PhilosopherJay

I just saw the movie "I'm Not There" last night. In it, six different fictional characters are made out of the historical persona of Bob Dylan. Some of the activities and attitudes of the characters match historical facts of Dylan's life closely at time, but in a distorted way and some are entirely made up, being mere riffs on Dylanesque themes. Only Dylan fans can tell the difference.

Aesthetically speaking, I thought the movie was fascinating at times and quite dull (cough, Richard Gere) at other times. Cutting two of the characters and about 30 minutes off of the two hour film would have improved it a great deal. Still, I have to give it credit for great originality. Dylan's music has never translated well to film (cough, "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," cough, "Masked and Anonymous") and this is about the best attempt so far.

In any case, I thought that this was exactly the opposite of the creation process for the Jesus character in the gospels. Instead of one becoming six, probably the Jesus character was taken from about six different characters, some possibly close to historical characters and some purely invented. They were all brought together into one character and name.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

maryhelena

:thumbs:

Way to go....cynic sage, apocalyptic prophet, prophet of social change, revolutionary, savior figure - crucified man - miracle worker - messiah figure......

Frankencaster

Perhaps the original Jesus myth but then he morphs into multiple forms.

Jesus multiplies to fit the culture he's introduced to.

Jesus is adapted to local belief systems in northern Europe, South America, native North Americans, etc.


The Jesus of a small rural village in Bolivia is quite different from that of a United Church in Canada with a gay, female minister.......or that of a Coptic Christian mass in Alexandria compared to a Mormon service in Provo, Utah.

Perhaps there never was 'a' Jesus image. one assumes 98% illiteracy in the first couple centuries AD so any concept of his image would have fit local expectations of a warrior king, wise man, wizard or whatever.

Toto

I'm not there on IMDB

I'm_Not_There

I imagine that many of us here have at least 6 aspects to our lives and a lot of fictional characters are composed of aspects of 6 different real people.

There's that magic number six again.

aa5874

The evidence of antiquity suggest the Jesus character was created by a catastrophic EVENT, the Fall of the Temple.

Horatio Parker

I think a case can be made for multiple Jesuses via the Gospel of Thomas.

Since the GT contains no passion/resurrection material, it's been argued that it's not a Xtian text.

If the passion/resurrection material existed separately, and IIRC there is an argument for that, then that would indicate multiple saviors.

Six or two, I dunno, but more than one seems plausible.

renassault

The Gospel of Thomas, like many other sayings Gospels (Gospel of Peter, Mary Magdalene and so on) focuses on the wisdom and ignores the rest as misunderstood history; that is, Jesus wasn't really crucified, and the apocalypse doesn't exist, as per the Gnostics. The authors and their group had this assumption and knew this, so no one needed to be taught about the resurrection/apocalypse or the absense of them, and history or anything about the resurrection/end of the world wasn't the document's purpose.

renassault

Yes, I'm sure, because Paul who wrote and died before the fall of the Temple supports this..

spin

The indication here is that the writer is ignoring something, but Renassault has no evidence for the writer having done so. He merely assumes that the writer has. He has no insight to the writer's literary context and so is merely talking through his internet hat.

renassault

Far from being the one who talks through internet hats, even if that were the case, it would be much better to talk TO that hat, than to someone who doesn't even know how to read such as yourself. We do not need to interview the author of the Gospel of Thomas to know what his intentions were with the work; it is quite simply there in what he wrote, and since he must have been aware of the Resurrection accounts written in the canonical gospels and having been spread since the 30's AD, had his work's purpose been anything other than a sayings Gospel, he would have reflected that by answering the Resurrection accounts, but seeing he does not address them, he is quite obviously in the genre of sayings gospels like the Gospel of Peter and such.