The Deceptive Mechanisms

[Undeceived]

Now, for some unknown reason, you're tempted to completely stop there and claim that Jesus was real but Heracles wasn't, given that we have to an extent the same sort of evidence for both.

Myths like Hercules were written in hyperbolic style to influence public thought or to entertain. Read a myth and the gospels side-by-side and tell me which sounds more like a personal account to you. There is an understatement in the gospels which we have been taught to think of as "Western". However, they are written in a time and region where writing styles were more flowery and blunt and intended to impress the reader. Hercules' life indeed has evidence that should be considered. But when we hold his story up to history, it is weakly supported. If the Passion of the Christ was set entirely in the clouds of heaven, or a mountain nobody knew about, I would view it much the same way. But we have archaeological evidence. We have an explosion of converts willing to die for the faith. A religion began, and every beginning needs a catalyst--a person and an event. Jesus has a purpose and a background--myths have neither. I think we can both agree the evidence is stronger for Jesus than the old Greek and Roman myths. Just because we said past events require a certain type of evidence doesn't mean we can't start ranking that evidence. In fact, it is the only evidence that can be ranked. When we weigh truth and lie in our minds, we are consciously or subconsciously comparing "traces" to our experiences. The moment evidence of any sort enters our mind, it becomes subjective.

...and the textual evidence suggests they weren't written by the people that Tradition claims wrote them.

Would you mind providing some of this evidence?

by definition, having "faith" means trusting in the face of no evidence, otherwise it's justified knowledge

What is justified knowledge? The dichotomy stated above goes like this:
faith=no evidence
all else=justified knowledge
Does that mean some evidence constitutes justified belief? Or is justified belief a result of testable, repeatable evidence? I think you were careless in your wording because this sounds like a false dichotomy to me.
Where is this definition of faith coming from? Whoever said faith is trusting on nothing? I didn't even know it was possible to trust nothing! The purpose of faith is to discover truths that are of the highest importance to us yet are unavailable to us through purely natural means. Questions like Why am I here? What should I love? What should I live for? live outside of the field of science. Faith is an attempt to reach beyond the empirical realm and illuminate those questions. Where the agnostic stops, the believer finds a new path to the summit. He uses faith to access a domain of revelation. The believer embraces faith not "blindly" but rather with his "eyes wide open." The goal is not to suppress the rational mind, but guide it so it may see more clearly. When scientists make hypotheses, they assume a variable and plug it into the equation. Believers plug God into the universe and see if it makes more sense. But we're still skeptical, and we still judge the newly-colored evidence in front of us. In Mark 9:17-24 Jesus came to cure a man's son of demon possession. He said, "If you can believe, all things are possible." The man replied, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." The Christian has faith even though he is not sure, while the unbeliever refuses to believe because he is not sure. Faith is a statement of trust in what we do not know for sure. But there is some evidence, or we would have no trust. Give me a taste of chocolate and I will trust that other foods taste good too--though in my solitary cell I may be uncertain.