Having grown up in a Christian environment and then steadily marching towards agnosticism as I grew older, many simple but numerous paradoxes in the Bible were enough for me to smell something fishy. So, I felt little further need to scour scriptures that I knew were more than just three times removed from the original biblical texts (which are lost anyway). What could possibly remain of the original ancient texts when it has been translated and retranslated so many times? If we recognize how translation in the real world works, with the conundrum of translating puns and subtle word associations that work in one language but not necessarily in another (without a lengthy footnote), we have to contend that much of the scriptures that we find, whether it be in our bookcase or in a motel nightstand, have been sanitized in the average version of the printed Bible. Since most people can't read Classical Greek or Aramaic fluently, it's not unreasonable to say that the great majority of Christians are pale imitations of the real thing, though in fairness they are not deliberately so.
As of now, I've always left the possibility open that a man could have existed at this time to form the basis of "Jesus" as most Christians know him today, but I'm very conscious of the fact that pre-Christian legends were undoubtedly overlaid on top of whatever historical events might have taken place, such as the virgin birth (compare with Babylonian religion) and the resurrection (compare with the stories of Egyptian Osiris, Bablyonian Tammuz and Norse Odin).
So to continue on with this blasphemy, I present to you a very thorough and lengthy article called Jesus Myth - The Case Against Historical Christ to ponder on. I can't vouch for the many details on this page but I have to say that the author went through much trouble and for those interested in the historical details of that time period, it might be something intriguing to look into further.
