Christians, would you have saved Jesus, if you had he chance?

[Angrboda]

If the Pauline epistles are any indication, letters were being written between the various churches by approximately 50 CE. That we don't have evidence of these other letters makes your expectation an unrealistic one. Also, much of the so to speak expected documents would not exist as the tradition may have been largely oral.

Fair enough. So early Jesus legends and a church developing by 33 CE, you conclude, is the best hypothesis to account for the data?

I'm suggesting that the birth and crucifixion dates aren't necessarily reliable, so the church may have had an earlier start than 33 CE.  Not that it need to have started earlier, 20 years is plenty of time for a religious movement to develop and gain speed.  But if the 33CE date isn't sacrosanct, it leaves the beginnings of the church open ended.

By what means are you dating the crucifixion? As pointed out, the Gospels come too late to bear indisputable evidence of when the 'events' in them actually occurred. They claim that they occurred under Pilate and Tiberius, but that could just be an arbitrarily asserted connection. As you said yourself, people at the time dated events by who was in charge; so if you wanted to place a narrative in a certain time, you would claim the participation of historic figures. That would explain why Pilate is involved in the sentencing of an obscure rabbi; simply put, he wasn't. Inserting Pilate into the story is just a false dating of events.

I take the claim of Pilate and Tiberius to be authentic. An obscure birth in an obscure town is easy to invent and difficult to doubt if you are living at the time. A Roman public execution for religious reasons in Jerusalem during the time of Passover, while perhaps easy to invent, would also be easy to doubt and ignore had it not happened.

If the public execution story hadn't been invented until 30-40 years after the event, it's quite plausible that no one would object.  On what basis would they object?  That they don't remember an event that happened 30-40 years earlier.  I don't remember my high school days well enough to state unequivocally that our hockey team didn't win a state championship.  There's no reason to expect that anyone would have veridical recall that an event didn't happen after that much time. Moreover, the Jews of Jerusalem may have been dead or dispersed by the time of the first Gospel; who would there have been to remember?  What other reason do you have for presuming the Pilate reference to be veridical?

If you read the narrative, Pilate himself doesn't quite understand why he's in the story either. The narrative itself communicates Pilate himself as confused as to why the Jews would seek him out.

Which is entirely consistent with it being a fiction.  There is plenty of evidence that the birth narratives are fiction, that casts doubt on the whole chronology.

If there was no historical obscure rabbi named Jesus crucified in Jerusalem during the Passover, you'd think the Jewish authorities would use that as an argument. "I was there, Paul. Nothing you are preaching even happened. There was no Jesus, no crucifixion during Passover, no empty tomb on the third day." Instead, we have a record of them saying, "The disciples came by at night and stole his body!"

Same objection as above.  Again these are references from the Gospels, which I'm pointing out may have a good deal more fiction in them than Christians are willing to accept.