Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?

[Phil]

certainly the authors of the synoptic gospels knew their Torah backwards...

The author of Matthew most certainly didn't have anything but a passing familiarity with the Septuagint and even then he made up a prophecy. Here is a quick and dirty way to show none of the authors that wrote "Jesus of Nazareth" were not familiar with Hebrew. Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament yet supposedly it says the messiah shall be from Nazareth (and Bethlehem but that is a clan not a geographic location). The Old Testament does say...

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots

Branch in Hebrew is the word Netzer which has the same consonants as Nazareth and that is why the gospels made such a dumb mistake.