Does Jesus love buttinski's?

I was explaining my view of the ahistoricity of Jesus today, when a kibbitzer across the aisle walked up to me and quietly told all present I was "a hater of Jesus" and walked away. While I thought that was being a buttinski, he did bring up an interesting thing.

As I've said, I'm 100% sure the character we know as "Jesus of Nazareth" or more popularly, "Jesus Christ", is a fictional character. One question that then comes up is, was there a person or persons in reality that he was based on?

Yes and no.

All fictional characters are based on someone else, to some extent, either real or fictional themselves. The fundamentalist and Catholic Jesus-a literal man, born of a virgin, crucified and resurrected-I'm sure never existed, in the sense that no man, especially, was ever or could ever be born of a woman without sperm somewhere, and no man (or woman) was ever resurrected bodily after rotting for two or three days in a Middle Eastern desert cave.

Frank Zindler and others have done a superb job of rooting out the pagan predecessors of Jesus of Nazareth. ( I refuse to use "Jesus Christ" as a name per se: "Christ" is a title, or honorific, meaning "anointed".) Rather than my going over their writing, here's a link:

http://www.atheists.org/christianity/jesuslife.html

I think you will find in it, and in other pertinent material on that site, all that needs to be said on the issue.

That's not to say Jesus of Nazareth is necessarily a bad fictional character. In him there is nobility, generosity, dedication to a cause: and there is, moreover, in his fight against the Pharisees and Sadducees and temple moneychangers, a lesson for us today. The lone fighter against the status quo is a theme that, like so much of Western Christianity, resonates with Western peoples, and that is one reason it has lasted as long as it has.

Man needs truth-and fantasy. Perhaps, especially, Western man. But each must be recognized for what it is-and the time to uphold the fantasy that is Christianity as anything but what it is is past.