Quote:the existence of a cult of Jesus extant in 165CE.
No. It does not. All it shows is that is that a group known as christians worshiped some guy who was crucified. Lucian never mentions the name "jesus." Neither did Pliny or Suetonius and even Tacitus...assuming that the comment in Annales 15:44 is legitimate which is a hell of an assumption. The earliest Roman source who mentions the name "jesus" is Celsus, c 180 AD and he thinks the story is flat-out fucking absurd.
The other thing that we can take out of Lucian's work is that in the 160's AD, xtians were considered to be easily conned simpletons.
