(April 15, 2014 at 2:43 pm)Confused Ape Wrote: Jesus would have been just one of many if he hadn't been crucified and his followers claimed he'd been resurrected.
I suspect Jesus was one of the many. The fact that it was his cult and not the cult of one of the others in the many that survived is mostly a contingent outcome unrelated to Jesus himself or anything attributed to Jesus. Paul probably had more to do with the success of Jesus cult than anytthing else.