Originally Posted by gurugeorge

I'd be inclined to interpret such sayings mystically, and to suggest that they got garbled in later, over-literal interpretation. IOW, what they refer to is a kind of cross-cultural experience where one feels oneself to be, at a deep psychological level, one with the underlying substratum of the Universe, which wasn't born and won't die.

"Immortal" literally means "Deathless" (Greek Athanatos) - that's what the Greek gods were. And that's also what the goals of "apotheosis", "entheos" were (e.g. cf. Greek philosophers from Empedocles to Iamblichus).

For cross-cultural triangulation, note that there was a closely-related concept in Chinese thought (the goal of some forms of Daoism was "immortality").

There's also a discussion of this sort of thing in the "Paul" writings in relation to the concept of "Resurrection" (cognate concept), and in a later gnostic letter/treatise "On the Resurrection".

These texts are difficult to understand, but they do make some sense if you interpret them as pertaining (at first, at the origins of the religion) to mystical experiences which are based in our shared physiology, neurology and psychology, and are therefore cross-cultural.

And absent evidence for a human Jesus, it's worth looking at the hypothesis that Christianity started as a small mystical sect, who were having visions and mystical experiences based on a revalued concept of the Messiah - that he was not one to come but rather one who has been; not a military but rather a spiritual victor. Specifically, a victor over death in the manner spoken of above, so that you imitated the death and resurrection in yourself (imitating death by baptism - i.e. temporary drowning leading to panic and loss of the ordinary sense of self - and imitating resurrection by the subsequent mystical experience of "deathlessness", whereupon you would be said to be "anointed" - i.e., a Christ, "one with Christ", or "Christ in you").