Jesus may have been about the luv but Paul of Tarus was and from ca. 150 to ca. 1930 Paul was the entire Christian religion. People read Jesus’ birth and death but never the Sermon on the Mount, which was virtually unknown to all but specialists.

Every theologian, priest and pastor knew Romans and Corinthians off by heart, though.

Fun Fact: Women having to wear veils was never mentioned in the Quran and it’s quite likely Muhammad never saw a veil, but veil-wearing was very clearly established in the New Testament. I’ve been to small towns in Europe where women still wear full-on veils to Church.

It’s also strongly implied in the Bible that women probably can’t go to heaven.

@dasmouse: You’ve never read Martin Luther have you? I believe his longest (and definitely his most passionate) commentary was on Romans. He loved that shit.

@gor: No, I think we’re on the same page here.

Veils are 1 Corinthians 11, and many people extended it further than simply praying (the text is pretty clear about woman heads, even if it just says ‘praying’). There’s still a few (small, distant) Hamlets in Portugal and Italy where they still where veils all the time, and many more where they wear veils only in Church and Mourning (the mourning clothes are fucking scary), and the Muslims likely picked up the custom from Greek Christians living in the middle East; the Greeks (outside of Alexandria) were incredibly strict with women even before Christianity. Most places the woman couldn’t go in the front room of the house unaccompanied (my own theory is that Paul’s primarily Greek upbringing is what influenced him, as the Jews were somewhat patriarchal, but not to *that* extent). A few chapters later there’s some other awesomely sexist passage I can’t remember the chapter though.

1 Timothy 5 is probably the best example of ‘women can’t go to heaven thing’ but really it was more the aggregate of Paul’s repeated statements that women will stray towards the Devil if unchecked by men, which is something that pops up all over the Epistles.