Very interesting article from http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm

"Around the world over the centuries, much has been written about religion, its meaning, its relevance and contribution to humanity. In the West particularly, sizable tomes have been composed speculating upon the nature and historical background of the main character of Western religions, Jesus Christ. Many have tried to dig into the precious few clues as to Jesus's identity and come up with a biographical sketch that either bolsters faith or reveals a more human side of this godman to which we can all relate. Obviously, considering the time and energy spent on them, the subjects of Christianity and its legendary founder are very important to the Western mind and culture.
The Controversy

Despite all of this literature continuously being cranked out and the significance of the issue, in the public at large there is a serious lack of formal and broad education regarding religion and mythology, and most individuals are highly uninformed in this area. Concerning the issue of Christianity, for example, the majority of people are taught in most schools and churches that Jesus Christ was an actual historical figure and that the only controversy regarding him is that some people accept him as the Son of God and the Messiah, while others do not. However, whereas this is the raging debate most evident in this field today, it is not the most important. Shocking as it may seem to the general populace, the most enduring and profound controversy in this subject is whether or not a person named Jesus Christ ever really existed.

Although this debate may not be evident from publications readily found in popular bookstores¹, when one examines this issue closely, one will find a tremendous volume of literature that demonstrates, logically and intelligently, time and again that Jesus Christ is a mythological character along the same lines as the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Sumerian, Phoenician, Indian or other godmen, who are all presently accepted as myths rather than historical figures². Delving deeply into this large body of work, one uncovers evidence that the Jesus character is based upon much older myths and heroes from around the globe. One discovers that this story is not, therefore, a historical representation of a Jewish rebel carpenter who had physical incarnation in the Levant 2,000 years ago. In other words, it has been demonstrated continually for centuries that this character, Jesus Christ, was invented and did not depict a real person who was either the "son of God" or was "evemeristically" made into a superhuman by enthusiastic followers³.
History and Positions of the Debate

This controversy has existed from the very beginning, and the writings of the "Church Fathers" themselves reveal that they were constantly forced by the pagan intelligentsia to defend what the non-Christians and other Christians ("heretics"⁴ alike saw as a preposterous and fabricated yarn with absolutely no evidence of it ever having taken place in history. As Rev. Robert Taylor says, "And from the apostolic age downwards, in a never interrupted succession, but never so strongly and emphatically as in the most primitive times, was the existence of Christ as a man most strenuously denied."⁵ Emperor Julian, who, coming after the reign of the fanatical and murderous "good Christian" Constantine, returned rights to pagan worshippers, stated, "If anyone should wish to know the truth with respect to you Christians, he will find your impiety to be made up partly of the Jewish audacity, and partly of the indifference and confusion of the Gentiles, and that you have put together not the best, but the worst characteristics of them both."⁶ According to these learned dissenters, the New Testament could rightly be called, "Gospel Fictions."⁷

A century ago, mythicist Albert Churchward said, "The canonical gospels can be shown to be a collection of sayings from the Egyptian Mythos and Eschatology."⁸ In Forgery in Christianity, Joseph Wheless states, "The gospels are all priestly forgeries over a century after their pretended dates."⁹ Those who concocted some of the hundreds of "alternative" gospels and epistles that were being kicked about during the first several centuries C.E. have even admitted that they had forged the documents.¹⁰ Forgery during the first centuries of the Church's existence was admittedly rampant, so common in fact that a new phrase was coined to describe it: "pious fraud."¹¹ Such prevarication is confessed to repeatedly in the Catholic Encyclopedia.¹² Some of the "great" church fathers, such as Eusebius¹³, were determined by their own peers to be unbelievable liars who regularly wrote their own fictions of what "the Lord" said and did during "his" alleged sojourn upon the earth.¹⁴
The Proof

The assertion that Jesus Christ is a myth can be proved not only through the works of dissenters and "pagans" who knew the truth - and who were viciously refuted or murdered for their battle against the Christian priests and "Church Fathers" fooling the masses with their fictions - but also through the very statements of the Christians themselves, who continuously disclose that they knew Jesus Christ was a myth founded upon more ancient deities located throughout the known ancient world. In fact, Pope Leo X, privy to the truth because of his high rank, made this curious declaration, "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!"¹⁵ (Emphasis added.) As Wheless says, "The proofs of my indictment are marvellously easy."
The Gnostics

From their own admissions, the early Christians were incessantly under criticism by scholars of great repute who were impugned as "heathens" by their Christian adversaries. This group included many Gnostics, who strenuously objected to the carnalization of their deity, as the Christians can be shown to have taken many of the characteristics of their god and godman from the Gnostics, meaning "Ones who know," a loose designation applied to members of a variety of esoteric schools and brotherhoods. The refutations of the Christians against the Gnostics reveal that the Christian godman was an insult to the Gnostics, who held that their god could never take human form."

Footnotes:

(1)
In the '80s this controversy erupted once again when GA Wells published Did Jesus Exist? and later The Historical Evidence for Jesus, both of which sought to prove that Jesus is a nonhistorical character. An attempt to repudiate Wells was made by Ian Wilson in Jesus: The Evidence, an entire book written to establish that Jesus did exist. (There is a chapter titled, "Did Jesus Even Exist?," which in itself immediately places a possibly hitherto unknown doubt in the reader's mind.) It should be noted that no such book would be needed if the existence of Jesus Christ as a historical figure were a proven fact accepted by all.

(2)
As regards the work of Erich von Daniken, Zecharia Sitchin and others, it should be understood that few of the stories of godmen can be taken literally to reveal actual superhuman "masters" or alien presences and influences. Most of these characters are, to learned mythologists, clearly myths. (See below)

(3)
"Evemerism," named after Evemeras, a 4th Century B.C.E. Greek philosopher who developed the idea that, rather than being mythological creatures as was accepted by the reigning intellectuals, the gods of old were in fact historical characters, kings, emperors and heroes whose exploits were then deified. Evemerists have put forth a great deal of literature attempting to prove that Jesus was a great Jewish reformer and revolutionary who threatened the status quo and thus had to be put to death. Unfortunately for historicizers, no historian of his purported time even noticed this "great reformer." In Ancient History of the God Jesus, Dujardin states, "This doctrine [Evemerism] is nowadays discredited except in the case of Jesus. No scholar believes that Osiris or Jupiter or Dionysus was an historical person promoted to the rank of a god, but exception is made only in favour of Jesus. . . .It is impossible to rest the colossal work of Christianity on Jesus, if he was a man." The standard Christian response to the Evemerists has been that no such Jesus, stripped of his miracles and other supernatural attributes, could ever "have been adored as a god or even been saluted as the Messiah of Israel." (Dujardin) This response is quite accurate: No man could have caused such a hullabaloo and hellish fanaticism, the product of which has been the unending spilling of blood. The crazed "inspiration" that has kept the Church afloat merely confirms the mythological origins of this tale. "The general assumption concerning the canonical gospels is that the historic element was the kernel of the whole, and that the fables accreted round it; whereas the mythos, being pre-extant, proves the core of the matter was mythical, and it follows that the history is incremental. . . . It was the human history that accreted round the divinity, and not a human being who became divine." (Massey, The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, henceforth, "MC" The bottom line is that when one removes all the elements of those preceding deities and myths that contributed to the formation of this Jewish god-man - which is what Evemerists insist on doing - there is nothing historical left to point to. As Massey says, ". . . a composite likeness of twenty different persons merged in one . . . is not anybody." (MC)

(4)
"Those who denied the humanity of Christ were the first class of professing Christians, and not only first in order of time, but in dignity of character, in intelligence, and in moral influence." (Taylor) While those who held onto the millennia-old gnostic Mythos of Christ preceded the carnalizers, or sarkolaters (those who made Christ into flesh), having long-established rituals and doctrines, it was they who were accused of being heretics by their younger, ignorant, carnalizing cousins, who were in reality the true heretics. Taylor: "The deniers of the humanity of Christ, or, in a word, professing Christians, who denied that any such man as Jesus Christ ever existed at all, but who took the name Jesus Christ to signify only an abstraction, or prosopopæia, the principle of Reason personified; and who understood the whole gospel story to be a sublime allegory . . . these were the first, and (it is not dishonour to Christianity to pronounce them) the best and most rational Christians."

(5)
Rev. Robert Taylor, The Diegesis. Rev. Taylor was an English clergyman widely known for his "heretical" sermons, which he began to deliver after discovering, through a superior classical education, that Christ was a mythological character. He was twice imprisoned in England in the 1820's for "blasphemy." Taylor was one of the early "freethinkers," although he maintained he was a "Deist," and, therefore, not an atheist. Taylor suffered tremendous persecution for his stance, yet from his prison cell, he composed The Diegesis, a remarkable and scholarly dissertation of the highest quality.

(6)
Ibid.

(7)
With acknowledgment to Randel Helms, author of Gospel Fictions.

(
The Origin and Evolution of Religion by Albert Churchward.

(9)
Forgery in Christianity by Joseph Wheless: "As said by the great critic, Salomon Reinach, 'With the exception of Papias, who speaks of a narrative by Mark, and a collection of sayings of Jesus, no Christian writer of the first half of the second century (i.e., up to 150 A.D.) quotes the Gospels or their reputed authors.'" In The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read, John Remsburg states: "The Four Gospels were unknown to the early Christian Fathers. Justin Martyr, the most eminent of the early Fathers, wrote about the middle of the second century. His writings in proof of the divinity of Christ demanded the use of these Gospels had they existed in his time. He makes more than 300 quotations from the books of the Old Testament, and nearly one hundred from the Apocryphal books of the New Testament; but none from the four Gospels. Rev. Giles says: 'The very names of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are never mentioned by him (Justin) - do not occur once in all his writings.'" In A Short History of the Bible, Keeler says, "The books [canonical gospels] are not heard of till 150 A.D., that is, till Jesus had been dead nearly a hundred and twenty years. No writer before 150 A.D. makes the slightest mention of them."

(10)
Wheless quotes the Catholic Encyclopedia: "Enterprising spirits responded to this natural craving by pretended gospels full of romantic fables, and fantastic and striking details; their fabrications were eagerly read and accepted as true by common folk who were devoid of any critical faculty and who were predisposed to believe what so luxuriously fed their pious curiosity. Both Catholics and Gnostics were concerned in writing these fictions. The former had no motive other than that of a PIOUS FRAUD." (NB: "C.E." denotes "Common Era" and is equivalent to "A.D.," whereas "B.C.E." denotes "Before the Common Era" and is equivalent to "B.C." )

(11)
Wheless, op cit. Mangasarian states: "The church historian, Mosheim, writes that, 'The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud.' [Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I, p. 347.] Again, he says: 'The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all of them infected with this leprosy.' Will not some believer tell us why forgery and fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of Jesus. . . . Another historian, Milman, writes that, 'Pious fraud was admitted and avowed by the early missionaries of Jesus.' 'It was an age of literary frauds,' writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the times immediately following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr. Giles declares that, 'There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were written with no other purpose than to deceive.' And it is the opinion of Dr. Robertson Smith that, 'There was an enormous floating mass of spurious literature created to suit party views.'"

(12)
Wheless: "The clerical confessions of lies and frauds in the ponderous volumes of the Catholic Encyclopedia alone suffice . . . to wreck the Church and to destroy utterly the Christian religion. . . . The Church exists mostly for wealth and self-aggrandizement; to quit paying money to the priests would kill the whole scheme in a couple of years. This is the sovereign remedy."

(13)
In one of his works, Eusebius provides this handy chapter entitled: "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived." (Wheless) Wheless also calls Justin Martyr, Eusebius and Tertullian "three luminous liars." Keeler: "The early Christian fathers were extremely ignorant and superstitious; and they were singularly incompetent to deal with the supernatural."

(14)
Wheless. "If the pious Christians, confessedly, committed so many and so extensive forgeries and frauds to adapt these popular Jewish fairy-tales of their God and holy Worthies to the new Christian Jesus and his Apostles, we need feel no surprise when we discover these same Christians forging outright new wonder-tales of their Christ under the fiction of the most noted Christian names and in the guise of inspired Gospels, Epistles, Acts and Apocalypses. . . . Half a hundred of false and forged Apostolic 'Gospels of Jesus Christ,' together with more numerous other 'Scripture' forgeries, was the output, so far as known now, of the lying pens of the pious Christians of the first two centuries of the Christian 'Age of Apocryphal Literature' . . . 'Almost every one of the Apostles had a Gospel fathered upon him by one early sect or another.' . . .If the Gospel tales were true, why should God need pious lies to give them credit? Lies and forgeries are only needed to bolster up falsehood. . . But Jesus Christ must needs be propagated by lies upon lies; and what better proof of his actuality than to exhibit letters written by him in his own handwriting? The 'Little Liars of the Lord' were equal to the forgery of the signature of their God - false letters in his name, as above cited from that exhaustless mine of clerical falsities, the Catholic Encyclopedia [C.E.] . . . The forged New Testament booklets and the foolish writings of the Fathers, are the sole 'evidence' we have for the alleged facts and doctrines of our most holy Faith, as is admitted by C.E."

(15)
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, by Barbara Walker, p. 471. Rev. Taylor, in The Diegesis, reports a slightly different version of Leo X's admission: "It was well known how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us." (footnote, p. 35.)

[yawn loudly] Boooorinnnnnggg
Another attempt by the Gnostics to seek relevance by trying to denouce what is indenounable or indisputable. Myrad acaheological evidences support the historical accounts in the old and new testament. Even the quran tries to seek relevance or credibility by plagiarising stories of Jesus the Christ.
Nice try mate, but it's headed the same way as those before it, down the drain!!

Havila:

[yawn loudly]
[SNIP]
Myrad acaheological evidences support the historical accounts in the old and new testament.

Which archaeological or historical evidence is there to support the historical accounts of the old and new testament? There is absolutely no credible evidence in support of a historical Jesus Christ that is even remotely as portrayed in the new testament.

Very nice. Where's the evidence supporting the said existence? Would you like to point some out to us?

Jesus is a fictitious character that never existed.

Istanbul is the origin of Christianity.

There are no quest for the historical Jesus due to the fact that there was never a person who walk this Earth called Jesus.

The story of the Jesus character is based on a combination of fakery and falsehood.