I think there is enough smoke to indicate some sort of fire. I think the broader Christ account is plausible, as the long historical record shows there are humans who will transcend fear and accept as their lot the most horrible of deaths, for a just cause they beleive in enough.
I find it challenges too much to go beyond the version cited by Sells; Mark, but find no trouble accepting the proposed non-shirking lead by example God. This God would more likely accept Christ and the historical few who also made the effort, than an ego driven earlier historical conception. And given what they've risked; good luck to them, they deserve all they get.
People don't like Easter. It reminds them of their limitations withits uncomfortable observations. It wasn't just "them" who did in Jesus; it was all of us (sympathy for the devil?) Its really about buckpassing and complicity- everyone has their price.
If the only tolerable life is one in which value and meaning must operate, Christianity seems a satisfying enough explanation without the "magic" bits. The riddle of death is not avoided in real Christianity, it is included as part of the scenario that faces every human, giving a plausible account of what people would have to transcend for meaningful life of any duration.
The eternality is just a side issue, but likely good icing on the cake.
It's ok to do a frivolous, comfortable life and just hope that you go to sleep afterwards, but what of the person who finds cowardice unbearable and must "take up arms in a sea of troubles"?
If you ignore the arguable injustices of life done others, what should you hope for if you are in strife yourself?
Distilling further, if sense of accomplishment is what makes life meaningful, what will life ever mean for a person never taking a hard decison?
Maybe Pascal's wager is still worth a think. At any rate, I think an ethical God is not so much the trouble as limited people.
And yes, its in our nature to think about these things.

As the only records of his resurrection were seen by his devoted followers and recorded many decades later, there is no solid information that he was resurrected at all.

Most probably, he died and his followers made it up to maintain the cult.

Ho Hum<<Which body will be"resurrected"?..>>it is the spirit that gets reserected into the soul;body,..the soul body shape is acording to the ego it houses..[thus in those with love of evil have a vile form[soul]body,those with good/grace/love have their inner goodness that shines through

as we spi-ritualy mature,we mature into a youth-fullness,..but usually when first reborn[are reborn]much as we are,..further others see us as we are recalled by them,in heaven..[yes and in hell]

we will even know those who thought to hide behind alias

and those with the plastic surgery..[that dosnt transcribe into the soul]..so all them nose job movie star's look only but vaguely like that celuloid image they portray

<<What about bodies vaporised by a nuclear explosion?..>> mate the physical meat dies,..the spirit inside us is eternal,

that ego they were..clothes them in their next after life..[those sheep remain sheep those wolves in sheeps clothing are revealed as the wolves they are,..our soul body reflects the real being we were being,..evil cant fake inner beauty

jesus died[in the flesh] what happend to his meat disappeared..[the minute he let go of his ego..its not an easy thing to do,..we spend so much effort in being who we think we are,..we miss that we really are,..ie..spirits having an incarnate learning,..designed mearly to give us the relitive realm in the next life[in heaven or hell],..that are not a threat [or punishment]only our just wages ,..chosen by us by that we loved in this life..[more shall be given]

say you loved to murder..[your love joins you to those with the same LOVE..[all the murderors are in the realm we would 'call' hell..,but they think they are in heaven..[because they so love murdering each other]..of course they can only murder those others who also love to murder

you have to love the justice of it all..,racist hell is a real hell, but racists so love their racism,..they all get the same realm[its not a punishment,its just what they love[fruits]they chose to love,..by their deeds..they chose to do..in this realm

What an extraordinary other-worldly question, aga.

>>The apostles must have been pretty dumb to die for this myth. Whoever died for a lie?<<

I would suggest that anyone who has been on the "wrong end" of a religious war has done exactly that.

If you were a Christian in the twelfth century, you would have seen a large number of Saracens taking this path. Of course, if you were a Saracen, you would say that the Christians had all died "for a lie".

If you were a Catholic in Northern Ireland in the seventies, you would have seen many Protestants die "for a lie" etc. etc.

Did the Germans of WWII "die for a lie"? What about self-immolators? Was there cause always justified, or did they not also "die for a lie"?

As I said, a very strange, and somewhat naive question.

>>They all had first hand experience of resurrection. It could not have been group psychosis.<<

Of course it could have been group psychosis - we have seen enough examples of that in religious communities through the ages, haven't we?

And there is absolutely not a shred of evidence that they had "first hand experience of resurrection".

Anywhere.

"The gospel accounts? Were all written well after the events they "record", and differ in many key areas."

No, the gospels were written beginning from 30-35 years after the event.

And this was in a culture where 10-15% of people could actually read and write. So EVERYTHING people knew was passed on orally. And the earliest follower were all Jews- guys who memorised the Torah word for word. It seems incomprehensible to us today, but their memories would've been 100 times better than ours. Also, they agree on the main points and only differ on minor ones.

"Tacitus? He mentions "Christus", once. He had not independently verified the story, or the existence of "Christus"."

1. He was clearly referring to Jesus of Nazareth, because the other information he says cancels out any other possibilities. 2. Why would you need independent verification when you've got Paul, the gospel sources (Q), John and Josephus?

"Josephus? Testimonium Flavianum is "hotly contested" as a reliable source, given that there is clear evidence of tampering with the text."

Actually, no. The part about Jesus being crucified is not really hotly contested. Josephus uses familiar Josephus-like language, and had no reason to make it up. The parts that were tampered with are the other bits- where he says Jesus IS the messiah and asks "be it lawful to call him a man?"

"Paul? Writing 20 years after the event?

But you would have to agree that anything he wrote was primarily designed to support his own mission, and therefore disqualifies him as objective evidence."

1. Yes, Paul wrote between 48-64 AD. 15-30 years after Jesus. An extremely small time period in antiquity.

2. Do we disqualify everything Tacitus wrote because he wrote with an obvious Roman Imperial agenda? No. Do we ignore all of Josephus writings because he wrote with an obvious Jewish agenda? No. They why on earth would we disqualify Paul?! That's not how historians work. You seem reasonably knowledgable on the topic (although, I could be wrong), so I'm surprised you even brought this point up!

Trav,

One argument put is that Josephus remained an orthodox Jew and did not convert to the new Christian Judiasm. Why so, if Jesus had so much appeal?

After the period of oral lore, the many gospels are displaced in locality, as we as time, having provincial flavours. In orthodox Christianity, the Gospel of Thomas, which would be close in time to alleged Q, is ignored by Christians.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are illustrative of the general religiosity of the period. Also, how works, even the OT works, were re-written.

Sacrafice and resurrection are known to the mystery cults from 500 BCE until after Jesus' time. Jesus is not well differentiated from Mithras and Dionysus. The Isis-Osirus godhead is an apt template for the trinity.

I do believe it is concievable Jesus existed:

Jesus may have been crucified close to the Passover. However, it is unlikely Pilate, Prefect (not Proconsul as Christians claim) of Judea, would have risked a roit by crucifying people during the Passover.

Likewise large crowds gathering to he hear a Jew speak in a the time the zealots were calling for revolt against Rome seems doubtful. Had the gospels said, 40 godfearers gathered, maybe it could have happen