There's a popular "meme" going around about the nature and origins of Christianity. While what you do with your life is certainly your own decision, I'd also argue it's worth knowing if the evidence for such a popular view is reliable: How can we make good decisions if we build them upon false premises?

I've chosen this quote from Daniel Quinn's web site, since it's reasonably terse yet contains most of the common errors.

The whole argument, at once:

The Jesus who comes to us through New Testament is fundamentally the creation of Paul (and the followers of Paul, who wrote the Gospels). According to Paul, Jesus was not understood by the apostles he chose during his lifetime, including his brother James, the immediate successor to Jesus and the head of the Christian church in Jerusalem. There is no indication that James and his followers (who actually KNEW Jesus) subscribed to the Pauline vision of Jesus as one whose death served as a redemptive sacrifice for mankind. Nor is there anything in the sayings of Jesus that confirms this vision. According to Paul, this was uniquely revealed to him directly by the ascended Christ. The Jerusalem church disappeared in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., so we can't be sure which version of Christianity might have prevailed otherwise. The Pauline version went on to dominate the Roman Empire and to become the established version throughout the world.

Responses to each assertion:

The Jesus who comes to us through New Testament...

Just a note: We're talking about the depiction of Jesus as found in the New Testament, so I'll be referring to the NT a number of times in my response.

The Jesus who comes to us through New Testament is fundamentally the creation of Paul (and the followers of Paul, who wrote the Gospels).

Gospel writers include Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Luke certainly was a companion of Paul's. John purports to be one of the twelve disciples who knew Jesus, not one of Paul's "followers". Tradition holds that Mark was dictated from Peter, again, not one of Paul's "followers". Scholars are not certain of the origins of Matthew, but as such, we can't reliably assert that this gospel, either, comes from a "follower" of Paul.

So we can't really reliably pinpoint any particular "Paulean" influence over the picture of Jesus presented in the gospels. And even if there was a "Paulean" influence on Luke, we can note that Luke, Mark, and John (another apostle) all agree Jesus died to forgive sin: how then did Paul differ from these others?

According to Paul, Jesus was not understood by the apostles he chose during his lifetime, including his brother James, the immediate successor to Jesus and the head of the Christian church in Jerusalem.

Any attentive reader of the gospels will notice that Jesus is misunderstood by his disciples (who later become "apostles") during his ministry. He rebukes them many times for missing the point.

But they all get a clue after the crucifixion and resurrection. The argument above says "during his lifetime", but is trying to imply after Jesus's death, only Paul believed in the redemptive role of the messiah, Jesus. Yet this argument is advanced only through innuendo, not evidence. The evidence, as we shall see, points in the opposite direction.

According to the author the argument that "Jesus was not understood by the apostles" originates with Paul, rather than being a common element of the gospel story as it was understood by the disciples themselves.

Yet again, in both Mark and John, two gospels originating from other apostles than Paul, we see the same story of confusion among the disciples as to the role of Jesus during his ministry. We would not expect this if Paul was the only one who felt the disciples had initially experienced such confusion.

Finally, I am unaware of any point at which Paul argues that the other apostles still do not understand Jesus' death as redemptive. If those advancing this argument feel they interpret some Pauline phrase or passage as making such an argument, they should make that clear. But everything I can see undermines the author's assertion.

There is no indication that James and his followers (who actually KNEW Jesus) subscribed to the Pauline vision of Jesus as one whose death served as a redemptive sacrifice for mankind.

James left us but one letter, and true, he doesn't come out and say "Jesus's death was redemptive" in that short missive. But to say we have "no indication" of James's beliefs on this matter is far from the truth.

For one, in his letter we see James refer to Jesus as "his Lord" (in the same breath as mentioning his service to God), as well as repeatedly refering to Jesus as "Christ" ("Messiah" in Hebrew).

As a devout Jew who accepted Jesus as the Messiah, not to mention as an elder in the church, he would have undoubtedly been familiar with the Jewish messianic prophecies which Jesus was believed to have fulfilled, including passages in Isaiah which depict a messiah who suffers to forgive our sins:

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6)

Passages like this were instrumental to early Christian faith, as seen in Acts 8, where an early missionary, Phillip quotes this exact same chapter, relating it to Jesus before Paul's conversion. Similar connections are attributed to the disciples as they ponder Jesus's death, before the events in Acts transpire.

The idea of a suffering messiah originated in Jewish prophecies like the above. Needless to say, such passages were written and cited long before Paul's conversion. And James, as a Jewish church leader, would have undoubtedly been aware of them an accepted them as evidence.

As if that were not enough, Luke records James and the church elders interacting with Peter and Paul (Acts 15). Paul had been openly preaching salvation through faith in the blood of Jesus -- just as Peter had before him. But Paul was preaching it to Jews and Gentiles, not just Jews as Peter had.

A group claiming to represent James opposed Paul, saying obedience Jewish law was necessary in addition to faith in Jesus's death. Peter brought the matter before James and the elders, stating salvation is through faith in Jesus as he explains the controversy to them.

James agrees with Peter, and, with the elders, writes a letter endorsing Paul's ministry and theology, and disagreeing with and disowning those who opposed Paul!

James and the elders write:

We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul -- men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.

The debate is about whether Jewish law is necessary for salvation. The conclusion James issues is: No, faith in Jesus is the answer. Gentiles do not need to adhere to Jewish traditions.

Nobody specifically enunciates the "death" of Jesus as being the alternative to justification through good works (e.g. "Torah", or "law"), because the context makes it obvious. That's what Paul, Peter, Phillip and others had been preaching all along, and James had just dissed those who disagreed with Paul by adding other requirements for salvation beyond that central one.

As a historian, Luke has been found reliable every other place he can be checked; there's no particular reason to believe he is being deceptive in this passage. Moreover, Luke lived at the same time as James, so that would have been a disincentive to falsify the account.

Last, the author also creates a false dichotomy by only mentioning two groups -- James, Paul, and the "followers" of each. But he neglects Peter, John, Jude and others who have left writings which today constitute the New Testament. Below, I supply quotes to show their view of Jesus's death does not differ from Paul's.

Nor is there anything in the sayings of Jesus that confirms this vision.

Does Jesus understand he has come to die? And does he believe his death is necessary for our salvation? Let's see what he says...

"Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." (Jesus, Matthew 10:38)

"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Jesus, Matthew 12:40)

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must got to Jerusalem ... and that he must be killed and on the third day raised to life. (Matthew 16:21)

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." (Jesus, Matthew 16:24-25)

Then [Jesus] took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the convenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Jesus, Matthew 26:27)

For brevity, I'm only quoting one gospel (the one with the most "sayings of Jesus", as the author cites), but you can do the same kind of thing with the others just by browsing through them.

Jesus repeatedly says things which indicate he understands both his fate and the redemptive role his death plays. Indeed, only the slightest familiarity with the Christianity, say knowledge of communion, is required to debunk the assertion that the biblical Jesus did not have a "vision" of his death as necessary and redemptive.

According to Paul, this was uniquely revealed to him directly by the ascended Christ.

Again, "according to Paul" with no citation. But Paul never once asserts that his belief Jesus was crucified for our sins is unique!

Paul is unique in that he became an apostle after Jesus's death, through a vision of Jesus. But that's not at all the same as saying Paul's belief in Jesus's redemptive role is unique or at odds with the rest contemporary Christian belief.

To the contrary, Peter himself gives Paul's letters and theology a ringing endorsement, refering to them as "scripture" in 2 Peter 3:17. In the same passage, he also warns us about distorting Paul's view of Jesus, which is strangely prescient of and relevant to this very discussion:

His letters contain some difficult things ... which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other scriptures, to their own destruction.

If we're curious as to how "unique" the view of Jesus as saviour through death is, let's see what other New Testament writers outside the gospels have to say (my clarifications in brackets):

"... the blood of Jesus, his [God's] Son, purifies us from all sin." (1 John 1:7)

"God, our Saviour ... though Jesus Christ, our Lord..." (Jude 25)

"For Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous [Jesus] for the unrighteous [us], to bring you to God." (1 Peter 3:18)

How can we claim a view is "unique" to Paul when Peter and John, two of Jesus's own disciples who lived with him during his ministry and knew him, offer the exact same view in their writings?

The deception here is so obvious as to be transparent.

The Jerusalem church disappeared in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., so we can't be sure which version of Christianity might have prevailed otherwise.

Despite the author's presentation as a fait accompli, whether or not the church in Jerusalem survived the fall is debated among scholars; there is evidence which suggests the Jewish Christian church existed there after 70 A.D.

Regardless, Jewish believers, some linked to this original group, continued to exist long after 70 A.D. Their practice, as Jews, was distinctly Jewish, and they continued to observe the Jewish traditions. Regarding one such group, which existed until the fourth century, encyclopedia.org says (emphasis mine):

NAZARENES ... an obscure Jewish-Christian sect, existing at the time of Epiphanius (fi. A.D. 370) ... they dated their settlement in Pelia from the time of the flght of the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem, immediately before the siege in 70 A.D. ... he characterizes them as neither more nor less than Jews pure and simple, but adds that they recognized the new covenant as well as the old, and believed in the resurrection, and in the one God and His Son Jesus Christ... But Jerome (Ep. 79, to Augustine) says that they believed in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rose again... They used the Aramaic recension of the Gospel according to Matthew, which they called the Gospel to the Hebrews, but, while adhering as far as possible to the Mosaic economy as regarded circumcision, sabbaths, foods and the like, they did not refuse to recognize the apostolicity of Paul or the rights of heathen Christians...

If we take this group as a small remnant of the original, it would seem their views were orthodox enough, even after several hundred years, and that Paul's theology in its entirely, more than just his view of Jesus as sacrifice for sin, was in agreement with theirs.

As to "which version" survived, I think we've shown reasonably well that the New Testament, to the extent it gives us evidence on this matter, consistently depicts a situation of strong unity around the centrality and necessity of salvation through faith in Jesus's death, both among Jews (James, Peter, John) and those sent to Gentiles (Paul, Barnabas, Luke). While can certainly find different practices -- Jewish and non-Jewish -- we see only one stance regarding the necessity for faith in the atoning death of Jesus.

Those looking for support for such a theory must turn elsewhere.