Christians celebrate rape, torture, slavery and genocide.

[The Grand Nudger]

Of course. Jesus was peddling his own interpretation of religion, just like any religious leader in history. This doesn't change the dogmatic nature of his teachings and the potential harm that they can cause.

No, I wouldn't say that this is altered in the least, agreed.

I think that it's likely that whoever wrote the Gospels had at least an idea of what the Old Testament was about. Including the "rape/murder/ genocide" part.

You'd think that was likely when we wonder if the authors of the gospels even knew wtf -they- were writing about...or what was contained in other portions of some parts of the gospels? Do we have any examples of references by this jesus character to those rapes/murders/genocides directly? "The Law" is fairly vague as a reference to any of these (vagueries are a convenient currency for a con after all ) .

Why? Because the first authors of the Bible were educated as Jewish. Educated Jews of those times probably knew what the Bible was about.

Yet they chose to spin a yarn about a character so drastically unlike the character of the OT that the two (judaism and christianity) could no longer be considered the same religion. A character so diverse from it's supposed source material that there was disagreement (and continues to be disagreement) that the two were, in fact, the same character. Perhaps the OT's value to the authors of the NT was little more than that of transference of authority. They seem to have been eager to assume the mantle of righteousness and continuity offered by the OT without actually being interested in advancing it's core narratives. Perhaps this was as inconvenient for them then as it is for some Christians today...but as foundational and necessary as it is for many christians today if they hope to even attempt a claim of authenticity?