In certain parts of the world 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 but disgusting to the rest of us.
Muslim schools in radicalized parts of the world teach their children to think of Jewish people as evil scum.
Cartoon characters (like Mickey Mouse) 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 are the height of ridiculous religious mania.
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?
Let us try and 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 were atheist......because THEY DISBELIEVED MANY GODS!
That is what was shocking to Romans!
EACH GROUP HAS ITS OWN PERSPECTIVE on what is normal, natural, believable and unbelievable.
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?
Statistically, by population numbers 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 and Women were mostly the big fan base for Jesus!
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?
When Elvis died we had a similar phenomenon: newspaper stories popped up with people claiming they had sighted Elvis still alive!
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. THEIR 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.
Think of our own day and age if it suddenly became illegal to be anything Christian UNLESS you were a Baptist. All other bible translations but one
burned? All other churches prohibited? Think of the riots and mob violence! This is the ACTUAL history of early Christianity!!
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 a thousand years passed and 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 we have now.
Walk into any Christian Bookstore and look at all the varieties of retelling and the CONTINUING REBRANDING of the Jesus image. Crafted, shaped,
retold to fit present day needs and tastes.
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.
What seems "normal" and acceptable to you is not YOUR RESEARCH and IDEAS. It is second-hand ever present backwash.
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??
Are you still in the market for your own PERSONAL Jesus? Or, can you start from scratch about the entire concept?
Can you give up on a modern, 21st Century version of the Jewish Messiah cum Christian superhero?
Jehovah's Witnesses are stuck with a RETURNED Jesus sitting on the throne for NINETY-SIX YEARS without doing a damned thing for anybody!
They are victims of their perspective.
America's Evangelicals are stuck with a COMING-SOON Jesus who is going to rapture them into heaven.
CAN YOU ESCAPE the Jesus trap? Or are you mucked down like a dinosaur who wandered into a Tar Pit?