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where would you say is a good place to start off reading the bible? im kind of overwhelmed by just how much there is and im not sure if i should just start off from the beginning or not

Hey there lil brother/sister in Christ! Welcome to the spiritual family, I'm so excited to have you!

The cornerstone of our faith is Jesus Christ... because without His life, burial, resurrection and promise to return again... we have nothing. That being said, the Gospels are the best place to start. If you don't know, the Gospels are New Testament books called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They tell the story of Jesus' life through the eyes of different disciples who followed him and tried to put his teachings into practice. I would say the book of John is where you should start; learn about how Jesus lived his life as our example in the flesh and learn about how much He loves you.

The Bible tells us to pray for the wisdom to understand, so it may be helpful to do this before beginning your studies!

"If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask it of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him."

James Chapter One, Verse Five

Please feel free to leave another ask or even DM me privately if you would like more thoughts, support or advice on your spiritual journey. I'm so excited for you!!!

"On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness."

-Matthew 7:22-23

Here's your reminder that Biblical scripture is not a customizable template awaiting your feelings and individual bias to fill in the lines. You can claim to commit murder or any other atrocity "in the name of Jesus," but just know that those will be His words to you on Judgement Day.

Stop forming baseless opinions and begin opening up your heart and mind to His perfect teaching.

How Credible is the Evidence for the Historical Jesus?

By Author Eli Kittim

I recently had a discussion with a Christian apologist who, in reaction to our conversation, posted on his blog a list of 9 sources outside the New Testament and a series of texts composed in subsequent centuries to prove the existence of Jesus.

He mentions Josephus, who is writing roughly 70 years after the purported events, and whose references to Jesus have been the source of much controversy in that they may have been subject to Christian redaction (interpolation/expansion/alteration). Incidentally, the scholarly consensus concerning the historicity of Jesus is largely influenced by the writings of Josephus. But Josephus was presumably familiar with some of the early gospels and other NT writings. So, why should his reference to John the Baptist be considered as constituting factual history? The same could be said about his references to Jesus!

Next, he mentions Phlegon who is writing in the second century about a rumored eclipse that allegedly occurred in 29 AD.  Then he mentions a group of people like Suetonius, Thallus,  Mara Bar Serapion, all of whose writings are considered ambiguous with regard to Jesus (we’re not sure if the references are to Christ or not), and which range from the late 1st to the 3rd century CE.

Some of these writings refer to Christian superstitions, such as the virginal conception of Christ, including those of Celsius (whom the blogger cites) who defends paganism and actually refers to Jesus as a person born to a Roman father. Celsius is not only writing 150 years later, but he’s also embellishing the story with anti-Christian sentiment.

Firstly, these are not independent eyewitness accounts. Secondly, some of these writers have obviously been influenced by the gospels—as is the case with Celsius who is probably drawing on Matthew and Tacitus who is presumably drawing on Luke—and, thirdly, they are writing approximately 70 to 200 years after the purported events.

In other cases, we are either dealing with explicit historical inaccuracies, or with authors who are known for sometimes embellishing a story with myth. For example, Josephus is also known for his expansion on the Moses story, as we find in the Midrash, making it difficult for us to ascertain what is real and what is mythical in some of his works. Take Justin Martyr, for example, whom the blogger cites. Writing in the second century, he proved to be historically inaccurate. In his “Apology” (1.31), for instance, he incorrectly claimed that Ptolemy, under whom the Septuagint had been translated, was a contemporary of Herod. Given his inattention to historical detail, how credible is his reference to the trial of Jesus? Not to mention his reference to the census under Quirinius, which did not exist, or at least not in the way that Luke describes it. So, he’s obviously drawing on the gospel of Luke, and he is, after all, a Christian apologist.

Despite all these discrepancies and historical inaccuracies, this Christian blogger nevertheless mentions all these figures and suggests that they provide indisputable truth for the historical existence of Jesus.

In the final analysis, the fact that Jesus is not mentioned anywhere outside the New Testament for about 70 years after his alleged death should certainly raise some red flags about his existence. It means that Jesus is missing from the historical record until the late first century AD. And the earliest New Testament texts do not mention anything about a historical Jesus, or about his birth or ministry, as we find in later developments (expansions).

And yet, despite the lack of historical evidence, Christ is still who he claims to be, to wit, the son of God! After reading this essay, you might understandably wonder how I can possibly make such a claim. How could I say that Jesus never existed and in the same breath claim to believe in him? Well, because if you study the New Testament you’ll find that Jesus was never meant to come in Antiquity, but rather at the end of the world (Luke 17:30; 1 Peter 1:5, 20; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3; Hebrews 1:1-2; Hebrews 9:26; Revelation 12:1-5; etc.).

The historical Jesus is based more on mistaken assumptions about the evangelists’ intentions than careful interpretation of their writings. I’m arguing that the traditional Christian understanding of the theology of the gospels is fundamentally incorrect. We have confused apocalyptic literature with history, and turned prophecy into biography. It’s not just the evangelists’ theological problem in finding the literary means to get Jesus to Bethlehem so as to fulfill Micah’s prophecy, it’s ours as well since our “theological needs here create biographical ‘facts’" (W.D. Davies, and E.P. Sanders).

Even so, the gospels are still valid as they give us a theological outline of Christ’s life using stories that are filtered down from the Old Testament. So, in conclusion, the gospels are prophetic parables or apocalyptic stories that are to be believed (paradoxically) and handed down to posterity until the time of their fulfillment:

“Once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. … After this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:26-27).

Historical Jesus Vs Eschatological Jesus: On the Question of the Historicity of Jesus

OPEN ACCESS AND THE BIBLE: The Bible and Interpretation

This is Eli Kittim’s academic monograph——published in the Journal of Higher Criticism, vol. 13, no. 3 (2018), page 4—-entitled, "The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Christ According to the Greek New Testament Epistles."

To view or purchase, click the following link:

https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Higher-Criticism-13-Number/dp/1726625176

_______________________________________________

The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Christ According to the Greek New Testament Epistles

Published in the Journal of Higher Criticism, vol. 13, no. 3 (2018)

By Award-Winning Goodreads Author Eli Kittim 🎓

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:6b2a560b-9940-4690-ad29-caf086dbdcd6

There Was No Pre-Pauline Oral Tradition

By Eli Kittim 🎓

When asked why Paul didn’t give us more details about Jesus’ existence, some scholars often use a common strawman argument that everyone already knew the story and so Paul didn’t have to write anything about it. But after thinking about this explanation for some time, I didn’t find it convincing. A key problem besetting the assumed pre-Pauline tradition is that it is a) based entirely on the gospel literature, which came much later, and b) it hasn’t been verified because there were no eyewitnesses and no firsthand accounts. Plus, the stories that we’re all familiar with (from the gospels) were not written until a few decades after Paul’s writings. So the life of Jesus was not written before, but after, Paul. Given that Paul’s knowledge of the story of Jesus is based entirely on “a revelation,” and that Paul himself admits that he didn’t receive it from man, nor was he taught it (Gal 1:11-12), it’s reasonable to assume that no one else knew the story prior to Paul’s writings, at least from a literary standpoint. After all, Paul was the first to write about it!

There are a lot of presuppositions that are implied by the oral Pre-Pauline-tradition hypothesis that most people aren’t aware of. Many people also presuppose that the gospels are historical, even though that has not been verified either. On the contrary, the fact that they were anonymously written, and that there were no eyewitnesses and no firsthand accounts, and that the events in Jesus’ life were, for the most part, borrowed from the Old Testament, seems to suggest that they were written in the literary genre known as “theological fiction.”

What is more, because the gospel texts are found at the beginning of the New Testament, people often presuppose that the gospels were the first Christian writings, and so they completely misunderstand the New Testament literary chronology. This presupposition leads to many other false assumptions that are very misleading and totally unrelated to the actual chronological development of the New Testament writings.

They have it all backwards❗️

What is more, because of the hypothetical Q source (for which there’s no evidence), even scholars often talk as if the gospels preceded the epistles, and so given that everyone already knew about the story, Paul didn’t have to mention all the details…

But wait just a second… ⛔️

The full-fledged story we usually refer to actually starts around 70 AD with Mark, and ends at the end of the first century with John. But surprise surprise, Paul is writing much much earlier than that. Paul’s letters are the FIRST Christian writings, which are written over two decades earlier (49-50 AD)! Paul’s writings are actually the EARLIEST Christian writings. So, presumably, no one knew the story yet, at least from a literary perspective. It was Paul’s task to tell the reader all about it.

But Paul failed to mention the pertinent information regarding the details of Jesus’ life, even though it is assumed that he was in a position to know this information. If Paul was expected to have all the pertinent information regarding the Jesus-story, and intending to write a complete account of these events, and if the details of the Jesus-story were important enough to deserve to be mentioned, then why didn’t Paul talk about any of them? Astoundingly, Paul didn’t mention any of the legendary elements that we find in the later embellishments of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. In Paul’s letters, there’s no nativity, no virgin birth, no shepherds, no star of Bethlehem, no magi, no census, no Elizabeth, no Zechariah, no John the Baptist, no flight to Egypt, no slaughter of the innocents, nothing about

“Jesus healing anyone,

casting out a demon, doing any other

miracle, arguing with Pharisees or

other leaders, teaching the multitudes, even

speaking a parable, being baptized, being

transfigured, going to Jerusalem, being

arrested, put on trial, found guilty of

blasphemy, appearing before Pontius Pilate

on charges of calling himself the King of the

Jews, being flogged, etc. etc. etc. It’s a very,

very long list of what he doesn’t tell us

about.” —Source credit: Bart D. Ehrman

This doesn’t mean that Paul is writing letters to people who already knew about the story.

It means that such a story didn’t exist. It was added later!

Conclusion

How is a supposed Aramaic story suddenly taken over, less than 2 decades after the purported events, by highly articulate Greeks and written about in other countries, such as Greece and Rome? None of the New Testament books were ever written in Palestine by Jews! That doesn’t make any sense and it certainly casts much doubt about the idea of a supposed Aramaic oral tradition.

In fact, most of the New Testament Books were written in Greece: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, Titus, the Book of Revelation, and possibly others as well! To sum up, most of the New Testament Books were composed in Greece. Most of the epistles were penned in Greece and addressed to Greek communities. The New Testament was written exclusively in Greek, outside of Palestine, by “Greek” authors who copied the Greek Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Bible when quoting from the Old Testament. So where is the Aramaic tradition?

What if the Crucifixion of Christ is a Future Event?

Read the PDF of my article, published in the Journal of Higher Criticism, vol. 13, no. 3 (2018).