We know the story as believed by christians, right? A virgin gives birth to the son of god, who grows up, does a few miracles and gets himself killed, then rises again and pisses off to heaven. Hmmmm.
For a start let's have a look at the "virgin" issue. Basically, some ecclesiastical nutjob bolloxed the translation from Hebrew. The term used in the original (ha‘almah) has been traditionally translated as "virgin", but further research shows it also means "a young woman of marriageable age". Which is the logical choice? Then there's the whole muddy waters of exactly when Jesus was born, where, the myth of Herod's baby-killing spree and the new star in the east that no one except for 3 wise men noticed. It's too long to go into here, but the full dissection can be found on this excellent site - http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/christianity_birthnarrative.html
So, when you remove all the bullshit you basically have a story about a Jewish kid who was born, somewhere, at some stage. It was only far later that the gospel writers tried to make him fit a 700-year old prophecy.
From there, the story goes that he argued theology with the religious teachers, became a carpenter, had a bit of biffo with some money lenders, recruited some followers, did a few miracles, and ended up executed.
Most or all of the stories about Jesus are no doubt exaggerations, myths, half-truths or outright lies. Don't forget that at this stage there was no media services or checking of facts, news was passed by word of mouth. When you consider that even today stories are twisted, "spun", and influenced on a daily basis, you can imagine the "chinese whispers" effect on news of those times. Someone found a forgotten stash of wine at a wedding that Jesus may or may not have attended; by the time someone wrote the story down he'd created it from water.
Then there's the execution, which again may or may not be based on fact. Even if it was real, victims of crucifixion usually died over the course of days. Jesus was apparently only on the cross (which was actually a "T" shape, thus buggering up the christian symbol completely) a matter of hours. The chances of him surviving this experience are therefore quite good, which would explain the resurrection story had he been spotted walking around afterwards.
In summary, the christians would have you believe that: A virgin gave birth to a child, who was the son of god, who died to take away your sins (bit presumptive really) and was brought back to life.
The realistic view is, of course, that there may or may not have been a man who became a bit of a folk hero for one Middle Eastern tribe. He cocked up politically and may have got himself sentenced to death, which it seems likely he survived.
People being what they are, of course, this myth has grown out of all proportion until you have the ridiculous situation that we have today; hundreds of millions of people believing that a 2000-year old semi-historical figure from a different culture has the power to "save" your imaginary soul.
It's funny, I don't see Tutankhamun's second cousin or a sergeant in Genghis Khan's army being worshipped around the world today!
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The Problem with the Jesus myth is, most of what is written about him was at least a century after he was dead. Considering that Caesar was born earlier than Jesus,and had lots of works, written by himself and others around him to collaborate his existence, what we have about Jesus are basically third hand or further accounts.
Considering that Jesus was the son of god, I cannot really understand why there is such a dearth of information about him. At least he could have written something? I can understand that just maybe, his stupid flock was illiterate, but for a son of god to be......illiterate? Makes no sense to me!
That aside, translation errors, faux pas, and other nonsense makes the bible we have today a confusing work of Man, not God.
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