You're right, Jug, in another chapter of the book the author talks about just that, and goes into detail about similarites between Jesus and Horus, son of Osiris and ancient Egyptian religion. The similarities are striking, and numerous. I swear, in some passages you could replace one name for the other and it would be the same thing.

But his point in the book is to show that the bible, and the Gospels in particualr, were never meant to be taken literally, as any Christian church would tell us. They are allegory, myth, and possess a certain truth the same way a Shakespeare lay, or Greek mythology, possess a certain allegorical, satiric, or moral, truth. His point is that it's absolutely irrelevant whether Jesus actually existed or not, it's the moral message behind the story is where the truth lies. In essence, Jesus stands for the kernal of divinity which resides in all human beings, thus every one in other words has God withing them, and Jesus' life is an allegory of every one's life. His suffering represents our every day trials, the hard moments in our life, and that if we believe in ourselves, in our potential to surpass these difficulties, our ability in effect to become God, we will have a much more fulfilling spiritual life. That is the salvation, and that is the Kingdom of Heaven.

What's the most striking in the book, though, is that this idea was, contrary to what most believe, around for maybe as long as 3,000 years before Jesus allegedly live. In fact, the author, and countless other scholars, have proven that this concept existed all over the world, and that virtually all spiritual faith derives from this concept. He lists examples of divnities in other religions, whether existing or not, who had at least a section of their story that was identical to Jesus, and many their entire story. I listed some in my first post, and if you look it up and look at their stories in this light, you'll be amazed.

As for myself, I can say that it also caused anger in me, knowing that the Christian establishment has consisitently lied since almost the beginning, withholding knowledge from the rest of humanity just to keep them docile and obediant. But, in the end, it encouraged to be more spiritually aware, without being outright religious. God, or Jesus, or whatever you want to call it, truly lies within us all, and that's comforting thought, because know I know I can really make a difference to myself and others.