Odysseus’ crewmen were a pretty shabby lot.  So, on the evidence, were Christ’s apostles.  Judas, of course, but also Peter denying Christ before the cock-crowed and his blowhard feckless scheme to buy a sword (and then to protect Christ by cutting someone’s ear off).

Great men are surrounded by great men, or make men great.  Are Odysseus and Christ exceptions?Odysseus is hard to admire.  His men are shifty and shabby, but so is he.  It’s only when he is in “dacent company” that he begins to rub off you.  Nausicaa and co.  Then his son Telemachus, but most of all his wife Penelope.  Her fidelity and resource makes Odysseus shine.  (It’s worthy of note that Tennyson’s poem recasts Ulysses in a heroic mold but also recasts his crew as dogged and faithful retainers–souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me.)

But Christ is the real kicker. Mary and Joseph have real steel in them. So do the folks who herald Christ’s birth at the temple. But above all, there is Peter and the other apostles. They aren’t much in the gospels. But Christ transformed them. I still remember reading Acts for the first time when I was a teenager. My hair literally stood on end.

Christ is the great man par excellence. In fact, they say that he makes his servants into friends, and his friends into gods.