I recently made the mistake of purchasing a DVD entitled 'Dylan: Busy Being Born Again - inside Bob Dylan's Jesus years. Dylan is neither a contributor nor a feature. Instead, a number of individuals chunder on about the topic, talking as much about themselves as the supposed feature, and presumably making money out of associating themselves with Dylan.
Most of the contributors appear to be Jewish, including Mitch Glaser who speaks for Jews for Jesus. On the face of it I assumed I was going to hear Jews indicate how they came to Christianity in some form, including their associate Bob Dylan, because it enhanced the limitations of Judaism. Not a bit of it. Their emphasis was on the fact that Jesus and his disciples were Jewish and that therefore it was not they who needed converting but the Gentiles.
What can I say? Without appearing anti-Semitic?
When the man Jesus was baptised in the Jordan something important happened. The spirit of the Christ descended into him. From that moment for the next three years of his life (and his mission) he was no longer Jewish Jesus but the universal Christ on earth. And it showed. The Jewish establishment did not like what he said and what he did at all and became the primary instruments of his crucifixion. They and their followers and descendants certainly needed conversion.
Paul began taking the universal Christ to the world which also needed conversion, and Christianity ceased to be a Jewish cult.
By concentrating on the man Jesus, Jews for Jesus and others are taking a superficial and materialistic view of Christ. The spiritual Christ is non-personal, but so long as you emphasise Jesus you can talk to him with closed eyes as if he is listening in the room next door ready to respond to all your ridiculous and ambitious expectations. To emphasise Jesus rather than the Christ is to emphasise the subjective feeling life of the soul instead of the objective thought-filled life of the spirit.
I can fully understand the wish not to be involved in Christian institutions and the Christian establishment, but this is not solved by ditching Christ.
Update. I have since found in the local library a new book on Dylan by a Jewish-American academic which is yet another fanciful manipulation of the subject in the author's own image. This one is a bit too distasteful. The author is intent upon turning Dylan into a fanatic orthodox Jew conversant with the mysteries of Judaism. Is there a movement to claim him before the man dies? The book is not worth reading in full, but on the principle of a drop giving a taste of the whole ocean, there is a wilful manipulation of complex facts to produce a limited ideological purpose and consciousness in the artist. So despite Dylan writing and speaking of his significant connection to Woody Guthrie, for example, who must not be Jewish, the Jewish academic sets out to destroy this fact with absurd and superficial argument. Gentile that I am, I like and admire Dylan on the basis of his being an unpredictable and independent artist whose stature in modern life is truly outstanding. Behind ethnicity, or nationality, or gender, or religion, or culture stands the individual human spirit and the true artist works from this and the individuality of the other responds. If either Dylan or any other wants to see his work in the conditioned terms of religion, etc. then the work will be rendered barren.
