[quote]1. " His "disciples" were designed as the Greek Chorus by the mythmakers who created them.". Any proof of this?
2. Read Tacitus. Me and "Watchmen" are currently arguing over whether Tacitus is reliable in this forum. And I think there is some stuff from Josephus, although I'm not sure.
3. "People can be wrong and still believe they are telling the truth." I mentioned this statement, although word-for-word, above. The difference between people now not lying about what they believe and people back then, is that people back then were eyewitnesses to what they believe, not just reading or hearing about it.[/quote]

#1 - There is no evidence for any recognizable jesus from the first century. What you are proposing is that the Merry Men could exist without Robin Hood. Totally silly.

#2. Of course I have read Tacitus. I have also read Sulpicius Severus. I have also read Candida Moss' "The Myth of Persecution."
You should, too. You'd learn a lot. In On The Historicity of Jesus, Richard Carrier shows how all that is necessary for the (much) later interpolation

"They key line here is 'Christ, the author of this name, was executed by
the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius'. This is the first-ever
reference to a historical Jesus outside the NT, dating to around 116 CE (very
near our cut-off date for usable evidence). 100
If the passage is authentic. I elsewhere demonstrate (following the arguments
of scholars before me who have argued the same) that this line is
probably an interpolation, and that Tacitus in fact originally described
not the Christians being scapegoated for the fire, but followers of the Jew- ·
ish instigator Chrestus first suppressed under Claudius (as reported by
Suetonius: see §1 1).

Pg 344."

#3 - You are asserting that there were eye-witnesses but you do so with no evidence to back you up. As already noted, there is not a single first century source for your godboy. Barring actual evidence - and by that I do not mean xtian wet dreams - the claims made by modern apologists on behalf of these alleged witnesses must be dismissed. Dismissed with the same fervor as you will doubtlessly dismiss the claims of Mormon "witnesses" for whom we actually have names.

You know there is a document called the Doctrina Jacobi which was written around 536 AD and notes that "there has arisen a new prophet among the Saracens." For a number of reasons no muslim in his right mind would attempt to use this as any sort of basis for Mohammed but the point is that we have actual evidence that someone thought there was a religious component to what was going on in Palestine in the early 6th century. We don't even have that for your boy. If only Pliny, while writing back to Trajan had said something along the lines of "Domini, you won't believe this but these fucking fools actually worship some guy who we crucified 80 years ago in Jerusalem! Ain't that a hoot?" But he didn't. Pliny knows nothing of the jesus story and indeed neither he, nor Suetonius nor Tacitus knows the name "jesus" at all. For that we must wait until the late second century when the Greco-Roman writer Celsus speaks of "jesus." and none too fondly!

"But our sources for anyone in the ancient world are scarce and rarely are they contemporaneous—they are usually written decades or even centuries after the fact. Worse still, the more obscure and humble in origin the person is, the less likely that there will be any documentation about them or even a fleeting reference to them at all. "

And once again we are treated to the GREAT XTIAN PARADOX. They will tell is that their godboy was so famous and important that the whole province was aflame with the multitudes of his followers who lined the streets in a ripoff of a Roman triumph and so scared the shit out of the powers that existed that they had to break every rule in their own fucking book to hold a trial on fucking passover! But, at the very same time, he was so insignificant that no one noticed him or any of his bullshit magic tricks.

Make up your minds.

"Lets look at Jesus from the perspective of someone living in Rome. A random bloke is claiming to be a god. This is happening in the (quite literal) corner of the Roman empire by a people who are nigh-constantly rebelling."

We don't have to have a random bloke. Such a man is Celsus who wrote:

""Again, if God, like Jupiter in the comedy, should, on awaking from a lengthened slumber, desire to rescue the human race from evil, why did He send this Spirit of which you speak into one corner (of the earth)? He ought to have breathed it alike into many bodies, and have sent them out into all the world. Now the comic poet, to cause laughter in the theatre, wrote that Jupiter, after awakening, despatched Mercury to the Athenians and Lacedaemonians; but do not you think that you have made the Son of God more ridiculous in sending Him to the Jews?"..."

Your history is weak. The people of Judaea petitioned Augustus Caesar to remove Herod's son, Archilaus, as their tetrarch and wished to become a Roman prefecture. Augustus granted the request. The prefect took up residence in Caesarea leaving the Sanheddrin to exercise a fair degree of home rule in Jerusalem. For the rest of Augustus reign and all of Tiberius' the situation in Judaea was quite stable. The shit hit the fan when Caligula became emperor but you guys keep telling us that your godboy was already dead by then. No. The revolts came later and depict a garbled history among the much later gospel writers who could not even understand that Bethlehem and "Nazareth" - if it even existed at the time - were in different countries and the citizens of one would not be expected to participate in a census in the other.

good site https://www.atheistrepublic.com/