Here is what I really believe.
'Who is Jesus' would be better expressed as 'who was Jesus'. While there is no reliable evidence that any such person as described in the gospels ever lived, my own opinion is that he was a real man.
I've traveled a great deal in Asia and in the Americas, and in every city where I've spent much time I've seen the street-corner preachers with their disciples gathered about them. Many of the preachers are charasmatic spell binders. Some claim Christianity as their creed, some Islam, some the Tao, but each claims to be the one with the true message of heaven. I've no doubt that Jesus did exist and was one such preacher.
As a child I spent a good deal of time in New Orleans. I was fascinated by the street artists in Jackson Square with their ability to paint a person's portrait in a few minutes. Such street-side paintings are not great art, but they are accurate representations of their subjects. It's too bad there was not one of these artists around in Jesus' time to leave behind a true picture of the man himself.
Instead, all we have are the contradictory accounts of the gospels. They don't give us much to go on if we want to know who Jesus was. Much of what they say is wrong. Jesus' mother and father are said to have been from Nazareth, but Nazareth didn't exist until after Jesus is supposed to have been born, lived, and died. No census was taken during the time of Caesar Augustus. When the Canon of the New Testament was ratified in 325 at Nicea, the bishops should have spent the money needed to hire a good editor to correct the mistakes and eliminate the conflicts in the story. It would have been money well spent.
Myths have a way of being built into the fabric of a culture. I've seen how myths can become so deep-rooted among a people that they continue to be believed long after they have been been proven to be false. The Jesus myth and all the world's religions have survived long past the time when they should have disappeared. Faith in one sort of god or another has proven to be stronger than reason.
So who was Jesus? He was a man who may or may not have lived and died two thousand years ago. His teachings have little value, and the church built in his name has been guilty of causing some of the greatest crimes in the history of humankind, from the burning of witches to the holocaust. Remember that it was Christians who built the extermination camps where Jews were slaughtered. Adolf Hitler's birthday was blessed every year in German churches.
Now you can excommunicate me if you wish. I leave you with this: El día ha sido bueno. La noche será larga.
(The day has been good. The night will be long)
garza33.
;
'Who is Jesus' would be better expressed as 'who was Jesus'. While there is no reliable evidence that any such person as described in the gospels ever lived, my own opinion is that he was a real man.
I've traveled a great deal in Asia and in the Americas, and in every city where I've spent much time I've seen the street-corner preachers with their disciples gathered about them. Many of the preachers are charasmatic spell binders. Some claim Christianity as their creed, some Islam, some the Tao, but each claims to be the one with the true message of heaven. I've no doubt that Jesus did exist and was one such preacher.
As a child I spent a good deal of time in New Orleans. I was fascinated by the street artists in Jackson Square with their ability to paint a person's portrait in a few minutes. Such street-side paintings are not great art, but they are accurate representations of their subjects. It's too bad there was not one of these artists around in Jesus' time to leave behind a true picture of the man himself.
Instead, all we have are the contradictory accounts of the gospels. They don't give us much to go on if we want to know who Jesus was. Much of what they say is wrong. Jesus' mother and father are said to have been from Nazareth, but Nazareth didn't exist until after Jesus is supposed to have been born, lived, and died. No census was taken during the time of Caesar Augustus. When the Canon of the New Testament was ratified in 325 at Nicea, the bishops should have spent the money needed to hire a good editor to correct the mistakes and eliminate the conflicts in the story. It would have been money well spent.
Myths have a way of being built into the fabric of a culture. I've seen how myths can become so deep-rooted among a people that they continue to be believed long after they have been been proven to be false. The Jesus myth and all the world's religions have survived long past the time when they should have disappeared. Faith in one sort of god or another has proven to be stronger than reason.
So who was Jesus? He was a man who may or may not have lived and died two thousand years ago. His teachings have little value, and the church built in his name has been guilty of causing some of the greatest crimes in the history of humankind, from the burning of witches to the holocaust. Remember that it was Christians who built the extermination camps where Jews were slaughtered. Adolf Hitler's birthday was blessed every year in German churches.
Now you can excommunicate me if you wish. I leave you with this: El día ha sido bueno. La noche será larga.
(The day has been good. The night will be long)
garza33.
;
