I've often wondered does starting a comment off with "first of all I am not a conspiracy theorist" bode well for a pleasant conversation. Ah well.

I once watched a documentary called "Caesars messiah". Now this documentary had terrible visuals and soundtrack and the usual cheap documentary crap. In this documentary they made the claim that Jesus was a character invented by the Roman empire to help pascify the Jewish regions.

The logic they use is this : the Jewish people, being people who don't like to be subjugated for obvious reasons, were just too rebellious for the Roman empire. So basically the Romans come up with a character who loves peace and teaches to turn the other cheek. Effectively cooling off an area that had high unrest.

In a period where the Romans notoriously struck out any semblance of religion in any region that didn't follow the Roman pagan religion, how did the new Testament survive? It's not a case of the Romans not being thorough enough, because they were, plenty of fires were had. Some people conclude so that maybe the religion was permitted by the Roman empire because they themselves created Christianity.

Now obviously there is more to the story than that. And I am not saying it is definitely all true, but I like a healthy amount of scepticism and am willing to listen to what anyone has to say, unless you, of course, are a flat earther, then you can please leave me alone.