One could argue as well that Jesus is the most important person in the history of the West, looked at from a historical, social, or cultural perspect… - Bart D. Ehrman

The question is then how can we decide what anybody in the ancient world said. We can't. We wish we could. It would be nice if we could. You would like to think that because you can go to the store and buy an edition of Plato that you are actually reading Plato, but the problem is that we just do not have the kind of evidence that we need in order to establish what ancient authors actually wrote.

The very idea that society should serve the poor, the sick, and the marginalized became a distinctively Christian concern.

My thesis can be stated simply: scribes occasionally altered the words of their sacred texts to make them more patently orthodox and to prevent their misuse by Christians who espoused aberrant views.