"Me"

Garrett Lambur
As I was reading Otto I came across a bit of information that I was unaware of before but is very significant. Otto was discussing in Chapter 19 whether it is possible to get a first hand apprehension of the holiness from Christ. He determined that it was hard to do from proclamation and with no “me” statements from Christ. No “me” statements from Christ? I was completely unaware of this fact. He continues that the records focus more upon the miracles of Jesus rather than the numenious experience. Well that means that he could have made them but they aren’t recorded. But I find it hard to believe that through out the entire Bible, of which my knowledge is poor, there are no me statements from Jesus. As I sit here writing this and pondering the implications of this, part of me wants to say that by having no me statements it shows his true lack of a possessive nature and his own giving nature. But another part of me thinks that I cannot possibly draw such a conclusion just from a lack of “me” statements, partly because it could have been that the writers of the Bible simply left out such statements. The Bible itself is such an enigma. It presents all that is necessary to have an entire religion yet it does not have one author or even an author. It is a compilation of many different person’s lessons and experiences. But part of what we have been going over in class lately is the validity of an academic source and one big part of a good source is that it is reviewed by peers. Now I realize that the Bible is not an academic source but part of me questions its validity. It has been translated, re-translated, then translated back numerous times and you can never truly translate one language to another. There are little nuances that you miss in the translation or words that have no equivalent in another language. Not only are their translation issues but there are different copies of the bible where the writer decided to leave out part or change it to fit his own ideas. The King James Bible was itself translated from three different languages and part of it was done in a manner to satisfy the Church of England and its ideologies. As a result, part of me is suspicious of the bible and as a result suspicious of the lack of “me” statements from Christ. Perhaps he did not say any “me” statements or perhaps they were never recorded, and perhaps we will never know.