I’m sure Dante would agree. 
Well, no, not the only one! Of course, I was a kid when I first heard it, you understand.
He’d have managed better if he’d had it planned.
Me too. I was old enough to buy the album, just. I doubt I have heard it in quite a few decades.
Do any of the major religions attempt to explain why they began when they did? Why Abraham at that particular time? Why Muhammad just then? Why did Buddhism have to wait for the Buddha?
Why’d he choose such a backward place and such a strange land?
Another Biblical answer- it was nearing up on the 490 years (seventy seven’s) from Nehemiah 1’s Medo-Persian decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the cutting off of the Anointed Prince & the following disasters on the City foretold in Daniel 9:20-27.
Whether or not you believe that was a prophecy of Jesus or the Messiah at all, JC & friends did.
God sets patterns for us to see, from atoms, planets, galaxies, the same basic concept repeated (perhaps atoms are star systems to other beings, and galaxies are atoms to others).
One such pattern is the Bible.
At first, before the flood, at the time of conception (begotten), we know God, as Adam and Eve did. We depart from His ways and we loose the connection with God. The flood comes, which represents birth, where we are delivered into a new world. From here we start to learn about God, not from knowing him as we did in the beginning, but from men, such as Moses, and other spiritual leaders, as the Israelites did (very few actually knew God, most just followed the teachings of men and followed a written code).
We continuously fall away from God’s ways’ (sin) then are restored, during this early stage of our life.
At some time Jesus comes into our life, and we get to know God as a person, and get God’s Spirit in us.
After which Jesus works through us as we do His work, which is to deliver the rest of the ‘Israelites’ to Jesus.
The Jewish day is also in this pattern, it starts at sundown, when the light of knowing God fades and we are in the dark, then Jesus, as the dawn, comes into our lives, and we walk in the light of the Son the rest of our lives.
The pattern of our lives I believe is part of the reason why Jesus came when He did.
Um, kanicbird, I think the question was about the historical Jesus, why he showed up in the era he did. I would have expected a more complicated and intricate answer from you, with quotes from Daniel and Genesis. I’m a bit disappointed, actually.
You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned.
I see what you mean - If he’d come today, he could have reached the whole nation.
That’s an anthrocentric view. Mankind didn’t summon Jesus. God sent Jesus.
This is a question I ask of myself every wretched day of my miserable life.
Damn. I knew someone would beat me to the punch as soon as I saw the thread title.
Because the marketing guys thought it was time for re-branding/product re-launch?
I’m more curious about why he appears on toast and car windows now.
Viral marketing.
Ah, but national TV also means you get debunked in prime-time by James Randi in front of millions. People would be demanding camera-phone pics of any supposed resurrection instead of “just trust us, it happened, it was pretty cool”.
My votes for a current day USA appearance would be either obscure cult leader in Nowhere, Arkansas, or locked up in a mental institution.
I think a better descriptor might be “cross-media marketing”.
That’s his Mom.
See, when God and an unsuspecting virgin really love each other the do a special kind of hug and a few months later she is having an akward conversation with her husband.