Historian explains why Jesus ''mythers'' aren't taken seriously by most Historians

[TheMessiah]

Yes, we know about him from Philo and Josephus and his own inscriptions and coins.

The French Revolution happened.  But a Tale of Two Cities is still fiction.

Atlanta burned during the Civil War.   Gone With The Wind is still fiction.

See a pattern?

That's because they really are fictional stories.

Is Jesus being a magical God fiction? Sure.

Is Jesus being a poor preacher who thought he was the son of God but ended up getting executed fiction? Probably not; there were quite a few people who attempted to claim themselves as the Messiah.

In fact, the death of Jesus (which is very well attested) is perhaps why Judaism changed - because Jesus in reality, was just a man and he died an embarassing death.

From the link.

Clearly the gospel writers were going to some effort to find some kind of scriptural basis for this rather awkward death for their group's leader, one that let them maintain their belief that he was the Messiah. Again, this makes most sense if there was a historical Jesus and he was crucified, leaving his followers with this awkward problem. If there was no historical Jesus at all, it becomes very difficult to explain where this bizarre, unprecedented and awkwardly inconvenient element in the story comes from. It's hard to see why anyone would invent the idea of a crucified Messiah and create these problems. And given that there was no precedent for a crucified Messiah, it's almost impossible to see this idea evolving out of earlier Jewish traditions. The most logical explanation is that it's in the story, despite its vast awkwardness, because it happened.

Jesus most likely did really die via Crucifixion (and thus, his followers at the time were left in a very weird position) - because if Jesus was purely fictional, then it becomes very, very hard to imagine why they would write him to have died via crucixation.