Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [9]
Jews of Trent, Italy, burned in 1475 on accusations of sacrificing Christian children. (1-laught)
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The Quest for Jesus Christ
In exploring the origins of Christianity, our focus naturally is turned to its purported founder and object of worship, Jesus Christ, whose story is told in the New Testament. So much interest and fascination have circulated around this wonderworker over the centuries that numerous and sizable tomes have been composed to fill out the New Testament tale by digging into the few clues as to Jesus's nature and historical background in order to produce a biographical sketch that either bolsters faith or reveals a more human side of this godman to which all can relate. Obviously, considering the time and energy spent on them, the subjects of Christianity and its legendary founder are very important to the Western mind and culture, and, increasingly to the Eastern as well. Nevertheless, little has come of all these efforts, as the "real" Jesus remains a phantom, mutating to suit the needs of the era and beholder.
In fact, it has been said that Jesus is all things to all people. This assertion is certainly true, as from the earliest times his nature and character have been interpreted and reinterpreted to fit the cultural context of his proponents and representatives. As Burton Mack says in The Lost Gospel of Q:
In the course of Christian history, to take one example of a series of social and cultural shifts, the Christ has been refigured many times over. In the period before Constantine, when bishops were taking their place as the leaders of the churches, the Christ was commonly depicted as the good shepherd who could guide the flock to its heavenly home. After Constantine, the Christ was pictured as the victor over death and the ruler of the world. During the medieval period, when the church was the primary vehicle of both social and cultural tradition, the story of Christ's ascent from the cross (or the tomb) to the seat of sovereignty, judgment, and salvation in heaven focused the Christian imagination on a Christ of a truly comprehensive, threedecker world. Somewhat later we see the Gothic Christ appear, and then the Christ of the crucifix, the man of Galilee, the cosmic Christ, the feminine Christ, and so on. In every case, the rearrangements were necessary in order to adjust the mythic world to new social constraints and cultural systems of knowledge.'
In fact, Jesus began his omnipotent reign when sons of God and sacred kings were all the rage. After the shocking and bloody turmoil of the Middle Ages, however, he became in the minds of the desperate a compassionate yet human teacher of morality, since it was obvious he could not possibly have been supernaturally in charge of the church in his name, which was torturing and slaughtering by the millions. During the political upheavals of the 2001 century, Jesus was considered a heroic revolutionary striving against oppression, as well as a communist. When various Indian gurus and yogis with their magic tricks became famous, it was fashionable to locate Jesus in India and/or Tibet. At that time too was the psychedelic explosion, such that Jesus soon became a magic mushroom. Within the "New Age" movement that began with the renaissance of spiritualism last century, he has become the "Cosmic Christ" and "Christ Consciousness." He has also of late become a black, a white supremacist, a gay, a woman, a heretic, a "Mediterranean peasant," an orthodox butcher whose name wasn't Jesus, a "Cynic-sage," an Arab, as well as the husband of Mary Magdalene and father of many children, from whom are descended at least one European royal family. Now, with the popular subject of UFOs and extraterrestrials, Jesus is an alien with extraordinary powers because he is of a superior race, with any number of "alien" groups laying claim to