Callista wrote:
But I can see why you might think so; he had some of the same distanced-from-society tendencies you see in many autistic people; he saw society from the outside...
That reminds me of Joseph Campbell´s "Hero of a Thousand Faces" where the hero after returning from his journey where he found enlightenment finds it hard to return to his ordinary life and to his fellow citizens. In his words "The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet or the ten thousand worlds. But the responsibility has been frequently refused. Even the Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have died while in the supernal ecstasy."
So the hero is always somehow separated from the rest of the society after experiencing the moment of "higher understanding" that his fellow men cannot comprehend. Think of Moses after receiving the Ten Commandments and the trouble he gets to integrate that wisdom into human life. The hero after his journey has difficulty in returning to the ordinary life so might be seen distanced from society.
Here is another passage "The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world. Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided" The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real."
Jesus to Campbell represents the transcedental hero who achieves balance between the spiritual and material world. The person who has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.
I like these books

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