Religion
In reply to the discussion: Brian Zahnd: No, God didnt command genocide in the Old Testament [View all]Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)You are conflating the religion with its scripture. Religions are more than that. I don't have the time or the inclination to summarize a veritable library of sociological, anthropoligical, and historical analyses of the Christian religion, but if you're at all interested in making sense of this stuff, here's a couple of books I think you'll enjoy:
A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by ecclesiastical historian Diarmaid MacCulloch (St. Cross College, Oxford). This is a comprehensive history of the religion going back to its Hebrew and Greco Pagan origins. It explains in no small detail the importance of the Old Testament to the first Christians in Jerusalem, what we do and do not know about the ministry of Jesus, and the early theological quibbles resulting from this lack of clarity. If it makes you feel better, the author is a theist.
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by UNC Chapel Hill Professor of Religious Studies Bart D. Ehrman. This explains the development of Christian orthodoxy and how this process affected transmission of Christian scripture. The sectarian struggles between camps of early -- and by "early", we mean "in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion" -- Christians dramatically altered the scriptural narrative, to the point where it is impossible to know what the supposed message of Jesus actually was.