What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[GrandizerII]

In other words, we need evidence for the assumption there would be evidence if the claim in question was true.

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For someone who claims he's not making very precise claims, you sure act like it. Most likely compared to what? That the story was made up whole cloth? Not an impressive claim. It's like the claim "Socrates was kind of like what Plato said he was like," it is a weak claim no one denied.

Could have worded this better.
I'm not saying "Yeshua existed" is very close to 0. I'm saying comparing that to another claim(mythicists claim) that is according to you very low isn't saying much.

I take a much weaker view that we don't know much of anything about this Yeshua person to say anything interesting. At this point it's hard to separate the man from the myths(and I'm not just talking about the supernatural stuff). The historical Jesus is like the historical Laozi.

Maybe I'm not getting your points properly, but I think you guys are misunderstanding how an HJ scholar may come to the conclusion that Jesus once existed. It isn't merely because he was mentioned in some book. It's more about reading between the lines to see hints pointing toward a person who more likely existed than not because they don't seem to make sense otherwise.