I’m talking about the Jesus in the bible that ended up forming this religion.
The religion was formed after he was dead. The Gospels were written even later, the bible compiled even later, long after Tacitus kicked the bucket. Lots of opportunity for bullshit and myth to get created so the Bible is not exactly a reliable source.
What I’m talking about, from the very beginning, is that there was a guy, and he got baptised by John, and he travelled around and preached had followers, and he pissed of the Romans enough to get crucified, and that is the person that believers then built a whole religion and theology around. What I’m not saying is any of that theology is true, that any of the miracles he supposedly did happened, just that there was a person who served as a nucleation point for the religion to grow around.
To make my point a bit more concrete, let’s take the last supper, and suppose for the sake of argument that it’s basically true as written in the bible, as in he had supper with his followers, knew that he was going to die and accepted that, and said something to the effect of “dudebros, if you want to remember me then just get together and have supper while thinking of me and I’m going to be there in your hearts and spirits”. “Don’t be sad no seriously don’t I’m fine with dying just have supper”. Then, long after that, some theologians came along and made a whole metaphysical thing out of it with the bread being the actual body of Christ and the cannibalism that entails and whatever bullshit.
…that is more or less how people get mythologised. They are beloved or respected in some way and then, over centuries, people worship them by spinning all kinds of tales, ascribe supernatural powers, bend the historical truth more and more while they’re projecting their hopes and wishes into that figure.
What people claim when they say “Jesus the person didn’t exist” is that it was all myth from the beginning – that there was no such human that got deified afterwards, that the whole thing was made up from scratch. That people started a religion featuring a god walking the earth in human form without there having been someone two-legged to do actual real-world walking. That there was no nucleation point for the religion to grow around. That’s not really much of a null hypothesis as it’s making the assumption that Christian myth breaks with patterns of myth creation you see in other instances. And then Tacitus comes along and says “yep we crucified that troublesome rebel”, making the case even more clear-cut.