Demythologizing Jesus

From a biography of Napoleon, by Elie Faure, comparing the immortilizing of Jesus and Napoleon:

"Jesus became a myth, but Napoleon did not.  The world did not really begin to concern itself with the Son of Man until a century after his death.  He was of the ancient East where everything is a miracle and a mirage.  He lived and spoke and acted outside the observation of the powerful and the perspicatious and amongst very poor people who, being quite uncultured and credulous, and being imbued with a strong leaning towards the supernatural, distorted and exaggerated all that they saw and heard said, and amplified and adapted their account to the point of finding a symbol in it and giving that symbol significance.  After His death there was no controllership, no meaning of obtaining information, no authentic documents: there was nothing but a childish account passed piecemeal from mouth to mouth and from imagination to imagination and leaving in existence nothing of the primitive reality (the defects of which had dropped away like slag and cinders from the flame of a volcano) but a marvellous romance which expressed, in reality, no more than the sentimental needs of the suffering and sacrificed half of the ancient world.  He was dressed up as the Angel of Good.  His deeds were seen only in their general sense and as a whole...

Source: Faure, Elie. Napoleon. Plimpton: Norwood, MA, 1924