Regarding Jesus

[The Grand Nudger]

So how did it get started?

How did this thread get started? People opened their (in this case digital) mouths. Nothing more wondrous or complicated need be invoked.

Bram Stoker based his book on both vampire legends and Vlad Tepesh whose real name was something like Vlad Dracula depending on how it was spelled .

Actually...he based his book upon his conservative and ethnocentric british views with regards to the influx of eastern europeans and their effect on society (specifically "good british women"). Vlad was a sufficiently eastern european sounding name. He considered (and wrote the narrative for) others. His knowledge of what you've presented was minimal, and would amount to telling a story about a told story. If he -had- known more about eastern european culture (to include all of what you mentioned) then he might not have been such an overt bigot. But then again, he might have been so anyway. Like a great many other good works of fiction, it was "based upon" a relevant social commentary - not anyone the author named his characters after. That's the beauty of fiction, or at least one of them. They allow us to confront some issue or scenario safely from the confines of fantasy. It isn't important, in the end, who the characters are or what the author chooses to call them - so long as the narrative provides a vehicle to and from that testing ground.

We know how this story got started along with who started it and why. Did a story teller decide to compose a tale about a messiah to tell in market places for money and people thought the tale was true?

We do, you've cracked the vampire mystery? I wasn't aware. We actually -don't- know why people started telling vampire stories...even though we do know why this particular vampire story was told the way it was.

Which could apply to some failed messiah who became an urban legend.

Or some non-existent messiah as a character in a narrative.

Paul Bunyan is a fictional character who may or may not have been based on folklore. Big John is a song. People don't have grief hallucinations about fictional characters.

Since grief hallucinations are not needed to explain either Paul Bunyon or Jesus - I can;t fathom why it gets mentioned again - except out of your insistence to plug it in. That's the only driving factor I can see here. Nothing even remotely suggest such in either case. Glad you caught Big John, but songs are stories too, and Big John is nothing if not a stereotype or archetype (or propaganda piece) "made flesh" in the telling of the tale.

Wild Bill was a real person who ended up with stories told about him.

Often by him..but always which bear little or no resemblance to him. "Wild Bill" was a construct, based upon "Wild Bill" - NOT, James Butler.

There's all kinds of reasons why the story of Jesus got started. I suggested two of them. I'm interested in hearing other people's suggestions.

There may be all kinds of reasons, sure, and I'm just as interested in hearing them. That won't stop me from pointing out chinks in the armor, so to speak.