So [in the 19th century] Jesus too received his biography. This was new. It was the opposite of the Christian tradition. This had been thanatography. A biography ends with the death of the 'biographee.' The story of Jesus makes sense only when his death begins and antecedes our lives.... it is enough for a Christian to speak of Christ and to call himself a Christian. Yet, the only question which he raises, runs: Have I sealed antiquity for you? Do you live after me? ... Jesus is [to them] the adolscent of innocence, the Y.M.C.A. hero, the good boy. The biographies have deprived him of his real name. For to us he is uninteresting unless he is the Word.... If the tomb of Jesus is not the womb of the Christian era, we had better forget his whole story as a fairy tale.

rosenstock-heussy, fruit of lips, 1.5

in Greek, βιος means life while θανατος means death.