Arguing from the Bible is like trying to pick pepper out of the fly shit. There's no primary source and the various different stories have been written and over-written by so many different agendas that try to tease truth out of them two millennia later is likely to drive you mad.
What we can tell is that it was written by Gentiles for Gentiles. The near complete lack of Jewish culture or thinking in the NT is damning on that account. Jesus is tried and crucified over Passover, but Passover itself gets passed over with barely a mention. So whoever wrote the NT they weren't Jesus' Disciples. At best they were Gentiles who were one step removed and had no cultural framework for the Messiah that they thought they were writing about.
As to whether there was an individual for the basis of the myths I defer to Occam's razor and human behaviour.
- Power hungry people who concoct religions almost inevitably base them around themselves.
- Why take the risk and trouble of inventing a Messiah when they're available on any street corner in Judea?
- If Christianity had been completely invented at some point then I would expect it to be more coherent and better written. The editing stinks.
What we can tell is that it was written by Gentiles for Gentiles. The near complete lack of Jewish culture or thinking in the NT is damning on that account. Jesus is tried and crucified over Passover, but Passover itself gets passed over with barely a mention. So whoever wrote the NT they weren't Jesus' Disciples. At best they were Gentiles who were one step removed and had no cultural framework for the Messiah that they thought they were writing about.
As to whether there was an individual for the basis of the myths I defer to Occam's razor and human behaviour.
- Power hungry people who concoct religions almost inevitably base them around themselves.
- Why take the risk and trouble of inventing a Messiah when they're available on any street corner in Judea?
- If Christianity had been completely invented at some point then I would expect it to be more coherent and better written. The editing stinks.
