 |
The Ebionite
Book Stall
Help Us by Buying Your Books at this Amazon Associate Store Origins | Bible Text | Torah Text | Hebrew | Biblical Studies See my Wish List at Amazon.com. It's my birthday or something! |
An Introduction to the Complete Dead Sea Scrolls |
Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the
Gospels
|
The Changing Faces of Jesus
|
The Religion of Jesus the Jew |
| Geza Vermes is one of the most important scholars to read to understand the historical Jesus (Yahshua/ Yeshu/ etc.). Start with Jesus the Jew, and then Religion of Jesus the Jew. Changing Faces of Jesus analyzes how the man Yahshua became a Gnostic type god-man in Christianity. You must read these books! I was a little disappointed in his most recent work, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus (available in the UK), although it is still worth reading. | |||
The Authentic Gospel of Jesus
|
 Jesus in His Jewish Context Geza Vermes Paprback, Buy New: $12.92 |
| Update! Authentic Gospel is now available in the US. Vermes looks at gospel information to evaluate its authenticity. Context is the republishing of earlier work, revised, and including five new chapters. | |
The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity |
|
 
The Jesus Dynasty |
Here is the recent book by Prof. James Tabor which looks at Yeshua as the human claimant as King of the Jews for which he was killed. Supports more than one Ebionite understanding of Yeshua.
|
||
Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the
Texts |
Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God: A
Ministry of Liberation |
Parables As Subversive Speech: Jesus As
Pedagogue of the Oppressed
|
Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium |
Written with Jonathan Reed, this is one of the best popular treatments for understanding the social and economic life setting in the days of Yahshua. It helps take Yahshua and his movement out of the realm of Christian mythology. Two books by William Herzog. Jesus, Justice, and the Reign of God is a good introduction to the Yeshuine movement as a reaction to socio-economic conditions in regard to restoration of Israel in view of the prophets, and how Yahshua looked to them for the core of his message. Parables as Subversive Speech was written first. It shows parables as stories with hidden revolutionary agendas. It is a difficult read. Robert Funk attempts to explode fundamentalist myths in viewing the Christian New Testament in Honest to Jesus. |
|||
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect
of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament |
Jewish Sources in Early Christianity
|
Jesus
|
The Christians as the Romans Saw Them |
David Flusser offers interesting insights on the Yeshuine Movement and later Christian interpretations. An insane secretive cult of unpatriotic atheist perverts and cannibals? Enemies of the Jewish God and Graeco-Roman civilization? Christianity was seen in this light before the Christians decided if "you can't beat, join 'em" and applied the same type of slander to non-Christians. Wilken's book lays it all out. |
|||
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? |
Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism |
Mysteries of Mithra
|
Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans
|
A new age gnostic recognizes his own and other pagan beliefs in Christian religion in order to bring us all together. Sorry, no gnostics here. The books of Franz Cumont (translated from French) are oldies but goodies. WHy was the urge to have Jesus ascend to the heavens like Roman emperors and pagan heroes? Where does the Christian day of the Sun as honoring the "son of God" originate? Is it Jesus or Mithra? We may produce our own reprints of these books. |
|||
JPS
Hebrew-English Tanakh |
Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia: Prepared
according to the Vocalization, Accents, and Masora of Aaron ben Moses
ben Asher in the Leningrad Codex |
|
Interlinear NIV Hebrew-English Old Testament,
The
|
Each of these have the Hebrew text of the Torah, Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings), that is the Tanakh. The second, by Dotan, has only Hebrew while the others include an English transaltion. The Jerusalem and JPS Tanakh have good translations, while the NIV has a heavily Christian (thus inaccurate) translation. But it does have an interlinear which can help show how the Hebrew is constructed. The actual rendering of the Hebrew cannot always be trusted, and it should be used by someone taking a course with a lexicon and grammar. The difference between Dotan's BHL and a BHS is that BHS has a critical apparatus which compares other versions and suggestions to emending the text. |
|||
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia |
Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible |
|
The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia:
Introduction and Annotated Glossary
|
| BHS is the
Hebrew text most often used by students and gives a critical apparatus
to the text and some masoretic notes. The text in Dotan (BHL, above)
is clearer for actual reading and it gives features that someone
reading for religious purposes finds useful. Tov is also for serious
students of the text. Yeivin is the best introduction to the Masorah,
although its typesetting is terrible (unless it has been updated from
a typewritten manuscript), while Kelley is used more often these days.
It is important to understand the masorah, or traditional scribal
notation to the text, when reading the Tanakh. Without these
notations, the text would exist as consonants without vowel-points or
anything else.
|
|||
Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (JPS Bible Commentary) |
Torah a Modern Commentary/Hebrew Opening |
 The Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (The Schocken Bible, Volume 1) Everett Fox; Paperback; Buy New: $18.70
|
Commentary on the Torah |
| Etz Hayyim
(Tree of Life) is a Conservative Judaism product and very good. All
four books are good. The next Torah is also good and modern as it says
including comments from biblical scholars. It is a Reform Judaism
product. Fox's book is best for its lively translation and great for a family reading of the weekly parshas. But the parshas are not marked!! It is also the only one of the four which does not include the Hebrew text. Hopefully this will be remedied in a later edition. Friedman is modern, and helpful. Friedman is known for his books like Who Wrote the Bible? discussing the Documentary Theory (JEPD) of origins for the biblical text. He does not strongly promote it in this volume. |
|||
Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew
Jacob Weingreen; Hardcover; Buy New: $43.95
Introducing Biblical Hebrew
Allen P. Ross; Hardcover; Buy New: $27.19
An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax
Bruce K. Waltke; Hardcover; Buy New: $52.50
A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar (Biblical Languages Series)
Christo H. Van Der Merwe; Paperback; Buy New: $37.95
Weingreen is old school classic. Ross is a good new grammar without too many Christian slants. Go to Waltke and Young when you get some Hebrew under your belt. Merwe is very good and discusses Discourse Analyses, and Hishtaf'el discovered as a verb form from Ugaritic literature.
Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar
William Gesenius; Hardcover; Buy New: $53.95
A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew: v. 1, pt. 1. Orthography and phonetics; v. 1, pt. 2. Morphology; v. 2, pt. 3. Syntax (Subsidia Biblica, 14/1-14/2)
Paul Jouon; Paperback; Buy New: $51.00
The First Hebrew Primer: The Adult Beginner's Path to Biblical Hebrew, Third Edition
Ethelyn & Stahl. Simon; Paperback; Buy New: $34.95Answer Book for The First Hebrew Primer
Ethelyn Simon; Paperback; Buy New: $9.95A Modern Grammar for Classical Hebrew
Duane A. Garrett; Paperback; Buy New: $24.49
Gesenius' is quite old but a standard "encyclopaedic" grammar. Jouon is much more modern and now standard but also a reference grammar like Gesenius. A good beginners' grammar is the First Hebrew Primer. Garrett is not outstanding but as typical of many new grammars. It has decent formatting which helps in seeing Hebrew.
A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: Based upon the Lexical Work of Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner
William Lee Holladay; Hardcover; Buy New: $23.80
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon
Francis Brown; Hardcover; Buy New: $23.77
Readings in Biblical Hebrew: An Intermediate Textbook (Yale Language)
Ehud Ben Zvi; Hardcover; Buy New: $50.00
Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Yerushalmi, and Midrashic Literature
Marcus Jastrow; Hardcover; Buy New: $29.95
Koehler & Baumgartner is very expensive, so use Holladay. It was around before K&B made it to English and I have used it almost everyday for 20 years. The same for the BDB. Although it old now and doesn't consider new developments in understanding Hebrew (like Ugaritic material), it is still a standard. It gives the old Strong's Concordance numbering (are you still using Strongs!? Snap out of it!) to help beginners. But BDB is not a beginners' reference. Ben Zvi gives you intermediate practice. Jastrow is also old, and very hard to see because of its typography. But it is indispensable for Mishnaic Hebrew.
Leviticus 1-16: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary
(Anchor Bible, Vol. 3) |
 Leviticus 17-22 Jacob Milgrom; Hardcover; Buy New: $35.00 |
Leviticus 23-27: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary
|
Religion of Ancient Israel, the |
| The Anchor
Bible Commentaries are usually quite good over books of the Hebrew
Bible, but Milgrom's Leviticus illustrates the meaning of the Temple
(and Tent) sacrifices and how the Christian teaching concerning
(human) sacrifice reveals its misunderstanding of them. In other
words, blood sacrifice did not "pay the price for sin" and neither did
Jesus.
Theodore Vriezen provides one of the best introductions to understanding ancient Yahwism, and now it is back in print. |
|||
