Believe it or not, atheosts read the bible. And other holy books of other religions as well. Why? Well, it makes sense to knw something about a subject to be able to speak about it intelligently. So, I read the bible on occasion. Not daily, but when I’m interested in finding out something that supposedly occurred in the Hebrew text or the Christian work. Some of it is absolutely fascinating, even though not exactly historical in all instances.

I interested in reading about the particular religion, from real historians because, guess what? Real history is sometimes different than fantasy and so I like to read about the early Christian church from the eyes of a historian, looking at it impassionatrly rather than the mostly nonsense we receive from the apologist class.

Currently, I’m reading 1st and 2nd Clement. Yes, these are not canonical books, but they’re written (supposedly) from an early church leader, Clement of Rome that lived during that very critical first century CE (35-99 CE). This is going to be an insight for me into the early church that we can only get from those second generation Christians. That’s right. When we look at the timeline, most of what we know (and believe!) concerning Christianity doesn’t come from the OG’s of Christianity. The book of Mark was written in 70 CE, 4 years after the cruxifixction. Matthew and Luck? Twenty years later than Mark. How many people from Jesus’ life would still be around in 90 CE? How about few to none, unless they were infants, or like Clement, born 5 years afterwards.

Anytime I get an opportunity to read something this early in church history, I look forward to it and I look to see if what is written is compatible with what people read in the canon. Think about it: Was Clement of Rome even aware of “Mark” or Matthew and Luke (these names were not assigned until possibly as late as 180 CE). This doesn’t mean Clement was unaware of those books, just that they were probably not in wide circulation during his life and not looked upon as autoritative until decades later. In fact, it was around 200 CE before the earliest manuscripts we have with those titles written on them.

There’s a lot of second generation and beyond writings (AKA, “Early Church Fathers”) that I believe I can learn a lot about those very early days beyond the letters of Paul (written 48-55 CE, die 64 CE, traditionally) that are exhortations from an “Apostle” that never knew the real Jesus, even though he and Jesus were contemporaries. To be able to hear the words of these early believers(I read them like they are in the room, speaking to me. Okay, that may be weird.). As an atheist, I think I study the religion more than believers. Net time you run into (not literally!) an intellectual Christian, ask them about any of the writing of Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian, and many others in the first 2 or 300 years of the Christian religion. How many of these will know anything about any of the early hierarchy of the church and what they were teaching to those first generations of believers?

Knowledge is power. Or so I’ve been told.