Your hunch is correct. Jesus is just a vector for Confucian philosophy taken out of the East and injected into Judaism. Later the Roman's realized that this new cult was wonderfully compatible with state control ("render unto Caesar that which is Ceasar's...") since after all the underlying philosophy was created to serve as a social contract between the Chinese and their emporor, after a few tweaks (delete a few stories, change a couple) the Romans went from persecution to endorsement to mandate and the rest is history.