You have to remember another thing to JK , that the example of asceticism and living with extreme poverty and owning nothing but the principals and wisdom within your own sentient heart , was ever mystifying to the Greeks , and it attracted even the greatest of all rulers of that ancient world , Alexander the great .
Such ones like Socrates and Diogenes ...and later the Romans would become fascinated to with a "Jesus" . Totally incomprhensible it would seem at first , this pacifist Rabbai's teaching , so similar to the Buddha's before him . That empire was ready to change , and had lived with extremes of endless wars and mad emperors , torturing it's subjects for too long . They needed to change , people wanted peace and sanity , and here they were given the promise of heaven and eternal life in a decaying threatened empire.
But that was the Empires first encounter with such a teaching , that had already been taught for centuries before to the east . It was a great mystery , this "forest" teaching of asceticism . non-violence , inner self realization , and it took centuries for them even to beginning to grasp it's subtleties and simplicity . There had been the Stoicism of the Greeks , and that was similar and respected . The idea of one God or first cause had already been reasoned by the Greeks before.
Jesus the figure was unique to the roman conciousness , but once they caught on to that essence , they had discovered a great truth and ran with it . But that truth was already known before and in other lands , seen by other ascetic masters in Buddha or the great Jain/Hindu sages ....the romans got entirely carried away with their holy claims .
Jesus was the one that the Empire deified , but it's not that simple as "Christ is the only One , Son of God "
not for 1billion followers of Islam , or 1billion followers of Hinduism , 1/2 bil of Buddhism and it will be ever thus . Christians have a good creed , and so live it . But it was not the original, it was the one that was perpetuated by the most swords though.
It does not make the teachings any less valuable or true that he is or is not the Son of God ...just a good shepard
would suffice. |
