Documentary evidence that dates from the time of Jesus' supposed life and death, which describes a religious leader called Jesus who started a splinter sect of Judaism would do it.
What documentary evidence for any other religious leaders that started other splinter sects of Judaism at the time do you have?
If you don't have any direct evidence for any specific one of those leaders, does that mean there didn't exist any such splinter sects at the time?
Thank you. This is a concise representation of the general objection I was going to make. Finding evidence of ANYTHING in that era that meets modern standards is often very difficult, if not impossible. Nearly all history from that era can be, and is, challenged.
I have yet to see a statement from PhilosophyTutor justifying his choice for a standard of evidence on this question.
To break up the awkward silence at the start of a recent Overcoming Bias meetup, I asked everyone present to tell their rationalist origin story - a key event or fact that played a role in their first beginning to aspire to rationality. This worked surprisingly well (and I would recommend it for future meetups).
I think I've already told enough of my own origin story on Overcoming Bias: how I was digging in my parents' yard as a kid and found a tarnished silver amulet inscribed with Bayes's Theorem, and how I wore it to bed that night and dreamed of a woman in white, holding an ancient leather-bound book called Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (eds. D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, and A. Tversky, 1982)... but there's no need to go into that again.
So, seriously... how did you originally go down that road?
Added: For some odd reason, many of the commenters here seem to have had a single experience in common - namely, at some point, encountering Overcoming Bias... But I'm especially interested in what it takes to get the transition started - crossing the first divide. This would be very valuable knowledge if it can be generalized. If that did happen at OB, please try to specify what was the crucial "Aha!" insight (down to the specific post if possible).