So the "teaching of Jesus as we know them" is a human construct only remotely rooted in what the actual Jesus might have thought or said, and therefore has nothing special (magical) compared to, say, Buddhism.
I agree with most of your argument, and it's pretty similar to what I wrote. But:
> Not really. Christianity is defined by the teachings of Christ "as we know them".
How do you define "as we know them?"
It seems to me that you're supposing that there's some "overall message" to Christianity that exists within the modern population of Christians. I don't agree with this, and I see no coherent way to discover what that message would be. But if you want to define a religion in this way, you have to take on that task.
I think that Christianity should be defined by "what is practiced as Christianity today," within each community that sees itself as Christian. Therefore, my argument goes, there isn't a single coherent "Christendom." Instead, there exists a highly fragmented population of Christians, across which practices and beliefs significantly differ. My argument is that none of these Christian communities is any more correct than the others.
I think that's a pretty mainstream interpretation of modern Christianity. I don't think I'm really reaching here.
No, I just mean "as we know them" as books -- the words in series. Not their interpretations.
The various churches and demoninations, yes, they are about the teachings of Christ as they "know them" (that is, they include their historically developed interpretation on top).
Not really. Christianity is defined by the teachings of Christ "as we know them".
If Christ existed, but had e.g. completely different teachings, then it would be irrelevant to know them (as pertaining to Christianity).
(It would be interesting to know them, of course, but it wouldn't be the "real Christianity". Christianity is defined by its history: the scripts it was based upon, and what the churches calling themselves christian did.).
That's because Christianity caught on and was adopted for the specific message we know. Not just because some Christ person spoke those things, but for their content (as we know it).
It's just like if someone comes and says "the real KFC recipe by the kernel is actually with marmalade and fish-oil". Even if that's true, what KFC is to people is what they've known to eat for all those decades, not merely a generic placeholder than can hold any value as long as it proves to be more historically accurate than the previous.