It’s the name with the explicit connection to James, a leader of the early church.

There’s a difference between the idea of a pseudo-fictional composite character, like King Arthur who was constructed centuries after his time, and a real historical guy who existed and had stories written about what he said.

Consider how much evidence we have for Pythagoras. Pythagoras was also a weird religious cult leader, but I’d expect most here would know him for the Pythagorean theorem. Which he didn’t come up with. Does that not make him enough of a “Pythagoras” for you?

You have to gauge your sense of skepticism. There’s a difference between “oh, Gilgamesh seems to be showing up in all of these King’s List documents that claim thousands of years of dynastic dominance which are 80% bullshit to oil up a kingship’s perceived position in the world.” and “oh, here’s a bunch of texts about an unusual rogue ‘rabbi’ that developed a following; there’s some probably exaggerated claims of healing, an oddly novel resurrection story that has more added to it as each Gospel is written.”

Read just the resurrection, Mark-> Matthew-> Luke->John to see how the more fanciful stuff develops. Heck - maybe even read the New Testament in chronological order - starting with the letters of Paul and see them as dealing with situations happening in real time. Treat it as a ‘found footage’/‘ambiguous narrator’ collection. A murder mystery.

There’s a difference between reading the Bible as a religious text, to either prove or disprove, and as a compilation of vastly different documents, by vastly different authors, writing across centuries.

For a modern example, think about John of God - one of the faith healing charlatans that Oprah promoted. Will people who live in the next few centuries automatically discount his existence because they find it occasionally next to a description of his supposed miracles, which accounts are perhaps more likely to survive than those of his sexual assault allegations? Will the things that he will have said to have said not be accurate, even if other information about him is not?

At the end of the day, there’s just as much evidence for the existence of several early historical figures that we don’t doubt the existence of. I think it’s reasonable to not privilege the text as anything other than a primary source document, and recognize that a lot of similar supernatural claims have been added to multiple real world figures in history.

Was it acceptable for them to proposition that he may not have existed?

Yes! The pagan Romans were still in power. An easy way for them to win points would have been to point out the guy never existed. Why would Tacitus describe the crucifixion if it didn’t happen?

You have communities of people claiming that this guy was real and being obnoxious to Roman authorities. The Romans eventually went full ham on Judea - burning down the second Temple. It would be really really unusual if the guy didn’t exist and they didn’t say so.

Were this any other historical figure it would be enough to say we have sufficient evidence for existence. You’re letting your bias against the followers of this figure color what evidence you’ll accept for their existence.

Are we all going to turn into Muhammad mythicists next?

I mean, I guess... But they stole like, the entire fucking thing from an existing religion. Christianity would not exist without the parts they took from Zoroastrianism.

You realize that books like the First Epistle to the Corinthians were actual letters written and sent to those churches? That's one example, but there is plenty of history to be pulled from the Bible. Shitloads of New Testament books are Apostles sending Jesus' words to various churches and governments. Look up "epistle".

Look at the Old Testament for more history. Books like Leviticus, where we can pick out loads of weird proscriptions, were the records of law as the Tribe of Levi saw it.

A scholar can spend a lifetime unpacking the Bible without believing in ghosts, holy or otherwise. You're doing the "I'm too smart for this bullshit!" thing. Stop. You're having the opposite effect.

The one in my head, that I cherry picked from a contradictory fictional source

Have you ever read a document from before 1400? Just curious, because you seem to be under the illusion that reading primary sources means that you either take everything they say literally, or dismiss them as entirely made up. This is exactly what I mentioned with regard to ignorance of historiography and method earlier.

Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes all say contradictory things about Socrates. Will you argue that Socrates was fictional?

I was not.

Historicity: the quality of being a real and important part of history and not a myth or legend (= ancient story)