We sing hymns about all things beautiful being made by God. With Jesus we have him as "outcast and stranger, Lord of us all" born in "the bleak midwinter" "waiting in loneliness for a visit" "blessing all the dear children in his tender care" and "taking them to live with him in heaven." We pretend he has nowhere to lie down, that he watches, hurt, in heaven as we sin.
In other words in recent times we have built a benign picture of a man we did not know. Is this what happened in earlier times? We have been given fabricated pictures of a man people wanted to have existed, when in reality just a poor beggar with a humble message passed through Jerusalem for a short period.
Is the fabricated Christ in our hymns an indication that his biography has been fabricated too?
What do fake details in hymns tell us?
Moderator: Moderators
Re: What do fake details in hymns tell us?
Post #2[Replying to post 1 by marco]
We have a distillation of a saintly figure, sacrificing himself incomprehensibly for the wrongs strangers might somewhere commit. Perhaps as centuries passed, Christ grew milder, warmer, holier, higher and the hymns that extolled him more romantic. Troubadours would sing songs of chivalry, or would praise brave fictions. Henry viii as a young man modelled himself on the fictions from chivalry. Perhaps Christ was largely fictional, made miraculous by the passage of years. The question is: when we wipe away the fictions is there anything worth preserving?
We have a distillation of a saintly figure, sacrificing himself incomprehensibly for the wrongs strangers might somewhere commit. Perhaps as centuries passed, Christ grew milder, warmer, holier, higher and the hymns that extolled him more romantic. Troubadours would sing songs of chivalry, or would praise brave fictions. Henry viii as a young man modelled himself on the fictions from chivalry. Perhaps Christ was largely fictional, made miraculous by the passage of years. The question is: when we wipe away the fictions is there anything worth preserving?
