To be fair, that whole story is obviously nonsense. Why would an omni god need to make himself human in order to sacrifice himself to protect us from himself? It’s ludicrous.

This is exactly the sort of story superstitious people in the Iron Age would invent to tell each other why their suffering during war and famine was righteous, though, to prevent uprisings and further societal collapse.

why not just make heaven and skip the whole test-you're-definitely-gonna-fail-without-me garbage. it all falls apart under the tiniest scrutiny, just so not compelling.

Yeah the whole thing is so stupidly convoluted, and I guess impressive if it's the only book you've ever read...

God makes the rules, why does he need to be a human sacrifice to stop his own creation from going to hell (also his creation and insanely abusive)? Why even invent the stupid rules that apparently require that in the first place?

I feel like a lot of the revelation stuff happened at the turn of the 20th century great awakening when the church was sort of co-opted by the wealthy to prevent the spread of socialism, though you could probably make a good argument about the great awakening and the downfall of the divine right of kings.

The Jesus arc was a problem from the beginning. That's why everyone was sort of fine with, or onboard, the original arthors killing him off so early in the storyline.

A lot of modern fanfiction authors would make the same choice.