Although skeptical there is the documentary on the history channel where they found a tomb of almost all of "jesus'" brothers and a mary and joseph all burried in the same spot, however there is absolutley no denying the fact that there was a Jesus of Nazareth, seeing as how jesus was one of the most common hebrew names available. And yes I know that the jewish religion is not the oldest but the jews have outnumbered many of their captors and many outsiders have married into their culture, it is almost ludicrous to tell anyone that their religion didn't spill into the people they surrounded. After all many times jews themselves started believing and worship other gods in order to be like everyone else. Of course you would have to buy into believing that every civilization was centered in a close area for a long enough period of time for a few religions to pop up. Let's not forget that just because something was written before another that it was created first. Considering that all civilization stems from the same roots and that jews are generally a larger mass of people in almost all of history its easy to see them being the dominant religious force as well