There was very likely never an historical, actual, individual Jesus. Rather he is a fiction, one of importance and a potentially immense force for good worth following, but a fiction nonetheless, a cumulative representative of so many real people of that time and place: preachers, refugees, and freedom fighters all become one, one around and behind whom people could rally, one about whom people could write, and tell, and sing. A baby born, innocent and loved, to desperate parents in dire situations, barred entry and refused sanctŕuary, shut out and shut down, a childhood on the run, hunted, persecuted, a young adulthood of revolutionary politics, of challenging the purportedly unchallengeable, of fighting back, passionate for peace and a profound concern for one’s people and homeland, but misunderstood and misrepresented to the masses, feared, and an untimely, undignified, unfair death.
william altoft 