That may be an obstructively selective reading of the man’s overall career. By those standards, the coherent message of *Huckleberry Finn * is, “If you’re a guy trying to pass yourself off as a girl, catch falling objects with your skirt rather than with your knees.” Sure, it’s good advice; but it’s not the only thing the book has to say.
Presumably if one is a Christian, one already believes that Jesus is a better source of insight. The OP believes that it is possible to receive spiritual guidance from Jesus directly, but that it is also possible to fool oneself in this regard. I’m suggesting that in such situations, the problem is perhaps not much different than how we judge the character of other people-- even fictional ones. We can say that Captain Picard wouldn’t initiate a first contact by setting his phaser to kill-- if he did, that would mean that he was being mind-controlled or had been replaced by an evil doppleganger or whatever.
Even if Jesus is really a perfect source of insight, that still doesn’t grant his followers any guarantee of certainty, so long as they themselves can be decieved. The only way around that obstacle would be a state of perfect self-knowledge, but then there’d be no guarantee that you aren’t deceiving yourself about that either.
The only other option is to consult the accounts of Jesus in the Scriptures, since that’s the only source of information we have about him. This would be true even if Jesus were just as fictional as George Washington.
I like the interpretation in Dan Simmon’s “Hyperion” for the Abraham story. A Jewish character (forgot his name) believed that God and Abraham were bluffing each other. God wanted Abraham to disobey, and Abraham had no intention of actually going through with it, but went as close as he could to see if God would change his mind. Abe outbluffed Him and God realized He had to be a lot more careful about faith.
"God said, “Abraham, kill me a son.”
Abe said, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on.”
God said, “Abe,” Abe said, “What?”
God said, “You can do what you want, Abe, but,
Next time you see me comin’, man, you better run.”
Abe said, “Where you want this killin’ done?”
God said, “Out on Highway 61.”
–Bob Dylan
This story is central to the Jews, Christians, and the Muslims.
Hah! Sucker! That would make you the greatest prize, not someone to avoid. Remember, the Devil even tempted Jesus, Himself. You, a mere human, believe you are protected from him by your piety? You are a toy for Satan to play with, and your misconceptions leave you open to all his mischief. Is he not called “the Prince of Lies?” Your faith does not protect you; it makes you a target.
I, an atheist but a lazy one, can barely be bothered to get up to piss. His lies can’t tempt me because to sin by commission, versus omission, requires far too much effort, and a damnation for sins of omission is a dime a dozen. No sport, and if the book of Job is any indication, both Satan and Jehovah are sporting men.
You, on the other hand, are screwed.
Seriously, and letting my Closet Catholic out for a breather, of course Christians can mistakenly believe they are conversing with God. That is why the postmortem road to sainthood is normally as long and involved as it is. The first thing the committee needs to decide is, Is this person telling the truth, lying, or just crazy? Once that’s done the rest is just paperwork.
And my point is, you said that the bible “presents a reasonably coherent picture” of Jesus, so I provide an episode that is entirely inconsistent with his ‘turn the other cheek’ presentation. Looking back, you did say “most”, but if you’re allowed to ignore the parts you don’t like, anyone and anything is reasonably consistent.
I’ll agree that it seems that most people nowadays have a similar opinion of WWJD, but this opinion is just one of may possible selective reads from the source material.
Of course Christians have decided that their interpretaion of the texts involving the Jesus character; as you noted this can be somewhat safely presumed, what with them being Christians and all. Which does sort of deflate my question as it can be sidestepped with “well, Christians don’t think he’s fictionalized”.
And yes, the word is fictionalized, not fictional. George Washington was (presumably) not fictional, but several exaggerated and downright apocryphal stories have developed about him; I’ve even heard that one or two of them were circulating while he was still alive. And this was in a day of decent recordkeeping, and he was merely a president. The tales about Jesus were written many years after his death by people who never knew Jesus as a man, but rather percieved him as a godlike figure; one can safely assume that the writers would have played up his godliness and nobility to the hilt, and have included every myth and rumor that they’d ever heard about him, since they’d believe those myths and rumors to be true. Even if these scribes were perfectly honest and sincere in their work, I’d expect their writings to resemble the actual Jesus about as much as the tales about Santa Claus resemble the actual Saint Nicholas.
My question, if I had stated it better, should have been more along the lines of “Supposing you have a christain who recognizes that the bible was not typed in english personally by God’s hands, that recognizes the non-literality of the tales of the Bible and Jesus; how does that Christian account for the fact that the tales about him are probably about as factual as the tales of Hercules? Do they still maintain a belief in the words that were put into his mouth? Or do they not even ackowledge the question?”
I think it’s consistent. One characteristic of Jesus that comes through pretty clearly in the gospel accounts is that the one thing that got him really pissed off was when people (e.g. the religious establishment) did things to come between ordinary folks and God. The “moneychangers in the temple” incident is just one of several examples of this.
“One can safely assume”? You can go right ahead and make an ass out of u and me, but I assume no such thing.
Unless you want to discount all biographical and historical works written by people who never knew their subjects personally, you have to at least concede the possibility that what we have is a fairly accurate account of Jesus’s words and deeds.
And you seem to be exaggerating the distance between the gospel writers and Jesus. The gospels were probably written within the lifetime of some of Jesus’s contemporaries. I direct you to the staff report Who wrote the Bible? (Part 4).
Okay, conceded. Jesus is scary and evil and unamerican (religous freedom? Freedom to have me BEAT YOU if you interfere with MY religion), but consistent.
(Okay, that’s not really true; I actually still think that he contradicted his ‘turn the other cheek’ thing. But then again maybe he only meant that for other people. Regardless, I’m not interested in duelling over this.)
Given how much variance there is between the tales of Jesus’s life that are based off of one another, I think it is proved that the biblical authors were perfectly willing to elaborate and alter their stories dramatically for the sake of pushing their own beliefs and agendas. Why do you assume that the tales that aren’t in more than one place in the bible are less embellished and made-up than all the ones that are? It seems much more reasonable to think that they were consistently “creative” all the way through, especially since such “creativity” is exactly what I would expect of somebody writing about their hero who they think is a god. I mean, come on. These guys were not impartial recorders of history here.
I’m quite aware that at least some of the gospels were written only a generation or two after Jesus’s death. I’m also aware that it only takes the time to walk from the stream to the bar for the fish stories to double in size. By a generation or two later, the fish that got away will have multiplied enough to feed a multitude.
