Our Lord Jesus Christ, Lord or Man? Options

During my internet years, I found info like Jesus married Maria Magdalena, went to India and studied there, that he did not die on the cross. I'm not sure what to believe in. Yesterday, I finished reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and in it I again read what I've found + Sarah, Jesus's daughter and how Constantine used the "perverted" new testament to make a god out of Jesus to win the Catholic over the Pagan. Altought the book has errors, it is still an interesting read.

What is your opinion on this? Jesus, the Lord or -just- a man?

Seems to me the importance of 'Jesus as God' only becomes desperate within Christianity itself. So far as paradigms are concerned, its one of the most powerful because it lays down the precept that One, transcendent God takes on flesh: the Word becomes encarnate, suffers and dies in order to bridge the divide between humans and God, washes our sins in the blood of the lamb etc...etc...the aesthetic it's all wrapped in shines through so strongly. The same can be said for its message: the way it creates this individual identification with Christ, who is himself identified as God. How that radicalized contemporary views of Hashem can be recognised in the way Christianity is seen as blasphemous and idolatrous by both other Abrahamic faiths. Does that diminish what I've taken away from his teachings? No. More power to the mavericks, scraggly beards and all.

(where would CM be without medieval catholics..)

This post has been edited by tyrian: Nov 3 2006, 08:09 PM