Historical Jesus VS revelation in other cultures

This is not the epic post I promised Ben. That post is still in the works, this is a preface to and an email I sent with some minor additions.

Preface:
I cannot believe that God is only revealed to those in the 'far reaches' of the earth through our meddling. Often revelation does come through crooked sticks, but I would like to think God would find more meaningful and culturally appropriate ways of being revealed. I purchased a book for a book group I was briefly in. It is called The Meaning of Jesus by Marcus J. Borg and N.T. Wright. Both are 'Jesus Scholars' and wrote the book as a kind of point counter point work. Anyway, I wrote professor Borg who just this winter retired from Oregon State University about some ideas and "wrestling’s" I've been having. Here is the..

Email:
Dear Professor Borg,
Hi my name is Tommy Ball and I am a student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. I am getting my undergraduate degree in Medieval Studies as a Student Faculty designed major, and hopefully History as well. I just picked up your, and professor Wright's book The Meaning of Jesus and have read only some of it, but from what I have read I am very surprised because many things I have read in the book are things I have thought about.
I feel like I have started to go through the process you went through in noticing how the modern worldview can polarize the Jesus and really most events, and concepts in the Bible. I have been lately very much influenced by Michale Frost: founding Director of Centre for Evangelism & Global Mission at Morling Theological College in Sydney; and Rob Bell the teaching pastor at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids Michigan. My dissatisfaction with the church began with the way in which it presented itself, but now it has since morphed into the kids of issues you raise in your book in seeing the Jesus presented as two different ideas. At one point I was almost prepared to throw out the requirement for there to be a historical Jesus completely, and am still not convinced there is a need in regards to the heart of the gospel. I say this because the little I know about how much obvious Jewish culture went into the gospels I feel is quite lost on those that teach pastors how to be pastors. I could be wrong, and maybe you know this better than I. I'm not certain much understanding of the Jewish culture in which the gospels and other books of the New Testament is conveyed at Seminaries. I see this as a problem.
Knowing the small bit of undergraduate level information I know about the time immediately preceding the early church and late antiquity I see the immediate danger that comes in not understanding the culture that exists around a specific text when one wants to understand said text. I also feel that many strange ideas that the Roman Catholic Church gets may well be a result of that as well as folk traditions that morph and graft themselves to the Christian tradition. I wonder if possibly later generations took the text they depended on, and interpreted it as if it were having been written in their context, and that this was the way in which they contextualized it for themselves thus making strange ideas make sense. I worry this happens today. I also worry that we take the concepts and images given to us by the Medieval church as the accurate ones--blindly and thus miss a cornucopia of wonderful ideas and concepts that could be presented by the gospel writers.
As I said earlier I haven't finished the book so my apologies if my question is later answered in the book. Do we need the historical Jesus? I think of this with a rudimentary idea of what Paul says in the beginning of Romans when he says that God has made himself known through his creation. Does not making knowing the historical Jesus for any kind of deeper connection with God limit God? Maybe my question walks too close to the edge away from Jesus and closer to the silly question of evil, but I think it is important to question how God might be revealed in other cultures, and the possibility that that revelation may not be through a white missionary with a Gideon Bible.