[The Bishop]

Ok I lied. I'm here anyway. Stony, I would say you're right. . . think about it. The old testament was the Jewish portion, and so it has the laws, rules, etc and the history, yadda yadda of their people. It also makes satan more of a general adversary to their continued progress as a people. The new testament makes satan a real entity, and the writers of this portion realized they were talking to a different crowd, and needed to show their front man (jesus) as a miracle performing guru type.

Another interesting thing is that he is referred to as "Rabbi" ... and nothing was mentioned anywhere about his wife. I have read in many historical biblical writings that point out that all Jewish rabbis had a wife... it seems in quite a few places that Mary Magdalen is very close to jesus, and in the surviving documents that were not included in the NT, it lends to the fact that jesus was an ordinary married rabbi, with an extraordinary claim.

Another by the by is that the Jewish prophecy of the Messiah says that he will come from the line of David, whereas christians will say that he is the direct son of God. whoops. the old testament does NOT agree with the new, and to top it off, when two of the new testament gospels attempt to trace the lineage back thru Joseph to get to david (and satisfy the Jewish prophecy) they don't agree. Lovely.

I wish I could tell the editors of the bible over the ages to have made a more fun work of fiction. sheesh.

God is real, all else has been human-added fluff.

-Bish