Reason Jesus must have been a real person

[CapnAwesome]

There have been several theories proposed that Jesus was not a real person. For example, he is a divine being that lived his life in the space between heaven and earth.  I think Richard Carrier proposed this.

So one question I have, is if Jesus was completely made up, why is his name "Jesus"?
I would think based on prophecy, a 'fake' Jesus would have been named Immanuel.  Not Jesus.
If you are going to make it up, you would make it up so that minor discrepancies such as this would be avoided.

Don't you think, then, that the gospels were at least based on a real person?

What? Well his name wasn't Jesus. That's an anglicization of yeshu'a.


Either way the argument doesn't make much sense. Actually I've found that the whole discussion makes little sense until you decide to define what it means by saying Jesus was a real person or not a real person. What percentage of the story has to be true for him to be real? Almost certainly there were Jews named Yeshu'a around. Does one of them count? Did he did to walk on water, turn water into wine, have supernatural powers? Or if broke the story down to the bare bones, someone was a Jew named Yeshu'a or something similar who traveled the middle east around 33 AD, claimed to be the Messiah, preached an update to Judaism, was crucified by the Romans but did nothing supernatural and stayed dead, is that person Jesus?

Until the rules of what makes a Jesus is defined, it's not a conversation even worth having.