> However, if there was only a crazy Hasid who came in
> from the country and was killed, the later writers
> certainly created an effective fictional character
> around him. The angry, driven, fearless/vulnerable,
> compassionate, riddling mystic they created is a lot
> more interesting to me than the sententious heroes of
> Greek tragedy.
Yeah, he's an interesting character, and harder to understand because we don't really 'get' the milieu. Some of his contradictions -- as we see them, anyway -- may well go back to the historical Hasid; others have perhaps been introduced in the processes of redaction and reflection.
To me personally the history of the texts is at least as interesting as the bare-bones historical original. Not that the latter is dull -- but look what was *made* of him! A fascinating, inexhaustibly fascinating story.