Reason Jesus must have been a real person

[mrj]

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.

I guess making those definitions is up for discussion.  Is it possible Jesus (Yeshua, yes, I know) was based on a real person? Or persons?
Christopher Hitchens, for example, has said he thinks Jesus was a real person and there must be some background to the myth of the Resurrection because there's no way an author would make women so important to the story (ie, Mary Magdalene finding the empty tomb, etc).
Regarding my original post, if you are going to make up the virgin birth and correct lots of other issues (like Matthew did), why not fix Jesus' name as well?  It really is supposed to be Immanuel.  Apologists still can't adequately explain why it isn't.   Another example is the story about Jesus being from Nazareth but being born in Bethlehem.  The whole nativity story is a mess trying to get Mary and Joseph down to Bethlehem.  Why not just have them start there? 

Long story short, I'm not making any statements about Jesus being God or not.  Just in terms of history, is it possible that the stories of Jesus are so screwed up there must have been some factual basis behind them? Or maybe not.  I'm still deciding myself.

---

There is really no solid evidence Jesus existed. I'd challenge anyone to try and prove otherwise. Then I would ask, do we use the same amount of evidence to assume the existence of other historical figures? If not, why? Why does Jesus get a pass?

The fact is, there is VERY LITTLE evidence of a historical Jesus. Some second hand writings scribbled hundreds of years after his supposed life. Only one of which actually mentions him by name. 

Can you provide some background on this?  I thought the earliest mention of Jesus is the letters of Paul, 5 years after he supposedly died.  Then the Gospel of Mark about 10 years after that.  And then Matthew, and so forth.  Are you referring to actual historical writings and not the New Testament?