the documentary "Who Wrote The Bible" by Dr. Robert Beckford

[yachiro300]

hello
Dr Robert Beckford is a British academic theologian and a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University,[1] whose documentaries for both the BBC and Channel4 have caused controversy and debate among the Christian and British religious community.


http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid= ... &plindex=0

hope u enjoy

 

[Elisha Kai]

I have seen at least two of his documentaries.

Beckford is what we Christians call a wolf in sheep clothes. There are indeed self-proclaimed evangelical (even Pentecostals) who realise that criticizing the Bible provides a lot of fame from the secular media and a lots money. We have seen all this before; just consider Barth Erhman. In my work I have realised that a leaving the Christian faith could make me a millionary, yet there is simply no way that I would sell the truth.

This particular documentary is typically one-sided, it only refers to one Christian scholar, Alister McGrath, but only in relation to the modern English Bible rather than its origins. So far as I am aware the rest of the team are notorious Bible critics or at least references to Anti-Biblical theories, rather than facts.

Personally, I found the documentary to present a very weak case against the Christian faith, unfortunately these theories can only be effectively perceived by those who study biblical criticism than merely the common believer, hence the stuff sound convincing; I think also that Beckford should reveal his true identity; the man is playing games, and counting the money, he certainly is not a Christian.

 

[Gary]

Oh dear, another fake. "Dr" Robert Beckford has this to say on the front page of his web site:

The Hidden Story of Jesus
C4 Tuesday 25 December 2007 8.30pm

As Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, theologian Robert Beckford investigates remarkable parallels to the Christ story in other faiths, some of them predating Christianity by thousands of years.
The Hindu god, Krishna, was conceived by a virgin and his birth was attended by angels, wise men and shepherds. Buddha was also the result of a miraculous birth, and was visited by wise men bearing gifts. He too began his ministry at about 30 years old and performed such miracles as walking on water and feeding 500.....
http://robertbeckford.co.uk/

etc, etc..... The rubbish hardly needs any serious work to rebut

Read this:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/copycatwho2.html

Virgin birth of Krishna?? The facts are simply otherwise--cf. Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology, p. 342:

"In India a like tale is told of the beloved savior Krishna, whose terrible uncle, Kansa, was, in that case, the tyrant-king. The savior's mother, Devaki, was of royal lineage, the tyrant's niece, and at the time when she was married the wicked monarch heard a voice, mysteriously, which let him know that her eighth child would be his slayer. He therefore confined both her and her husband, the saintly nobleman Vasudeva, in a closely guarded prison, where he murdered their first six infants as they came.

According to the story, the mother had six normal children before the 7th and 8th 'special' kids--a rather clear indication that the mom was not a virgin when she conceived Krishna [remember, this is not an issue of 'special births', but of 'virgin' ones].
:D :D

What about thr "Dr" claim that: "Buddha was also the result of a miraculous birth.."
Again, utter rubbish.
The first and finest biography of the Buddha, written by Ashvaghosha in the 1st century, called the Buddhacarita ("acts of the buddha") gives a rather strong indication of her non-virgin status in canto 1:

"He [the king of the Shakyas] had a wife, splendid, beautiful, and steadfast, who was called the Great Maya, from her resemblance to Maya the Goddess. These two tasted of love's delights, and one day she conceived the fruit of her womb, but without any defilement, in the same way in which knowledge joined to trance bears fruit. Just before her conception she had a dream."

"The oldest accounts of Buddha's ancestry appear to presuppose nothing abnormal about his birth, and merely speak of his being well born both on his mother's end and father's side for seven generations back. According to the later legend he is born not as other human beings, but in the same was as a universal king he descends from the Tusita heaven by his own choice, and with this his father is not concerned. This is not properly a virgin birth, but it may be called parthogenetic, that is, Suddhodana was not his progenitor."

So our "dr" is just another non-Christian making money with claims that most of us don't spend enough time in investigating!

:-? :-?

 

[anna-Rose]

greetings

is it not good to know that the Bible has authers who either make themselves known in the texts or others atribute to them around the time of writing?

the Bible was written by around 30 different authers over about 1500 years ( this does not include the apocropha - never read this part of the added Bible but do know that it is the history of the inbetween testiments added in the middle ages )

hope of some help

dza devlefa
a-R

 

[Gary]

Yes. we know the Bible was wrtten by multiple human authors inspired by the Holy Spirit.

However, our "Dr." has this to say:

Take the Five Books of Moses, which open the Bible and include the world-famous stories of the creation, the Garden of Eden and Noah's flood. Known in Hebrew, the language they were written in, as the Torah, these books contain the foundations of Judaism and Christianity. It turns out that the Books of Moses weren't written by Moses at all, but by four anonymous writers, each with his own particular view to promote. These writings were only brought together when an Israelite king found them useful to promote his political agenda, many centuries after the time of Moses. Says Beckford: 'King Hezekiah turned the Bible into a party political manifesto for monotheism. He definitely knew something about spin.'

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsi ... bible.html

The JEDP theory (the Documentary Hypothesis, 4 authors of the Pentateuch) has been around for some time but is widely challenged by Bible-believing Christians.

Recently scholars (Van Seters, Schmid, Rendtorff, Rose, Lemche) have challenged both the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch's composition and even the presuppositions supporting literary-critical analysis itself. Likewise thus the dates of the Pentateuchal material come into question. But these studies are not informed by modern structural and linguistic approaches. An approach to exegesis so informed leads to dating the Yahwist's work far earlier than is usually done, well back into the premonarchical period.

and

It is now accepted that the [quote:5f499]documentary hypothesis (JEDP) is hampered with serious difficulties. Redaction history and tradition history are now considered more fitting points of departure than literary criticism in explaining the origin of the Pentateuch. There is a preference for the view that much of the Yahwistic material was written later than originally thought, implying a much longer period of oral and written transmission of many of the Pentateuchal narratives. The way literary criticism and tradition history were applied in the past is largely invalidated by current folklore research which should be used as a corrective as well as to devise a new theory on how the Pentateuch originated.

and, finally

"The evidence presented here points to the following conclusion: there is much more uniformity and much less fragmentation in the book of Genesis than generally assumed. The standard division of Genesis into J, E, and P strands should be discarded. This method of source criticism is a method of an earlier age, predominantly of the 19th century. If new approaches to the text, such as literary criticism of the type advanced here, deem the Documentary Hypothesis unreasonable and invalid, then source critics will have to rethink earlier conclusions and start anew." (p. 105)

[/quote:5f499]Source: The Redaction of Genesis by Rendsburg (Eisenbrauns: 1986), which demonstrates an INCREDIBLE linguistic unity and artistry of the composer of all of Genesis.
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/dochypo.html

See also: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qjedp.html

and this excellent article by Glenn Miller
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qmoses1.html

:D :D

 

[Vic C.]

So our "dr" is just another non-Christian making money with claims that most of us don't spend enough time in investigating!

Isn't this usually the case, Gary? Man ofter takes the path of least resistance.

I noticed you cited Campbell. While I don't consider him an authority on things Christian, he does offer a unique view on the history of world religions.