Quote:Considering each new retelling was written by a guy who had access to the previous one, you'd think it wouldn't be too hard to keep the details straight.
But there was no such concern. They were written independently for different audiences and the stories were spun to make them interesting to those audiences by whoever the fuck wrote them.
This shit existed as oral tales for a long time until sometime in the mid to late 2d century when the so-called proto-orthodox ( to steal Ehrman's term) decided that the heretic Marcion had a good idea and concocted a "canon." What you see in the fucking bible are those documents which got a majority vote in committee. Laws pass legislatures in much the same way and, as Bismarck noted: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."
