Posted: Feb 27, 2010 1:34 pm
TimONeill wrote:Crocodile Gandhi wrote: Sure, this man did a great amount to shape the way that billions of people live their lives ...
Quite by accident. If the historical Yeshua ben Yosef (aka "Jesus") came back to see the weird bloated cult/s that arose in his name he'd probably die again of total horror and revulsion. He was a devout and ferociously monotheistic Jew, yet he would find himself turned into an incarnation of Yahweh. The guy would hardly be able to comprehend the insanity of what his ideas have been transformed into.
Nikos Kazantzakis touched on this in his novel The Last Temptation of Christ and Frank Herbert played with similar themes in his Dune novels, but I've always found the contrast between what the Jewish preacher Yeshua ben Yosef was trying to proclaim (as silly as it was) and the baroque monstrosities Christianity has evolved into to be one of history's most bizarre ironies.
I've toyed with the idea of a short story about a time traveller who rescues Yeshua from the cross and brings him to an intensive care unit in the present to nurse him back to health. When Yeshua recovers and comprehends what Christianity is, he becomes a vociferous preacher against Christianity and ends up being killed by fundamentalist Christians for blasphemy. I might have to write that one.
Totally agree, and your closing cracked me up! I have often thought about much the same thing.
It would make a great movie. My own version is that "god" (not Jesus) appears in modern times, and apologizes for being busy for a couple thousands years, but he wants to set the record straight. He tells people Jesus was just a man and gospel writers were full of shit, and the bible is nonsense. All the fucking christians do is argue with him, and take it from there...
