Is Christianity based on older myths?

[Mister Agenda]

It still remains that if Christianity is based on recycling old myths (including the Teacher of Righteousness):

1. The eyewitnesses of John, Peter, and James lied (with or without Paul's help).

Are you actually ignoring my posts, or just pretending to ignore them? We can't even assume there were eyewittnesses to do the lying. We can't assume they were lying rather than merely inaccurate. We can't assume that Chinese Whispers can't account for drastic inaccuracy between the original accounts and the ones written down with zero intentional deception being involved.

There has yet to be a plausible reason for such involved and far reaching deceit.

There would have to be if our position was that being the only possible explanation and also that there was something in human psychology that made it unlikely for us to lie without a plausible reason, but it's a demonstrable fact that many people don't need a good reason to lie, or perhaps more kindly, think 'it makes a better story' is a good enough reason to lie.

Plenty of people have indicated that they don't think deliberate deceit is the only or best possibility. I think you've just seized on it because you see it as a weaker position, and can work in an appeal to emotion with it (you guys are saying all these guys are liars!).

Seeing the problem with that, some of you say, "Well, not so much as a lie...as...". Sorry, the deceit had to be intentional.

So you misrepresent our position and then claim we're dishonestly changing it to address your insightful points. Don't be such a douchebag. And support your claim that the deceit has to be intentional.

2. John, Peter, and James (with or without Paul's help) had access to all the myths mentioned (from Egyptian, Sumerian, Roman, Greek, eastern religions, etc.) and cleverly used them to be compatible with not only monotheism, but the monotheism of the OT.

Who said that? Oh, it was you. No cleverness or special education is required to incorporate elements of another story you've heard into the one you're telling. You don't have to know the story you're borrowing from's provenance. And what Christianity came up with is not compatible with the monotheism of the OT. You've got three gods with the NT, and some hand-waving about them really counting as one god. It shows chutzpah, not cleverness.

I have yet to hear any scenario that is more probably than the disciples ALL believed what they were saying was true; and since some of them were eyewitnesses, they believed they saw these events (most important being the resurrection of Jesus).

The disciples could have completely believed what they were saying was true, but we don't actually know what most of them were saying, we only know what people told other people they said. It would be nice to have a first-hand account of the events of the life of Jesus, but we don't have that. It would be nice to have interviews with first-hand witnesses, but we don't have that either. We have oft-told tales.

It is important to note that it does not matter what you believe about the events of Jesus' life or if you think their belief rational.

Why was it important to note that?

If the disciples all believed what they saw, wrote and spoke of, then the hypothesis of this thread, that Christianity is based on recycled myths, fails.

If the disciples all believed 'what they saw', 'wrote', and 'spoke' of, then the hypothesis that Christianity is based on recylcled myths is affected not a whit, because we only have hearsay of what the supposed discioles supposedly saw, wrote, and spoke of.