I happen to work in the entertainment industry where the standard answer to 'how can I improve my act?' is 'cut five minutes from your show.' It just seems to me that God if he wanted to express himself 'divinely' would find a way to be more concise.
For example, there is a lot to prune in the writings of Isaiah. You could probably pare down the present 66 chapters to a 'greatest hits' package of about twenty chapters or so. The same goes for most of the prophetic writings. The Book of Numbers? Are we really supposed to believe that this is a truly holy book? I'd argue you could probably shave it down to about five chapters.
And what about the gospels? Why the need for four texts? It all seems a bit sloppy on God's part. Couldn't you boil this down into a single narrative and prune the apostolic letters? I almost forgot - this is so very Marcionite. Yet is style an argument for authenticity? For me it is certainly. Yet have you ever seen the way the university crowd go about in public?
Marcion was certainly an aesthete. No wonder the rest of the uncultured Christians ran him out of town.
