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David_Gerard comments on Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story - Less Wrong
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There were quite a few troublemaking preachers who fell afoul of the law in Judaea at the time, many of whom were called Jesus - it was a very common name at the time.
However, one of the big problems with assuming one of these fellows (or another we have no documentation of) was the human seed for Christianity is the early Christian tradition of docetism - that Christ had no corporeal existence at all, and was just an idea. Paul of Tarsus certainly seems to think along these lines, despite the later caution against said notion in John.
This also helps explain the curious lack of non-Biblical evidence for such a person, in histories where one would expect it.
It is often noted by apologists that scholars think there's enough evidence to say there was a human seed for Christianity. However, "scholar" in this context is a weasel word - most are Christians and theologians, who would have tremendous trouble (personal and professional) coming to the opposite conclusion at all. The epistemological standards accepted in Biblical history in particular are generally bloody awful and an embarrassment to other ancient historians.
For a pile of stuff on this issue I recommend the RationalWiki article, which I have worked extensively on. (One of the other main contributors just so happens to be an atheist who was a student of Biblical history.)
(I find this stuff fascinating, if only for the psychopathology. And, as such strident atheists as Mencken, Dawkins and Hitchens have noted, you can't be highly literate in English without knowing the KJV, much as you need to know Shakespeare and Greek mythology. The trouble is that ... well, it's like you wanted to study the Odyssey or the Iliad but the only people to learn from were people who (a) actually believed in all the gods named therein (b) really wanted you to as well.)
That stuff is very interesting. Your point about motivate teachers is fruitful. I'm adjusting my belief that there was a Jesus. That said, I learned of the historical Jesus thesis from my Rabbi, who I don't think had a motivation to be pro-Jesus. And he didn't sugarcoat religion with me (he introduced me to such anti-religious ideas like the problem of evil and the problem of miracles).
That said, I can't give very much weight to docetism, (or Gnosticism generally) because they lost the ideological/theological battle. (Wikipedia is quite coy, saying that "some Christians" think it's heretical. The Nicene Creed is a flat-out rejection of docetism, so I think it's safe to say most Christians reject it).
And generally, I don't expect much historical evidence of Jesus, because he wasn't that important in his lifetime. As ArisKatsaris says
In other words, the assertion in Mark that Jesus was followed around by scribes is a pious lie that can easily be explained without asserting that Jesus never existed.
That docetism lost out isn't really the key point.
Consider the general case: there's some property P that is observable (for example, having a physical body). At time T, there's no agreement that I have P. At time T+ 200 years, there's agreement that I had P at T.
It seems to me that the lack of agreement about P at T is important evidence here, regardless of what agreement other people come to about P at (T+200).
The people arguing not-P are theological mystics, who have substantial reason to assert not-P despite any observation, That is, a substantial amount of the motivation for asserting not-P can be explained without reference to observation.
I'm on shakier ground on the specific contents of the theological position, but Wikipedia leaves the impression was that the dispute was not about what was observed, but what was actually there. It seems consistent with docetism that Pilate believed there was a seditious preacher named Jesus, who he ordered crucified. Docetism just says that the image Pilate saw was an illusion, not a man (or even matter).
Ah! I hadn't realized that. Yeah, if the docetics were making the same claims about the observable world, then my argument above is irrelevant.
Not quite. It's not irrelevant, it just becomes an argument in favor of historical Jesus, rather than against it.
If a lack of agreement among early Christian about the observable world was relevant as evidence AGAINST the existence of a historical Jesus, then by Law of Probability, agreement about it must constitute evidence in its favour.
Sure. Needn't be anywhere near that complicated, though.... the existence of people who believe in the existence of a historical Jesus is evidence of a historical Jesus, albeit not particularly strong evidence. If it weren't for those people, we wouldn't even be talking about it, any more than we're talking about a historical Clark Kent.
alternatively...:-)