> Christ's morality is quite different from the golden rule and much more radical. "Turn the other cheek" is not the golden rule.

I did not mean to suggest that the golden rule is the core of Christianity, although it's certainly one facet of Christ's teachings which people erroneously consider to be novel. I offered it as one simple example of something within Christianity which is borrowed from elsewhere, and which is also wholly unremarkable.

FYI, turn the other cheek is not what Jesus said. He said:

> If anyone slaps you on your right cheek, turn to them your other cheek also.

I was a Christian for a long time and the sort of mistake you’ve just made really does vitiate the faith’s proponents. Quick summary (Walter Wink would be spinning in his grave): left hand only used for wiping butt. Not for anything else. Right cheek slapped = back-handed slap with right hand. It’s not an attack, it’s a rebuke. Therefore turning the other cheek is a means to challenging the slapper as an equal.

It’s the opposite of what you think it is: it’s sticking up for yourself and using the law to get the better of someone. Ditto the “go the extra mile” (any Roman could have any Jew or Gentile carry something for them for one mile, but no further — with a penalty if they did). Can’t remember the bit about the shirt off your back but it’s also a way to fuck with people.

I'm not sure if you are a Christian or not but if you really believe that you have a personal relationship with an almighty being, I can't comprehend how you would not really be sweating the details on what he said during his time here on earth, and trying to understand it in its proper context.

> Christ's morality is quite different from the golden rule

You seem to be at odds with OP in a way that makes me believe you may be a Christian. OP talked about Christianity, which I would consider to be the synthesis of the teachings, texts, and traditions of Jesus and the early Church. You are specifically talking about Christ’s teachings only, which is suggestive of someone who believes in Jesus as mythical hero, since very few secular scholars would feel comfortable prescribing to Jesus the views offered in the synoptic Gospels without heavily caveating the gospels’ own complex origin story.

Nonetheless:

1. I don’t want to presume anything of anyone reading this, so I will state the obvious: there is a secular consensus that Jesus existed in history. By which we usually mean: a person known as Jesus was at large in the same parts of the middle east as the Bible conveys during approximately the same time period, and he was likely a Jewish preacher (possibly a Rabbi), who was executed and ultimately his followers eventually formalised Christianity approximately a generation after his death, which eventually overtook pantheism, Mithraism and a host of other cults to become the prevailing religion in Rome a few hundred years after Jesus’ death.

2. The synoptic gospels were written between 40-100 years after the death of Jesus, and contain accounts of Jesus’s deeds which can be simply split into: legend (things we know cannot be true), contradictions (things the various books disagree amongst themselves about), theological copypasta (bits which are the same but which seem obviously lifted from different sources — e.g. Marcan priority sees the gospel of Mark written first, and the authors of Matthew and Luke drawing from Mark + a non-canonical source called the Q document).

3. Legend is a loaded term, so: large parts of the story are clearly legend. The massacre of the innocents is totally invented, as is the ridiculous census requiring Jesus’s parents to travel 200km to Bethlehem (all elements contrived to fulfil Jewish prophecy), as is his birthday (not mentioned in the Bible but 25th December is borrowed from Sol Invictus). Clearly to anyone who does not believe in fairy tales the immaculate conception and Christ’s miracles were also invented, and there is some evidence to suggest that some of his miracles (esp. Lazarus) were crafted to fit archetypes in other traditions. Ditto the immaculate conception and the notion of the “rises after death” God.

4. The only parts of the Bible that you can really read much into are the actual teachings, and that narrows the field enormously (particularly when the authors do this brilliant trick of repeatedly telling us people’s reaction to Christ’s teachings, but not the teachings themselves. “Everyone was super impressed!” “Oh what did he say?” “Errrr…”).

5. There are a few different interpretations of the teachings, ranging from “psychiatric disorder” (I’m not joking! There is a school of thought that Jesus had borderline personality disorder or something), to “magician” with much in between. The most compelling one to me is “apocalyptic preacher”. Most of the writings of the early Church and the behaviour of the early Christians indicate that they truly believed that the world was going to end, and apocalyptic cults were in vogue at the time.

6. So now we get to the morality of the man. Let’s see…