JW_Rogue
It seems that Jesus was indeed an apocalyptic prophet. Not merely a man of peace and love like the hippies. May be he was the source of the idea that the kingdom of God would come to Israel during his generation to destroy the Roman Empire. We can't know if he believed that he would be proclaimed king by God, or something like that. But, it is possible that he did something crazy in the temple, and the jews were offended by something politically wrong that he did. So they or the roman authorities decided to kill him. After his death, the plans of the sect had to be modified. I strongly doubt that Jesus believed that he would die for the sins of the humanity. His death was not predicted, but his educated disciples developed a theology to justify his death and invented initially an spiritual resurrection. They indeed found some interesting texts in the OT, like "the suffering servant" in Isaiah 53 to justify this unexpected death. So they proclaimed that Jesus would be back in power to establish the kingdom in Jerusalem. Then, Jerusalen was destroyed in 70 AD, and they invented that Jesus predicted it. But now, this destruction of the city was convenient to invent that his body disappeared when his disciples visited the tomb. Because all tombs were destroyed by the romans, no one could verify if that story was true or false. When this jewish sect was shunned by reorganized pharisees in the 80s and 90s, they invented that Jesus predicted that they would be expelled from the synagoges. Indeed, I believe that at every emerged problem, the Christian scribes decided to invent a prediction for this situation. ....In the beginning of the second century, some guys believed that the matter is evil, then some Christian scribes decided to invent the bodily resurrection, so as to ensure that he resurrected in flesh. Of course, the virginity of Mary and other stories were the product of gentile christians to make Jesus like the pagan gods.