bullethead
Of the hard cast variety
I'd venture to say that most believers have no idea of how their religion came to be.I just read about the Council of Nicea yesterday. Turns out there were different sects of Christianity who were actually physically warring with each other so Nicea kind of put a big bow on Christianity and made it a finished, authorized product. The emperor (Constantine?) couldn't abide by all the chaos so he had to do something. Entire gospels were dropped completely or added - many recently written (thus centuries after Jesus' lifetime!) not just found behind a filing cabinet. Side-note I can see how oral stories & myths from the old testament can contradict each other. Thousands of years & many hundreds (or thousands) of miles of distance apart means stories passed along will never be accurate or in synch. That's just a lot of data to examine for plot holes or continuity or whatever, with evidence long gone. But when the main new testament gospels from disciples (Matthew, John, etc) who were part of the same small group WHEN JESUS WAS IN THE FINAL MONTHS OF HIS MINISTRY not all that long ago BTW contradict each other or completely ignore some events or get major details wrong it sounds....I hate to say it but....made up. Thus inaccuracy in the OT is expected. In the NT society & technology was a little more sophisticated, so the bar for accuracy should be set quite a bit higher. Just my 2 cents