“Jesus may submit to being marginalized, but not to being generalized. With other great religious leaders, we are satisfied once we have extracted the essence of their teaching from their sacred texts. Stories about Buddha, for instance, are didactic rather than dramatic; the narrative arc of his life is relatively unimportant to his message. The Tao-te Ching yields useful instructions for ordering one’s perception of life. No one worries about discovering the “real” Loa-tzu behind the words. But with Jesus, the story is important, and we want it to be about a real person. Where did he come from? What did he do? Who were his friends and enemies? Why did he die? What happened next?”

– from “Looking for Jesus” by Virginia Stem Owens