Oh Jesus Christ Not Again!

It’s that time of the year already. Hell, it’s fucking several minutes away here. Yes, I am a little late with talking about the season, but here I am, so deal with it. I figured it being the second most important Sacrilegious Sunday of the year (the most being Easter) that I should do something a little special for the birth of my parents Lord. It is the birthday of the western civilization’s most influential demigod. A man said to be born of a woman who was a virgin (yeah right, I hear she was the play toy of Alpha Epsilon Pi). Like many mythological creation stories of pagan gods that came before, Jesus’ tale seems to be made of the same packaging (Christmas pun intended). His whole life is one greatly fashioned folk tale. Jesus is the Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan of his time (Abs, I cannot recall any British folk heroes at the moment for comparison). And look what he accomplished after some mighty nifty exaggerations to his life story to make him bigger than life, he has half the world two thousand years later still drop what ever they are doing in December, blow their pay checks on gifts for people they both love and do not, in remembrance of his designated Day of Birth (which is a mighty interesting historical tale to tell in itself if I had the time or patience to do so). And it is these exaggerations I want to focus in on today and speculate on why the early Christians may have done so.
Now, everyone should know that the four main books of the Bible, New Testament (Mark, Mathew, Luke, and John), were not actually written by the disciples of Jesus (those who knew him). The writers of the gospels heard their information secondhand as we all do today. Usually, they were the assistants to the disciples. The point is that the gospels are not first hand accounts to begin with. Whatever they wrote down can only be taken from interviews of others. And this is written many, many years after Christ had come and gone. Eyewitness accounts are not really reliable to begin with. For example, right after the Allied force entered Berlin during WWII, they interviewed several eyewitnesses who were bunkered down in Adolf Hitler’s Bunker. They asked them to give detailed accounts of what occurred and they got many, many mixed responses that did not make sense when put together. Many stories contradicted each other and the interviewers did not know how to make sense of it all. Now this was hours and days after the battle. Imagine years later. How reliable do you think the witness accounts would be?
Next, we have artistic licensing. The authors of the four gospels took their own artistic liscencing when writing down Christ’s life. This was purposely done for two reasons. One, quite simply, because authors or anyone telling a story tend to make it their own, put a little bit of their selves (not literally their lives) into the mix when telling the tale. Maybe this is not purposely done, but automatic. The second is a bit did have a purpose. The writers were writing for specific audiences (like Mathew wrote for Jewish people and Luke wrote specifically for Hellenistic people in mind). So you gear your tales for the intended audiences. Why? Well, because you want them to easily relate to what you are telling them. And if you appeal to them, you have another convert, and thus just one more person added to your cult. Throw some mystifying details in there to prove how divine Jesus was and thus justifying his worship. It is nothing new to the ancient religions.
But Michael, if the authors of the gospels exaggerated and used artistic licensing when spreading the word of God, then how come all of the miracles and amazing feats are uniform throughout the four gospels? Well, they all are not uniform. Some have miracles which are not in others and so on, yet you’re right, most of the big ones all seem to be in all four. Well, my answer to that is that they were not written at the same time. Now, I cannot think of a specific example but I can give somewhat a general one that I can make up (though it does happen). Imagine that same interview with those people from Hitler’s bunker. Let’s say there were two interviewers talking to twenty or so witnesses. Both ask most of the witnesses their own separate questions of the same incident separately and so on. We can probably assume that the questions asked we still pretty much be the same though. Now one of the interviewers is the only one who is paid attention to by the media and it is his story which is taken down, but it is this perspective which is the false one (or at least less true of the two). The other interviewer’s report is totally ignored. Well, everyone who reads the AP (associated press) release will believe the false story. Later when us fellow historians look back on that event, since we only have the AP report and the interviewers and witnesses being dead, we are given the wrong info, where we yet again make our own interpretations based off fallible facts, thus perpetuating the situation to a worse one.
Could things have gotten off on the wrong foot? Ask yourself, do you really believe that someone could cure the blind, or could it have started out as an exaggeration of the man named Jesus. Remember in the movie Braveheart when one of the foot soldiers tells Mel Gibson that his character couldn’t be William Wallace because Wallace was seven feet tall and etcetera. The peasants made up intriguing details to help themselves believe in a cause, to help them selves to escape vicariously through such a hero from their tedious lives. What is different here? Nothing is that I can speculate about. Of course the authors of the gospels could have just spiced up their stories because the simply realized that Jesus on his own was a really, really boring guy. Who would join their cult if the guy only talked about peace and love? Throw some miracles in there; make Jesus more divine than he was, and bingo, instant culture-shaper. Boom! A man who one could set up an empire of power over the masses by (sure, it took a thousand years, but it did happen… and most of the divining of Christ also occurred at this time when the Catholic Church went power hungry right before the medieval ages). The authors of the gospels were embarrassed by the boring hippy they followed. All of their peers (except the Jewish people, but even then) followed gods who were fun and led exciting lives. To make Jesus a pop idol, and of course thereby a respectable savior, they had to spice up his image. That’s right; Jesus had the ultimate PR guys, and what a job they did do.
Well, that’s all the time I have for this o-sacrosanct night of holy placental goo. I need to get to bed before the Corporate Clause makes his annual trek to place seedlings of greed in every child’s mind right before they shove off to worship the guy who is responsible for it all to begin with.
Peace out peoples and to all a good night,
Supersanctimoniousboy