(June 9, 2012 at 11:06 pm)cratehorus Wrote: Jesus was not a real person, so where did this Jesus myth come from? Was it based on a single other faith? Was it a combination of other faiths? Or was it completely invented out of nothing?
There WAS a person or people, lead by a person, or group of people who started the religion, otherwise it would not exist. And those people got their ideas from prior and surrounding cultures.
Much like what we now call "soda" started out, not as the soft drink it is accepted as now. But when carbonated beverages first started to compete just before the turn of the 1900s , those who sold them at that time, were marketing them as a medicine.
Religion exists like Coke and Pepsi exist. Coke comes out with a cherry soda, Pepsi looks at that and says " We need to get in on that, lets give it a similar flavor, change the can color and marketing and give it a different name".
But what did not happen is baby being born without a second set of DNA and no one has ever survived death.
So even if we found the DNA of a man named Jesus, all we would find is a guy who managed to be a successful marketer of a myth. Most experts who are not apologists lean to Jesus being a myth. But it would not matter if he did exist, even then, he was just a man, and religion is still myth people use for political power.