The Birth of a Mystery
Jesus of Nazareth remains the most famous
unknown man in history
Prophet by Emil Nolde
(© board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington)
By GARY KAMIYA
At Christmas time, that odd and oddly moving season (how strange that a first-century Jewish heretic's birthday would make our children glow), a question sometimes arises amidst the wearying routine of shops and office parties: Is it still possible to say anything meaningful about Jesus? Is it even possible to think anything about him?
Who was the most famous man in history? No one knows. The actual Jesus seems hopelessly lost, buried beneath the accumulated stuff of an entire civilization. The triumph of Christianity, a victory of proportions so intimate and vast one can scarcely grasp it, makes it almost impossible to return in imagination to its human source.
And yet there once was, in all probability, an overcast Monday, or a wind-blown Thursday, when an intense young man from Galilee and his worried, marveling, obstinate followers tramped through a field of corn on the outskirts of some long-vanished town in a farflung colony of the Roman Empire.
Who was that man? What did he think he was doing?
Next page: A gigantic blank page
