Newton's Cat

If one begins by reading Mark 1,4-5:

Came John, the one baptizing in the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins. And went out to him ALL the Judaean country, and the Jeruslamites ALL, and were baptised by him in the Jordan River confessing the sins of them.

... and considers the possibility that the author used the ALLs to indicate to his readers that what they were reading is fiction .. i.e. he expected his readers to realise that he was using a fictitious story as a vehicle for his comments about contemporary Jewish society and its system of beliefs ... and goes further and sees the text as a script of a play ... written by an intellectual ... for an intellectual audience ...

Then one can peruse the rest of the New Testament and see it in a different light.

Most of the rest of the New Testament was written by people after the Gospel of Mark had been drastically altered by the elevation of his central character, Jesus, to the status of a God.

I can see no evidence that any of the later authors who contributed to the New Testament realised that Mark began as something very different in its teachings from that which it displayed after it was altered.

The author of Mark had a "very expansive" knowledge of most fields of human thought ... he had the mind of a competent philosopher - and he probably associated with other philosophers and intellectuals rather than being a "loner" driven by the desire to establish a religion. It was never his intention that his story should do more than "shake up" the thinking of people in positions of power within the Jewish world ... it was a "political play" - using religion. He created a "myth" ... which was later dressed with the clothes of a real-live myth.

If one could go back in time to when it was written and say to the guy:

"This character Jesus .. in the future billions of people will think that this man is God."

... he would sit, opened mouthed, then laugh at such stupidity.

I was stoned when I wrote this ...

JP2

Haha, well at least you're honest.

I don't see much in the Gospel of Mark to indicate that he wasn't being sincere about what he wrote, although I would argue that the secrecy he invokes surrounding Jesus' miracles indicates that the mythology of Jesus as a miracle-worker wasn't particularly well-established when he wrote the Gospel. Given that there doesn't appear to be any miracle tradition predating Mark (I'm thinking specifically of Paul here), I can't find any other credible explanation as to why he would go to the trouble of explicitly pointing out that Jesus wanted the miracles kept secret.

So even if he didn't invent these stories himself, I think there's reason to believe that they were at least created shortly before the gospel was written and had yet to take much of a hold amongst the early Christians. In that sense you are right to say he was probably "creating a myth", but I think that rather than being bemused by it all, he'd actually be rather chuffed to find out just what an effect this mythology would have on civilization later on.

Sarpedon

Why does one begin with the second gospel rather than the first one? Did your Perfect god get his notes out of order? It looks like you go fishing for the random verse you like, and then say 'begin with that.' I could just as easily say you should begin with the verse where Jesus tells people to castrate themselves.