If you grow up in a majority Christian society, sooner or later you have to come to an accommodation with the mythology of Jesus. How did such a story spring up around this guy? Indeed, was there ever even such as fellow as Jeshua son of Joseph from Nazareth? Or is it all just a constructed story?
(I like to use the name "Jeshua" to refer to the fellow to try to separate the actual person (if there was one) from the mythological character "Jesus".)
It's pretty clear that a large part of the story was constructed, drawing on previous myths. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to suppose that some guy named Jeshua started preaching and kicked up enough trouble to get tortured to death.
So here's some speculation, based on half-remembered bits of my Catholic upbringing, my intuition, and my experience with the mystical state.
Imagine: a group of people in the Middle East chafing under occupation by a foreign empire. (Any potential relevance to modern geopolitics is strictly coincidental.) The people of Judea and Galilee are hoping for a Messiah, an anointed leader to unite them and kick some Roman ass. It's possible that they're specifically looking for such a leader to arise as a descendant of the royal line, though it seems more likely that Jeshua was made an heir of David via the intervention of his chroniclers, well after his death. (On the other hand, being of the royal line helps explain how and why he gathered so much attention so quickly once he started preaching.)
If we take seriously the story in the Gospels about young Jeshua wandering off from his parents and being found in the temple in deep discussion with the priests, we might imagine him as having an interest in spiritual affairs from a young age. So when he hears about this fellow John (maybe his cousin, maybe not) who has started preaching and leading intense water-based purification rituals, it makes sense that Jeshua might want to give it a try.
The thing about ritual work, that you really have to have done it in some fashion to understand, is how it can catalyze a sudden spiritual transformation. The excitement of the crowd, John's intense preaching, the hot desert sun, the sudden immersion in the cool water, maybe even a little oxygen deprivation depending on John's style -- it all really gets to Jeshua. He has a big time capital-letters Mystical Experience, and his understanding of his relationship to his self and to the Universe is changed. He gets filled up with acceptance and inner peace. If he was doing this in a Zen context, we'd call it satori. If he was a Hindu, maybe Krisha would appear to him. Being a Jew, his cultural conditioning led him to hang it on Jehovah, so he explained by saying things like "The Father and I are One."
So Jeshua starts preaching too. Maybe he's a little better at it than John, maybe he's more naturally charismatic, maybe he is of royal blood which always gets people's attention. He gives some good speeches. He starts to attract crowds. He starts to piss off some of the more orthodox leaders of the Pharisees.
And then some folks get the idea that Jeshua might have the qualifications to be the Roman-ass-kicking anointed one the people are looking for. They convince themselves that he is the Messiah. Jeshua tries to tell them that politics isn't really his line -- "Render on to Caesar what is Caesar's" -- but some of his fans don't get the clue. This pisses off the Romans.
And so Jeshua's fate is that which often befalls people who piss off both the religious and political leaders of their cultures. (Hey, it was just preemptive self-defense by the Romans. At least Jeshua got something resembling a trial, unlike so many victims of today's violent world-spanning empire.)
But here's the clever part. It rapidly becomes obvious to Jeshua's followers that their dead leader is not going to lead a rebellion against the Romans. So does that mean he wasn't the Messiah? No! They deploy the power of the retcon: the Messiah's job was never to free us from the Romans, no, it was to free us from, um, sin, yes, that's it. And Jeshua did it! Hooray! He was the Messiah after all! Of course, this was a strictly metaphysical victory, so, there's no evidence of it on Earth, sin appears to be with us as much as ever, but trust us, it's been defeated.
Throw in some rather standard resurrection mythology and a few typical miracle stories, let bake in oral rumor and storytelling for a few decades before anyone writes anything down, and after a while the poor mystical carpenter's son who talked about peace and love is the Only Son of God, the King of Kings, and so on.
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