More so than Paradise Lost, it dramatizes the inner workings of the mind of Jesus, his perception, and the interplay of faith and reason in his debates with Satan.
Whereas Strauss's work had been an intellectual exercise in destructive criticism, Renan's was an attempt to reconstruct the mind of Jesus as a wholly human person a feat of imagination, performed with a disarming admiration and even reverence for its subject and with a felicity of style that gave it a large and lasting audience.
Immortality is also, as it happens, on the minds of Jesus' followers as they gather to feast while danger threatens their leader in "Jesus Christ Superstar".
One is put in mind of the Jesus and Mary Chain or My Bloody Valentine, bands around when Mercury Rev began making noise in the late 1980s.
So for those of you on the edge of the abyss, or for those of you who are curious about what goes through the mind of a Jesus freak confronted with meaninglessness for the first time, here's some things I wish I'd been prepared for but wasn't.
We keep in mind the words of Jesus, "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41).
It is through this compilation that the tradition of the "prayer of the mind," or Jesus prayer, uttered in a particular bodily position with a special way of breathing, became better known and gained new followers among Orthodox as well as Western Christians.
As an atheist, why would I? I don't accept the existence of Jesus, never mind his alleged divinity, so discussions about the suppression of one wing of superstitious nonsense by another are clearly of limited interest.
As I contemplate this cross, my mind becomes filled with thoughts of Jesus who told the disciples that He was leaving them in order to prepare a place in His Kingdom and that He would return for them so that they could be together with Him forever.
"I mean," Rhoda says, "between inventing new viruses and making sure the tides and planets don't get out of whack, doesn't it sort of blow your mind that Jesus or whoever still has time for acts of cut-rate sentiment?" "It seems to me, Rhoda, that Los Angeles, or something, is making you hostile to wonder.
Piece of Home: Holy Bible "You have to fill your mind every day with the words of Jesus Christ," Mr. Morpeau said.
