Christopher Hitchens had an interesting idea - Christ Myth Theory - Christopher Hitchens
There's also this short video where he explains his idea starting at 2.43.
Quote:Although he repeated in his writings and public appearances that there is no reason to believe that Jesus of Nazareth existed as we understand him in the Bible, he did concede the possibility that a charismatic rabbi in Palestine who believed he was the son of God may have become the inspiration for gospel stories written many decades later. To Hitchens, the best argument for the "highly questionable existence of Jesus" are the biblical inconsistencies themselves, explaining the "very attempts to bend and stretch the story may be inverse proof that someone of later significance was indeed born. [164] In other words, the Bible may have been more consistent if the writers had created a fictional character from scratch. At a 2008 debate in Las Vegas,[166] he used the same logic when he said, "It’s impressive to me that the evidence is so thin and ... so obviously, strenuously cobbled together because it suggests that there was something going on, there was some character." Hitchens used Jesus' birth legend as an example of biblical inaccuracy, stating, "None of the story of the nativity is true in any detail and not one of the gospels agrees with each other on this fabrication." Explaining he did not want to be so profane as to tell believers that there was nothing there, Hitchens concluded that the attempted fraud of the gospels "may have worked on stupefied peasants in the Greater Jerusalem area, but really should have no power to influence anyone in this room." [166]
There's also this short video where he explains his idea starting at 2.43.
Where are the snake and mushroom smilies?