At the urging of some Christians (and also some of the non-Christian followers of Jesus) I read the Bible. Some of these missionaries had traveled to other continents to distribute copies of this “holy” book to "unbelievers" and to people who followed the teachings of other "gods" and sages. Later, after I had read the Jewish scriptures, to which Christians applied the ethnocentric and pejorative label "old," and also the Christian scriptures, the "new," I was skeptical of this practice, since the "god" or "lord" of the "old" text was not merely hostile but homicidal and even genocidal toward peoples other than those this "lord" considered "his" own "chosen" favorite people to whom he had, strangely, "promised" lands upon which others already lived.