Why did pagans not take any notice of Jesus?

[Angrboda]

Making sense of fiction is the work of an editor, not a historian.  Is it puzzling that the traveling miracle man that everyone had heard of isn;t actually mentioned by anyone?  Yes, but since that's not the historical jesus it hardly matters.  

We know that people hear (and believe) stories like that..all the time, and none of it relies on there being any actual travelling miracle man that everyone's heard of or even a man that no one has heard of.  Mythical christ and legendary jesus are both uninformative as to any historical man.  This is another point that historicists and mythicists agree on.

Historicists think that there was a man that stories were attached to. Who was that man?  Can't really tell from the stories.  Mythicists think that there was a story that men were attached to.  Who was/were that/those men, can't really tell from the stories.  That's it, that's the difference, and in neither proposal of the development of christianity and magic book is it exceptional that a miracle man wasn't noticed by anyone.  It's only exceptional in the context of a fictional world that exists nowhere beyond the pages of magic book.

Imagine yourself having this same conversation about abraham lincoln, vampire hunter.  How come nobody noticed he was killing vampires?  Isn't that strange?  It makes sense that people would notice it, right?

Or, for a more direct example.  Who was John Frum?

The problem with that is that the historical Jesus hypothesis claims that there are ordinary accounts and tellings in the story that are to be believed and then there are non-ordinary, exceptional aspects which are to be ignored in discovering the historical Jesus. Being known throughout Syria is not an exceptional aspect to this account, and so if we are asked to deny that, then the historical Jesus is based upon a flawed premise, because even the ordinary events in the account are shown not to be true or credible. If those parts of the account aren't historical, then the argument for a historical Jesus goes away.