Let me start by saying, I believe Jesus was real, but not in the divine way that Christians do.
I think that Jesus was an excellent selling point of the whole religions-thing back in the day. Consider this; you are told to believe in a supreme creator of the universe that has absolute power over everything and is perfect, that is how you should live, the catch? You can't, if you think you can, "How dare you insult God by comparing yourself to him!"
This was before Jesus.
Along comes Jesus and says "Hey guys, we should all share the love because, you know, we are all equal". Next minute you have Jesus kissing the feet of his disciples (not a very mighty thing for the creator of the universe right?). The point is, this opens up a whole you audience for religion, suddenly, you have
someone you can relate to! You have something, someone "real", Jesus was just a man (yes the son of God but still just a man).
Jesus wasn't perfect, this opened a door to people that had given up hope in religion because they believed it to hard to get into heaven.
Note* I'm paraphrasing, I'm pretty sure Jesus never actually said "Hey guys, we should all share the love because, you know, we are all equal"
Note** I could expand and go into more depth, but I'm pretty sure you guys get the point.
So, what do you think? Jesus, the greatest form of advertising?
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They really could have used anyone, meaning that the strategic approach to get followers by thinking that god loved us so much that he came down to be one of us is quite the business move to get people hooked into whatever type of snake oil they were selling.
Jesus is simply a poster boy for the great tale of fantastic stories that we have come to know as the bible. For some reason i cant even comprehend how we decided to blindy believe in some book just because it tells stories about "god" talking through the writters of this book.
I just......sigh........it makes me feel ashamed of how small minded we are as a species
I strongly believe that jesus was just another crazy person that believed god talked to him. But people actually took this guys word seriously. To the point of nailing him to a cross. But the resurrection part is the made up icing on the cake to get people to buy into it.
Jesus is certainly the poster boy for advertisement success. And very likely the most popular product ever invented by human kind.
The view you have of things before Jesus, if you're talking about the Hebrew Scriptures, is the New Testament point of view. Jews is not believe you had to be perfect or you'll go to Hell or that God had Jews by the balls by setting up laws he knew they couldn't follow to the letter. Also, there were certain big profile figures (Abraham and Moses, perhaps Job) in the Old Testament who challenged God and were not punished for doing so.
I think the reason why Jesus was made into a savior, is because the people at that time really wanted a savior, so they created one according to the religion that they already part of, which in this case, Judaism.
A left leaning political activist that was crucified because he upset the rich and powerful. So someone wrote a book about him, and as they say, the rest is history.