Jesus claimed to be a Jewish Messiah and was later misrepresented to create Christianity

I am going to start by pointing to the fact that my respected opponent made appeal to the New Testament to prove some of his contentions, which I will deal with in the rebuttal. With this in mind, my opponent has opened the door for me to use the New Testament, remember he appealed to it, by appealing to it he establishes its veracity to tell us about the Historical Jesus.With that said I am going to start with the virgin birth of Jesus.The New Testament says (I paraphrase):Mary said to the Angel 'How can this be, seeing as I am a virgin?' The Angel answers: 'The Holy Spirit will come unto you and miraculously conceive the Holy Son who is the Son of God.' (Luke 1:34-35)As far as the virgin birth is concerned, the answer given in the Gospels as to why it was necessary for Jesus to be born to a virgin was so that he wouldn't inhereit the sinful nature passed on through the father, rather the conception would be miraculous work done by the Holy Spirit to not taint the Son of God's body with the sinful nature, which would void his sacrifice on the cross if he wasn't sinful.Very early church Fathers such as Ignatius of Antioch, who was a student of the apostles (mainly of Saint John), he writes:"He (Jesus) was conceived in the womb of Mary, according to the appointment of God, of the seed of David, and by the Holy Ghost. For says [the Scripture], "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and He shall be called Immanuel."" (Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, chapter 18)So right from the start, the belief of the virgin birth was present among the early Christians.Secondly, I am going to show you the radical claims made by Jesus that no mere human being should be making:But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the paralytic (Mark 2:10) Similar stories are found in Matthew 9, Luke 7, and Acts 26. This supports the histoical reliability of these claims, because they are multiply attested in many New Testament Books, and in many different instances, so there is no good reason to deny Jesus ever made this claim.For Jesus to claim that he can forgive sins shows that he thought of himself as more than a man, even the Jews of his time had a problem with this claim:"Why does he speak like that? Who can forgive sins except God alone?" (Mark 2:7)Jesus claims to be able to work on the Sabbath: And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:16-18)Notice what Jesus just said, he said "My Father is working until now, therefore, I have that same authority". What Jesus is basically saying is that even though only God can work on the sabbath, Jesus to can work, because he is God's Son. The Jews understood his claim and were irritated because he was claiming equality with the Father. A similar story is found at the end of Mark 2, where Jesus claims to be Lord of the Sabbath, which is another claim to deity. Jesus claims to share the same glory as the Father:"And now Father, glorify me in your own prescence with the glory that I had with you before the world was." (John 17:5)This is i'd say the clearest claim to deity that Jesus makes. If this doesn't sound like Jesus claiming to be God for you, I don't know what will.To say that Jesus didn't think of himself as anything other than a man is only to deceive yourself, and to shoot yourself in the foot in light of all the overwhelming Gospel evidence, each of these divine claims are found all throughout the Gospels, not just John, so saying that only John presents a divine Jesus, but the other Gospels didn't is to be ignorant of what the Gospels actually say.I will also show you that many disciples thought Jesus was God:"Thomas answered and said to Jesus "My Lord and My God" (John 20:28) In Greek: ho kurios mou kai ho theos mou, which literally means "The Lord of Me and the God of me"Peter says: You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. You killed the Author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.” (Acts 3:15)That Matthew thought Jesus was God is very clear from his Gospel. That Saint John thought Jesus was God is very clear from his prologue: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1)I will now show you how early church Father Ignatius of Antioch in one of his authentic letters, whom as I said earlier was a student of the apostles thought about Jesus: Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the church which is at Ephesus in Asia, and most deservedly happy, being blessed through the greatness and fullness of God the Father, and predestined before the world began to an enduring and unchangeable glory, united and chosen through his true passion, according to the will of the Father AND Jesus Christ our God. (Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, chapter 1)Notice how Ignatius distinguishes between the Father and Jesus, yet he calls Jesus God.Thirdly, Jesus makes plain what the purpose of his mission is:"The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)"This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matthew 26:28)"For He was teaching His disciples and telling them, "The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and when He has been killed, He will rise three days later." (Mark 9:31)Jesus was well aware about what was going to happent to him. Jesus makes the same exact claims in Mark 8, Matthew 16, Luke 9, John 2. This claim is not only found in one Gospel, but in all four Gospels, and multiple times in the same Gospel, sometimes even repeatedly. This saying of Jesus is very well attested amongst all Gospel writers, which is why most Jesus Historians, whether Christian or not agree that Jesus made this claim.Michael Licona's evidence for this claim is the following: it is multiply attested in all Gospels, it is found in Jesus' rebuke of Peter, it is found in Jesus' parables in Mark 12, the disciples don't understand his claims, Jesus himself asks the Father is he can be excused from what is about to happen to him. [1]Not only is this evidence overwhelming, but it passes the criteria of embarrasment, meaning that if the Gospel writers were just inventing sayings of Jesus to prove their case, they wouldn't have included embarassing remarks from JEsus, and his disciples, this would work against their case. So all this said, there is no reason to deny that Jesus predicted his violent death and subsequent resurrection.To say that Jesus never said he came to die for sins and rise from the dead is to ignore what JESUS (not Paul) said in the Gospels.Let me just review what I have established, using Jesus words only, not Paul, not a commentary within the Gospels, but Jesus himself:Jesus on many occasions and many instances claimed to be God, Jesus in many instances preached that he came to die for sins, Jesus on many occasions predicted his death and resurrection.I also proved that Jesus disciples and Ignatius, a student of Saint John himself thought Jesus was God, and that he came to die for sins.I'd like to end with words from my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ after his resurrection:"Go therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name (singular) of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 28:19)All of these teachings I demonstrated can be traced right back to the historical Jesus himself, as he in the Gospels make the claims, his disciples also make the claim, and a student of Saint John, Ignatius makes these claims, a good historical chain that shows that the historical Jesus is not some mysterious figure cloaked in legend, but a figure who claimed and taught everything that we Christians believe today.Source: [1] http://www.risenjesus.com...