What seems normal and natural to us comes from what we are around every day. The things we hear and see are familiar. Even the wildest, weirdest things are commonplace when they are common around our place!
In certain parts of the world, for example, people eat monkey brains by trapping a live monkey in a special table and then cracking open its skull and eating the contents! Yummy or disgusting? Normal to people who do it all the time; disgusting to the rest of us.
This is true of the opinions we hear in our household and neighborhood and school and nation. Muslim schools in radicalized parts of the world teach their children to think of Jewish people as evil scum. Cartoon characters are employed to demonstrate this imputed evil. The child grows up with the very natural understanding that Jews must be stopped at all costs!
For a Protestant, the Catholic lay person's obsession with seeing the "Virgin" Mary in rust stains on water towers or in the burnt side of a grilled cheese sandwich--as an example--the height of ridiculous religious mania seems evident.
But, for the devout Catholic, reared on countless stories of martyrs, saints and intercessors, etc.---the beauty and awe-inspiring come natural in any report of the "Virgin" Mary appearing.
What is my point?
Imagine a time and a world in which there WAS NO JESUS as yet.
The Jewish ethos certainly revolved around expectations of some sort of Messiah of some description.
For the Gentile Roman--the everyday world would be filled with demi-gods, emperor gods, sacrificial ceremonies and placations, auguries, etc.
The Roman could partly comprehend what Jews were doing in there Temple ceremonies if only because they themselves did something reasonably similar. Yet, to Romans, Jews and Christians (eventually) were atheist because THEY DISBELIEVED MANY GODS! That is what was shocking.
Many came and went with claims to Messiah-ship. Reports of miracles were not uncommon. After all--why would anybody ever believe such a claim unless some magic, hoodwinkery, flim-flam accompanied the charismatic presentation of a candidate for Messiah?
Jesus was believed by relatively few. After all, there had been plenty of Messiah-candidates before (and after) him. The role of Messiah wasn't a startling innovation. Things attributed to Jesus might stem from a need, desire or opportunity to convince a skeptical listener that this Jesus was in some important ways different from the others. Miracles, for example.
With the "miracles" being described as so numerous the world could not contain the description--it makes one wonder how Jesus avoided being taken more seriously than his predecessors with their phoney magic.
Who would be more disposed to believing him? People (groups) with a similar agenda. Yet, no group embraced him. Neither Pharisee, nor Saducee, nor the officials at the Temple were warmly predisposed. Jesus only attracted the odd man out like a Judas who may have been a radical Sicarii. Fishermen.
Women were drawn to his peaceable message, certainly. Rabble. Prostitutes. Castoffs from regular society.
Jesus spoke, attracted crowds, gathered twleve, performed miracles, got into arguments/debates, was arrested and put to death.
Was any of this different from any other Messiah before him?
LARGELY, THE CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT WAS THE RESULT OF STORIES CIRCULATED AFTER HIS DEATH.
Were these fish stories? Exaggerations? Embellishments?
Since we know there were many, many (later called non-canonical or apocryphal) stories or Gospels about Jesus--this would tend to prove that divergent, contradictory, embellished fancies became widely circulated.
WHY? If there was only one real and true Jesus who only did real and true things---why so many contradictory tales about him?
It is far more likely that each group who wanted or needed Jesus to fit a certain preconception model jumped at the chance to BRAND their beliefs as THE JESUS.
By the time Constantine came along and Paul had a chance to embroider the Platonic ideal into the historical shadows of Judiasm--there were a hundred brands of JESUS and stories to match them!
What Constantine and the power of Rome were able to achieve was the certain destruction of competing forms of Christianity by Edict, excommunication and the power of banishment.
In the marketplace of religious fancies, the Brand that could wipe out the competitor was more likely to prevail.
With the burning of competing Gospels and the banishing of so-called heretics---Christianity was fused into a single (bifurcated!) orthodoxy of Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox until Martin Luther came along.
With the advent of Protestantism--the whole fracture and retelling started all over again.
The result is every denomination of Christianity all over again.
Walk into any Christian Bookstore and look at all the varieties of retelling and the CONTINUING REBRANDING of the Jesus persona!
It never seems to end.
Such is the power of myth. It fits today by changing yesterday into a more serviceable model.
Your perspective has been shaped your entire life by your daily encounters and your indoctrinations.
Your association with Jehovah's Witnesses and your disappointments have also shaped this view of who/what Jesus was and what you may need him to be (or not be).
Is it possible--ever--to escape our perspective?
Can we get a fresh and objective start on looking at Jesus, Christianity, other religions, or religion itself? Or, are we doomed to recycle variants, opinions, hearsays and prejudices parading as Truth??