| PAGE Book | LOC Kindle | CHAPTER 26 |
| 174 | 4732 | How can I be sure of my faith? Dominic’s fourth talk is based on Gumbel, Nicky: Questions of Life: A Practical Introduction to the Christian Faith, Cook Ministry Resources, Colorado 1996, pp. 57-68. |
| PAGE Book | LOC Kindle | CHAPTER 27 |
| 182 | 4935 | the monotheistic revolution: This is the subject of Römer, Thomas: The Invention of God, Harvard University Press, 2015. Note especially pp. 210-241; There is an extended discussion in Hayes, Christine, Introduction to the Bible (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press 2012, Loc 386-544. |
| 183 | 4945 | the metadivine realm: Hayes: op cit, Loc 412-424. |
| 183 | 4949 | polytheism, paganism, is more intellectually coherent than monotheism: Harari, Yuval Noah: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Kindle Edition). Harvil Secker, London 2014, Loc 3157-3180. |
| 183 | 4953 | monotheism is inherently unstable because of the problem of evil: Wray, TJ & Mobley, Gregory: The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil’s Biblical Roots (Kindle Edition), Palgrave MacMillan 2005, Loc 194, 3246; Römer: The Invention of God, pp.218-9; Hayes: Introduction to the Bible, Loc 6707. |
| 184 | 4990 | Humanism’s just a bastard child of Christianity. It’s incomplete. It has a God-shaped hole at its core: This view is expounded by Tom Holland in his 2022 Theos annual lecture: Humanism: a Christian heresy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYGQ6FIFLps&t=15s (accessed 27/03/2024). |
| 184 | 4996 | the Ancient Israelites…believed there were other gods, but they only worshipped one: Hayes: op cit, Loc 551; Attridge, Harold W, Ed: The Harper Collins Study Bible, Fully Revised and Updated (Kindle Edition), HarperOne 2006, Loc 1405; Wray & Mobley: The Birth of Satan, Loc 788-826. |
| 185 | 5004 | J, E, and D, plus lots of psalms and even P weren’t written by monotheists: Stark, Thom, The Human Faces of God, What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (And Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It (Kindle Edition), WIPF & Stock, 2011, Loc 2401; Römer, T: The Invention of God, pp. 1-2; |
| 185 | 5005 | It’s not a case of the Pentateuch having a few very ancient verses that are relics of a polytheistic past. The whole thing’s saturated with it: Römer, T: op cit pp. 47-48, 78-72, 101, 116-117, 127, 234, 248; Stravrakopoulu, Francesca: God An Anatomy (Kindle Edition), Picador, 2021, Loc 530-545; Stark: The Human Faces of God, Loc 2552-2678; Attridge, Ed: The Harper Collins Study Bible, Loc 1382; Hayes: Introduction to the Bible, Loc 210, 278-284, 555, 961, 2003. |
| 185 | 5008 | It literally means Yahweh’s face, his hands, his breath: This is the theme of Stravrakopoulu: God An Anatomy. See Loc 1255. She discusses some of the reasons in Loc 7041-7076. |
| 185 | 5010 | the Septuagint: This is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, dating from the third century BCE. This makes it older than any Hebrew Texts we possess and gives us a window on an older version of the Hebrew Bible. (The oldest full Hebrew text is the Masoretic Text, dating from the ninth century CE; the Dead Sea scrolls include fragments of almost every book of the Hebrew Bible, dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE.) See Barton, John: A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths, Penguin Random House, London 2020, pp. 302-307. |
| 185 | 5018 | So the allegorical meanings that we love…were imposed on the text later: Stark: The Human Faces of God, Loc 1133-1145, 1173, 1188-1205, 4249-4287; Barton: A History of the Bible, pp. 331-358; MacCulloch, Diarmaid: A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Kindle Edition). Penguin Books 2010, Loc 1715-1723. |
| 185 | 5020 | The Bible isn’t the Word of God. The Bible shows us how the Jews and Christians found God: Two books which take such an approach to the Bible are Stark: The Human Faces of God and Barton: A History of the Bible. |
| 188 | 5088 | Christians often point out the contrast between the panic that gripped the disciples when Jesus was arrested and the heroism they would later show: for example Gumbel, Nicky: Questions of Life: A Practical Introduction to the Christian Faith, Cook Ministry Resources, Colorado 1996, p. 37 |
| 188 | 5099 | Shabbetai Zevi: Armstrong, Karen: The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Harper Collins, London 2001, pp. 26-30. |
| 188 | 5110 | many remained loyal: Armstrong: op cit, p. 30. |
| 188 | 5114 | Dönmeh (crypto-Jewish Muslims): Armstrong op cit, p. 30. |
| 189 | 5125 | if there is a God with a revelation to make, that is how he would do it, through real, specific, imperfect, temporally-bound lives. This revelation would always be partial so that our own reactions and insights become part of the story: Personal communication from a lifelong Christian who read an early draft of this book. |
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Paul Clark 