you get a jesus take instead because jesus is always alive and present in your heart so write that down
it’s a john dominic crossan take actually because i found some interviews of him on YouTube and he is a good irish voice to go to sleep to
crossan’s deal is “the important core of Christianity is parables. Jesus taught in parables and arguably intended his life to be a living parable and certainly the first Christians took him that way and anyone who goes far beyond that and asks if it Really Happened is missing the point”. The Gospels are like Zhuangzi in this regard – Zhuangzi contains obvious parables with doubtful characters, and one of the characters is Mr Confucius.
now, crossan’s ethos here is “when i was a lad in Ireland people didn’t make you swear to believe the bible was inerrant but nor did anyone make you say you it was all nonsense and so we lived in this land of parable which is the true Christianity”.
crossan wrote a semi-popular book on the historical Jesus written around the theme of patron-client relations, and how the stories of Jesus so often involve them because your average med cannot imagine life without godfathers and fixers. Crossan’s Jesus’ Kingdom is a Kingdom Without Brokers. Jesus wants to reform the mafiose and bring in an egalitarian world where all have direct access to God and Power.
the tension i want to point at is the fact that the deepest way mafias got back into Christianity to corrupt this vision are the patron saints and mariolatry system – patrons are very much fixers for specific problems, and it’s clear Crossan doesn’t like these people much when they are alive. But Crossan does like comfy vague Celtic olde irish Christianity. Which, I would say, is plagued by patron saints for lost things and lumbago and naming anything that needs a name. I haven’t seen anything by Crossan explicitly about this, but I can’t see how Crossananity would be anything but Cromwellian in casting aside these particular Irish boyhood Jesus stories that nobody asks you to believe really happen or not.
maybe he covers this in his autobiography which i have downloaded but not read
PS 27/09/2022: he does not.