What's in a name? It appears that "Christian" is a 5th century designation of hazy relevance, but nobody seems to like "Chrestian." I remain unclear if Jesus being "anointed" or "righteous" was the primary focus, and then one might wonder what "righteous" even means.
https://www.academia.edu/43061919/Chrestos_not_Christos
It's startlingly easy, as always, to follow references and suddenly be unsure what "religion" this is, or how one might belong to it.
Names! The NT authors call themselves ‘slaves’, Jesus’ designation for a leader. The epistles have references to "the way" or "the road" (i.e. a new exodus). I think of Kerouac's On the Road — beings who are travelers, roadies. The 1 John letter uses "children," "friends." Instead of being nestled into a category perhaps the idea is to evade categories, to practice non-category. A servant or slave was viewed as a non-person. Perhaps the theological idea at work is to efface personhood, to evade category using the cultural situation of enslavement as a means of entering a transcendence of identity-less-less. I'm lately wondering if the biblical project is to convert humans into spirits who might be viewed as silent "helpers" but not typically seen. The scene of Jesus changing the eyesight of the man in Mark 8:24 into seeing on another psychic plane alerts me to the possibility that many layers of reality might be contemplated, as in Tibetan Buddhism.
But that's not "Christianity," is it?
The idea that one can go to church, etc etc., and insinuate into biblical narratives, doing Christian cosplay as the Spirit moves—just seems goofy. At the same time, the possibility is so apparent that surely the biblical authors intended or contemplated that it would occur. A biblical theater in which one is constantly changing parts (am I Adam, David, Jeremiah, Jesus or Paul today??) might be a strategy to destabilize mortal identity and open the spirit realm.
I remain unclear if Jesus is meant to be seen as a real-life person. A scholarly process which attempts to overthrow the "John" gospel on the basis of it not being about the "real" Jesus is typically goofy. How or why the gospels were written isn't known, and it's not clear any of them were meant to be viewed as a non-fiction text of glitzed-up 1st century journalistic reportage of Jesus' doings, i.e. "Scripture." I personally suspect the Qumran-types were the silent authors, if operating under what they viewed as the influence of a spirit Teacher of Righteousness. I rather suspect them of distributing texts anonymously via manuscript discoveries in jars, as noted occurring since the 1st or early 2nd century.
But no scholar- or Christian- is to the point of saying that!
The "Odes of Solomon" not naming the Jesus figure seems provocative, and perhaps the basis for questioning his historical existence. And it's odd that there is no glimpse of Jesus-- or Peter, Paul or Mary--except as diffused through the biblical texts. I have to wonder if the Qumran friends seeding texts that seemed "authentic" might have generated belief in characters and thus seeded those characters in the imagination of the human race. I like a quote by Samuel Butler, the 19th century novelist: "The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.”
But "Christians" are a club of people who are often truly low, nearly animals really, and ever eager to kick out of their supposedly sacred company the very people who are most responsive to the biblical texts.
They do you a favor when they do.
