All books are written for or against some point of view, and the books of the Bible are no different. Bible book authors were often motivated to write because they wanted to challenge or correct those who had written before them. As Helms explains, The Bible is a war-zone, and its authors are the combatants. Paul said of Peter, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong (Gal. 2:11). Helms notes that Jeremiah condemned the entire religious establishment of his time the very same people that other Bible authors held in highest esteem: prophets and priests are frauds, every one of them (Jer. 8:10). Luke felt the need to write another gospel even though many writers have undertaken to draw up an account of the events (Luke 1:1). Luke obviously felt that Mark s gospel was filled with errors and edited it freely. Not even Mark s account of the words of the dying Christ was left unaltered.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A deep dive into biblical history...,
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This review is from: The Bible Against Itself: Why the Bible Seems to Contradict Itself (Hardcover)
Randel Helms is a well regarded Biblical scholar. In this work he details the subtle inconsistencies and glaring contradictions of the modern incarnations of the Christian Bible. This work is best read by someone with a more than passing familiarity with the Bible (including its alternate forms). While scholarly, the information is presented in a more or less chronological order and is fairly easy to read.
Helms spends a good bit of time with the New Testament, presenting some detail of the battle between the Jacobites (followers of James) and Paulists (followers of Paul). At no time does the work challeneg the legitimacy of faith, rather it reminds us that the bible was crafted by people and thus subject to their own interjections and plagarisms. The correlations between Egyptian myth, Old and New Testament is truly striking. I especially appreciate the inclusion of references in the original Greek. If you are interested in the history of Judaism and Christianity and its beliefs, then pick up this work. I would also recommend a basic primer on Biblical history.
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Bible Scholarship,
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This review is from: The Bible Against Itself: Why the Bible Seems to Contradict Itself (Hardcover)
Randel Helms may be the world's most underrated biblical scholar. This is probably due to a few factors: First, the smoothness and accessibility of his writing; second, the brevity of his books relative to other scholarship; and, third, his primary approach of addressing the bible as literature, and examining it in terms of style, allusion, metaphor, and historical perspective.
His new book, The Bible Against Itself, is the third in a trilogy of such examinations, the previous books being the excellent Gospel Fictions (1988), and Who Wrote The Gospels (1997). All short books, they each contain as much detail and scholarly citation as books four times their length. The Bible Against Itself delves into many of the outstanding contradictions in the bible, and helps explain them by showing how various books in the bible were written in opposition to other books, to dispute them and hopefully supplant them. Helms chronicles a history of literature that came into being as a result of the constant struggle within a people's culture to identify themselves and their god - a struggle that lasted from the exile to Babylon through the first couple centuries of Christianity. This struggle was comprised of multiple opposing factions, each passionately dedicated to their points of view and as passionately opposed to the views of the others. The literature that espoused these views form a history of the development of Jewish and Christian laws and philosophy that is less concerned with historical truth than it is with persuading the culture to see things according to the writer's point of view. And this persuasion is generally accomplished through threats of damnation, insults, and other vitriol. Read this book. Read about the prophets calling the other prophets blasphemers, the Paulist Christians labeling the Jacobite Christians dogs and sinners, and vice versa, and the apocalyptic authors erring again and again, but continuing to predict anyway (using as their sources the errors of previous apocalyptic theories). You'll love it. It's a great book.
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So much to digest,
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This review is from: The Bible Against Itself: Why the Bible Seems to Contradict Itself (Hardcover)
It isn't a very long book, but there is so much in it I was amazed. Its the single best book I've read on the subject of the Bible. I think that believers need to read this book and think about the documents that make up the basis for their faith and where those documents came from. This book showed me the human side of the texts that make up the bible, and why so much of the bible is well, confusing. The authors style is very quick I'd say, you dive right in without any apologies like in Dennetts "Breaking the Spell". I liked that, it got to the meat of the matter and challenges the reader to keep up with the point the author was trying to make. Atheists and Believers should check this one out.
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