Jesus in Old Age

Rather than crucified, buried in the tomb and resurrected and then briefly appearing in the Upper Room where people could marvel at his appearance, though He could have retired because of his ordeals and occasionally performed miracles for people in the local area who seemed particularly appealing to Him when the case presented it to Himself. Otherwise, he thought about what it meant to know himself as somehow divine and mulled on that, trying to appreciate His experience and its meaning. His children and grandchildren would likely, at least when they were young, to  inquire about that matter and He would answer them as best he could. What did it feel like to be dead? Did it feel anything at all, or bad dreams, or the anguish of the Underworld? Did He wake up slowly or all at once when recovering his consciousness? Was awakening  painful or healed except for the scars on His body, which had healed but which He could  show to the children? Maybe, because He knew a lot of things, He could have dictated a memoir or maybe just said new wise remarks never recorded. Then, eventually, He had died of old age and been passed to heaven in the usual way as happens to people of good will who, around the world, also die and are remembered as an idea, for what they really are rather than in their reputations.

That alternative story would have made Jesus more like Mohammed, which is a messenger who experienced resurrection as a gift or a curse rather than engaged in his essential being and so like Moses as well, who had many faults and so not to be taken as a God. Jesus humanized could have still been preeminent and spiritual but not the singularity in which He has been invested, the Gospel writers working hard enough to eliminate as much as possible the apocalyptic reveries as in Revelations and crisp in being in keeping with Jewish law, rationality, and the ecstacy of suffering which is so central to the experience of Christianity, all of which could be retained with making Jesus more human.