It’s hard to be sure of anything that happened so long ago, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence, and scholars almost universally agree that there was at least a person by that name doing things in the area at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of... are two good places to start.

Anecdotal evidence? Two thousand years later? "Consider the source!"

The evidence which I described as ‘anecdotal’ starts a mere twenty or thirty years after Jesus’s death, and comes from sources who didn’t have any particular interest in promoting the Christian agenda. It seems that I may be unlikely to convince you, but if you’ve already got a strong opinion on this it might help to come at it from the other direction and start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory#No_independ... first.

Personally, I don’t really think it matters much either way (the events of a few decades being much less influential than the following two millennia of activities by people who did believe he existed), so I default to taking the word of people who’ve actually studied the matter in depth; but as he was one of several Roman-era Messiah claimants wandering around (we know of at least two others, and there were probably more whose names never made it into the histories we have) it seems reasonable that the group which happened to catch on would have also originally coalesced around an actual person.

You can be easily disabused of this ignorant view by reading the wikipedia page for the historicity of jesus. Jesus mysticism is a fringe, crackpot view in historical scholarship. People adopt it because it suits their priors not because it has the weight of literally any scholarship or investigation behind it. It is , simply put, a ridiculous proposal in the light of what is known about the NT.

My understanding (from reading a book called "who wrote the Bible") is scholars generally agree Jesus existed, but out of the 5 main objective criteria for "did a character exist", he only satisfies 3 of the 5. IIRC, the fact that he plays so prominently in modern life acts as an effect size: in the 3 categories he can be confirmed, he is off the charts.

So it is generally accepted he existed, even if the criteria used to judge other historical characters is loosened for JC.

Edit - but please try to not say things like "ignorant" or "disabused" unless you meant to attack OP. Those are pretty loaded words for a collegial discussion.

Even bart erhman has published in his hostoricity

Existence of historical Jesus has been well established. First century Jewish historian Josephus and Roman historian Tacitus wrote about him... For eyewitness, you can find first person account in the New Testaments.

> First century Jewish historian Josephus

Two mentions. One is almost certainly fabricated, or at least heavily rewritten by later Christians.

> For eyewitness, you can find first person account in the New Testaments.

The Gospels aren't first person accounts. The closest you get to first person accounts of Jesus in the NT are brief mentions of Paul's conversion experiences in his epistles. The Gospels probably draw on first person accounts to some extent, but they themselves aren't first person accounts.

There's a very strong case to be made for the historicity of Jesus, but you make a misleading one by leaving out some very important context regarding Josephus and mischaracterizing the accounts of Jesus in the NT.

> No eyewitness accounts, no Roman accounts, no Jewish accounts, etc.

debate the authenticity all you want, but what exactly do you think the new testament is?

The criteria with which you dismiss the historical Jesus is also applicable to any other historical figure of antiquity. By your measure, no one without a photograph, video, or audio recording can be counted as anything other than a myth. The historical Jesus is very real (as is His Divinity, but that is beyond the scope of this response).

Jesus is ahistorical - no documents, no records. Everything about him written long after he died.

In contrast Pontius Pilate is historical - there are extant documents with his name and title.

Simply b/c Pontius Pilate was real doesn't mean Jesus Christ was real. And it certainly doesn't mean he rose from the dead!