Islam claims something similar too. It's funny though, that they all lead to empire, ultimately.
No one who would be in the position to know if the man-God really claimed what He claimed goes down and dies when they know *wink-wink* that He never claimed such a thing. Now they may have been deluded into thinking it was true when He was a liar, but that’s not the argument I mean to present.
Could you please elaborate this, please? I didn't understand one bit of it.
As for claiming divinity, again, you need to rely on the Gospels, which is not exactly what one could use as reliable historical fact. They were all built, written and compiled, in and by the minds of mere, mortal men.
You are using one myth, to "prove" another.
And that brings me back to that John Adams quote again- why were some of the gospels destroyed?
As a Christian, I can say with authority that nothing about Christ makes sense. He did not make sense to his closest disciples who walked with him for three years, he did not make sense to the authorities of his time and he did not make sense to those who witnessed his death until the Holy Spirit touched them:
Here is the first time Peter went public and it was after the Holy Spirit entered there lives: Acts 2:22"Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,[d] put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.
The reason you cannot understand is because to someone untouched by the Holy Spirit all of this is foolishness:
1 Corinthians 2:14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
You friend are at this moment spiritually discerned. There was a time when I was like you, I understand. Although God has not opened your eyes to these things, it doesn't mean they don't exist or that you will always be blind to them.
And that brings me back to that John Adams quote again- why were some of the gospels destroyed?
This seems to be a major issue for you. If the four Gospels we use today, which are traced back to within decades of Christs death, are sufficient to understand the nature of Christ and his ministry, why do we need more? Let me use an example. Color TV uses three colors to represent a picture and when we add time by using multiple pictures in sequence, we have all we need to reproduce a movie. We don't need anything more than these 4 basic things to produce the movie on TV. Likewise, we don't need anything more than the 4 gospels plus the Holy Spirit to understand Christ's ministry and life. Why carry around 50 books when 4 do nicely?
You might be implying that the 50 books would convincingly contradict what the other 4 say. If that were even remotely possible, they would have come in very handy by those in authority in the early christian era's when the authorities used Christians for lion food and human torches to light the streets with.
Further, each generation has its share of skeptics and Christian haters who are capable of raising the objections to the original gospels. The arguments are many and are not unknown to any mature Christian. We know what the objections are to Christ. These Gospels have withstood the test of generations of skeptics and critics.
Also, don't for a minute think you are aware of objections, theories etc that believers have not studied or discussed themselves. In fact the original gospel writers know the objections. They wrote to an audience of skeptics in real time. The original audience was alive to them because they were their family and friends. The Gospels address answers to those objections. One is written to answer the objections to Jewish people, one is written to answer objections by Gentiles. One is written to address Jesus as God. One is written to address Jesus as man. One is written to address Jesus as King. All together they provide a 4 dimensional view of Christ.