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I created an interactive map overlaying Apostle Paul’s 20,000km of journeys on a 1st century Roman Roads network, with modern vs. ancient cities and site photos. The base map utilizes the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire (DARE), which was embedded into ArcGIS, with all four of Paul’s journeys with every stop added. The Roman Roads map can also be switched to a modern map to compare the ancient vs. modern locations.

This is part of a personal project I am embarking on called Kingdoms Collide, where I plan to retrace every step of Paul’s journeys across the ancient Roman Roads.

Interesting. Is it possible to add what sources you use for each datapoint? The Acts and Epistles of course (verse numbers would be nice), but you use more sources, right?

Thanks for checking it out! I have the verse references, with plans to add all the relevant verses within the box as well.

Most of the locations are known historically, however some could benefit with additional sources, such as Malta. I will try to add those as well

It already shows the sources if you click on the markers

Why Paul? Is it because he was just particularly well traveled and well documented?

Not op, but Paul was on his way to persecute Christians when he was confronted by a vision of the risen Jesus.

Acts 9:15 – The Lord said to Ananias about Paul: “This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.”

His mission to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles makes him a good choice for this work.

(Also not OP, so this is not speaking for them but speaking to the documentation.)

The more accurate answer is that Paul wrote (or was supposed to have written) a bunch of letters documenting his travels. The book of Acts (christian bible) also documents his travels. Note that multiple of the Pauline epistles are widely recognized to be forgeries written in his name.

The time of the other apostles post-New Testament is mostly accounted as tradition rather than written record. I'm not saying all, I'm saying most. I do not pretend to be an expert. There's no map to be made of the travels of Thomas, for example. Only the idea that he reached India (and maybe some other details that I'm leaving out). Or Jame-the-Just, who, as far as I can tell, might have gone to Rome but didn't travel the Mediterranean. The reason for his conversion has little to nothing why this is interesting (to me, to scholars, to people who aren't of the faith).

I've been reading a ton about the first two centuries of christianity for a couple of years and this is my current understanding. It's an exciting topic if you're a history nerd. Especially if you're an atheist who wants to better understand the formation of the dogma that you might have been taught as a child.

Apologies for stomping on your reply / reasoning. I don't agree with your answer. No harm intended.

I don't mind your response, it's interesting.

There's a wide body of scholarship on who wrote each Epistle and when, no point trying to debate that here imo. I agree they weren't all written by him, but the six that were are enough for decades of individual study and reflection. In the ancient world, writing in the name of a respected teacher wasn’t always seen as fraud the way we think today. It could be seen as honoring a tradition — like continuing a school of thought under a founder’s name.

I don't think our replies negate each other, they seem complimentary to me.

Another aspect that's interesting is that his path covers most of the territory that was conquered by Alexander the Great, see Daniel 8-11. This Hellenistization and Paul's strength in Greek rhetoric, and 'dual' citizenship made him well suited for quickly spreading the gospel to these areas.

Jewish by birth and religion — giving him authority in synagogues, knowledge of Scripture, and credibility among Jews.

Roman by law and politics — granting him rights that protected him and enabled his mission across the empire.

This combination was rare and made Paul uniquely suited to bridge cultures: he could preach to Jews in their synagogues, debate philosophers in Greek forums, and stand trial before Roman governors.

why Herodotus? Why Thucydides ?

Magnificent project, congrats!

Is ArcGIS free for this kind of project?

Thank you!

Yes, it is free through ArcGIS Online, their web-based mapping software

What a nicely done narrative presentation and container (ArcGIS etc) of travel. Immersive 360 degree pictures might be nice to add.

There's a 1990 board game about Paul's travels with a similar map, but with less narrative detail, it's more about immersion and play. Tom Vasel wrote a review: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/100649/review-journeys-of-p...

Campaign variant: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/127941/missionary-campaigns...

Other - a bit more crunchy and modern board games that feature a little bit of Paul are Commissioned (2016) and The Acts (2018) & expansions - both games can be solo'd - good for personal immersion in the topic of church history, community building or friction.

# Bart Ehrman on the Pauline timeline:

https://www.bartehrman.com/story-of-paul-in-the-bible/

https://www.bartehrman.com/apostle-paul-timeline/

https://www.bartehrman.com/historical-paul/

# Academic research bridging archeology and the letters of Paul

https://rbecs.org/2020/07/03/nasrallah/

I really love the way this is put together. This is a great way to illustrate someone's journey through life.

I am doing a similar project with family genealogy so it covers a longer span of time but the family connections to places become tangible. You really see how some people live out their entire lives in one small area while others hit the trails and find a way to prosper in some far-off locality. It especially stands out when you look at children and inheritances since the first-born son typically ended up with the father's best assets and other sons needed to find their own way with smaller parcels of land or almost nothing. Perhaps the most interesting part is discovering all the loops and intersections where a descendant ends up living or working in a town where an ancestor lived generations earlier without knowing anything about that ancestor. Feels like the circle is completed when someone later cycles back through and finds that they also like the place well enough to stay a while.

Thank you for giving my project a look!

What you are working on sounds really interesting. Now you have me thinking on my families genealogy connections…

It really is a great project. It can also eat up a lot of time. I don't have much time for some of the kin to be able to see it since a couple are over 90 and several others are aged 80-90. Using photos and deeds and wills to correlate locations with addresses that have become something else can be tedious. Getting the written or spoken stories is a little easier if you can send some photos around and ask people to share stories about the subjects (homes, cars, people, events, etc)

I have taken a similar path to yours in that the location flags have links to photos relevant to that flagged location (home, farm, etc) so the experience of tracking a relative thru time is a little more rich for the young people who may never have met or heard of that person before they click the link. Tying things to contemporary newspaper accounts of the joys and tragedies of life that found these people adds another layer and helps reinforce the family lore about events or people.

I've always loved history. There's so much of it and every minute that passes just adds a little more flavor to the tale.

(86 miles, 6-7 day walk)

Was it common to go walking across the Roman Empire or was it a rare feat?

I'd recommend looking into adding a speculative final journey he might have taken to Spain. He mentions plans to go there in Romans, and other sources like 1 Clement and Jerome suggest he actually went there. The city of Tarragona has a tradition that he visited, as a speculative destination to map.

St. Paul (and his translators) are responsible for some of the most evocative turns of phrase I have ever encountered in literature. From 1 Corinthians 13:

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

Only in recent years have I appreciated how familiarity with such material so enriches my experience of other, later literature. To use this example, the title of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and its eponymous sentence (paraphrased):

How can we know the gods face to face, till we have faces?

Who is Paul, and why is his journey interesting?

I eventually figured it out I think.. A brief summary about Paul and his journey at the top would greatly improve the first impression of people adjacent to and outside of the target audience.

Nice work!

Nice site design. Brings scripture to life.

One UI comment. I notice there is a legend under the map and callouts on the map to each of the four journeys. I wanted to see one of these switch the display to only show one journey at a time. Maybe the site does this and clearly on desktop, but I couldn’t intuit it on mobile.

Thank you for your comment!

I am still working on the legend and having it do exactly like you said. I have to change things up a bit but hopefully I can be able to implement it soon

Very interesting project! The Roman world really comes alive this this.

A pet peeve of mine though (and a bit OT):

I know it is not your fault, since this is inbuilt behavior, but I cannot for the life of me understand why almost all map widgets now have this behavior when as you are scrolling the whole page and happen to go over the map, suddenly the scrolling motion is used to zoom out the map, which thus quickly collapses into a thumbnail or a dot. It always drives me nuts when it occurs, a total fail of a UI/UX design. What was wrong with pinching to zoom out??

Not sure, but I think Google Map started this trend. I wonder if these map widget designers actually test the interaction with actual users.

Beautiful work, no other words.

I’ve always thought it would be cool to build a side project like OpenStreetMap, where people can mark the places traveled by famous historical figures — kind of like what you did with Paul’s journey, but open to any historical figure. Do you know if there’s anything like that out there?

Thank you so much!

I don’t know of anything like that, but what a cool idea. I have a passion for the Silk Roads as well, and I made an interactive map for it. Soon I will add Marco Polo’s and Ibn Battuta’s routes to it. I really like historical journeys and how they intersect with the modern locations

Who's Paul?

its probably the most important figure of the Christianism just after christ himself.

The OP mentions it in another post, but he meant the Apostle (follower of Jesus, or something similar to that)

Viewing this in Firefox on Linux I see the outline of the travels before the map loads, then the map loads over it and I can't see it anymore.

neat! Small typo in 'Paul's first Journey' :

>This first trip laid the framework for hsi other trips further afield.

should be 'his'

How did Paul make money and buy food for the journeys?

Paul financially supported himself as a tentmaker (See Acts 18:3 - “There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.”)

There are also other mentions he was a tentmaker.

> tentmaking

For anyone wondering

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentmaking

> ... in which missionaries support themselves by working full-time in the marketplace with their skills and education, instead of receiving financial support from a Church.

Just to be clear, Paul literally made tents. The meaning of "tentmaking" that you quote came later by analogy with Paul.

I guess I'm just wondering where the profession disappeared in the general sense of surnames. You've got Smith, Tailor, Fletcher, etc.

I feel like if tent-making was such a prevalent profession, there'd be name derivatives from it

Professional surnames tend to reflect trades that were common when surnames were introduced to a culture. In English, that means ~1066. In Turkey, that means 1934. For whatever reason, there doesn't seem to have been a lot of tentmakers that established family names in England during the Norman Conquest. Not so in other places, though:

The Arabic surnames Kheyyam/Khayam/Khayami are all derived from the word for tent maker, Plachta is Polish, but more closely aligns with canvas-maker, mostly sails. And then theres Zeltman, which is German for tent man (which is ambiguous between "man who sells tents" and "man who lives in a tent")

And you know this how?

https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/skenopoios

"some translate more generally: leather worker"

i often wonder this. how wasnt he robbed along the way? how didnt he starve to death. unless he was the calvin klein of tents, surely youd be working all day every day making tents just to survive, leaving no time for your spiritual whitecastle.

In addition to his wages, he had many patrons, church funding, 'stayed with friends', and was transported for 'free' as a Roman prisoner.

It only takes believing in 1 miracle to be able to believe in any of them. It only takes witnessing one miracle to witness many.

Interesting. I’ve just gone down a rabbit hole and seen Thomas Jefferson call Paul the first corrupter of Jesus’ teachings and I’m seeing everything in a brand new way. It makes a lot of sense.

TIL Jefferson published his own "version" of the New Testament. [1]

> Jefferson mashed up/cut and pasted the New Testament to remove any references to the supernatural, or miracles, as well as the divinity of Christ. His title for the book was "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which tells us a lot about his motivations.

Walking in Arius' footsteps ...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dnyxy8/thoma...

It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students.

> It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students.

It's interesting that every point of this narrative conflicts with the canonical accounts (even excluding the Pauline corpus for this purpose), in which Paul did encounter Jesus, and did at least spend time with (we aren't explicitly told it was spent in study, but presumably it was not exclusively in silent meditation) with disciples of Jesus between the encounter and conversion experience and the start of his ministry, and he got along as well with the other apostles as the other apostles they did with each other.

I'm not really a believer or practicer anymore, but as someone who spent substantial time reading scripture when I was, I've thought a lot about what happens to Christianity if you discard the writings of Paul. If the namesake of Christianity satisfies the claims of the believers, that should be sufficient. Unfortunately, I believe that without Paul's writings, as well as the body of knowledge contained in extra-scriptural writings (commentary through history, catechisms, doctrine passed down by your local church, etc) Christianity pretty much falls apart.

Christianity as an imperial-aligned religion doesn't happen sure, but I'm not sure it falls apart. Jesuism or "The Way," looks a lot more like the Anabaptist traditions, Quakers, Liberation Theology, Christian Anarchism, and secular "Jesus as moral exemplar" movements.

As to the degree that these are falling apart is debatable. They certainly don't have the strong central hierarchy and universalism that Catholic and Protestant sects have, but they seem to endure.

Paul's letters are the earliest evidence of Christianity we have. The gospels weren't written until much later. It wouldn't surprise me if Paul's theology influenced what was written in the gospels.

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There is widely held view, based on textual analysis, that some letters attributed to Paul are not by him. Most prominent of those are 1 and 2 Timothy, thought to be by Timothy himself, and the source of many of the ideas you complain about.

Those letters, even at the time the Bible was compiled - about 400 AD, were nearly not included due to doubts about their authenticity.

Fair enough, but they were included and they were attributed to Paul. The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either. You can put quotes around Paul's name in this context but the effect is still the same.

> The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either.

We absolutely know for sure that those books weren't written by the 'names' used - we just know that none of the authors identified themselves, or cited any sources - and were written 40-100 years after the events they claim to detail.

We don’t know that for sure, and the author of John does clearly identify himself in-text..

Everyone also agrees Luke-Acts is written by the same person, and that Acts shifts to a first-person perspective during the account of Paul’s journeys.

It’s not currently in fashion to think they were written by their the people they are named after, but it’s not implausible; the strongest argument for later dating of the gospels is simply that they all are perceived to clearly prophecy the destruction of Jerusalem, which did occur circa 70AD. But there’s no particular reason, even from a secular perspective, to assume this wasn’t just a reasonable guess about the future given past history and the contemporary political environment. Also, it seems relevant that our earliest sources given them those credits.

Wild the criticism differences on this site when the topic touches Christianity versus other religions.

People always quote only half of those verses and use it to grind an axe. It's tiresome. Let's get the full text in here:

> Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. (Ephesians 6:5-9, NIV)

So yes, Paul doesn't rail against slavery and insist that it must be torn down. But the simple fact is that slavery was a fact of life in Paul's day, and he had to deal with the world as it was. Thus he focused his advice on the reality of the situation, not engaging in a vain struggle to overturn the order of society in one step. Even the command to treat your slaves well because you will answer to God would have been a significant change in Paul's day. Progress is made one step at a time, and it's not just to blame Paul for doing the best he could in the conditions of his day.

And, frankly, his advice to slaves is good advice. As the ancient Stoics recognized, the only thing you can control is your own response to the situation life places you in. If you're a slave, that isn't ideal, but you can and should conduct yourself with integrity even in such a situation. That doesn't mean you shouldn't hope to be in a better place someday, but in the meantime do the best you can where you are. That's great advice that everyone should follow.

> Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present herself as the radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church - for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each of you must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:22-33 NIV)

Notice that this is far more than a one-sided "women must listen to their husbands" that it is often portrayed as. Expectations are placed upon both parties, and by far the larger obligation is placed on the husband. He is commanded to "love [his] wife just as Christ loved the church", and Christ loved the church so much that he died for it. Thus husbands are expected to be completely and utterly self-sacrificing for the good of their wives, even to the point of death if necessary. That is no small obligation, needless to say. Even if one doesn't like traditional gender roles, it is disingenuous to portray this verse as some kind of misogynistic oppression of women. In fact men have huge obligations of service and sacrifice placed upon them, in Paul's teaching.

Dunno, man. I read the full quote as "thou shalt be complacent and suffer what comes to thee without complaint, for someday thine misfortune will be alleviated by the grace of God".

Which isn't adequately far from "shut up and get over yourself", from my perspective.

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That's doubtful.

To do that, St. Paul would need to make all the other 12 apostles buy into the story and start spreading it. Then do the same with the extended 70 apostles and their disciples. And, of course, change the gospels.

In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.

> In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.

As I understand it, a number of people claimed to be the Messiah in Jesus' lifetime (and before, or since for that matter, including today). I don't think Old Testament references to the Messiah are all that meaningful as such for this particular discussion. Whether Jesus is or isn't the Messiah is of course a matter of faith.

> a number of people claimed to be the Messiah in Jesus' lifetime (and before, or since for that matter, including today)

Yes, they imitated and used the "concept of Jesus". That's why I think St. Paul did not invent it.

They didnt use “the concept of Jesus”. Jesus is just the name of one person who some believed was the messiah.

Right; I understood that more as "the person Jesus", rather than the broader concept of the Messiah.

> Paul would need to make all the other 12 apostles buy into the story and start spreading it.

I'm not sure that follows.

What works do you believe that we have from these 12 people - and how would you evaluate the relative credibility of them and Paul / Saul?

As I understand it, Paul conceded he got all his information <sic> about Jesus from revelation, and there's a compelling argument to be made that his works all describe a different entity (a supernatural one) than the human-like character described elsewhere, and much later, in the NT.

Paul's writings largely precede the gospels, so he wouldn't have needed to "change" them. They were written later. He could have drafted them himself for all we know.

> They were written later. He could have drafted them himself for all we know.

I mean, that's not at all true. You’d have to ignore the same research that tells us that they were written later in the first place to say we have no information with which to reject that they have a common authorship with the Pauline corpus.

Nobody has claimed Paul invented the idea of the Messiah.

There is no mention of the 12 apostles except for IIRC 1 Cor 15 which is likely an interpolation. He mentions only James (bro of Jesus, curiously erased from history), Cephas (/Peter?) and John. And he doesn't use kind words about them...

He would have written a self-help book for wannabe cult starters titled 'How to get your first 12 customers'.

What is interesting about this project is that it cleanly splits off the real and verifiable components from the fantastic bits.

From the map dialog for Lystra, visited on his first and second journeys:

**

>Second Journey Verses (Acts16:1-5):

>Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek. 2 The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. 3 Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. 4 As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. 5 So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.

**

I guess you need to have rules if you're gonna let people play the disciple game. Rule #1 - Get circumsized. This rule may be most effective at limiting disciple group size since any uncommitted wannabees would take a hard pass. I'm left wondering whether this could be the origin of "just the tip", or tipping culture?

Luckily for Timothy, Paul was a tent-maker or leather-worker, depending on which translation you favor, so he likely had some really sharp tools and would be able to make short work of this little project. Timothy probably didn't find much delight in pitching tents for a while though. Pretty funny trying to imagine walking around preaching for converts after this operation and wondering whether they had a cone or something like your cat gets at the vet to shield the parts from scratchy robes while walking. Probably lots of talking to God on those journeys.

An argument against the position that the "concept of Jesus" is woven throughout the Old Testament is that the Jews did not accept him as such. And yes, I do know about all the 'christian' reasons why that did not happen, but it is rather obvious that there is no need to rewrite the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.

> no need to rewrite the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah

Funny you mention that. Because those Jews (not all of them, mind you) that did not accept the Messiah did try to change the book of Isaiah. The mental gymnastics about the "Almah" translation continue to this day.

https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/isaiah-714-a-v...

According to the 'Acts of the Apostles', Paul (then still called Saul) was actively prosecuting the followers of Jesus, which by many were considered to be a Jewish sect, like there were more of such sects.

It was on one of this prosecution trips that he experienced a medical condition that lead to temporary blindness, which he interpreted as a divine intervention, resulting him to join the sect.

Doubtful.

As far as I know, academic consensus is that there was probably a real person behind the Jesus movement, just as with Buddhism, Islam and other religious movements. Of course, that says nothing about the supernatural claims made by the Bible, or how closely the canon written centuries after the fact actually hews to that person's teachings.

That feels like a real stretch considering that Paul is responsible for starting the branch of Christianity that would eventually outlaw any “non-canonical” books about Jesus. Said books would never even have existed if it was true that Paul invented the character of Jesus whole cloth.

The erradication of non-canonical books came way later. There was no such thing at first (during at least the first two centuries following Paul's life).

Does remind of an intellectual property crackdown some. "Only we get to tell this story"

He was also a Roman citizen, so he could pull some privileges for free rides like getting to Rome through exercising his right to appeal directly to the Emperor

His main privilege was that petty local rulers were more reluctant to persecute him than they would a non-citizen.

Seneca’s brother, most well known as the recipient of Seneca’s letters, was one such judge who dismissed the charges against him when he found out that he was a citizen.

As an American, I’m planning a similar strategy to finance my vacation to Ecuador.

In addition to the exact work he did, it was an early church value to work, rather than depend on external funding:

"If one doesn't work, one shouldn't eat"

https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/2%20Thessalonians%203%...

Didn't he work as a tentmaker? Also I'd imagine he got a lot of support along the way.

Yes he did and tentmaking was a respectable artisan trade that also likely includes leatherwork and weaving, not just camping tents.

Acts is fiction (likely based on the epistles and Josephus). There are 7 undisputed Pauline epistles (though a few scholars even believe none of them are real - most recently Nina Livesey). So his itinerary certainly wasn't as vast as depicted here (also, it's impossible). Itinerant preachers were supported by communities they preached to. Also, Paul is urging people to give money to his 'collection for the saints'. There is no word what happened to it (neither in Acts). Hmm...

There’s nothing in Acts that could be said to come from Josephus, what do you mean? Josephus does not mention Paul at all and has only a brief disputed reference to Jesus.

The original christian mega church grifter.

Jesus would have cast him out along with the rest of the pharisees if he had the chance.

What motivated you to make this? It’s not entirely clear to me from looking over more of your site. Seems like a lot of effort unless you and your family are believers.

you dont need to be a "believer" to have interest in your culture and history. what we are in the west, our philosophy our way to see the world has been shaped directly from the ideas of people like Plato, Socrates and Paul.

Or perhaps interested in history of religion?

Yeah could be. Their overall story seems interesting. Just curious to know more of the “why” behind the effort.

and civilization

Not sure why I’m being downvoted. Asking why someone wrote something is a basic skill everyone is taught in primary school.

dont want to be rude, but your question shows how narrow your vision of the world is.

I’d argue that people downvoting my question have a very narrow view of the world

let me tell you something, when you ask: "What motivated you to make this? It’s not entirely clear to me from looking over more of your site. Seems like a lot of effort unless you and your family are believers."

you are projecting yourself into other person. that is the opposite of empathy. for YOU is a lot of effort. for YOU is only valuable for "believers" (whatever that even means) for YOU also includes family believers....

dont you see? if you dont, no problem i understand. i just wanted to explain to you why are you downvoted, that's all.

we know you are being snobbish because you don't like christianity.

I’m not sure who you are replying to exactly but I assure you I like Christianity very much

downvoted because I was wrong, or because you don't like people pointing out the obvious?