I’m about as atheist as they come, but it seems pretty settled history that the man existed and was politically impactful
The bible Jesus probably never existed, but there were clearly a guy a lot of people followed called Jesus that the romains crucified.
Except his name was probably some version of Joshua. The Jesus spelling comes from the Greek, where a lot of masculine names end in -s.
Yeshua is one I’ve heard used for his historical name.
He was most likely a real guy. But a guy Christian’s would absolutely hate: a brown Communist Palestinian who hung out with prostitutes, lepers, pariahs, refuted the legitimacy of the state, and organized massive mutual aid events to feed the poor. Probably a good dude. It’s a shame his followers are dicks though.
I’m starting to think he wasn’t all that great. He would have been someone who started a little apocalyptic religious following around himself, and those kind of people don’t tend to have the best interests of their followers at heart.
He probably did see himself as starting something that would kick the Romans out of Judea and install himself as king. Judas got cold feet about it and warned the authorities. The Romans crucified him for exactly what the gospel accounts say, except they had a lot more evidence than the writers were letting on.