Was just re-reading The God Delusion and it emphasizes that Jesus continued the Old Testament’s in-group inclusion and out-group hostility. This jives with something (I think?) from Professor Ehrman’s books suggesting Jesus would have been surprised by Paul preaching to the gentiles.

But, Rodney Stark makes a strong point that one reason Christianity sold so well in the first few decades was that there was a lot of migration and it appealed to new immigrants (as it did to women and the poor). And perhaps the best-known parable is the one where the enemy (Samarian) was a “neighbor.”

So is all this right or is it an example of more inconsistencies?