Windmill knight said:
What I would like to know now is how do we fit into this perspective other things we knew about the origins of Christianity. For example the Book of Q.
If you understand that the book of Q was, as Mack has pointed out, just general sayings of Cynics which were related to Stoics, and if you were reading HoM carefully, you would have picked up the clues that it was the Stoic philosophy that was utilized by early Christian fathers to create their Christology, then you would realize the connection.
Additionally, if I am correct that the Mithraic Mysteries were sort of the layman's version of Stoicism, created by that great Stoic, Posidonius, then obviously, sayings and other things would have been incorporated. Also, the main ritual of the MM was the communal meal in imitation of the "meal of the god". Plus, Mithras was "born from a stone/rock" (comet) and Simon of the Judaic rebels, was renamed "Peter" or stone, in the gospels.
Windmill knight said:
It has also been said that the story of Jesus was largely taken from other myths, like Osiris and others. So who came first and how, JC, Osiris, etc?
It's important to NOT get distracted by all the other theories that have been propagated for centuries in an effort to explain away Christianity. Indeed, there were many dying and resurrecting myths all over the world, related mainly to comets that go below the horizon and are reborn later. The events that surrounded the HISTORICAL Caesar, in a sense, imitated those mythic archetypes and probably infused new life into them at that time. To some extent, the facts about Caesar and the myths intertwined.
Windmill knight said:
Also, I'm counting the Cs as a source. Some f their remarks can match Julius Caesar, for example being married to 3 Roman women. However, others seem to point out to a different character - one much less involved in politics and much more in spiritual teachings. Or so it seems to me.
Any ideas?
Keep in mind that the Cs sessions about Jesus were highly charged. I expect the Cs did the best they could under the circumstance.
Note our discussion toward the end of the possible/probable utilization of an annual honoring of Caesar by Jews being the impetus behind their rebellion. It would be only rational for the emperors to want to change the direction.
My guess is that, when Jerusalem was destroyed at the time of the rebellion, Titus et all got their hands on scrolls that outlined the "passion of Caesar" and together with Josephus, created the "new story" along with the modifications that serviced their agenda.
This happened in parallel with the orthographic changes detailed by Carotta.
This is where Atwill's book is useful. If he realized the true source of the Jesus story that was PRIOR to the Flavian emperors and was the inspiration for the Judaic rebellion, he would have seen that the Flavians only worked with the materials to hand. They didn't just "create" it by fiat. There WAS something there that was powerfully inspiring and produced the kinds of spirits that the Jewish rebels exhibited as described by Josephus.
There were, of course, more edits and changes along the way.
), was the interruptions from the members of the panel, when Laura was talking about all the threads that led her to the idea that Julius Caesar was probably a man, who's life and death was used to invent the Jesus story. It's surely understandable as all of you participated in the research, and really wanted to share the information, but for me it was somewhat difficult to follow what Laura was saying at times. However, later in the show all the information you brought up about the Julius Caesar as a man of great talents, accomplishments and his real love and care for people was great! 
