Originally Posted by noise

I never thought about it much. I suppose some specifics about the character Jesus may have been modeled after the life of a particularly charismatic dude.

But the overall character is just your classic hero going through the typical heroic journey. In Jesus' case, the journey culminates in the whole death and rebirth ordeal (symbolic of course, but for some reason now interpreted as literal), but really, his story isn't so different from any other hero's saga. Just an everyday guy who got tossed into a world of extra-ordinary happenings who not only survived but prevailed, and came home just in time to save the day.

Think Luke Skywaker, Frodo Baggins, or even Harry Potter