Why I find Christianity so hard to stomach.

[daaron]

48. Pretty hard to say what's what.

Once one takes advantage of all the time that's passed and surveys the whole scope of Christian history. There are a great number of extra-biblical early Christian texts that offer very different cosmologies, theologies, liturgies, the works. Why do modern Christians continue to give undue weight to the Councils of Nicea and that era's choice of orthodox canon, when there is so much more to explore for the open-minded scholar to read and ponder!

A thorough reading of the "Lost Books of the Bible" ought to disabuse a reasonable Christian of their gullibility for biblical miracles, and open up new ways of understanding not just Christ, but many of the fundamental elements of the faith. There was no agreement on who Jesus was, or what was true. Surely we have grown since the time of Constantine. As just one example, consider how the Dead Sea Scrolls have changed our understanding of both baptism and the Last Supper - they turn out to have firm albeit marginal roots in mainline Judaism dating back at least to the Maccabean revolt.