Shit. What The Hell. Jesus Never Existed

[Secular Elf]

I have never claimed that a Jesus did not exist nor that this person wasn't the basis for the later myth. What I have stated is the this person's actual existence is irrelevant and understanding that the figure as portrayed in the Bible most assuredly did not exist and is mythological.

This is pretty much where I am.  There was no man walking on water and raising the dead named Jesus.  But there probably was a man behind the myth.  The problem is the myth is so much larger than the man that the man's actual doings are essentially irrelevant to Christianity.  What is most relevant to the development of Christianity is what Paul said about Jesus, and what Paul said was primarily doctrinal, not facts about Jesus.

The most interesting thing I have learned through my readings about Early Christianity is that Paul's view of Jesus, Pauline Christianity, was not the only view about Jesus's divinity that existed in the 1st to 2nd Centuries CE. The view that Jesus was the literal son of a god that came to save mankind from its sins at that time was only popular among Proto-orthodox Christians, and their theology did not gain favorability until the Proto-orthodox Christians were accepted and sanctioned by Constantine and his successors.

Among Early Christians that were adoptionist in theology, they viewed Jesus was divine by way God adopting him at his baptism. The Jewish Christians named Ebionites were the first group of Early Christians to represent this view. Most notable adherents of adoptionism during the 2nd Century CE were Theodotus of Byzantium and his followers.

Early Christians that were docetic in their theology viewed Jesus was only divine because his physical body was an illusion, and therefore Jesus was a pure spirit incapable of dying. That meant that the crucifixion was an illusion. Docetism was a prominent feature of dualistic gnostics.

Early Christians that were Gnostic in their theology viewed Jesus was divine because he was sent by the true God (not the demiurge, the evil creator god, who was the Jewish Yahweh) to liberate men's souls from the prison of the physical world (created by Yahweh, the Demiurge) through secret knowledge (gnosis) so that those liberated souls can return to the true God in the realm of light.