It is very difficult not to impute into the very unassuming original story all the grand assumptions of our time. We don’t know what happened. We can’t rely on the texts for historical accuracy. Our minds gather all the accretions built up over the centuries and assign the magnificent edifice of these traditions to whatever happened in the first century. We don’t know what happened.
But something happened. The borrowed mythologies and hopes combined together with an event that is hopelessly buried in our own mythologies and hopes. But something happened in that first century that changed the way we perceive reality and That-Which-We-Call-God.