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I've been reading all the argument on who did what when and where, and I have to ask again: Is religion a history course? If we become scholars and get the history rightly formed, are we then "saved"? Is this what it's about, what we were created to become? Studying these stories long enough to pass the history test?

"I never ask God to give himself to me, I beg him to purify, to empty me. If I am empty, God of his very nature is obliged to give himself to me to fill me.
How to be pure? By steadfast longing for the one good God… God being in himself pure good can dwell nowhere except in the pure soul. He overflows into her. Whole, he flows into her.
Where the creature ends, there God begins to be. God asks only that you get out of his way, insofar as you are a creature, and let him be God in you. The least creaturely idea that ever entered your mind is as big as God. Why? because it will keep God out of you entirely. The moment you get one of your own ideas, God fades out. It is when the idea is gone that God gets in.
God desires urgently that you, the creature get out of his way - as if his own blessedness depended on it. Ah, beloved people, why don't you let God be God in you? What are you afraid of?

Is religion a history course? If we become scholars and get the history rightly formed, are we then "saved"? Is this what it's about, what we were created to become? Studying these stories long enough to pass the history test?

You bring a detached message to the group which was quickly overshadowed by the continuing clamor. No, we are not saved by knowing the right history, it is all about belief and obedience to God and His Christ.

That being said, Jesus called himself "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" Perhaps if He wer only the Way and the Life we could avoid these discussions. But He is also the Truth, and we are obliged to defend the Truth when it is attacked.