Why Everyone is Mistaken About Jesus

There was only one Christian and he died on the cross. - Nietzsche

"This "bearer of glad tidings" died as he lived and taught--not to "save mankind," but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers--his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty--more, he invites it. . . And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil . . . Not to defend one's self, not to show anger, not to lay blames. . . On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One--to love him. . . " 'The "kingdom of heaven" is a state of the heart—not something to come "beyond the world" or "after death." ... The "kingdom of God" is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a "millennium"—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere...." - Nietzsche

“Because if you read the King James Bible – that descended with the angel – you will see in italic in front of these words “Son of God,” “the Son of God,” “because I said I am the Son of God”. And most people think the italics are for emphasis, but they are not. The italics indicate words interpolated by the translators, you will not find that in the Greek. In the Greek [it] says “a son of God.” So it seems to me here perfectly plain that Jesus has got it in the back of his mind and that this is not something peculiar to himself. So when he says, “I am the way. No man comes to the Father but by me”, this “I am,” this “me,” is the divine in us, which in Hebrew would be called the Ruah Adonai. A great deal is made of this by the esoteric Jews, the Cabalists and the Hasidim. The ruah is the breath, which God breathed into the nostrils of Adam. It is different from the soul, the individual soul in Hebraism is called nefesh. So we translate the ruah into the Greek [penafma], and the nefesh in to psike or psyche, the spirit. And you ask the theologians what’s the difference between the soul and the spirit and he won’t be able to tell you. But it’s very clear in Saint Paul’s writings. So the point is that the ruah is the divine in the creature by virtue of which we are ‘sons of’ or ‘of the nature’ of God. Manifestations of the divine. This discovery is the gospel that is the good news.” - Alan Watts

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So, Alan Watt’s notion is that Christ was attempting to express a universal divinity, the divine in all beings, similar to Nietzsche’s conception that the kingdom of heaven is a state of the heart, not an afterlife or “otherworldly hope”. Nietzsche considered it a shame that Jesus did not have someone with the psychological insight of Dostoevsky living near him, because he otherwise might have been dissuaded from expressing things as he did, not knowing that they would necessarily be misinterpreted. “It is a pity that there was no Dostoevsky living near this most interesting decadent [Jesus], I mean someone with an eye for the distinctive charm that this sort of mixture of sublimity, sickness, and childishness has to offer.” - Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ

It is worth noting that Nietzsche had profound admiration for Christ as a person, despite being extremely critical of Christianity. Similarly, Nietzsche criticisms of the Jews are sometimes mistaken for antisemitism, when in reality he was critical of the Jews not of his day, but of the fact that the Jewish religion had led to the creation of Christianity, which he considered to be Europe’s greatest misfortune. This is sometimes erroneously misinterpreted as antisemitism. In fact, Nietzsche was one of the most pro-Jewish non Jews in all of world history.

“Then, when the Jews can exhibit as their work such jewels and golden vessels as the European nations of a briefer and less profound experience could not and cannot produce, when Israel will have transformed its eternal vengeance into an eternal blessing for Europe: then there will again arrive that seventh day on which the ancient Jewish God may rejoice in himself, his creation and his chosen people and let us all, all of us, rejoice with him!” - Nietzsche, Daybreak