Did Jesus exist?

[Cephus]

-and that contention establishes the historicity of jesus just as much as the passage (and further speculation) below does..... 


...which is not at all.

This should be awfully simple.   I'm looking for the history of a man, not the history of the beliefs of his followers, or a recitation of fairy tales which include him as a character.

Questions of christianity, in the selected passage above, are the least of the worries the passage has as far as reliability is concerned btw.  There's far greater concern that the passage in question editorializes the reign of Nero to a greater extent than it recounts it.  Any tidbit of info regarding the history of christian belief that might be gleaned from the passage is a footnote, comparatively.

The history of a man named Jesus? There are several, as you know. 

However, Tacitus tells that a man put to death by Pontius Pilate had followers who were called "Chrxstianos".

What a coincidence. The Book of Acts tells us pretty much the same thing.

Actually, that passage was entirely unknown until it was claimed by Sulpicius Severus in the early 5th century.  No Christian apologist prior to that ever claimed anything about that passage supposedly written by Tacitus.  It is widely thought to be a fraud, just like the passage in Josephus' Jewish Antiquities.