Let me explain:
The Gospel According to Luke Chapter 9 begins with Jesus bestowing the power of casting out devils to his apostles.
Being of sound mind, my reaction to this is that Jesus is insane, and the apostles are insane. Let me give an example. I discovered Marvel comic books in my early teens, and I became immersed in them. I would lay in bed and imagine I had Spidey Powers, or walk around in the neighborhood and imagine I had Spidey Powers, or go to the mall and imagine I had Spidey Powers.1 Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases.
2 And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.
You get the idea. I doubt that anyone knew that this was going on in my head, so I had no social commitment to this idea, but for years I escaped to the Marvel Universe in my head. Then I grew up. Jesus and the Apostles may have experienced this same sort of thing, except they demonstrated in public that they thought that they had Spidey Powers. The townspeople probably thought they were nuts, but JC and the Boys thought they were super heroes. The public doesn’t tend to memorialize crazy people, so it explains why you don’t see monuments to Jesus from 30 AD, or letters, or civil records and legal documents, or biographies or histories of any sort from 30 AD. But some time, as one of his disciples was entering his sunset years, he might have told his tale of Spidey Powers to a young, impressionable child, who then grew up and wrote it down for posterity. And that’s how legends of the supernatural are born.Glad I could be of assistance!
Next time, I’ll return to my Very Shallow Commentary on the Gospel of Luke.
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