Customer Reviews

The Origins of Christianity & the Bible

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There are many books that have been written about Christianity and the Bible, but Andrew D. Benson's *The Origins of Christianity and the Bible* is hands down the best I have read. The big difference between other books and Benson's is that this one backs up everything it says with proof in the form of ancient quotations, authoritative sources or the Bible itself. The author's strategy is simple: provide tremendous amounts of information without attacking anyone's beliefs and let the conclusions take care of themselves. And the only conclusion that one can rationally draw after reading this book is that the Bible, far from being the "inspired, inerrant word of God," is a book that reflects the attitudes, opinions, prejudices, and yes, the God, of its authors. Benson shows comparisons between ancient Canaanite writings about the God El (a word which is translated "God" over 200 times in the Hebrew Bible-Strong's number 410) and the Bible's descriptions of the Hebrew God Yahweh ("the LORD" in most English Bibles). Benson also demonstrates how New Testament authors took Old Testament passages out of context to further their agendas. And rather than just pointing out Bible contradictions, Benson explains why the contradictions occur-e.g. because of editing or differing oral traditions. Every serious student of the Bible-from Christians and Jews to atheists and agnostics-should own this book. Quite simply, it is the best available.

ORIGINS is extremely well-researched and thoroughly documented, perhaps the most accessible and in-depth study of Scripture available. It is a delight to read and an excellent reference that anyone interested in Christian theology ought to have in his/her personal library. I highly recommend this book. I should like to have written it myself.

Benson's book exemplifies thorough unbiased research. The 2,577 footnotes referencing 175 scholarly works demonstrates the incomparable extent of this research. It should be a MUST READ for those interested in The Origins of Christianity and the Bible. It is one of my most trusted reference sources because the author has no religious or denominational axe to grind. He simply lays out the facts with an abundance of footnoted references from reputable Christian and non-Christian scholarly resources. As a former evangelical preacher, bible school teacher and Christian conference speaker I will tell you Benson opens profound new perspectives necessarily obscured or avoided in bible schools and seminaries.

Andrew Benson has written a remarkable book detailing the origins of Christianity and the Bible that I believe should be read by all seekers of knowledge. Read this wonderful book and find out what's taught in many seminaries and universities but not in churches.

I think that the great majority of Christians would be shocked to learn that the Bible contains thousands of contradictions, inconsistencies, and outright mistakes, all well documented by many biblical scholars. Additionally, it's replete with examples of injustice, absurdity, intolerance, cruelty and violence. As was pointed out in a previous review, many Christians are unfamiliar with the influence that early Babylonian myths had on the Bible as well as those from other ancient countries such as Persia and Egypt. I suspect that most Christians are completely unaware of the many similarities between the dying and rising godmen of the Greco-Roman mystery religions and the story of Jesus. Many other comparisons can be made that suggest influence's on the Bible from earlier times such as the similarities in the writings of Philo of Alexandria to the Gospel of John which was written many decades after the writings of Philo. Unfortunately, churches choose not to present this type of information to their parishioners just as they do choose to use very selective scriptures in teaching the Bible while ignoring perhaps 90% of the other biblical scriptures. Whether this is all new to you or you're already a serious student of biblical history and want to learn more, Mr. Benson's book is not only a great introduction to the origins of Christianity and the Bible but, additionally, it contains a compilation of information and reference materials that would require reading a great many other books to acquire.

I think the comprehensive nature and documentation of sources is what impresed me the most about Mr. Benson's book. Additionally, he doesn't preach to his readers nor does he come across, as some writers on this subject do, as angry with Christianity; he simply presents the information and lets the facts speak for themselves. I highly recommend this book to any serious Bible student whether Christian, agnostic or atheist. It's not only a fascinating read but also a great reference book that you will return to again and again.

To quote from Mr. Benson's personal autograph to my book: "May knowledge replace superstition."

This book is comprehensive, concise, remarkably well documented, thorough, and clear. It is an excellent work of scholarship as others have also said. Others have already gone into great detail but I want to just confirm what they're saying and also say "kudos" to the author.

I would suggest that there is a growing groundswell of support for a mature, authentic spirituality that dares to achieve a kind of middle ground concerning the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the best books to lead us to this 'promised land' is Andrew's 'The Origins Of Christianity And The Bible.' You see, on the one hand we have the ancient mindset that enshrines the Old and New Testament as containing the verbatim, inerrant 'Word Of God' that characterizes fundamentalism in Judaism, Catholicism, Orthodox,and the Protestant denominations. One the other extreme is the over-the-top agnosticism that is so intolerant of the myriad inconsistencies and contradictions found in the Bible that it dismisses the entire thing out of hand as being untrue, out of date, and a waste of a good mind.
I think Andrew has succeeded in providing us with the necessary tools to grow out of our spiritual, historical infancy and get us to really start thinking for ourselves - in a mature way, and strive to reach a place somewhere between these two extremes. There is deep spiritual truth behind mythology, narrative, parable, and so on. The Bible writers were well-meaning enough, but still captive to the cultural sensibilities of their day such that we simply cannot call their writings the 'Word of God.' But we ought not throw out the baby with the bathwater, for as I'm convinced, there is nevertheless a higher Power urging us to bring down the light of goodness and justice to this oftentimes troubled world. I am glad to have this excellent reference, and look forward to what will yet come from the brilliant mind of this scholar.

Well, it's one book your church doesn't want you to read. I've read "The Bible UnEarthed", "Christ in Egypt", and "The Jesus Puzzle". I thought I had covered the major points of both the old and new testament; like 95% of what I read in Mr Benson's effort here was new; i mean to say that most of what Benson presents in this book was new to me even after reading the books I stated as my beginnings in reading about the Bible. I found this book by typing in some words in google and seeing what I got; i don't remember exactly what I was searching for, but I found this book; as soon as I felt comfortable money wise, I pretty much decided to buy this book. I actually had Frazier's "The Golden Bough" amongst my 'amazon' cart list; but, I decided to drop that I buy this. I hope to get around to buying and reading that book; but, I'm pretty happy with my choise right now! I basicaly wanted to read this book to cover a period of history not covered by the above books; that of the few centuries before the supposed birth and life of Jesus Christ. This book delivered and gave much more.

I actually stopped reading around page 246; that's when he gets into I don't know if 'extra' stuff would be the right way of putting it; but, I feel that after page 246, he's covering other stuff beyodn the history and what the history tells us.

The only thing I feel disappointed in is that it seems that Mr Benson doesn't cover the history covered in "The Bible UnEarthed." Disappointing is probably a bit too strong however as that book came out after the publishing of this book. Still, considering the amazing archaeology presented in this book, it's a bit 'surprising' Benson didn't know the history presented in "The Bible UnEarthed." Also, despite some use and mention of the dead sea scrolls, I think this book came out at the same time as Eisenman's "James Brother of Jesus." That's my next reading actually; but, based on everything I can find about what Eisenman is trying to say, it seems that Benson doens't consider Eisneman's findings either. This is not to take away from what Benson has doen either since he may not have known about that research. Yes, he knew some but not quote the thousand pages of "James Brother of Jesus." This is probably one of my biggest possibly points that Benson misses; but, i have to stress again it's not his fault as that research hadn't been made yet.

Benson tries to give the Hisorical Jesus the benifit of the doute. After pages 246, he has "Did Jesus Exist?" where he tries to come up with a few passages suggesting that maybe there was a historical Jesus. I'm not too sure those passages are really so significant. Did Jesus really go to Corinthia?

I think a point that Eisenman tries to be coy about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that while Paul was in competition to some degree with James, James is not the brother of Jesus. Do the Dead Sea Scrolls mention a Jesus Christ? No! Well, maybe I need to read Eisneman now, but I seem to recall that the Dead Sea Scrolls do not mention a Jesus Christ.

Mr Benson further goes back and forth about the Historical Jesus with respect to whether Paul knew of him or not; while on one hand, he points out the numerous passages where Paul says he did not learn of Jesus by meeting him, and that he essentialy derived him from scripture; well, I recall him trying to derive from some passages of Paul that there was an Historical Jesus. I just want to point out some passages beyond the point that Jesus Christ is not mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Well, I think I'll come back edit and after looking up my notes of other books; to say the least, i have passages where Paul is saying how the name Jesus is just a code word from scripture. I've seen this 'code word' jesus amongst some christian church fathers as well; also, I have a passage of Barnabas to the affect that in order to practice our faith, we must historicise Jesus. Right now, I've got to go!

Here's one of my promised quotes,

"then he clearly manifested himself to be the son of god. For had he not come in the flesh, how should men have been able looked upon him, that they might be saved?" - Epistle of Barnabas chapter 4:13-14

Here's something else I found curious; Mr Benson finds much Plato in the Bible. I've heard of the following quote . . .

"the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified" This is out of Plato's Republic.

The crucified is often translated as impaled; but, if you read about like in Allegro's "Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christians" you'll see some interesting analyses about 'impaled'; this is about impaled from other considerations other than the above Plato quote; so, it's completely independent. What's remarkable is not just that Benson misses this quote, but that he has lot's of plato quotes other than the one I'm showing here in this review.

Plato's republic was found amongst the stash of Gnostic gospels of the Nag Hammadi found in like 1938 or something like that.

I'll of course try to come back and edit this to give the other quotes I promised;

I was really blown away by this book. The sheer scale of the research and the detail Benson has gone into is commendable in the extreme. It seems that his perspective is to treat the bible as an historical document just as an historian would any other religious text from the era and then systematically explore its various aspects with reference to other materail, beliefs and cultures of the day.
You can really see how the bible reflects the culture at the time the various parts were written and the variety of techniques and sources Benson pulls together make this quite a monumental undertaing on his part.

It seems from its rather twee layout and construction that this is not an undertaking by a large publisher but a labour of love from someone with a genuine desire to research this particular set of documents and as such I'm so pleased I bought a copy and I hope he sells more in the years to come

This book is great for atheists. It will justify their unbelief and give them hope that they are right. Unfortunately, the scholarship is extremely weak and prejudiced.