JC,
It is difficult to know exactly what Jesus said that what his intents were behind the words. Most of what we have today are copies of manuscripts that have been altered and modified through the years by various people with various agendas. The difficulty with the original manuscripts is that they began only as verbal tradition that was passed on and then were not written down until at least 40 years later. It's like a combination of the games of Telephone and Memory all wrapped into one.
Jesus was allegedly the representation of the Jewish god, but much of what we have him recorded as saying and doing really find themselves at times at odds with Jewish belief. Often the Jews took the "word of god" very literally as it was written, while Jesus seemed to take a more holistic and metaphoric approach.
I believe that over time people have been able to twist and manipulate the Old Testament scriptures to force Jesus into being the Messiah that he very well was probably not.
Those who are steeped in Christian apologetics often refer to Jesus as being able to be only 1 of 3 options; Liar, Lunatic or Lord. I don't believe that it has to be so concrete as any of those. While I do not believe that he was intentionally a Liar I think that he had just as much potential to be
misguided by his own thoughts or psyche as any of the rest of us could be. While I also do not believe that he was a Lunatic it is quite possible that he did have some degree of a mental disorder...or he could have been one of those geniuses that thought on a much higher plane than anyone else of his time. Brilliant people can often look to the rest of us as though they might be a little crazy.
For the third option....I am not convinced that he was Lord by any stretch of the imagination; but he was apparently a damn good
leader. To be able to inspire the following that he did and rally up the troops for his cause was probably quite a feat in those days.
So what's the verdict? Is it a mix of all of the above? Could he have just been a good leader who may have been slightly confused by his own intellect? I don't believe that he ever outright claimed to directly be God; I think that his followers did that
after the fact.
The problem is that so many things have been imported into the story of who Jesus is and what he did over the development of what is now history.
I personally feel bad for the guy. Look what the world has done to him today on either side of the fence.
