively believing works of fiction? These
people would have had some oral traditions to compare it to right? They would have been pretty stupid to believe
something that didn't square with their history. What about the later prophets such as Isaiah who refer frequently to the
Exodus as a symbol of God's power...What good is the Exodus if it never happened?
Why go through all the trouble to concoct a story that is *actually* rather embarrassing to them because it describes their
constant whining. If they really wanted to make up a bogus story, then they would probably want to make them look more
like heroes, put in some action-packed adventures of how they kicked Egyptian butt, and triumphantly created a nation,
rather than wandering around lost in a desert for 40 years and losing in battles. As far as we can tell, most "revisionist
history" likes to paint pretty pictures, not bad pictures. Can you think of many nations who glorify their defeats? Some try
to erase all evidence and not mention them in their textbooks. As another reviewer put it, these theories only raise more
questions than they attempt to answer.
Having spent time on an archaeological expedition in the Near East, I have found that archaeology is somewhat subjective.
This author cites a few select people who take something that is unclear, does a lot of guesswork and speculates based on
that guesswork. We end up with competing versions of how the Exodus happened if it happened at all.
Despite the author's attempted conclusion, I realized that the Exodus really might have happened after all, considering all the
circumstances and the evidence discovered so far. But, it seems that critics still want to downplay the evidence so they come
up with more unsubstantiated speculation to throw more confusion on the subject.
Finally, the author said that the Exodus could not have happened because it would have been impossible: "Putting aside the
possibility of divinely inspired miracles, one can hardly accept the idea of a flight of a large group of slaves from Egypt
through the heavily guarded border fortifications into the desert and then into Canaan in the time of such a formidable
Egyptian presence."
The whole point of the Exodus account is that it was impossible without a miracle from God!
The author uses the old argument that if the Exodus *really* happened, we would have found evidence for it by now. This
is a classic "atheist-of-the-gaps" argument, that because there's no evidence, it must mean it never happened. But, as
archaeologists continue to work, they continue to find new evidence to disappoint critics.
Skeptics used to doubt the Bible's description of ancient cities of Babylon and Nineveh, until they unearthed them. So on
and so on... I realized after reading this book, that people will only see what they want to see.
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The authors belong to the radical school of archaeology known as Biblical Minimalism that ignores the value of written
history in evaluating archaelogical evidence and which sacrifices true objectivity in favour of the ideological standpoint that
the Old Testament must be debunked at all costs. Much of what they say has been said by others in the past and found
wanting. The main weakness of the authors arguments lies in their "religious" acceptance of the old Albright stratigraphy of
Israel and the ignoring of the controversies surrounding the dating of strata and archaelogical finds. When these are taken
into account the authors' view of things crumbles.
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The Bible Unearthed presents a theory that the Patriarchs (Abraham, Moses, et al) didn't exist, the Exodus never happened,
and in fact, the whole idea of a single god wasn't "invented" until over a thousand years later than claimed in the bible. As
proof of their theory, the authors offer primarily the LACK of archeological evidence (i.e. if there was an Exodus, there
would be pottery fragments in the desert and since we haven't found any, there must not have been an Exodus). Their
writing style is to present the Bible's point of view (often very well done), the conclusions of other archeologists, and then
show how the REAL DATA supports their point of view.
The problem is that the point of view they debunk is either a literal interpretation of the Bible or a strawman, so selected,
that it can be discredited. They seem to ignore some other obvious alternatives. In the case of the Exodus, does it really
have to be all or nothing? A more likely explanation is that the story is based on a real event, the telling of which evolved
over time.
If the Exodus didn't happen, where did the Ark of the Covenant come from? (yes, the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark) If we
are to adopt the authors' point of view, we must believe that people of the time didn't notice it suddenly showing up as if
nailed together by some temple priest in his garage. It almost certainly existed, and the authors themselves seem to
acknowledge that point. The Ark plays a part in too many events (battles) and traditions (temple rituals) to be a
LITERARY creation.
There are other cases where relevant data seems to be ignored either because it doesn't fit into the authors' point of view or
they aren't aware of it. For example, the authors view the 12 tribes of Israel as something brought into the narrative because
with them, it would be "more powerful and timeless than the fleeting adventures of a few historical individuals herding
sheep in the highlands of Canaan." DNA sequencing now allows us to determine not only ancestry but the passage of time
based on rate of mutation. This method has been applied to the tribes of Israel (i.e. the Levi tribe which can be separately
identified in the population) and supports the Bible's view of events as opposed to the one presented in this book.
_____________

I'm not quite sure how a biblical archeologist can start off any worse than to deny that Abraham's stories are true, claim the
exodus never happened, and that Joshua's conquests are myths. I particularly thought it quite interesting to note that his
reasons included that the Bible wasn't written until the time of Josiah and the cities mentioned did not exist at the time of
the exodus. How absurd. Most people are aware of the fact that the Bible didn't take on its final form until later so why
would anyone think they would use ancient names for cities that have been renamed when most of the uneducated
populous at that time it was written wouldn't have any idea where they were referring to. That is hardly proof. What amazed
me was that his use of the names of the cities were a major portion of his proof for redating the entire chronology of the
patriarchs and the exodus. One of his "problems" with the current belief system is that people take the Bible as fact but then
would use wording from Herodotus? This is the same person that has been called, "the father of lies." The only thing I
thought that was worthwhile was his exposition on the late period of Hebraic history.
If you want to read something more scholarly, with better presumptions (IMO), I suggest David Rohl or even Immanuel
Velikovsky. Leave this one to be sold at one of those book clearance sales.
_____________

Although I found this book to be a gem and I am in agreement with the authors' findings in most areas, I can't help but be
a tad bit skeptical. Specifically I refer to the fact that there are still quite a large number of scholars in the fields of
archaeology and biblical scholarship that are convinced that the Bible is an authentic historical document. These scholars are
referred to as "maximalists". In some cases, the maximalists accuse scientists such as Finkelstein and Silberman of re-writing
history. The camp that Finkelstein and Silberman belong to are called "minamalists". I wasn't even aware of this terminology
nor of the fierce debate that is alive and well amongst scholars over biblical arcaeology until I read James Hoffmeier's book:
_Israel in Egypt_. This book opened my eyes to the fact that no scholar can claim to be certain about events that occured in
the biblical period. I personally believe that there is far too much speculation prominent from both the maximalist and
minimalist camps. I would therefore recommend that interested readers examine both sides of the story before making any
concrete decisions about the historicity or lack thereof of the Bible and its stories.
_____________

I am SO glad I checked this one out from the library before buying it. The authors are by no means researchers. The jump
to conclusions prematurely. I was amazed it was printed before someone told these two that they need to do more research.
There are better books out there...find one!
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This book fails as logical and historical reasoning. Contrary to their billing by the usual professional shills as "objective and
scientific," at least one of the authors, Silberman, is a spin-meister whose recent book, "Digging for God and Country," is a
political manifesto. I admit I've seen the hard evidence presented worse, but their logic -- the way they draw inferences from
that evidence -- is what is truly pathetic. For example:
(1) The authors claim David was merely a local chieftain who never united an empire, because his Jerusalem was just a
large village, and because Israel and Judea had not yet emerged as organized kingdoms. Applying this logic to
Charlemagne, Aix-la-Chapelle was a large village (if that) and France and Germany had not emerged as organized
kingdoms, therefore Charlemagne was merely a local chieftain. Yet we know Charlemagne united most of Christendom,
notably France and Germany, into a vast empire the like of which Christian Europe has never seen before or since. So the
hard evidence, far from "differing sharply," chimes just perfectly with the inference that David was ancient Palestine's
Charlemagne. How can the authors imply that the "unparalleled" magnificence of Jerusalem couldn't have described a small
town, while ignoring that the whole description concerns all of TWO -- count 'em, one, two -- buildings: Temple of the
Lord and King's Palace? Our own mediaeval kings, Charlemagne included, built the most magnificent cathedrals and castles
amid (by our standards) the smallest mud-and-wattle towns. HELLO?
(2) The authors claim the Sinai Peninsula contains no evidence of the Exodus, yet they suppress recent discoveries of
striking evidence in Saudi Arabia, detailed in books like "The Mountain of Moses" by Larry Williams. One of his main
points: the Sinai Peninsula is exactly the WRONG place to look for evidence of the Exodus. Especially detestable is how the
authors' see-no-evil know-nothingism in this matter condones the Saudi goverment's ongoing demolition of irreplaceable
artifacts in situ.
(3) The authors claim Abraham anachronistically kept camels long before they were tamed [such "facts" are notoriously
prone to re-dating, but let it go], therefore the redactors confabulated all the stories about him and others. Haven't they seen
15th-century paintings depicting the Apostles wearing Florentine attire? Yet they wouldn't dare suggest the painters
fabricated Christianity, or so much as altered it in even one essential. Lamer still is their argument the Tanakh was
"uniquely" suited to further 7th-century BC politico-religious agendas, therefore the men of the age invented it. What if all
traces of civilization before 1400 were lost millennia hence? A couple of future wiseguys could use the same overreaching
logic to "prove" the Florentines invented Christianity, which sure was uniquely suited to further 15th-century agendas. It's
AT LEAST as logical (if not truer to human nature) to say people derive their agendas from their religion, as their religion
from their agendas. How then should a religion not be uniquely suited to further agendas derived from itself?
Our heroes are just "projecting." The New World Order uniquely is sacrilegious enough to fabricate a World Religion to
promote an agenda. (The organs of demagogy like Time magazine are quite open about it.) To give this monster a color
of justification requires making its archrival, Judeo-Christianity, appear to be an agenda-driven concoction too. Finkelstein
and Silberman don't believe their own "logic." They're just splashing headlines that will play in Peoria and motivate the
masses to embrace the new religion.
For all its pretensions to being "archaeological fact," this book does an EXPERT job of selling the public two controlling
attitudes vital to their eventually buying into that religion: (1) "Your own favorite religion, folks, is also an agenda-driven
confabulation," and (2) "What's the matter with agenda-driven confabulations? Go ahead, grab the comfort." Why else, amid
debunking a religion they obviously scorn, do the authors strain to conserve the emotion of reverence itself? Religion for
sure is nothing but a booby prize for prize boobies if it's nothing but a "deeply rooted sense of shared origins, experiences
and destiny that every human community needs in order to survive." But this is precisely what a New World Order needs in
order to survive: a religion that can be as plastic and manipulative as it wants to be, and still lay claim to our reverent
submission.
Underlying the scheme is the authors' unswerving allegiance to the Materialist Paradigm, of which Democritus gave the
classic aphorism over 2000 years ago: "The only reality is atoms and the void; everything else is opinion." [That this is not
science but metaphysics is illustrated by the medical investigation of after-death experiences. Every last vital sign is flat; thus
100.0% of the EMPIRICAL (truly scientific) evidence says the patients are dead, 0.0% says they're alive. If ANY evidence of
life existed, doctors could tell the dead from the near-dead; but they can't. Yet Materialists insist revived patients only had a
"near-death" experience -- because the PARADIGM (not the evidence!) says dead configurations of atoms can't revive. All
the facts contradict, but The Paradigm still wins; the fanatic just fantasizes it will be vindicated somehow by future facts.]
Occasionally the facts do unequivocally support Finkelstein and Silberman's theories, but when they don't, the facts are
never allowed to support what might be a stronger theory if that doesn't square with The Paradigm. Most glaring in a book
about the Bible is the rigorous exclusion of God as anything but a figment of human intellect. The implications of this are
on display if one reads between the lines: human beings are configurations of atoms to be managed like any other
configurations, and "religion" is how it's done, though God doesn't exist as He isn't a configuration. The agenda of animal
instinct is everything; no spiritual agenda can exist. Our brave new world, then, is destined to belong to the subtlest
manipulator of all....
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The physical evidence that Finkelstein/Silberman present is public, precedes the publishing of this book, and is available
elsewhere as well. Finkelstein only digs at Megiddo, Silberman is not even an archeologist. They have an agenda they want
to present and they do so in this book. However, a completely different analysis of the same evidence is presented in other
books, for instance in Israel in Egypt by James K. Hoffmeier (1999). The evidence is there, it's just what story you make
up to try and fit the evidence. Archeology is a very inexact field, and when you find a pottery shard or a wall, you can fill
your mind with almost any story. Since Finkelstein/Silberman come with well known biases and predispositions, I don't
give their stories too much heed, and most Israeli archeologists don't agree with them either.
_____________

The latest timewaster from a pair of authors popular with those who want to write their own moral code by denying the
reality of the Commandments of the Creator.
By attempting to deny the historicity of the Bible (to the ludicrous extent of erasing Moses and Abraham) Finkelstein and
Silberman have not only poured scorn upon their Jewish upbringing, but also eliminated any basis for independent
verification of their claims, which become mere opinion.
For a much more realistic and satisfying approach to interpretation of the Bible in the light of history, science and our
God-given human reason, I would recommend instead The Science of Historical Theology, by John F. McCarthy (ISBN
0895554410). As director of the Roman Theological Forum, his work ... provides some genuine scholarship in the area of
Biblical exegesis.
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Israel Finkelstein just rehashes his hypotheses which he has been stumping across Israel and abroad, that the Bible is false,
etc. etc. Basically, he tries to delegitimize the Bible in any way possible, even when his findings corroborate the Bible, i.e.
Solomon's gates, he still attempts to find a solution to why it isn't correct. But his basic evidence is: lack of evidence. So, if
archeologists haven't found evidence of, for instance, Abraham, Finkelstein concludes he didn't exist. But in the real world,
and sadly for him, lack of evidence does not constitute evidence. Sorry, Mr. Finkelstein. Finkelstein and his cohorts are in
the minority position in Israel (though vocal and media savvy in order to create controversy and to sell books), so it's best
to temper his hypotheses with the majority opinion among Israeli archeologists.
Up until the early 1990's, these archeologists said David didn't exist. Then someone found an inscription naming 'Bet
David' which these guys couldn't deny (though they tried). Now, faced with real evidence, they try to diminish David. It's
the same pattern over and over with archeologists like Finkelstein. Those who come with preconceived biased notions taint
their own reputations and the veracity of their works. I simply do not trust Finkelstein anymore because of his twists and
turns, and the majority of credible archeologists in Israel don't agree with him either. Instead of this book, I recommend
'Israel in Egypt' (1998) instead, which considers all evidence fairly, unlike this book which has an agenda to prove.

As a professional historian, I am profoundly embarrassed by the impression that this book must leave in the minds of most readers. This is, quite simply, not the way historians work. A good historian is meticulous. He doesn't invent stories. He backs up every point he makes with evidence. If his argument is controversial, then he admits as much and confronts the opposing view. Unfortunately,
Mack's book is far from professional.

Mack's book rests entirely on imagined reconstructions of the past. He invents various "Jesus movements," but, although there is no direct evidence for any of them, he never confesses that he has indulged in conjecture. Quite the contrary, he goes on to tell us about what each of these imagined movements believed. He gives us scenes of how they met, what they talked about. He tells us what Paul
was thinking on numerous occasions as well. Mack nowhere admits that he has no sources for these imaginary scenes, and it is only professional scholars who can be expected to know that he has simply made them up. Likewise, Mack assigns dates to various sections of the Bible without at any time justifying those dates or giving the underlying argumentation behind them. Never once does he admit that
the dates and arguments he gives reside on the extreme fringe of Biblical scholarship. He pretends to be dishing out "fact," although his "facts" are hotly contested by scholars. It is a supreme act of dishonesty to lead non-specialists astray in the manner that Mack does in this book. Indeed, the central irony of Mack's work is that he accuses early Christians of mythmaking while he himself is
guilty of the same charge--acting as if his knowledge comes directly from God! There are no footnotes in the text and only a tiny unsatisfactory bibliography that ignores the vast scholarship on the subject which contradicts Mack's fringe opinions.

Given more space, I would happily give examples of Mack's deplorable historical method. However, I will have to settle for pointing out the sheer absurdity of his central thesis: Mack posits, anachronistically, that Jesus was a vague teacher of multiculturalism (Multiculturalism, which Mack constantly describes as "bold, heady, and wondrous" was a political buzzword in the early 1990's, when Mack
wrote the book). Mack's Jesus did nothing and taught little that was memorable, as evidenced by the "fact" that various groups immediately began to associate him with completely contradictory teachings. Nevertheless, this vague teacher spawned scores of "Jesus movements," ultimately leading to Christianity. Never, ever, does Mack explain how such a singularly unremarkable figure, who never went to
Jerusalem or did anything generally ascribed to him and who never taught most of the teachings attributed to him, should have become such a legendary individual that everyone in the Hellenistic world soon wanted to attach his name to their beliefs, schools, and/or cults. Absurd. But Mack has a political agenda: he takes any NT quotations that sound "multicultural" and declares that they are
earliest. Thus, he simultaneously validates his mid 90's political views while retaining the latitude to thrash the rest of Christianity for not being multicultural enough. Indeed, in one of the most anachronistic reconstructions imaginable, Mack sees virtually the entirety of the Christian mythogenesis as a struggle between the late 20th century political ideal of multiculturalism and its
opponents--all this happening 19 centuries ago!

This book is amateurish, politically-inspired dreck. I have no religious agenda, so it is simply as a historian that I counsel you to avoid it.
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You should also read "The Case For Christ". It is a story of a devout atheist's crusade to disprove the divinity of Jesus only to end up a believer in Him.
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I don't understand how people can take this seriously. This is basically the author's ploy to get his socio/political opinion out there and have it backed by his "Jesus".
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According to "Who Wrote the New Testament," Jesus movements arose in Galilee due to the social experimentation of people responding to the confusion caused by living in a multicultural society. Mack postulates that there were at least five separate groups of Jesus people in the earliest years: 1) the Q community, 2) "The Jesus School", 3) "The True Disciples", 4) "The Congregation of Israel", and
5) "the Jerusalem Pillars", (Mack, 44-45).

Mack argues that the earliest followers of Jesus remembered him as "a teacher who challenged individuals to think of themselves as citizens of the kingdom of God (Mack, 70). This united people in a form of social experimentation in which they met as groups, shared meals, and attributed sayings to Jesus; revising them as needed, to fit the "school of thought they were developing" (Mack, 45, 70).
Mack believes that Jesus' earliest followers were not all that interested in preserving his teachings. Rather, they felt free to create or change them to reflect the kind of communities they wanted to become (Mack, 46).

To be clear, Mack is not just postulating differing theologies among early Christians, such as among Hebrew and Hellenist Christians. He is postulating numerous independent Jesus groups with widely divergent beliefs ranging from those who know nothing about a resurrection to those who knowingly made up myths about Jesus as a resurrected god.

Mack's theory of numerous competing Jesus groups does not stand up to close scrutiny. In order for Mack?s theory to work he has to dogmatically assert (ignoring all evidence to the contrary) that the earliest followers of Jesus did not care enough about Jesus to pass on the stories of his life or teachings.

Mack then has to discredit the earliest actual sources for Jesus. So for example, Mack dogmatically asserts that the early Christian history presented in the Book of Acts is historically unreliable. Mack was either unaware, or simply ignored, the work of authors like Colin Hemer, the Greco-Roman scholar from Cambridge University, who provided a detailed defense of the historical reliability of the
Book of Acts in his book, "The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History" (Eisenbrauns, 1990).

Having dismissed the earliest actual sources for the history of Jesus, Mack then relies on imaginative reconstructions of hypothetical sources. In fact, Mack's theory of early conflicting Jesus communities is largely based on the dogmatic assertions of what must have happened, based on the postulation of the imagined beliefs (and dis-beliefs) of hypothetical communities behind the hypothetical
redactions of various ancient documents; all the while dismissing the earliest actual sources like Luke/Acts or the letters of Paul as completely unreliable, in spite of numerous scholarly studies to the contrary.

For example, while many scholars believe that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke may have been dependent on a lost source that scholars now call "Q", the fact is that "Q" remains a hypothesis. To postulate, as Mack does, the imaginative history of a hypothetical community behind a hypothetical gospel, and then to presume to tell readers what this and other hypothetical communities supposedly did or
did not believe, is to move well beyond the realm of scholarship into the realm of conspiracy theories!

When Mack says that the Jesus movements arose in Galilee due to the social experimentation of people responding to the confusion caused by living in a multicultural society, it sounds like he is confusing first century peasants with modern academics. I suspect that first century Palestinian peasants often worked from sun up to sun down struggling to put food on the table, and had much less time
for social experimentation? than 21st century academics sitting in their ivory towers pulling down six figure salaries while they come up with controversial new theories in their attempt to publish and not perish. One must conclude that the only mythmaking in "Who wrote the New Testament"; the Making of the Christian Myth, is the mythology contributed by Burton Mack himself.
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There are many reviews of this book that are on target. I will keep mine short. The author of the book is hostile to Christianity and hides behind supposed scholarship. The book is largely biased opinions. If one strains, one can find some useful information. For anyone who wants to see the author's bias most clearly, get a copy of the book and look at the last page of the last chapter. There, the
author puts forth such an absurd anti-Christian, anti-Bible, and anti-American vision that the rest of the book is put clearly into the context from which the author writes. I read the whole book, looking for a few nuggets, but finding few. My recommendation is that this book is not worth reading and certainly not worth buying.
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For an avid reader, few experiences are more disappointing than the discovery that an eagerly anticipated book is unworthy of its reputation. This is such an instance. From the outset, it is clear that Mack has an agenda, and neither facts nor a foolish commitment to scholarship must disturb it. Noting that "biblical imagery and themes pervade" our culture, he informs us that "the Bible is always
lurking in the background" when we discuss "attitudes toward sexual orientations, Jewish-Christian relations", "theories of white supremacy", and other topics. As a result, the Bible has become an impediment to progress that must be removed.

To banish the New Testament from its authoritative position, Mack wants us to agree that it is mere mythology, and as a result, its various claims and doctrines should not be taken seriously. But believers being what they are, Mack knows that this point must be made carefully. Otherwise, readers may become so defensive that they will resist his vision. To avoid this, he tactfully assures that
there is nothing really "wrong" with the fact that the New Testament is myth, and so we need not defend the early Christians who fabricated it. Instead, we must recognize that the early Christians were merely expressing their essential humanity by inventing tales that reassured them during their turbulent times. Having understood this, we can both revere the early Christians as real people and
dismiss their mythology, the New Testament, from its authoritative role in our world..

With his mission clearly in mind, Mack establishes the historical context for the New Testament's development. He tells us that Alexander the Great's conquests unleashed a series of events that culminated in the social turmoil for which the New Testament myths were the solution. Proceeding from this charmingly naïve hypothesis, Mack unfolds the most grotesquely malformed rendition of ancient
Mediterranean history I have ever encountered. It is terrifying in its aspect! His errors are uncountable, and they rise before us without limit, like the stars in heaven. Eventually they force us to our knees before the awful vision of Mack as a dark genius of misinformation whose reckless inventiveness is infinite, inexhaustible, and utterly unrestrained. There is no fact within history's
complex and subtle fabric that Mack cannot mangle, misrepresent, or misunderstand. He is the anti-scholar! Mack and his disdain for accuracy and reason are the universe's counterweight for real scholars and their obsession with them.

The most distressing aspect of this book is that its hypotheses are interesting and plausible, but a serious reader cannot evaluate them because they are not thoughtfully placed in the context of the relevant evidence. That is a job for a scholar, and so Mack is immediately disqualified. Ironically, his ignorant mishandling of the facts and his blatant bias toward a particular social agenda
combine to discredit his ideas, which may actually have merit. Unless a real scholar takes an interest in them, we shall never know.
_____________

This book would be laughable were it not for an audience of extraordinary ignorance that laps it up.
_____________

Richard Elliot Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible" was a masterpiece of scholarship that painted a vibrant portrait of the political intrigue that resulted in the creation of the Old Testament. Despite a similar title, Mack's "Who Wrote the New Testament" is none of those things.

One problem is that Mack's interpretations of Paul's writings seem incredibly unfounded. Paul's writings are the earliest we have, so they should give us the best insights. For example, Paul's description of the ritual of Communion indicate that the idea of a Last Supper existed early in the church. Mack dismisses this notion by claiming Paul's description is symbolic of a basic meal. Paul also
indicates that Jesus was a martyr. Mack ignores this and claims Mark developed the whole crucifixion idea. Based on Paul's disagreements with church leaders, Mack claims that Paul circumvented them and created his own theology--despite the fact that some of Jesus' original followers were still alive and able to dispute him! And speaking of church leaders, Mack makes the claim that Peter was not a
member of "the twelve" (apostles) that Paul mentions. This is a valid if highly debatable theory, but Mack simply ASSUMES it as if it were on par with the idea that men need air to breathe!

But the biggest problem is the hypothetical document of Q. Mark's Gospel, the first written, contains very little of Jesus' teachings. Matthe and Luke used Mark's story line but included teachings in their Gospels. The teachings they included are so similar that scholars believe the writers must have shared a common source. This source has been nicknamed Q. There is no hard evidence that Q ever
existed--it is merely the most logical conclusion.

That Q is a hypothetical document doesn't faze Mack. He actually claims that the material in Luke should be viewed as a virtual copy of the original material in Q. He assumes that Luke copied the ENTIRE document, IN ORDER, and WITHOUT ADDING OR MODIFYING ANYTHING. He either realizes the weakness of this contention or views it as obvious, because he certainly doesn't bother to explain it in any
detail. (Even "The Lost Gospel" is lacking in this regard.) With that settled, though, Mack claims it is possible to dissect Q and define several separate stages in the original "Jesus movement." It is this movement that Mack uses as a basis for all his other assertions in the book. (It should also be noted that Mack does not spend much time discussing Q, as he wrote a previous book on the
subject: "The Lost Gospel". That book however, does little to support Mack's theories.)

Does this sound pretentious? Ben Witherington thought so. In his book "The Jesus Quest" he rightly blasts Mack and his contemporaries for treating the known Gospels so flippantly while elevating documents such as Q to a status on par with the writings of Josephus.

To be sure, "Who Wrote the New Testament" has some fascinating theories, but that's all they are: theories. And it doesn't help that Mack's prose is occasionally dull enough to put a mummy to sleep. In fact, the first thirty pages or so make for an awfully hard read for someone just wondering who actually wrote the Gospel of Luke. (Actually, anyone looking for a list of names in answer to the
title question will be sorely disappointed.)

All in all, this isn't a BAD book; it just isn't a very good one. It's fine for getting a new perspective, and it will surely be embraced by those seeking to destroy Christianity, but the arguments aren't strong enough to hold up against Mack's opponents, so apologists need not worry about losing any of the faithful because of this.

Anyone caught in the middle, wondering if this Jesus business is for real, will probably find this and Mack's other books a waste of time. Maybe there simply isn't enough information available to answer the burning questions. But if the answers are out there, waiting to be found, it seems almost certain that Mack is not the person who will make the discovery.
_____________

Most of Mack's book deals with the question of when early Christian documents first appeared, who wrote them (individual or community of origin), (sometimes) why the author wrote the book, and how the person or community of origin understood, thought about, and used the document. This had the potential to be a book of great utility, but Mack states very definitive conclusions about controversial
topics, often on the basis of limited evidence. Moreover, he generally fails to inform the reader of the wide range of scholarly opinions on the subjects at issue. These shortcomings detract from the book.

For example, Mack dates the four Canonical Gospels as follows: Mark (~75 CE), Matthew (~85 CE), John (~100 CE), and Luke (~120 CE). Aside from a detailed, and non-controversial, presentation on why Mark was the earliest of the four, Mack provides only a limited basis for understanding either his relative or absolute dating of the other three. Similarly, he fails to mention that most scholars date
John as the latest of the four and that a few date Matthew as being later than Luke. He also fails to mention the wide range of dates assigned to each of the four Gospels by various scholars. For example, many Christian scholars date Luke to about 60 CE, whereas secular scholars assign dates of anywhere from 75 to 130. Moreover, most Christian scholars date all four Gospels to 90 CE or earlier,
whereas some secular scholars think that all four of them appeared after 90 CE. I think that Mack also concludes far too much, and too strongly, about the communities of origin for the four Gospels.

It gets worse with regard to some non-Canonical books. For example, Mack spends a fair amount of time on "Q", the hypothetical "sayings source" allegedly used by the authors of Matthew and Luke. (The theory here is that Matthew and Luke had two primary sources, Mark and Q.) According to Mack, Q originated around 50 or 55 CE (before any surviving Christian documents aside from some of Paul's
letters). He then proceeds to draw very strong conclusions about the contents and organization of Q, about the nature of the community that produced it (e.g., how they thought of Jesus), and about how they used Q. Mack also asserts that Luke was much more faithful to the structure of Q than was Matthew. Wow! To begin with, some reputable scholars, although a minority, think that Q never existed.
No fragment of Q has ever been found, and no surviving ancient document makes any reference to it. However, let us assume that Q once existed. If we further assume that: 1) Matthew and Luke each had exactly two written sources, namely Mark and Q, and 2) Matthew and Luke both incorporated all of Q, then it would be possible to conclude that Q consists of material found in both Matthew and Luke, but
not in Mark. However, this putative Q material appears in somewhat different order in Matthew and Luke. It is hard to see how one could determine which of the two was more faithful to the structure of Q. It is also hard to see how one could determine whether Q originated before or after Mark. Moreover, suppose that Matthew and Luke each used 90% of Q. In this case, it would be possible for 85% of
Q to appear in both Matthew and Luke, 5% to appear only in Matthew, 5% to appear only in Luke, and 5% to be lost. There is some Matthew-only and some Luke-only material. Maybe this consists in part of Q extracts that did not make it into both Matthew and Luke.

One could list numerous other examples of this sort.
_____________

Man, this book is so awesome! Mack shows us that New Testament scholarship is really an imaginative and creative art form. Mack, like some other NT scholars, hypothesizes that an underlying, pre-existing document may have existed that was used as a source for some passages common to both Matthew and Luke. We've no independent evidence of this hypothetical "Q" document, its content or source
(assuming that it existed at all) except what is pulled from Matthew and Luke. This makes serious and judicious scholars (like John P. Meyer) reluctant to assert lots of crazy conclusions about hypothetical Q and the community that propagated it. Mack's genius is to show us how this total lack of any shred of historical data about Q is really liberating, allowing us to make up any conclusions we
want about its content and source! Once you get as good as Mack at reading the hypothetical text of the hypothetical Q, you will even be able to identify hypothetical rough drafts (the "strata") of the hypothetical Q. Then you can really get creative!

Dispensing with the annoyances of evidence and history, we can totally make up what we want about the hypothetical Q and the imaginary Q-ites--we can decide that the Jesus of our own hypothetical Q is the "real" Jesus, and our Hypothetical "real" Jesus can be a social worker, or a magician, or a socialist, or Dead head . . . you name it! Is that awesome or what!? Make Jesus in your own image!
What's more, we can say that Q Jesus really only had a problem with authority figures and institutions and stuff-this is great!-we get to make up a Q Jesus who says that its really only religious guys in robes and stuff (like the Pope!) that are evil, but "real" Q Jesus didn't care so much if you or I sinned a lot-he just hated rules, man!
Even more cool-we can say that all of the other NT stuff that we don't like was just "myths" made up and added later by guys that were not as clued in as our Hypothetical Q-ites. In fact, we can dispense with EVERYTHING that ANYONE has ever said about Jesus before Mack came along. Check it out: It's only us moderns like Mack that have been so clever as to imagine the hypothetical beliefs of the
hypothetical Q-ites, so we can say that throughout all of Christian history, everyone else got it wrong! From old guys like Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante, to Therese of Lisieux, Thomas Merton and even Mother Theresa-the whole rest of Christian history is rubbish cuz EVERYONE took a wrong turn right after Q-ites, and only WE have been clever enough to conger up what the Q-ites might have thought!
Only Mack and us Q-ites know anything about Jesus, cuz we made him up from the hypothetical Q! And we can blame all that is wrong with human-kind on the wrong turn that Mack was not around to save us from until now!
Mack's method further breaks down the ugly dividing line between scholarship and imagination, and he strikes a great blow for academic freedom-freedom from rigor, judicious analysis, facts, and stuff.
Just one thorny problem. Maybe one of you rave reviewers can explain this to me: We do have evidence both within and outside of the NT that in the years immediately following Jesus' execution a bunch of dudes really did go around proclaiming the "myths" of Jesus' resurrection and divinity-and they suffered ridicule, hardship, torture and death for it. How to explain the behavior of James and Peter
and Steven and Paul and others? Why would they make up a Christ "myth" that would just make them greater enemies of the ruling Jewish and Roman elite and gain them even more lively humiliation, torture and execution than if they just said Jesus was a reforming Essene with strong public speaking skills? People make up stories for gain, not for ridicule, torture, and execution. (Ouch!) So, these
cats must have actually believed their own rap. So . . . let's add it up. On the one hand we have a historical record of first-generation martyrs loudly proclaiming their beliefs regarding the divine nature of Jesus, and on the other hand we have no historical record of the Q-ites whose beliefs in the hip anti-establishment kind of Jesus just happen to match perfectly those of the ever creative
Burton Mack. I wonder . . . who's generating the myths here-an early lunatic conspiracy of guys with an inexplicable death wish, or Mack?
Help me out! How can I invent my own Jesus when Paul and Peter and those guys that were around at the time got martyred for proclaiming their Jesus? Can we make up Q-ites that were prior even to Jesus, or maybe a Jesus who was prior to Jesus? The "real Jesus" unknown even to Jesus and his followers? Well, I am sure we can think of something. After all, there are so many who have devoted their
lives to the task of coming up with a cool Jesus-like, a Jesus who says it's okay to do whatever seems cool, like sleep around even. (After all, isn't that about the main source of everyone's beef today with the Jesus we've had for the last twenty centuries?) Well, with so much at stake, I am sure some of Mack's buddies out at Claremont will come up with something.
_____________

Mack demonstrates an amazing grasp of the material he is discussing. He paints many interesting and colorful images of how various figures in history actually decided what to put in their writings.
However, I am deeply puzzled and disturbed by this book. He makes much of the 'mythmaking' that he claims produced almost all the NT, yet he never defines what a 'myth' really is. Likewise he does not define 'fiction' although he terms the books of the NT as works of fiction.
Does he not realize how important these terms are? Most Christians in history became Christians, and remain so, based primarily on the conviction that the Bible (OT and NT) is substantially true-- that God was the real author of the Bible and that God was working in and though Jesus as recorded in the Bible. To state that the NT (and the Christian 'rewriting' of the OT)were works of fiction to
support changed social conditions, seems to mean that the information about Jesus was not the way things really happened. If so, then why should any thinking intelligent person base his/her life upon the fictionalized ideas and doings of a 1st century wandering preacher? Is this the question Mack is really posing? Is Christianity a huge mistake? I think Mack's mythmaking is misleading to say the
least.
_____________

Typical preconceived conclusions hidden thinly behind the author's own elaborately constructed fantasy. No foot notes. No source material. No substatiation or support of his views. It reminded me of a debunker's book on UFO's although the scholorship was not as good. It amazes me to what lengths this "author" goes to construct his very own myth. No Christian "mythmaker" could match him!

Don't waste your time with this. There are far more balanced texts available. This book seemed more constructed to impress the author's eastern liberal establishment friends than to credibly address the subject.
_____________

The subtitle of Who Wrote the New Testament? is "The Making of the Christian Myth." OK, I said, I'm ready to deal with a doubter, as long as he provides some good scholarship on the subject. What a disappointment; in no way is this good scholarship. With nary a footnote, Mack spins an entire book of scenarios and suppositions out of thin air. He has written a work of fiction, not of history or
theology.

Burton Mack opens his book by saying that he will not address the history of Jesus' life because almost nothing is known about him. He thus ignores the great volume of work that draws on sources outside the New Testament itself that indicate in the strongest terms that Jesus really lived and that the gospels are essentially true. See for example The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life
of Christ by Gary R. Habermas, in which the author demonstrates that aside from the Roman emperors, no life of the period is better documented than that of Jesus. Mack's reason for avoiding the evidence soon becomes clear.

The book is of the "postmodern" genre that says there is no such thing as objective truth, that every "text" just reflects the economic and social interests of the writer. Mack never says so, but it is clear from page 1 that he is an atheist who immediately discounts any possibility that God exists, or that Creation, miracles, or any other "supernatural" events have ever occurred. Needless to say,
Mack scoffs at the very idea of Jesus's resurrection. Mack looks at Christianity as might an anthropologist who finds an odd cult among some remote tribe in the Amazon. He pays no heed to the immense history and scholarship that is available on the subject. He never comes to grips with the real issues.

Mack's final chapter is a diatribe about how modern white Americans use Christianity to enslave and dominate the rest of the world. The fact that most non-white Americans are active Christians, as well as hundreds of millions of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, not to mention many civilizations over the past 2,000 years - none of this matters when Mack's preconceptions are at work. Read
something else instead of this book.
_____________

In "Who Wrote the New Testament" Mack asserts a picture of New Testament history that lies significanyly beyond the evidence that is currently available. He imposes a sociology of Religions padagim, and analyzes the New Testament through that lens (in much the same way Crossan uses cross-cultural anthropology.) Unfortunately, many of his operations are procrustean, and the majority are
unpersuasive. He equivocates with the word "myth" (in terms of a communities explanation for an event, and something false.) He also follows the standard Bultonian "Trajectories" interpretation relies too heavilly on too little evidence (i.e. Galations.) He asserts a "Q Community", asserts that it can be stratified (ala Kloppenberg) and asserts that we can know about the circumstances that caused
the various "layers" to form. Unfortunately, the existance of Q itself is far from evident, even if it is currently the predominant padagim. Especially in regards to Q, his methodology is both weak and circular. Literary dependence is no longer an absolute in Biblical studies. Overall, Mack uncritically accpets the results of "critical" scholarship. His work reads like a conspiracy theroy - The
evidence looks this way because the 4th century Christian chruch wanted it to look this way. The Acts of the Apostles is a late Myth, forging the idea of an Appostalic Age. Overall, I find his argument to be totally unconvincing.
_____________

Mack says previous understanding of Bible authorship is wrong and presents a new account. This isn't based on new manuscript or historical discoveries, but on a way of manipulating literature that allows one to construe multiple authors with different purposes, smoothed together by editors (or redactors or mythmakers) who were trying to construct a myth for some purpose.

The problem with this book (& approach) is it is based on a type of logical fallacy called circular reasoning. The conclusions one wants to obtain are built into the premises. He starts out assuming the Bible is purely a work of human imagination, not divinely inspired and written down by humans. This excludes any contrary evidence.

The technique then proceeds by deciding there are X main themes, then goes through and groups those themes, deciding what odors and penumbras of word sequence denote the theorized authors, discarding those that don't fit (when the author talks about the clever editing, it's a red-flag his grouping criteria failed at that point), then announces (surprise) X sources have been "discovered".

The only reason he doesn't end up with X+1, X+2 all the way up to X+n authors, etc., is because he doesn't consistently apply the technique, and/or the text is too short and baloney can't be sliced any thinner.

The author identifies a predecessor book this way, called "Q" which, of course, undercuts Christianity. The author writes:

Mack: "... since we did not have an independent manuscript of Q ... One would have to line up the sayings between Matthew & Luke in parallel columns and decide between them where the wording differed slightly... Voila. An entirely different world of Christian beginnings comes into view.

Mack: "no other text or set of texts from the first century lets us fill in an entire history of an early Christian community-in-the-making this way.." (translation: there is no evidence for this alternate history beyond this method of selecting among verses in Matthew & Luke)

Further study suggests to Mack and others, three distinct layers to this mythical earlier work (i.e. the theory had to be puffed up to crank out more commentary on it):

Mack: "recent scholarship has found it possible to identify three layers of instructional material in Q....the earliest layer, Q1, consists largely of sayings about the wisdom of being a true follower of Jesus. Q2 ... introduces prophetic and apocalyptic pronouncements of judgement upon those who refused to listen to the Jesus people. And Q3 registers a retreat from the fray of public encounter to
... thoughts of patience and piety for the enlightened ones

This type of gaming appeals to people of a speculative nature. One can fill papers, journals and books sniffing out new layers all without concern for it being valid. Labelling the texts as "Q1", "Q2", etc., also confers a sort scientific aura to the work, as if it was mathematical and precise when it is exactly the opposite.

Burton Mack is professor of early Christianity at the School of Theology at Claremont and associate scholar at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont and has worked in the field for 40 years.

Why work on a subject for so long if one has no respect for and automatically dismisses the truth of what one is studying? As I read this book, I realized the focus of admiration is the POWER of the Bible to influence people, not the truth. If one discounts divine inspiration one would surely seek to rewrite it to participate in that power. And, indeed, Mack's conclusion from this exercise in
circular reasoning? The New Testament was written in response to the "multi-culturalism" of the Mediterranean in the first century. That is, he discovered the motive was just like the current fad sweeping his campus and faculty meetings in modern America. Circular reasoning cannot produce new information. It just superimposes familiar biases.

This book is significant because it is repeated so often. But as I read through pages of unsupported assertions, I was most reminded of a book on phrenology, the science of reading the bumps on ones head to predict the future. Impressive account of the shape of skulls, but when all is done, you don't actually know anything except what the author thinks. So what?

It is Greenberg, not the reader who is making the claims that certain parts of the Bible are mythical. The burden is on him
to make his case, not the reader. Thus, it should be pointed out that he simply has not offered any evidence. As a criminal
trial lawyer, perhaps he sometimes has to make arguments without evidence, and we can give him credit for a good try.
However, like a court of law, the rules of scholarship require a high level of proof before finding the defendant guilty. But
all Greenberg offers is his opinions and anecdotal evidence. He is not convincing, except possibly to those who already
share his views and take comfort in seeing a book written, however thin the case it makes, that supports their viewpoints.
Lacking any more convincing evidence, the Bible must be found innocent of being based on myths.
_____________

I picked up this book with interest as I have studied archaeology, the bible and have a particular interest in ancient Egypt.
Although there was some interesting and thought provoking information, the author's claims of "myth" verses "reality"
completely undermine his work and credibility. For example, claiming that the first humans were Adam and Eve is a "Myth"
and that the "Reality" is that they were the Egyptian deities Geb and Nut is absurd. Geb and Nut are as fictional (or
mythological) as Adam and Eve in his research and the author has no way of proving his claim that one is "real" (reality). I
would have given the author more credit had he presented his ideas in a different way - just showing the possible origins of
various stories in the Bible rather than claiming "Myth" versus "Reality". But I guess a reasonable, logical and more
tempered approach wouldn't sell as many books as the more "sensational" yet less believable "Myths exposed!" type of
writing. Too bad.
_____________

The title of this book is somewhat misleading, and it should be called "Egyptian mythology and its relationship to the Bible
stories". If you are interested in this topic, go ahead, it will be a wonderful book. But if you are looking for scientific
explanations or archeological discoveries that confirm or deny the biblical stories, if you are looking for facts that justify
calling myths to the Old Testament narratives, go find another book.
_____________

The author's introduction points to his over-reliance on the tired and much discredited Document Hypothesis of the
Pentateuch, and from there, he treats the reader to a somewhat juvenile series of undocumented inferences based on his
fascination with Egyptology. How any serious student of bibliology could term this book "scholarly" is beyond
imagination, since it includes no footnotes and no attempts to validate the author's claim that Bible stories emanated from
Egypt.
The Document Hypothesis, which is the author's stated foundation, has not a single scrap of archeological evidence behind
it. Of the thousands of ancient Biblical manuscripts recovered from the ancient world, not one has shown the Pentateuch as
anything but an integrated whole. The once vaunted "JEPD" documents do not exist in archaeology and remain the
imaginative inference of a 19th century philosopher. Hardly a firm foundation for attempts to mythologize the Bible.
_____________

I returned this book. I was hoping for a work of scholarship in which the author would carefully argue for his views by
presenting documented research. This is not the case. Instead, the author simply throws out conjectures about the Egyptian
origins of the Hebrew scriptures. There is absolutely no attempt to connect any of this with academic Egyptology or the
mountains of Biblical scholarship. Read Richard Friedman or Mark Smith or Finkelstein if you're interested in genuine
scholarship from a liberal/skeptical point of view.
_____________

Greenberg's attempt at debunking Bible stories is about as far fetched as Freud's interpretation of dreams. Since he doesn't
believe a single story in the Bible he jumps through esoteric and literary hoops in an attempt to prove they are perloined
from other sources. To believe his theory, one would have to conclude that the writers of the Bible were familiar with
Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician and Cannanite ancient texts (some of which were so secret even their priests didn't know
about them) which preceeded their writing for centuries. In addition, the writers of the Bible thought nothing of taking pagan texts and
turning dieties into human characters. His attempt at finding similarities between ancient pagan stories and Bible stories are
so stretched it is has to imagine what type of drug he was on to conjure up these connections.
Well, it's good reading when you are waiting for the computer to boot up.
_____________

While this book did have some interesting information, it wasn't an entertaining read overall. Moreover, it is not very
scholarly. There are no footnotes and the conclusions are somewhat abrupt. My biggest problem was that as far as I am
aware it contained no myths of the new testament. It should be titled "101 Myths of the Old Testament."
_____________

When I read this book's description on Amazon I thought this might be an interesting read, and so I checked this book out
through Michigan's interlibrary loan system. I read part of the introduction then promptly returned this book to the library.
If I had bought it, I would have promptly thrown it into the garbage can.
Greenberg claims that his views are in line with current scholarly consensus, but in actually his views are far from
mainstream. Not that being out of the mainstream is bad, but Greenberg twists wording to fit his own theories. He starts
out talking about the Documentary Hypothesis, but that is where his views and those of mainstream scholars end. He is
also the author of "The Moses Mystery" which basically claims that the Israelites borrowed their monotheistic religion from
the Egyptian sun-cult. There is absolutely no archaeological or empirical evidence to support this claim. All the claims made
in this book are based on that assumption.
I am open to new ideas and theories, but when a claim is based on no evidence or, at best, semi-circumstantial evidence,
that claim is worthless, and so is this book.
_____________

The book attempts to trace the roots of 101 bible stories from the Old Testament to the Babylonian, Egyptian, Assyrian,
Mesopotamian or Sumerian mythology. Unfortunately there is not a great deal of specific dating of material when drawing
comparisons. The Hebrews are not referenced as a source for any of the stories, rather are cited as being the editors of
them. The author does not address the potentially larger issues at play with the common motifs in various cultures, thus the
book became rather stale as I made my way through it.

Well, I must say, I was quite disappointed with this book. I was hoping to read what actually happened and how Christian Myths were created, but instead the book talks about theories and examines them so deeply that it would totally lose me; it felt like a really boring text book that quotes other books and people in every line of the book. I am an avid hostory reader and in particular love
European history, but this book was really bad. Half way through the book, I stopped reading and picked up Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King, what a book. I also read his other book, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling (see my reviews).
________________

This book leaves me feeling very conflicted. A part of me sympathizes with what Burton L. Mack is attempting to do and a part of me feels alienated and repulsed. I sympathize with his desire to share with his readers what he knows of the evolution of the New Testament texts and indeed of the Old Testament, too.

Mack tells us he is "a biblical scholar and historian of religion who has been engaged in the academic study of religion and culture for 30 years"

The author writes in the prologue: "A wealth of information is available in these fields of study that can help us understand how the Bible came to be and how and why the Bible continues to affect our culture. This knowledge is vast, detailed and scholarly, but it is not arcane. ... It seems a shame that no-nonsense knowledge of this kind is seldom called upon when discussing the Bible in either
parochial or public forums. Perhaps a no-nonsense book about the making of the Bible will help."

But who decides what is and what is not nonsense where all these erudite academic disciplines are being applied to our understanding of the New Testament alone the entire Bible? Why, Mack decides, of course. Having identified himself as the authority, he apparently expects his readers to unquestioningly accept his every say-so, even in the most controverted areas of biblical studies. It is that
kind of arrogant authoritarianism that alienated me.

Those of us in the Roman tradition are perhaps hypersensitive to demands for blind obedience to any authority that argues, "It is so simply because I say it is so." Mack seems to be claiming absolute authority for personal interpretations and conclusions based on limited and narrow research. In these ecumenical times, when Protestant and Catholic biblical scholars are in constant dialogue in all
areas of scriptural studies, it is certainly surprising that an author such as this seems either to be unaware of or to have totally dismissed the work of scholars like Raymond Brown and Joseph Fitzmyer.

Mack seems to have chosen to associate himself with the Jesus Seminar school of thought. He is an expert on Q1, Q2 and Q3 and on the gospel of Thomas. He is certainly close to the findings and positions of John Dominic Crossan's Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (NCR, Feb. 4, 1994). Many of Mack's appeals to "acknowledged, uncontroverted positions" rang Crossan bells for me.

Mack subtitles his work, "The Making of the Christian Myth." But even at the end of the book, I was still not sure of how he understood the content of the myth. I found his use of the term ambiguous. Does it imply that the Christ myth was concocted as a deliberate deception for purely pragmatic organizational and institutional ends? That is certainly insinuated.

Myth can be used, of course, in a perfectly orthodox way, as A.K. Commaraswamy explains: "Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words." Rabbi Heschel tells us: "The reality which myth presents in symbolic form is the unknown transcendental reality that lies beyond observation and simple deduction but that is recognized as existing and operative; myth may
represent it as personal being (divine or demonic), a Thou rather than an it."

In this sense, myth implies not falsehood but truth, not primitive, naive misunderstanding but an insight more profound than scientific description and logical analysis can ever achieve.

I'm not at all sure that Mack would embrace this understanding of myth in the context in which he uses the term. In fact, he totally avoids the questions of biblical revelation and inspiration. The whole story of the formation of the Christian Bible is an exclusively human story, and Mack believes that he has given us a no-nonsense account of how it all happened.

In his epilogue, he discusses the prospect of ridding the contemporary culture of the insidious influences of this Christian Bible so that we may imagine and create the sane societies that are desperately needed in our multicultural world. It may be much more difficult and far more destructive than Mack seems to think. Why, one must wonder, would a "John Wesley professor of New Testament studies"
even contemplate such an outcome?

The "fact" is that is only your opinion.

It is not my opinion.

You got that?

You must be insane.

Well, copping an attitude about it is not going to work either.

Read what I've written in other posts, and hopefully you'll gather
enough information to perceive how I've already answered that question,
many, many times.

Such is the ignorance of those who are unable to publicly say "Jesus
is LORD."

<><

"... no one can say 'Jesus is LORD' except by the Holy Spirit." (1 Cor
12:3)

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.med.cardiology/msg/1b0c2b85ef6a4310?

Ooooo.... I feel privileged.

I got a one-liner from Mr. One Liner himself.

<yawn> and <stretch>

I'm afraid there'll be no time for that.

In fact, after meeting Him, you'll never again get anything you want.

It'll only be a never-ending series of unwanted events, from then on.

That would be a perverse want rather than a need.

Confusing wants with needs is a common problem among those unable to
publicly say "Jesus is LORD."

<><

"... no one can say 'Jesus is LORD' except by the Holy Spirit." (1 Cor
12:3)

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.med.cardiology/msg/1b0c2b85ef6a4310?