Hiistorical jesus my best guess.

[highdimensionman]

The original Jesus was a roman pagen god who was a little fair boy who went round performing miracles.
He was invented because the women were at the time complaining that the pagen gods suited men and didn't represent women well enough.
People like me and some foreign groups in rome were seen as undesirables and were put underground.
They got obsessed with the symbol of a cross thinking it had high significance and in mathematics a cross based reference is useful although I don't know just how sane or aware of such they were.
I think one day an underground undesirable man who's name may well not have been Jesus got up on a balcony and made a strong statement about how rome should work with his people.
The only thing that was rare about this event was that a romen elite wrote down what the man said. Being written about in this age made you a celebrity as paper wasn't cheap and there was no internet.
Sometime later it all got out of hand in rome and the real beginning of the religious indoctrination regarding Christianity began.
The rest of the bible today is a load of cobbled together reinterpreted old stories, myth and a pile of other made up indoctrination crap.
I think the original Mohammed was just a bunch middle eastern arab elites making their own version of it all.

[The Grand Nudger]

One issue for that hypothesis is that no one, not the romans or anyone else, actually did take notice of any jesus the man in his life. A hundred or so years later they were still fuzzy on exactly what a christian was. A century or more after that, even, is when things got out of hand.

[Anomalocaris]

The original Jesus was a roman pagen god who was a little fair boy who went round performing miracles.
He was invented because the women were at the time complaining that the pagen gods suited men and didn't represent women well enough.
People like me and some foreign groups in rome were seen as undesirables and were put underground.
They got obsessed with the symbol of a cross thinking it had high significance and in mathematics a cross based reference is useful although I don't know just how sane or aware of such they were.
I think one day an underground undesirable man who's name may well not have been Jesus got up on a balcony and made a strong statement about how rome should work with his people.
The only thing that was rare about this event was that a romen elite wrote down what the man said. Being written about in this age made you a celebrity as paper wasn't cheap and there was no internet.
Sometime later it all got out of hand in rome and the real beginning of the religious indoctrination regarding Christianity began.
The rest of the bible today is a load of cobbled together reinterpreted old stories, myth and a pile of other made up indoctrination crap.
I think the original Mohammed was just a bunch middle eastern arab elites making their own version of it all.

Guess again.     Making shit up is not an improvement upon religion.      In fact, even in cesspools of wishthinking such as any religion, things are still often examined more thoroughly and critically than the stuff you made up.

[Ranjr]

I like to picture Jesus as a punt returner who declines a fair catch, gets absolutely clobbered, but holds on to the ball.  He lies unmoving on the turf until team physicians call for the cart.  When the cart arrives, Jesus hops to his feet and jogs to the sideline, giving the peace sign.  The crowd goes wild.

[Fake Messiah]

Oh no, another topic about Jeerlyboos. I think I'm gonna vomit...

I would say that Jesus is as historical as Molly Pitcher. It seems that she never existed, and yet there are uplifting books about her that tell inspiring stories for girls to look up to as if she really existed. And some people do seem to think she existed since there were some postal stamps with her image, and some (if not most) think she was made from one or several real women's life stories, but it seems that she was completely invented during the crisis known as the Revolutionary War, just as Jesus was invented during the crisis of the 1st century Jewish–Roman wars, and later re-invented over and over again as is the case with Molly Pitcher.

[Jehanne]

In my opinion, Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical individual of his day, and was the equivalent of the one David Koresh of our day, one of many who existed during his time. The Romans, of course, knew exactly how to deal with such individuals.

[Anomalocaris]

Oh no, another topic about Jeerlyboos. I think I'm gonna vomit...

I would say that Jesus is as historical as Molly Pitcher. It seems that she never existed, and yet there are uplifting books about her that tell inspiring stories for girls to look up to as if she really existed. And some people do seem to think she existed since there were some postal stamps with her image, and some (if not most) think she was made from one or several real women's life stories, but it seems that she was completely invented during the crisis known as the Revolutionary War, just as Jesus was invented during the crisis of the 1st century Jewish–Roman wars, and later re-invented over and over again as is the case with Molly Pitcher.

Exactly what does Jesus “existed” mean?

Imagine we can go back in time and actually have a detailed census of Roman Palestine and we have a swarm of persistent spy drone that can follow the lives of any persons that might pique our interest.  How would we identify THE Jesus when we see him?

If the salient attribute of Jesus is son of god, then in all probability no such Jesus existed or could have ever existed.

If the salient attributed of Jesus is the name Jesus, then tens of thousands of these likely existed during period he supposedly lived.    If it is a Jesus born to Joseph and mary there would likely be a large number of these as those as the list of names in common circulation in the Jewish community was small by modern standard.     If it is a carpenter Jesus born of Joseph and mary who chose to by establishing a cult of a dozen or so impressionable halfwits rather than with his trade, there might even be several of these in the period in question. 

What if different plausible attributes ascribed to Jesus was actually a mishmash of attributes of several people, such as one person was a carpenter born of Jospeh and mary and had a bunch of groupies, and another overthrew the money changer’s tables and got crucified?   who is the real Jesus?

What kind of correlation would suffice to identify this real person, or perhaps group of real persons, as lying at the origins of the myth of godboy Jesus, but not any others?

Does the character in a fiction very loosely based on the life of one or several individuals, embellished time and again long after the individual(s) had died, actually exist merely the individual(s) that supposedly inspired the character actually existed?

[highdimensionman]

The original Jesus was a roman pagen god who was a little fair boy who went round performing miracles.
He was invented because the women were at the time complaining that the pagen gods suited men and didn't represent women well enough.
People like me and some foreign groups in rome were seen as undesirables and were put underground.
They got obsessed with the symbol of a cross thinking it had high significance and in mathematics a cross based reference is useful although I don't know just how sane or aware of such they were.
I think one day an underground undesirable man who's name may well not have been Jesus got up on a balcony and made a strong statement about how rome should work with his people.
The only thing that was rare about this event was that a romen elite wrote down what the man said. Being written about in this age made you a celebrity as paper wasn't cheap and there was no internet.
Sometime later it all got out of hand in rome and the real beginning of the religious indoctrination regarding Christianity began.
The rest of the bible today is a load of cobbled together reinterpreted old stories, myth and a pile of other made up indoctrination crap.
I think the original Mohammed was just a bunch middle eastern arab elites making their own version of it all.

Guess again.     Making shit up is not an improvement upon religion.      In fact, even in cesspools of wishthinking such as any religion, things are still often examined more thoroughly and critically than the stuff you made up.

If your talking things people have done research papers and ah phds in such topics then yes they probably are more rigorous. It's guess work more than spawned from thin air. If you want research papers and proper thesis your in the wrong place you should go to arxiv. Ok lets put it another way whats the lightly hood someone from underground rome got up on a balcony to talk to romans compared to some one magicing up fish. It may not have happened It may not even quite coincide with expected biblical dating but I added it in guessing It probably did in some way happen.

[highdimensionman]

One issue for that hypothesis is that no one, not the romans or anyone else, actually did take notice of any jesus the man in his life.  A hundred or so years later they were still fuzzy on exactly what a christian was.   A century or more after that, even, is when things got out of hand.

There's lot's of history lost. my guess was purely based on the cost of paper an importance of being recorded on paper a few thousand years ago relative to people getting on balconies preaching. I think monty python the life of brian portrays the issues one can have historical accuracy quite well in this area.

[Mister Agenda]

Little Rik. That explains a lot....