That's the problem is you think only the book was the cause of Christianity. The Apostles were the origin after Christ resurrected. Before that; there was no Christian.
the bible didn't exist until the 3rd century, but that's not the point. wherever you look in history during the last 2000 years and note that christians or christianity had some sort of impact on events, the impact is invariably due to ulterior motives or sect-specific interpretations that have nothing to do with biblical stories themselves.
The Bible IS christianity and the belief in it and the stories you mention have impacted christianity, which have impacted how people view the world, which has impacted historical events. Example, the Crusades were a war to spread christianity to the heathens. Without the stories and messages in the Bible the Crusades would not have occured. Understanding the root beliefs of people will help you understand why they do/did things. Its a very simple correlation..... plus they are interesting stories and do accuratly portray life in a time period with little records, plus some magic.
motivations and justifications for the various crusades were way more complex than that and frequently were political. it's worth studying if you have time - actually way more interesting than biblical stories. that's kind of my point. the "root" beliefs that would help inspire something like the crusades would obviously have to be a matter of extremely subjective interpretation. looking at stories in the bible would not even begin to explain why they happened. pretty big misconception here. early OT stories don't portray life at the time accurately, and even in the NT there are known inconsistencies.
unless you're hung up on taking every word in the bible literally, I wouldn't think it's a huge deal for believers to get around if the authors sometimes embellished oral tradition of older stories with details more contemporaneous to when they were writing them down.
But, of course I take every word literally. Not to mention, it's my sole source as a guide to living life. I'm not in want.
for those interested, this is one of the most concise histories on the crusades. It ties in several aspcts and is a ten min read http://www.thearma.org/essays/Crusades.htm
It just repeats, paragraph after paragraph, that Crusaders were motivated by religion, not money...which just supports the critics, who say that Christianity killed tens of thousands of Muslims. Nothing new.
I turned it on for five minutes and its just not for me. Seems well produced, but to me it's like watching the smurfs, if millions of people based their lives on the smurfs.
That's God talking! Listen up! Incredible killer smurfs is probably how the Middle East views our current Crusaders.
Watched it and was a little disappointed that they skimmed through so many good stories. This feels like I went speed dating and just got a glimpse of what the bible is all about. I get that there is a lot to cover, but there were some really good stories that weren't even discussed. Especially the ones with Isaac.
