The Man Nobody Knows

“It showed a pale young man with flabby forearms and a sad expression.”

Barton uses the adjectives, “pale,” “flabby,” and “sad,” to convey why he found the figure of Jesus so unappealing in his childhood. Barton admired masculine figures who were healthy, muscular, and happy. Later in life, Barton decided that the artistic depiction he describes on the wall of his Sunday school had misrepresented the real Jesus.

“‘I will read about him as though he were a new historical character, about whom I had never heard anything at all.’”

In this introduction for Barton’s revised portrayal of Jesus, he presents himself as having tried to find the real Jesus by going back to the original sources. Puzzling over the discrepancy between Jesus’ accomplishments and the artistic depiction of a frail Jesus, the adult Barton decided to ignore the traditional portrayals of Jesus and read only what those who had personally known Jesus said about him.

“For it will tell the story of the founder of modern business.”

Barton, an advertising executive, frames his portrayal of Jesus to appeal to a readership of modern businessmen. Barton controversially labels Jesus as “the founder of modern business,” a characterization designed to attract the attention of Americans who lived in a business-dominated culture in the 1920s.