Jesus's sacrifice

[Minimalist]

As I understand it the early xtians were just a rebel group...hence the delight with all the smiting and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the gospels.

One of the problems with the early gnostics....who may well have been the earliest xtians... is that the Xtian Book Burning Club was pretty successful ( at least until the Nag Hammadi cache was found) in exterminating whatever they may have said about themselves. As a result, all we know is what a handful of later xtian zealots said ABOUT them.