Who was this jesus dude anyway?

excerpt from an email:

weird, never thought of him as a lunatic or a liar, I guess thats because I think the bible has a lot of lies written by bad men for the purpose of control, I believe that he must have existed as a simple soft spoken man who just wanted us to love each other, and I think the rest of it was words put in his mouth, but I dont know him, anymore than I know mother therasa, same goes for sidartha(budda) he was the son of a king, found out that there was pain and suffering, had a meltdown and came out of it with some wisdom, thats it, and yet even he was deified.

so yes, the jesus and the god in the bible to me sound like lunatics and/or liars but I dont beleive the bible is their book at all, I only have humans who are falable telling me that it is, that cant be enough, only people who feel the precence of god can feel otherwise, because without that they just have people telling them what to think.

so anyway, I dont believe that he even claimed to be the son of god. I have started to read the davinci code, found some really interesting stuff in there, it is totally a book of fiction but it threads in some real verifyable facts, like in the painting the last supper, there are two things I never would have noticed had they not been pointed out, there is a woman to Jesus' right and there is an extra hand that belongs to no one in the picture that is holding a knife. now those two things you can verify, but whats beyond that is conjecture, but interesting none the less, in the book it is proported that the woman is mary magdelin and that like Jesus, lies where made up about her too, she was not a prositute, she was his wife, had his child and was to carry on the cause after his death but the other followers didnt like that, so they banished her, made things up about her and went on to build the whole concept that women were subserviant to men, threading the bible with everything they could to keep women in their place. Later this lead to things like witch hunts, anything even being a doula, that a woman would do as a healer or herbalist etc... put power in the hands of women, so they were percecuted for it.

It is actually the notion of women being subserviant that was the first thing I had a problem with in church as a kid, it just seemed patently wrong from the first time I heard it.

anyway, thats all interpretation, well everything is when you talk about history, I think the story in monty pythons the life of brian is as plausable an explanation of jesus as any.

so what is left? we have all these writings, conjecture, thoughts, feelings etc... all we can do is sift out of them what makes sense and that is where I come back to 'we hold these truths to be self evident' there are truths spoken in the bible, by socrates by sidartha, by confusious but only those that are self evident, I like to expand on that, self evidence, if Jesus says (and I dont know that he does) that the world would be better for all of us if we just tried to love and forgive each other more, I dont car if that was divine inspiration, the words of a simple man or the writings of evil people years after his death, that part of what is said is a self evident truth and the value of it is that even though it is self evident not everyone would have thought of it quite like that had it not been said. Those morsels are what I defign as wisdom, things that immediatly ring true for the listener, whereas when some pagan says you will be exalted in the afterlife if you throw a goat into a volcano, I have to say, err, doesnt ring so much for me dude, guess I will have to pass on that there advice.

so you can see, I dont necessarily go against the christian god or jesus, I am really against the bible, so if there is a god, if jesus was his son and there is an afterlife, when I am judged I will say, never knew weither or not you guys were real, didnt believe in the bible but regardless I tried my best to be a good person and to be good to other people and to life on this planet in general and not to hedge my bets just in case you were real but because I judge myself more harshly than you ever could, your shame in me I can bear but my own I cannot, that means no disrespect it just means that I have high standards for myself and it sounds like less forgiveness than you. anyway, its entirely possible that the bible was partially inspired by god but over the years got corrupted by groups of men in power, parts of it sort of tilted to achieve their ends and in the end if there is a god, it could say, my words were corrupted some of you did your best to follow these words with the best intentions, interpreted them as best you could and tried to be good people, some of you didnt beleive them but still tried to be good people, some of you pretended to follow them and used them for evil and as an exuse to kill others and some of you where just bad people, those of you that were good regardless of your method are ready for the next level, those of you that werent, didnt get the message and need to try again.

so I should be more clear about my beliefs I guess, I dont know if there is a god or not but I dont believe in the bible for sure.