Our Lord Jesus Christ, Lord or Man? Options

During my internet years, I found info like Jesus married Maria Magdalena, went to India and studied there, that he did not die on the cross. I'm not sure what to believe in. Yesterday, I finished reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and in it I again read what I've found + Sarah, Jesus's daughter and how Constantine used the "perverted" new testament to make a god out of Jesus to win the Catholic over the Pagan. Altought the book has errors, it is still an interesting read.

What is your opinion on this? Jesus, the Lord or -just- a man?

Well I lost track of time and got an hour ahead of myself so I wanted to finish up on my thought here.

When is comes to finding the truth about Jesus, Mary, the Descipiles and possible blood lines I think historical evidence is pretty useless, outside of speculation and story telling. The very reason I think is because what my first post is an attempt to articulate is that there are MANY sources that claim this and that about Jesus and such. There is no real truth only that which we choose to believe. The only real conspiracy of that time I believe in was the early Church's action to supress all the other gosspels to affectively "corner the Christian market".

IN my own humble opinion I think if we want to find any measure of truth to this subject we should step back and search ourselves with our own knowledge and our own reasoning.

I believe Jesus was a highly intelligent man who was raised Jewish and left Judea to study abroad both in the east and west. I know the bible insists that Jesus was poor. While he was most likely a generous philanthropist I don't think he was broke either. People of that time were willing to pay philosophers for their thoughts and I'll bet with the education Jesus accomulated he had some pretty interesting thoughts. If he did actually travel a lot he probably spoke several different languages so he had a means to articulate his thoughts that most did not have this may helped him as a trader, simply trading artifacts for goods. So influenced by what he had learned Jesus returned to Judea to teach and help others. That is what I think he felt was his true calling in life. He used his knowledge of Judaism and other religions to teach people a message of hope and compassion, a sort of live and let live philosophy. Over time this wondering philosopher found a small gathering whom he called his disciples, those who would spread the simple message to others.

There were actually many philosophers of the time and Jesus was not the only one people thought of as the Massiah. I believe the reason Jesus was given that title was because he became a Martyr in the eyes of his followers. I don't think Jesus fled Judea. I think he intended to die on the cross. I do think it is very likely that Jesus had a wife, or life partner who fled to Egypt to escape the persecution of the Romans and Jews. There her and any possible children lived under an assumed alias. They probably moved around alot and may even influenced some of the gnostic gosspels, as I'd bet their decendants did as well. But so did Jesus' other followers. They too moved around and soon the true story of the life of Jesus was too obscure to know what really happened. But the seed of Jesus' teachings did not die and they were perpetuated and morphed by his followers who claimed Jesus was not only a Martyr but the son of God who preformed miracles and the dispersment of Jesus' followers through out the Roman Empire is why I believe Jesus remained the Massiah while other contenders simply faded into the back waters of history. There were probably many Gosspels that detailed the life of Jesus and the early Catholic Church stamped out all save those that served its agenda. The Church probably went to great lengths to maintain dominance over the knowledge of Christ and even claimed its leader, the pope was a decendant of a disciple of Jesus, St Peter.

In reality, the story of Jesus is probably one of the saddest sagas ever told.