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God, Jesus, and the Bible: The Origin and Evolution of Religion HARD COVER
by Dr. William Harwood
ISBN: 978-1-935444-28-2
Read a review from Freethought Perspective
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Freethought Perspective
God, Jesus, and the Bible is a comprehensive history of the origins and development of the Jewish and Christian religions. It traces the origin of the "god" concept, the evolution of monotheism, the development of Judaism through the first century CE, and the evolution of Christianity.
God, Jesus, and the Bible utilizes the methodology of history, in which, as in every scientific discipline, conclusions must conform to the evidence, not the methodology of theology, in which evidence is manipulated to whatever degree is necessary in order to make it conform to predetermined conclusions.
God, Jesus, and the Bible falsifies religion as totally and permanently as the first photographs of the Martian surface falsified the "canals" myth.
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God, Jesus, and the Bible: The Origin and Evolution of Religion, William Harwood
(World Audience Publishers, 2009, ISBN 978-1-035444-84-8, 456 pp., hc $40, ppb $28)
Reviewed by Bernard Katz, American Rationalist
If you missed Dr Harwood's 1992 Mythology's Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus, here's your second bite of the apple. God, Jesus and the Bible is like eating your favorite fruit all over again--only with the addition of new insightful material in the endnotes. Like his former book, he treats both Judaism and Christianity with a wholly skeptical and scholarly perspective.
God, Jesus, and the Bible explores the origins and development of Judaism and Christianity and for a bonus he throws in a brief commentary on those portions of the Koran that support Muslim terrorism.
After beginning his illuminating book on the origin of religion, Harwood then develops the origin and history of Judaism. He does this by dissecting the writings into the strands of its many "schools"--like the tales spun by the "Yahwist" school, those propagated by the "Elohist" group, those written by the "Deuteronomist," those broadcast by the "Priestly" author, and those written from the point of view of an editor called the "Redactor."
Harwood then carries the evolution of Judaism into Christianity in three wonderfully orchestrated chapters: "From David to Jesus: The Age of the Messiah," "Requiem for a Dead Jew," and "The Making of a God." Harwood's work reveals many things, including one that Jesus the Nazirite preached only Essene Judaism, a rival Judaism from that held by the Sadducees and their Temple priests. He also shows that Christianity is a mongrel religion, for it took all its dogmas and symbols from pre-Christian and contemporary pagan and Jewish religious sources. If these don't clip the wings of the "saints" of those Christians who insist that we take the Bible literally, nothing will.
For an especially good treat, one that will even upset many nontheists, is Harwood's proof that Jesus was a real person. In other words, he's convinced me that the long "quest for the historical Jesus" is now over. (Check out his physical description of Jesus on pp. 258-259 and endnote 7 on p. 290.)
His bibliography of 14 pages would delight any student of Judaism and Christianity--for it recommends such competent authors as Frazer, Ellis, Larson, Conybeare, Caput, Dawson, Ehrman, Glover, Grant, Helms, Legge, Price, and the Robinsons, to name just a handful, for I have many of their books on my own shelves. If you're a student such as I am, you'll recognize these scholars as some of the best in their fields.
Harwood has also compiled an index of 31 pages--a section sorely needed in many books. These are detailed and properly refer to the specified material, thereby making it easy to locate what you want. God, Jesus, and the Bible uses the methods of history so that, as in every scientific discipline, conclusions must conform to the evidence--and not to the methods of theology, where the evidence is manipulated to make it conform to predetermined conclusions.
One last accolade because the following is so true that all of us should hang it on our walls. In footnote 36 on p. 292, Harwood writes: "By defining morality as whatever a god says it is, heads it's a sin and tails it's a virtue, religion destroys the ability to tell right from wrong. In much of the world, that is the legal definition of insanity. Anyone who was not insane before he started believing that mass murder was evil when Hitler did it with gas chambers, but is not evil when his Sky Fuhrer does it with disease, famine, religious wars, natural disasters, transportation accidents, and old age, is certainly insane once he does acquire such a belief. Sin means the unnecessary hurting of a non-consenting victim. Any other definition is insane."
As Harwood justly says: "God, Jesus, and the Bible falsifies religion as totally and permanently as the first photographs of the Martian surface falsified the 'canals' myth."
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