The passage I would like to highlight in Whitlock’s essay is:

Historical Jesus scholarship must value multiple pieces without synthesis. We are not obligated to provide a complete, unified picture of Jesus. Mitzi Smith and Yung Suk Kim in Toward Decentering the New Testament, for example, thoughtfully discuss “The Danger of a Single Story” when they present the diverse gospel stories and their diverse sources.46 Scholarship must avoid a single story about Jesus of Nazareth and instead present a diverse and fragmented Jesus.

It’s interesting if we draw a comparison between the historical Jesus and the historical Socrates. Certainly, we usually think we have an idea about the gist of what Socrates was like. His label of being a gadfly certainly encourages a portrait of the thinker nobly going around Athens and annoying people with questions. His death was a little murkier. Was he the resolute master ordering Crito to make an offering to Asclepius for the poison/cure (pharmakon) because of the transformative effect his unjust death would have on an unjust society (and it did – we no longer pronounce capital punishment on people like Socrates in enlightened society), or the practical man of Xenophon’s portrayal who wanted to die so as to not have to endure the senility of old age (soma – body = sema -prison)? Was Socrates the noble philosopher of Plato’s stories, or behind this facade was he actually the charlatan running the Thinkery in Aristophanes’ Clouds and the Noble Lie of Plato’s Republic?

Generally speaking, we uncritically adopt as a principle the notion that for doing history an earlier source is always preferable to a later one (it isn’t), and create an “aura” around Socrates as the paradigmatic noble thinker by fixating on the early Platonic dialogues. Do we not in the Phaedo with Socrates’ words to Crito see the paradigmatic just man rather than just a thinker, who is fully developed in the even more paradigmatic case in the Republic where justice incarnate was the impaled just man?

Perhaps the Republic, the most famous book in the ancient world, influenced the Greek-speaking writers of the New Testament? Recall the admission of the soldier at the cross (truly this was the Son of God; an innocent man). And again, it worked. Civilized society no longer executes people for the unjust reasons the corrupt Jewish elite persecuted Jesus for. We don’t see the injustice at the time, but in retrospect, and so if we were ancient Roman citizens we might have enjoyed the sport of Christians being fed to the lions in the arena, though from the perspective of distance in time and ethical maturity we find such things monstrous.

Bibliography

Whitlock, Matthew G. Fame and Aura in Crossley, James; Keith, Chris. The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus (p. 346-367). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.