I’m no biblical scholar, but I am not persuaded that Jesus, as he has come to be known, existed. Even if he did, and all the stories and teachings attributed to him are authentic, it still does not explain the explosive growth and influence of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Inevitably, there was some vacuum to be filled, something missing in peoples’ lives that the notion of Savior satisfied. Uncovering that seems like a more interesting academic endeavor than trying to prove whether a charismatic prophet who was executed by the Romans at the behest of the Jewish hierarchy actually existed.