 88. Jesus (His Truth) |
Whatever the motives might have been for making a Jesus myth, the Gospels are a kind of literary fabrication about a mythologize human being who either may have lived or, otherwise, who may never have actually lived. Perhaps the myth of Jesus sprang from a tradition that existed long before the (presumed) historical time of Jesus. All kinds of possibilities exist, because there is no historically reliable factuality to depend upon.
Clearly, the motive of those who made the books of the "New Testament", including the Gospels, was to make an institution, to communicate about an (essentially) mythologize and "interpreted" figure effectively, then, to make a myth of a human being who (on the basis of that myth alone) has, ever since, been commonly presumed to have been an actual historical figure. The Gospel stories are (at least largely) not about an historical, factual, and actual Jesus - the person as he would have acted and spoken while he was alive. Everything that people have speculated about, thought about, felt about, and "reported" and asserted about "Jesus" has occurred only after (and even long after) Jesus was no longer alive - and, therefore, all of it arose entirely within the writers' own sphere of thinking and desiring and intending.
There is nothing that could be said after the lifetime of such a person as Jesus that would be as relevant to his own teaching as all that he, himself, said when he was alive. Whatever Jesus cared to say that was of the nature of a teaching, or, otherwise, of a revelation about himself, he would have said during his lifetime. Whatever others have said afterward is really their own creation, for their own reasons.
The writers (or inventors and fabricators) of the "New Testament" wrote largely for the purposes of institutionalization, and, therefore, in order to achieve a "victory" for their particular faction, and to "concretize" the self-image (as well as the public image) of their institution, and to give their institution the characteristic of "authority", and to differentiate it from other views and institutions - and especially to differentiate it from the "rival" institution of Judaism, by referring to "Christianity" as the "true Israel" (thereby suggesting that the historical tradition of the Jews had been superseded). And this purpose of the "New Testament" has created terrible problems for the Jews (and even the entire world) ever since.
Many have proposed that the right approach to discovering the "facts" about Jesus is to examine the "New Testament" Gospels and, thus and thereby, to determine what about this person can be said to be based on "actual" and "historical" evidence, and, on that basis, to determine "who" this person was, what he "actually" said, and what he "actually" taught. Scholars have undertaken great efforts to identify the "actual" sayings and the "true" stories-and to eliminate the "dross". Much of this effort is useful scholarly work. On the other hand, what now remains, after such scholarship, is rather chaotic, and even mundane - and there is little or no suggestion in the dominant factions of professional scholarship that the Jesus-tradition originated in association with esoteric Spirituality.
The result of the (especially nineteenth and twentieth century) scholarly process is that some scholars now presume that Jesus of Galilee may never have existed - and those who assert that Jesus did exist (as a naturally living historical person) tend to reduce him to the status of a rather mundane figure, who was limited to merely day-to-day social concerns, and who communicated a socially positive disposition (and message) of "compassion-toward all", and who might even have had a political agenda of a kind, such that he may be viewed as a kind of social rebel within Judaism. However, the dominant trends of professional scholarship are not based on any presumption that this person Jesus was Spiritually Awakened, and that he taught an esoteric Spiritual "method". Indeed, there is virtually no participation in esoteric Spiritual life and practice within either the tradition or the scholarly field of "official" (or exoteric) Christianity that would enable (or even permit) the straightforward and detailed understanding of Jesus of Galilee as an ancient example of a "Spiritual Master" (or an esoteric "Guru") - a type of human manifestation that has appeared in all traditions, and everywhere in the world, since the days of the ancients.
There is, to now, no full professional scholarly presentation of Jesus, and the "New Testament" Gospels, on an entirely (and authentically) Spiritual basis-stated with full awareness and experiential understanding of what is thus being suggested. Instead, "modern" scholars, in general, tend (because of their own ignorance relative to Spiritual matters) to reduce everything to the gross (physical) dimension of conditional existence. Therefore, any evidence of a subtle or Spiritual or mystical or esoteric nature is, rather automatically, presumed to be myth, or a manifestation of the mind of popular magic. In other words, what is Spiritual tends to be dismissed in favor of either what is simply biological (or biographical, in the sense of the life-person) or, otherwise, what is merely political, social, and "objectively" cultural.
Who is the Jesus that has emerged from the efforts of "modern" scholarship? He is a kind of social religious figure, who was itinerant, and somewhat revolutionary in his views. There is nothing uniquely and outstandingly important to religion (or to humankind in general) about such a person. There have been (and are) endless numbers of such "good" people. In fact, Jesus (as a presumedly actual historical figure) was an authentic true Spiritual Master-and not merely a social-morality teacher. However, Jesus is only one of many such (fourth-to-fifth stage) Spiritual Masters and, therefore, he is not unique. Indeed, the real importance of Jesus is not in his uniqueness, but in his authenticity-as a Spiritual Master. It is only the institutional mythologize of Jesus (as a kind of iconic idol, made of words) that has made Jesus seem unique, and demanded that he be uniquely "believed about"-and, as a result, the significance of Jesus as an authenticator of traditional fourth-to-fifth stage Spirituality has been lost and forgotten.
