Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page 43
Sin and Atonement 43 innocence and paragon of sacrifice who so bravely volunteered himself to take the burden of all of mankind’s sins on his shoul- ders, or was it a different person? His conduct, both at the hour of the Crucifixion and during the Crucifixion itself, strongly casts shadow of doubt, either on the identity of Jesus Christ as or on the truth of the myth spun around his person. But of that later. Let us now return to our critical examination where we left it off. Some other questions which arise from the last cry of agony by Jesus Christ as are as follows: Who uttered those deeply pathetic and touching words? Was it Jesus as the man or was it Jesus as the ‘Son’? If it was Jesus as the man who was abandoned, by whom he was abandoned and why? If we accept this option, it would also have to be taken for granted that till the last, Jesus as the man retained a single independent identity which could think and feel freely and individually. Did he die at the moment of the parting of the soul of Jesus as the ‘Son of God’ from the body of the man he had occupied? If so, why and how? If it was so and it was the body of the man which died after the soul of God deserted it, then the question would arise as to who got revived from the dead when the soul of God revisited the same body later on. Again, this option would lead us to believe that it was not Je- sus as the ‘Son’ who was suffering but the person of Jesus as the man who cried out in such agony and he was the one who suffered while Jesus as the ‘Son’ looked on in a state of total indifference and apathy. Then how can he justify the claim that it was he, the ‘Son,’ who suffered for the sake of humanity and not the man in him?