I dunno...

The Gospels were written 40+ years after the death of Jesus. That leaves a lot of room for blurred memory and biased opinions to color the text.

And actually, if you look at history, Christianity did not begin as a religion, but rather as a movement of people who followed a charismatic and unconventional Jewish teacher. It wasn't until 4 years after the death of Jesus that a non-Christian Roman emporer (Constantine) held an inquiry to decide whether Jesus was actually a god. Once the decision was made that Jesus had in fact been a god, then the religious beliefs of what we know now as Christianity became more widely accepted.

Interestingly enough, Constantine never professed a belief in or worship of Jesus or the Christian God until his death. All of his life he lived worshipping the "pagan" gods we now associated with the Romans -- that is until his dying day, when, on his death bed he proclaimed his love and belief in a Lord Jesus Christ -- just in case the Christians were right all along.