Quote Originally Posted by Subteigh View Post
"Jesus" was basically Joshua 2, the Jews wanted their Messiah to come for centuries to save them from their enemies. The threat of the Romans was likely the trigger that pushed their myth-writing into overdrive.
Now, using that to argue Jesus was definitely not based on a real person at all seems like an example of the genetic fallacy, amplified by the fact Christianity largely became the greatest enemy of the Jews for a while under pagan emperors like Constantine (who were also Mithran and could be seen as having corrupted an original tradition if you assume there was one.)

Nothing about Jesus in the Bible can be accepted as certainly true. All the details are mingled with miraculous events, which means that the whole account should be discounted, if not disregarded entirely.
Why would you discount miraculous events? Sending a manned rocket to the Moon is more miraculous than walking on water in my opinion. Even by the Christian Bible's account, it's not blasphemous for me to say that, either. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." John 14:12 I think going to space is a greater work. I think computers we use are a greater work. I think many things we do today are more miraculous than walking on water and turning water into wine and feeding crowds by splitting bread. In fact, it is easy to be almost jaded towards those types of miracles and think of them as rather banal with the "Faustian age" we live in.

There may or may not have been a real figure that myths were later associated with, but the fact is that even Jesus/Joshua's very name should be treated as suspect when considering the Jewish desire for a new Joshua as their Messiah. (Jesus/Joshua was a very common name, but the nature of the stories does make it highly likely it was deliberately chosen because of the significance of Joshua in the Old Testament).
I wouldn't use Jesus's name as a counterargument since Jews also liked changing their names whenever anything important happened, e.g. Jacob becoming Israel and Abram becoming Abraham. Jesus could've changed his name before he started preaching and that fact might've gone completely unnoticed by the gentile authors. Many accounts also said his name would be Emmanuel. So maybe it could be Emmanuel and Joshua and whatever was convenient at the time. Doesn't mean there definitely wasn't a real person, or that there definitely was.