LeRoy,

I couldn’t agree more. What might have happened if Jesus had been literate, or had a chronocler like Socrates had with Plato or Johnson had with Boswell? We’ll never know, but I can only grade Jesus on the basis of what was recorded at least 50 years after his death.

I give mostly good grades to the basic principles. I give mostly bad grades to the Church that used his name. I give an A+ to the Sermon on the Mount, regardless who wrote it. I give an A to St. Paul who apparently crafted his own version for his used car salesmanship, but a D for his messages.

Of course the whole course of the early church was invovled with the Roman politics culminating with Constantine and his mother.

I actually like the Jesus of driving the money lenders out of the temple, but there are scholars who believe that was the actual reason for his crusifixion, not the trumped up charges portrayed in the gospels. Cyril Connoley had a short paragraph that is interesting. I’ll transcribe part of it here.

“Jesus was a petulant man: his malidiction on the barren fig tree was sheer spite, his attitude towards the Pharisees was one of paanoiac wrath. …Those parables which all end ‘There shall be wailing gnashing of teeth,’ what a tone for a Redeemer. …he does not wish to break away from the Jewish framework of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, but mainly to enrich their ethical content; consequently he imitates the intolerance of the Pharasees whom he condems…(Oh ye generation of vipers) and maintains the avenging role of God the Father which he claims to superseded.”

I like the parables, but then I like fables, stories, write a lot of them myself. I like D. H. Lawrence’s “The Man who Died” because it is a credible alternative story.

I wonder how Jesus would have graded his own life?

As always, my very best.

Don