Historical Jesus research is an interesting and deep subject. If you're interested, I'd recommend this lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_dOhg-Fpu0 http

Historical Jesus research is an interesting and deep subject. If you're interested, I'd recommend this lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_dOhg-Fpu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_dOhg-Fpu0 Short version of the evidence is these two (rather thin) things: 1. The Biblical texts include many theologically inconvenient details. A purely fictional character would just not have been written with them. 2. A near-contemporary mention, before the rise of Christianity, in a source (Josephus) without an agenda in promoting Jesus's story. (This is complicated by the fact that later Christian redactors added in extra references with more theologically convenient bits.) This looks quite thin, but note that in this part of history sources are always hard to find - there are Roman emperors that we have much more tenuous direct evidence for! But it does mean that we can't really say much about this figure. EDIT: On re-viewing - note Dr. Martin's interesting philosophical cartwheels trying to not look (to himself even) like he's going against articles of Christian faith. EDIT 2: For the interested - skip to 27:00 after he's done hemming and hawing about theology vs. history and gets to actual information.