Since “Five Books” meme seem to be all the rage amongst the kiddies these days, I’ll try my hand at starting another.

The Five Biblical Studies Books I’m Stupider for Having Read

Here are the rules:

1. These are Biblical Studies books. Note that anything written by Tim LaHaye is not a Biblical Studies book.
2. Feel free to list multiple books by the same author, but you need to have at least three authors out of the five books.
3. You’re free to include books that were so stupid you couldn’t finish them.
4. Explain, in as few or as many words as you can muster, why the book in question was so mind-numbingly stupid.

Here are my Five Biblical Studies Books I’m Stupider for Having Read. The order is not significant, they all killed brain cells.

1. James D. Miller, The Pastoral Letters as Composite Documents (SNTS monograph series, #93). I are more dumber for having read this book. According to Miller, it seems as if there aren’t two single words within the Pastorals that cohere.

2. Bart Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot. I feel pain for any other unfortunate soul who read this book. I had to read it as I received a review copy from Oxford. These are brain cells I will never, ever get back.

3. Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities. I couldn’t finish this book. Standard Ehrmanian fare, proto-orthodox, down with alternate orthodoxies, blah, blah, blah. I still wish I hadn’t spent the $20 on the two volume edition (even though it was paired with Ehrman’s Lost Scriptures, which is actually a cheap way to get decent modern English translations of several writings).

4. Kenneth J. Neumann, The Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles in the Light of Stylostatistical Analysis. The lit review/overview is actually pretty good, but it boggs down after that. Too much math for my brain. It made my head hurt and I still couldn’t quite get what was going on. I’m sure it’s brilliant, but it doesn’t communicate well.

5. Gail Riplinger, New Age Bible Versions. I almost hesistate to include this as a "Biblical studies" book, but I am dumber for having read it.

Who to tag? Jim West (post here), Steve Runge, John Hobbins, Kevin P. Edgecomb, and Mike Aubrey, of course (though I’ll understand completely if any of you would like to defer).

Update (2009-07-08): There’s been a bit of backlash (here and the update here, thanks to Nick for pointing these out otherwise I’d not have been aware of them) on the whole idea of books that “made me stupider”. Some context, people:

1. The meme is based on an offhand thought I had while responding to yet another “five book” meme (the “Five Influential Primary Sources” meme, see the second sentence). Too many serious memes were floating around, some levity was required.
2. I figured it was time for a sampling of not-so-great books. You know, equal time and all that.
3. In my mind, “books that make me stupider” are equivalent to those books you read and end up with the only response of “huh?”. Alternately, it could be, “no, he/she can’t seriously be arguing that!”
4. These responses occurred with virtually every page in my #1 and #5 listed books, and with some frequency in Ehrman’s book. I’ve blogged a lot about Ehrman’s stuff (good and bad), search the blog to find my comments. Also note I think his translations are great. But when he’s the center instead of the text, then I think his work suffers tremendously.
5. My #4 book by Neumann actually didn’t make me stupider, but I felt stupider because I didn’t quite track the math and selection (and omission) criteria even though I felt I should be able to. I’ll say again: his lit review is fairly good.
6. I fully expect that if I ever publish a book, there will be some proportion of readers who will claim that my book made them stupider.

If this post has made you stupider, please accept my apologies (and do be sure to include this post in your list).