I'm not accepting any Christian rot about Jesus having to exist as they see him because you are basically treating your religious texts as fact. So I suppose his "miracles" are historical fact, too? i'm granting you that I think there was a charasmatic preacher. You are taking it so much further by trying to push Biblical "truths" as fact.
If you grant that you 'think there was a charismatic preacher' then you're essentially accepting the historicity of Jesus to the same extent that most non-Christian scholars do, you're just reluctant to apply the name 'Jesus' to him for ideological reasons. Nobody here is claiming that most historians of religion accept the tenets of orthodox Christology.
Generally the study of ancient history works through more or less accepting the rough trustworthiness of ancient documents, rather than through positing conspiracy theories about organizations that only attained any degree of political or economic power decades or in some cases centuries after the earliest known copies of said documents were written. Jesus' existence is accepted as fact by the vast majority of reputable historians of religion essentially because there's no good reason not to that doesn't rely on just such a conspiracy theory. Similarly, the vast majority of reputable historians of philosophy accept the existence of Socrates based on the testimony of manuscripts of Plato's dialogues that are far, far, far further removed in time from Plato than the earliest known New Testament fragments are from their putative authors.
Nathan, I don't need Plato or Socrates to exist. I have "their" ideas, philosophy, theories with or without the person in the flesh. The literal existence of Jesus is very much needed in Christianity. Christianity asks of you subservience and worship of an actual figure. There is quite a difference.
I don't think you understand the point I was making.
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