Indeed I have to take atheists and skeptics of this and previous ages to task for not recognizing the Achilles Heel of the existing tradition. Why bother fight about the historical existence of Jesus? This is not a winnable argument. The facts are that when the scales of probability are measured most people (even detractors of the surviving orthodoxy like myself) would have to acknowledge that even if the story of the Passion isn't EXACTLY like the one which our ancestors passed down to us it seems highly improbable that the whole thing was just made up (as the silly mythicists contend).
Indeed as I have shown elsewhere the fact that the pagan witness Celsus or his Jewish source (see books 1 and 2 of Origen's Against Celsus) DO NOT USE the 'Jesus never existed' argument when they tried to demolish Christianity AND ORIGEN (from whom all our information about these two sources comes from) IDENTIFIES CELSUS AS HAVING WRITTEN HIS TEXT AROUND 140 CE (and thus his Jewish source to within 80 years or so of the historical Passion) the idea that the 'whole thing never happened' is quite simply a non-starter.
Something must have happened. At the very least (and I don't think we have to 'deconstruct' the story to the level described here) someone must have been 'mistaken' or at least identified as being named 'Jesus' and that person was indeed crucified at the end of Pilate's administration (see the Real Messiah for that argument).
Mythicists attack my 'naivete' but I in turn feel very suspicious of their whole approach to antiquity. Their position that there was some kind of 'organized plot' to invent a religion out of thin air seems utterly implausible to me. Indeed their whole position depends on us viewing the first believers in Christianity as being so stupid that a handful of 'conspirators' could convince them of the existence of an event that never occurred merely by dressing up the fraud in pagan images.
This is so utterly stupid on a number of levels that I don't know where to begin. I for one do not feel that Clement or Origen were stupid. I don't think that the believers in Alexandria who preceded them were stupid. In fact when I read the fathers of the Alexandrian Church tradition I am utterly in awe of their knowledge.
One of the reason I hated Joseph Atwill's book for instance (there were thousands but let me 'bottom line' it for my readership) was that its underlying assumption was that the author - Atwill - was smarter than everyone in antiquity. Only he was 'smart enough' to see the truth while everyone else in the history of the religion wallowed about in ignorance (save of course for the original conspirators).
My theory in the Real Messiah is very different. I assume that the Alexandrian Church KNEW the truth about the hidden messiah in the gospel. Indeed I find that there are 'bits and pieces' of this understanding that 'someone else' was being announced by Jesus throughout the surviving literature - i.e. from the 'two advent' theology of early Church Fathers, the rabbinic interest in Agrippa, the high standing of Mark among the Samaritans and Copts, as well as the basic formula for reading the gospel in early Islam just to name a few.
The only credit I give myself was that I happen to have appeared at the end of an age of relative peace and tranquility which allowed for me to put all the pieces together TO AT LEAST START THE PROCESS OF A GRAND 'REVALUATION OF VALUES.' I never claim that I proved the case that Marcus Agrippa was the 'real messiah' of Christianity. Instead I think that I have presented a good case for why we should do more research.
To get back to the last point - while I think that the pagan elements in Christianity may well be there but the influences are I believe secondary. The core of the story is a contemporary belief (Alexandria?) that God (or the 'glory Lord') came to earth to empty his soul into humanity in order to perfect what was good but not perfect in humanity at creation.
In order to have this story developed there must have been a crucifixion or at least a death (which in turn allowed for the 'emptying' to have taken place). My construction of the historical events behind the gospel assume a Marcionite starting point - i.e. that there was an Apostle whose experience at a 'heavenly revelation' became the foundation of the religion. I believe this was suppressed in the second century in favor of a religion by committee. This is not a 'conspiracy theory' any more than Knox's work is a 'conspiracy theory' or many others who have sincerely attempted to make sense of Marcionitism.
In any event to get back to my original point, the Achilles Heel of the Catholic tradition is the claim that Irenaeus faithfully preserved the teachings of a Church Father known as 'Polycarp.' I know this doesn't seem as sexy as 'Jesus never existed' but it has one thing that the mythicist argument doesn't have - an inescapable logic which those with both intellectual honesty and deep knowledge of Patristic literature (very few individuals I am afraid) have to acknowledge challenges the very foundation of everything we hold sacred.
In short if Irenaeus was lying about his relationship with Polycarp an inescapable cloud of suspicion has to raised about his claims about the four gospels, the canon, the Acts of the Apostles and the foundations of the beliefs of the Catholic Church.
The problem is for us - how do you make this utterly devastating argument sexy enough that our mothers, fathers and grandparents could sit through a book on this subject and not put down the book after a couple of pages to watch American Idol instead ...
BUY MY BOOK. SERIOUSLY. WHAT CAN YOU BUY TODAY FOR $10?
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."