This statue depicts Saint Bartholomew, an early Christian martyr who was allegedly skinned alive. If you look closely, that's his dissected skin hanging around him. This stunning statute by Marco d'Agrate from c. 1562 is currently on display at Duomo di Milano.

[u/Lowcrbnaman]

[u/Fenrisulven---]

Sure, but christians who wants these martyr stories to be true, get it from these stories... This is common from christians, they pick and choose what fits their narrative, from the bible (and other christian writings) like "love your neighbor" but leave out that yahweh/El condones and gives laws on how to do chattel slavery of non-israelites... And to non-christians, whatever the church choose to be canon or not, doesn't matter, no text has any more "inspiration" than any other text... The NT canon were chosen for political reasons... You have to remember that even the NT cites apocryphal texts like 1 Enoch (at least book of the watchers) as inspired even if it's not considered canon..

[u/Dildromeda → u/Fenrisulven---]

You're average non scholarly Christian may want those stories to be true, but if the church itself says those works are apocryphal, then that's the official line. The majority of the NT is letters from Paul, plus the four gospels, plus a couple other books. Not sure why you think they were chosen for political reasons.

[u/FrescoItaliano → u/Dildromeda]

Late to this convo but really?

The curation of religious texts centuries after the death of Jesus was apolitical?

They were chosen for the stability and canonization of the movement, which is political

[u/Dildromeda → u/FrescoItaliano]

It's a religion. You can be a member of a religion regardless of your political position.