Reading The Bible (and other scripture)

[convulsivespace]

With each succesive 'gospel' jesus becomes less hardline and his message more friendly and less old testament

My intuition tells me it was probably the opposite: over time well intentioned (or not) authors steeped in a society of Hellenistic/Rabbinical Judaism tried to force Jesus back into the Old Testament box that they understood. Ideas generally become less radical over time, especially as they spread in influence and increase in threat to the stats quo.

[Mr Vegetables]

I'm reading John Barton's History of the Bible on and off, and it's very good. It's quite strange to read something by a practicing Anglican Priest which is quite so blunt with saying "loads of this stuff didn't happen, including some of the bits you might half-think did."

Weirdly the book that made me feel most differently towards it all was The Twelve Caesars, because it is striking how many strange myths are in that ancient historical account, and how they feel a bit similar to all the ones about Jesus, which may have been entirely intentional on early Christianity's part. It shifts how you see it all, I think, when it's someone like Emperor Claudius who's at the centre of these kinds of stories