2. Where did the Stories About Jesus Come From?

2.1. Jesus was a Jewish Messianic Cult Leader

A very common belief, accepted (in part if not in full) by Christian liberals is that someone who claimed to be a prophet and messiah (there were many such people appearing amongst the Jews) is the historical Jesus. His life story has been intermingled with older pagan myths, and it is very hard for us to see his true life or message to the extent that we have little or no information about him, he is effectively without historical basis because the real figure is obscured by the mythical one.

God-Man myths were very popular and pre-dated the God-Man of Jesus by thousands of years. They all shared a common format which (or "vegetation myths") is that the Son of God has 12 disciples, and is betrayed and killed by a traitor. Popular myths such as the virgin birth, miracles, curing the blind and ill are also familiar and common aspects of these myths. As such, such events were assumed to be true of the historical Jesus. These myths became interwoven amongst the stories of someone who might have been real. Many Jewish sayings became attributed to this character, and sayings of John the Baptist too. Stories about the disciples were assumed to be true and not simply symbolic stories as the original gnostic Christians believed. Once people wrote pseudipigraphically under the names of the disciples people accepted them as true too. The rest is history, but initially is based on mistaken pseudo-historical accounts.

2.2. The Jesus Mysteries Hypothesis: Jesus was Another Mystery Religion God-Man

Perhaps the most historically correct of all the theories is that Christianity started out as much more Gnostic than it became from the 2nd century onwards, and the stories of Jesus and the disciples match those of other Mystery religions and Pagan religions precisely because Christianity wasanother Mystery Religion. Literalist Christianity as we know it was the Outer Mysteries of this spiritual religion. It explains why the historical centres of Christianity were all gnostic when literalist Christians went back to research the past, and why so many Pagan god-man elements are part of Christianity. It also explains why none of the scholars of the time mention Jesus or the miracles around his life, because even the Christians themselves knew that they were symbolic stories, not actual events. Later Christians had to defend their 'new' religion against critics who knew it was yet-another copy of the typical son-of-god saviour religions of the time:

“The Jesus story sure looks like you would expect it to look if it were patterned after other god-men. Early Christian Church fathers such as Justin Martyr (d. 165), Tertullian (d. 225), and Irenaeus (d. 202) felt compelled to answer the pagan critics of the time who claimed the Jesus story was based on earlier traditions. The fathers claimed that the similarities were the work of the devil, who copied the Jesus story ahead of time to mislead the gullible.”

"God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist" by Prof. Victor J. Stenger (2007)₃

2.3. History Led up to Christianity

Elements common to all types of the Christian religion that were common in previous Pagan mystery religions include much of the religious content of Christianity. All elements of Jesus' life such as the events around his birth, deathand ministry were already parts of the myths surrounding other god-men of the time. Peripheral elements such as there being twelve disciples were similarly present in other more ancient religions and sometimes with an astonishing amount of duplication. First century critics of Christianity voiced accusations that Christianity was nothing but another copy of common religions.

All the actual sayings and teachings of Jesus were also not new, and much of the time speeches attributed to Jesus are more like collections of Jewish and Pagan sayings. Even distinctive texts like the Sermon on the Mount are not unique. If we remove all the content that Jesus could not have heard and repeated himself, there is nothing else left. If we remove the supernatural elements of Christianity that are copies of already existing thought and religion, there is nothing left which is unique! Even many of the sayings of subsequent Christians are not unique; Jesus appears to not have taught anyone anything that was not already present in the common culture of the time. This shows us that not only did Christianity follow on, as expected, from previous thought in history but that we do not even need to believe in God or supernatural events in order to account for the history of Christianity.

Stephen Hodge very usefully lists many of the similarities found in the Dead Sea Scrolls to the teachings and organisation of Jewish Christianity. He also concludes that these Jewish documents make the teachings and appearance of Jewish Christianity less revolutionary:

“The [Dead Sea Scrolls] collection is really an invaluable cross-section of religious material that reveals for the first time just how rich and varied Jewish spiritual life was at that time. The scrolls offer an intellectual and devotional landscape into which Jesus and his movement can be placed. No longer does Jewish Christianity seem an inexplicable, isolated occurrence. [...] In other words, the true value of the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they help provide a genuine context for what was to become Christianity. For example, they tell us just how widespread was the expectation and longing for a saving Messiah among Jews at that time, and that there were a number of competing theories about the expected role of this Messiah in the world of Judaism. The scrolls also reveal that the expectation found in the Gospels that the end of the world was imminent was a dominant belief in many quarters in Judaea.

All biblical scholars agree that, apart from their intrinsic value, the sectarian scrolls are of tremendous importance as background information to the social and religious conditions in Judaea that led to the rise of Christianity. [... There are] subtle implications that can be derived from the Qumran texts, for they not only provide interesting parallels to Christian concepts and practice but tend to reduce the uniqueness of the Yeshua movement.”

"Dead Sea Scrolls" by Stephen Hodge (2001) [Book Review]₄

“The only pre-Christian man to be buried and resurrected and deified in his own lifetime, that I know of, is the Thracian god Zalmoxis (also called Salmoxis or Gebele'izis), who is described in the mid-5th-century B.C.E. by Herodotus (4.94-96), and also mentioned in Plato's Charmides (156d-158b) in the early-4th-century B.C.E. According to the hostile account of Greek informants, Zalmoxis buried himself alive, telling his followers he would be resurrected in three years, but he merely resided in a hidden dwelling all that time. His inevitable "resurrection" led to his deification, and a religion surrounding him, which preached heavenly immortality for believers, persisted for centuries.

The only case, that I know, of a pre-Christian god actually being crucified and then resurrected is Inanna (also known as Ishtar), a Sumerian goddess whose crucifixion, resurrection and escape from the underworld is told in cuneiform tablets inscribed c. 1500 B.C.E., attesting to a very old tradition.”