I just realized I’ve never really looked into or addressed one of the central components of Christianity: the Gospels. And by that I mean, the fact that it is Gospels plural, that there are four books (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John) of the Bible which run more or less parallel to one another, telling the same stories in slightly different versions. This necessarily complicates the way that the various Christian traditions deal with the subject of version control, since the issue appears at the very heart of their traditions. Of course, they are still telling the same essential story, and the differences between them are not enormous. But they are significant in some places. I should probably find out more about the history and development of the books of the Bible at some point. It seems like it would be pretty interesting. I’m guessing there were various groups that each of the Gospel books came from and represented, and that they were a sort of syncretic fusion.

Also, its interesting to think about Christianity as being focused around comparative study, but that they’ll limit it at that one story. They won’t bring in stories from all around the world, like Joseph Campbell did, in trying to articulate his idea of the “Monomyth”. In that sense, I think I can understand better what he was getting at, trying to put together the early stages of a syncretic world religion, structured around the central metaphor of comparing stories, just like Christianity itself is.