You know how it is: white people don't want to kneel in front of a black man, and black people don't (usually) want to kneel in front of a white man, and Asians also don't want to kneel in front of a non-Asian - so they each imagine this "totally historical" person in their own way as if he is Santa Claus.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
