Nick Tosches’s Jesus’ story, Under Tiberius, 2015, is the greatest story ever told ever–fulminative culmination, exundant

Old gods do die, and new gods do appear.

Under Tiberius, Nick Tosches, 2015, p. 34

I delivered my words with poetic grace and force, a single line in the dactylic hexameter of Homer, ending with an ancipital foot … It was … the rhythm and not the meaning of these simple words that struck with might …he who controls rhythm, controls.

— Ibid., p. 66

Asmodeus is called by the Book “the worst of demons,” …Except for the Satan, to whom allusion is made here and there in the Book, there is little concern in the Book for demons. And I wonder, if Asmodeus is said to be the worst of them, and he could neither seduce nor rape the woman Sarah, what menial piddlers these imagined demons must be.

— Ibid., p. 134

There is only one business. Call it what you would. Deceit. Greed. Filth. It is all the same. He who does business is he who lies. He who does business is he who steals. All business is shit, and he who does business is he who wallows in shit: eating it, regurgitating it, and, all the while, squealing deceit.

— Ibid., p. 236-7

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

— Ibid., 253

Know thyself …

And then expel thy self … Real thy self. Let loose the shame of thy self.

The words of Jesus. The words of no other.

— Ibid., p. 257