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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

Not at all. The bible is famously allegorical which is known by everyone who practices catholicism, but the historical evidence and written records are quite clear - there was this incredibly charismatic guy who grew a following, helped the poor and got crucified.

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> there was this incredibly charismatic guy who grew a following, helped the poor and got crucified.

What historical evidence supports that Jesus helped the poor?

There are non-christian references to Jesus in roman/jewish history books written in the same century, which give pretty strong support to the idea he was an actual person and was killed for his charity 'work' that catered to the poor and sick. Obviously no real 'historical evidence' is possible beyond that.

Sorry, I studied this ~30 years ago, and am not really in the mood to dig for more details :)

When you see the multiple conflicting written records, and actually look at the historical evidence, the only thing that is clear is that people keep curating what people read so they have ‘a clear written record’ that benefited them at the time. Not that the record was ever clear or unconflicted. Sometimes it was really obvious (Council of Nicea, the Anglican ‘reformation’, other times a lot more subtle - like check out what the Dead Sea scrolls say).

This should be especially clear for anyone that has studied the history of the Catholic Church, eh?

Frankly, while I’ve read many versions of the Bible (and a version of the Koran and Hadiths), the underlying theme that has always struck me is how apparent it is that at least the self-stated followers of the book i’ve met never have?

Or if they have, blanked out very large portions of it. Typically the most outspoken ones, anyway.

The new testament is also famously contradictory (as is the old, but not so obviously nor so much so). When it was pulled together from multiple sources a shoddy editing job was done.

And the old testament is taken as allegorical when it would be inconvenient for the believers to follow exactly, but taken very literally in specific parts when people want others to live a certain way. Or just ignored completely, like the existence of other gods being specifically mentioned (though IIRC not necessarily as equals) which stands in contradiction to the monotheistic view.

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