Where did the Jesus myth come from?

[Justtristo]

Robert M Price on one of his Bible Geek podcasts, talked about a about in a dialogue between Justin Martyr and a rabbi named Trypho. Dr Dr Price mentioned that somewhere in this dialogue Trypho asserted that Christians invented the character of Jesus. I would bet that more ancient writers thought the same as Trypho, however their works have not survived.

There's good reason to think so and not just because of the bad reputation that Christians have earned for the last 2000 years of being book burners. Apologists often tout "hostile witnesses" such as Thallus, Lucien and Celsus, people who were late second century critics of Christianity. Yet their works are "lost to us" and the only reason we even know about them at all is they are quoted in the works of the apologists of the time.

I dunno if we can assume that early Christians (once they were in charge in the Roman Empire) were deliberating burning non-Christian works, as opposed to works by those considered heretics. I believe they just were not interested in preserving them. That is why we have every one of St Jerome's letters (which Richard Carrier called them interminably boring) got preserved. While the vast majority of ancient scientific works were preserved.

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That christianity has been in need of apologists since the very beginning is similarly telling. Apparently this bullshit wasn't as easy to believe (even two thousand years ago, when people believed in this sort of shit almost as a rule) as our modern apologists would have us believe today.

I am beginning to think Christianity was the Mormonism of the Ancient World. All sane people would agree Joseph Smith invented Mormonism outright, however currently there are 14 million Mormons in the world.