Did Jesus exist at all?

[robvalue]

That's the whole problem with "historical Jesus" in a nutshell.

"Such a person" certainly did exist; in fact there were probably thousands of the bastards. Even if the tale was intended to be based around a particular one, through the Chinese whisper mill and other edits, the chances it hasn't picked up elements of anyone else along the way seem very slim (to me). And at that point it's pretty irrelevant who it was originally meant to be, given how terrible the accuracy is likely to be anyway.

The gospel authors were probably not eye witnesses, and so even if they intended the tale to be about one specific person, they didn't have any strong evidence it actually was about just one; or even that the character ever existed at all. They were going off of stinky rumours.