Can someone help me read about Christianity?

>>9552912
Christians are followers of Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus Christ can be found in the four books of the Gospels. Jesus did not write anything. Instead, He was written about by four of his disciples, who are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul, an apostle, which is a follower of Christ who never personally met Christ, also wrote heavily about Christ. The books written about Christ are collected in what is called the New Testament.

The Old Testament is a collection of Hebrew scriptures. The first part of the Old Testament focuses on the history of the Hebrews. The middle of the Old Testament is the songs and proverbs by the Hebrews. Lastly, the final part of the Old Testament is a collection of various prophecy books, which prophecy the coming of the Christ.

Christianity became the dominate religion of the Roman Empire. It rapidly spread throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle-East. It is still the dominate religion of Europe. During the colonial period, it became the dominate religion of the Americas.

>>9552912
The BBC have a good overview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/

>>9552933
>Instead, He was written about by four of his disciples
>various prophecy books, which prophecy the coming of the Christ.
Just as a note, this is the traditional Christian view, all secular (and religious jewish) scholars would disagree.

Just get a free Holy Bible, or read one online. The entire book is in chronological order. Genesis explains the beginning, continued on in Exodus. I think it was Numbers and Deutoronomy that were the most boring parts. After that, it's more history about the first rulers of the jews, AKA judges, then the story of Saul and David make up Samuel 1 and 2. I forget the rest. Psalms and Proverbs aren't really narratives but boulders of prayer etiquette and wisdom, respectively. The New Testament starts with the four gospels Matthew Mark Luke John. Acts is events that took place afterwards, and then the rest are letters sent from/to Timothy, Paul, John, James, Titus, mostly guidance for the young churches at the time. Revelations is the one focusing mainly on what is to come, which is a whole lot of bad things followed by good things.

>>9552933

This is what I wanted!

1 Q: So there are 2 bibles? The Old Testament and New Testament? And the New testament is the one people use and has all gospels in it?

Any other holy books other than the new testament bible?

Old Testament

Genesis
Deuteronomy
Kings1 and 2
Joshua
Job
Psalms
Lamentations
Jonah

New Testament

Matthew
Mark
Luke
Romans
James
Revelation

>>9552972

What is acts?

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>>9552951
>The entire book is in chronological order
Only about half of it is a narrative at most, and you can't just read it like a story book. There's plenty of overlapping and stuff slightly out of order, as well as things like the prophetic books which are hard to date.

If you want to know about Jesus, read the four gospels. Mark is the shortest and easiest to start with. If you want the Old Testament God, Exodus is pretty good (skip ahead when it starts talking about the Tabernacle though)

>>9552969
The Bible includes the Old and New testaments as sections. Christians use both. The New Testament has the four gospels and a collection of letters by apostles (important early Christians), most notable Paul who founded many Christian communities in the Mediterranean.

>>9552983
* and Revelation, which is a record of a religious vision that has dozens of interpretations about what it means

>>9552969
No, normally the bible consists of both the New and Old testament. But "pocket bibles" that are only the New Testament can be found as well. If your bible is less than 500 pages thick, chances are that it's one of those.

Read Answering Atheism by Trent Horn. That's how I started.

>>9552969
The Bible was not written at one time. The Bible is a collection of various books, written at various times, by various authors, with various religious views. Yes, the New Testament is the one with the Gospels in it, and the one which focuses more on the philosophy of Christians.

In Christianity, the only true holy book is the Bible. The words of Jesus are of course the most sacred.

However, in Christianity, especially Catholicism, there are saints, who are considered the perfect examples of Christians, and are considered almost holy.

Protestants generally do not have saints. However, some Christian philosophers like Martin Luther are highly regarded in Protestantism.

>>9552983
>>9552994

So all I need is a proper bible and all christian writings are covered?

>>9552979
The Book of Acts is the first book after the four Gospels, and fifth overall book of the New Testament. Acts tells the early history of Christians after Jesus has left the Earth. It tells the initial spread throughout the Roman Empire, and the disbanding of the disciples to preach, as well as Paul's conversion to Christianity.

>>9552979
Acts is after John and before Romans.

NOTE: There is "John", and then there is " 1 John" ('First John'), "2 John" ('Second John'), and "3 John" ('Third John')

People sometimes refer to John as "the gospel of John" and "First John" as "the epistle of John" to help clarify things.

>>9552979
Sorry, stupidly forgot to include it and John. Read those b4 Romans

>>9553006
Well, the Bible has a special place above any other writings, so yes it has all the most important stuff.

Also, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have a few more books than the Protestants. If you get a Bible "with Apocrypha" it will have the extra books in a separate section. That's probably the best way to cover all the bases.

Bread is important, i think.

>>9553006
No, not all Christian writings will be covered.

Because Christianity became popular in Europe, which managed to preserve many of their ancient texts, as well as invent Gutenberg's printing press, there are tens of millions of books focused on Christianity that supplement the Bible. There have been millions of people who have devoted their whole lives to trying to understand the Bible. There are different opinions in the Bible, and still even more questions which have yet to be fully agreed upon in the 2017 years since it's been written

>>9553006
Basically, yea'. There are also some books like Apocrypha and The Book of Enoch, but less than 1% of christians actually read those. Mostly people that want to scrape the bowl clean read anything more than what's in the Bible.

>>9553026

Im talking really about scripture dedicated to christianity not like interpretations. Im after the stories really.

>>9553023

Oh ok!

>>9553034
The Gospels are Christianity's main keystone block that links the rest of the Bible together. The works of Paul will unlock the philosophical side of the religion.

>>9553047

And gospels + paul are in the new testament which are in the bible. Got it.

>>9553034
>Im after the stories really.
A lot of it isn't stories. The Bible covers all sorts of genres. These are all the story books, roughly chronologically, by section ("deuterocanon" is the extra books that Protestants don't use):

OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis
Exodus
Numbers
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
Jonah
1 Chronicles (repeats part of 2 Samuel)
2 Chronicles (repeats 1 and 2 Kings)
Daniel (chapters 1-6)
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther

CATHOLIC DEUTEROCANON
Tobit
Judith
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees

NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Acts

>>9553058
I forgot to mention... the four gospels are about the same life... but told in four different ways. Don't let any inconsistencies fool you. The writers each chose differently on what occurrences of Jesus's life to report on.

biblical scholar speculation pls:

who was Q??

>>9553097
We don't even know who wrote the existing gospels, we'll never know who wrote Q (if it even existed).

>>9553100
Well, let's see...
Matthew wrote Matthew.
Mark wrote Mark
Luke wrote Luke
and John wrote John.

>>9553141

at least two of those disciples were illiterate

>>9553141
haha!

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>>9553141
This nigga

>not learning about Christianity from thebricktestament.com
>Current year

>>9553159
>Luke
>Disciple of Christ
bruh

Why didn't jesus write anything himself /b/ros?

>>9552912
Just read the gospels, generously and naively, as you would any other text, and then go from there

>>9553545
Jesus was a Jew, they didn't write down their religion until much later in the game, he probably thought his sect (Christianity) would operate in a similar manner.

>>9553545

I don't know about Jesus but one of the reasons the apostles didn't immediately start writing about him is that they mistakenly believed the world was ending soon after Jesus died, so from that perspective it didn't make any sense for them to bother recording anything. After a few decades they finally settled down and started thinking about the future.

>>9553566
>Jesus was a Jew, they didn't write down their religion until much later in the game

The Torah was written thousands of years before Jesus. What are you talking about?

>>9553650
The Mishnah was only first written down like 200 years after Jesus' death.

>>9553679

You're out of your mind. Jesus used the Greek Septuagint which was made in the 3rd century BC, and he repeatedly quoted scripture. "It is written"

>>9553701
What the actual fuck are you talking about, is this some reformed Judaism meme to pretend rabbinic literature doesn't exist?

>>9553707

I'm not the one claiming the Jews didn't write anything down until after Jesus died.

>>9553679
mishnah isn't the torah and there are Jewish Scripture that is from 408 BC that we have today

>>9553722
>>9553723
Holy fucking shit, how can /lit/ legitimately be this bad at religion.

This is like saying you can become Catholic and understand Catholicism solely through reading the Bible.

>>9553754

I think you're experiencing some major cognitive dissonance because you're not even making any sense. You claimed that the Jews didn't write anything down and I objected to this. That's it. I don't know where you're getting this stuff about understanding Catholicism solely through reading the bible.

>>9553754
The Torah and Septuagint predate Jesus by hundreds of years, jews definitely wrote religious texts long before the 1st century. I'm not even sure what your point is, we're not talking about education in rabbinic judaism. Plus, christian jews wrote their own gospels and several pieces of pseudepigrapha soon after Jesus, so they weren't all opposed to new religious texts.

>>9552912
>Old Testament
Basically a collection of works that describes the Christian history of the world, laws made by the earliest Jews, stories, poems etc. that make up the back bone of Jewish theology.

>Jesus
I guy who probably didn't exist apparently was representative of a messiah that was predicted by the Old Testament. For Christians he represents the marriage between heaven and Earth and the martyr who saved man kind of their original sin.

At one point he ascended into heaven and gave his followers (known as apostles) the tools they needed to spread his message across the world (also known as the Apostolic Tradition).

>New Testament
The New Testament is made up of a bunch of different sections, The first are the Gospels which are a collection of oral traditions collected around 65 A.D. They supposedly detail Jesus' life, death, resurrection and his various teachings. Each one emphasis a certain message to different group of people around back then such as other Jews, non-Jews and newly practising Christians.

Other sections include letters made by one of the apostles to Christians all around the world, prophetic dreams, exploits of the apostles etc.

>Cardinal Newman
>Thomas Browne
>GK Chesterton
>Pascal
Start there