Walter L. Wagner said:
for a guy who never existed, he sure developed a huge following!
More people believe in things other than Christianity, so if reality followers the numbers as you suggest, then some other story besides the legend of Jesus is the correct story and the Jesus story is incorrect and should not be followed.
it appears that the jewish historian Josephus made mention of him and his associate John:
The good news is that Josephus is a historical person as is Pilate. The bad news is that Josephus was born after Pilate was retired from duty. He therefore is not an eyewitness to anything told in the Gospels. You may also wish to try to decide if Jesus was instead executed in the era of Josephus, and/or whether Josephus recalls any mention of Jesus or John the Baptist before or after the escalation of hostilities (ca 67-72). And you can even assume that the experts who explain how Josephus is not the author of the remarks about either man are wrong. Pretty soon it will develop into futile quest for the historical Jesus, but not without a lot of rich detail about the period, if you're into that sort of thing.
i take it you don't believe the wikipedia article about Josephus, cited above?
It's a good place to start, but it's a slippery slope. Either I'm losing my mind or this article has undergone major revisions since I last read it. Both are probably true.
are you also disputing the existence of an historical figure from which developed Krishna worship/religion? do you also dispute the existence of an historical figure that gave rise to Buddha worship/religion? to Islam religion?
All of those religions are just as fantastic in their use of legend, myth, fables and magic. There is no historical Krishna, no historical Buddha (Siddhartha) and no historical Mohammad. These are all legendary characters just as Jesus is. And yet billions of people believe such stories, which was gmilam's point.
Execution on the cross was very common,
Not in Roman criminal justice proceedings it wasn't. Romans were immune from crucifixions on the basis of citizenship. It was mainly used against slaves and rebels as a deterrent, to keep them in compliance. On this fact alone Jesus best fits the profile of an executed rebel. I think you meant to say that it is mentioned in several sources of that period; it's a historical fact that Romans used crucifixions and there are several sources who speak of hundreds or thousands of people being executed this way. However the mass executions all seem to be inflicted on slaves or Jews. And there is nothing more than anecdotal evidence to suggest that Jews were ever executed for anything other than treason.
and I seriously doubt the Romans kept track of all the names of the people so executed.
Regardless of whether they did or didn't there is no competent evidence to corroborate even a realistic version of the Gospel story.
During the slave revolt, some six thousand of re-captured slaves were crucified and left for days along the Appian Way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War I seriously doubt the Romans recorded their names.
Even if we treat that as an exaggerated number, it doesn't help explain why any trial and conviction remotely similar to the legend got no official mention since it would have taken a minimal effort. And the legend goes out of its way to tie the Sanhedrin to Pilate without any corroborating story found in rabbinical records and lore. But this isn't the right tack for speaking to the historicity of a person in a legend. This is a little like looking for reasons that Johnny Appleseed left no records of purchase from a feed store, or that Paul Bunyan never got a permit to cut wood on federal lands. A little closer to home are the records of the various witch hunts of colonial American Protestants. There may be enough historical evidence to reconstruct the historical fact of terrorizing women under the color of law, but no one is looking for any evidence that these women actually levitated or communed with the dead.
Had a historical figure known as Jesus not existed,
No such historical person exists. You're wrong about that. We might need to define what we mean, but under the common definition you'd have to agree that at best there is speculation that some person who was crucified for his complicity in the Judaean rebellion may be personified in the legend. But that's as much as it could be - speculation, which reflects beliefs, not evidence.
I seriously doubt there would have arisen numerous accounts of him, as we see in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and numerous others.
Those aren't historical accounts, nor are they four sources. There are at best two sources, Q (John) and M (the synoptic gospels), so designated because the stories are of unknown origin. None of those are historical people, just names added to them by the Catholic Church early in its decisions of what to leave in and what to leave out. In any case, these are not accounts of what happened, just legends. You don't imagine that some journalist accompanied Lazarus (one version of Lazarus anyway) as he got his Scrooge-like tour of Hell just before Jesus reanimated him. Nor would any witness know for sure whether Joseph was Jesus' biological father (despite the two conflicting lineages trying to connect Joseph to David. Just as you can't place a person at the scene of the Crucifixion and at the same time at the Temple, watching the tabernacle come apart.
There are no "others" unless you mean the Gnostic writings, which have little or nothing to do with the Jesus Christians believe in. All "others" would come far too late (or too early if you count Plato like I do). Even if the Gospels had been in the form of historical evidence, they are too far detached in time to be of any use. The oldest fragment (7 lines from John) was probably written in ca. 125 CE, way too late to constitute evidence even if it had some basis as an authentic document. But again there is no historical evidence that converts a legend into fact. At best it would be a credible document would serve as a myth buster, not something that perpetuates the myth.
Those accounts by non-Roman people in that area all detail execution by crucifixion.
Not really. Josephus and Philo come to mind, but they make only passing remarks about crucifixions, some of which seem to use fabulous or legendary exaggerated numbers, and all of which seem based on nothing more than hearsay. However the overriding theme as it applies to a person crucified as "King of the Jews" is the important political and military fact that was unfolding: rebels were being crucified to send a message to the underground. Romans were going house to house slaughtering entire families. People were dying of starvation en masse as the Romans laid seige to them. And out of this we get the legend of the loaves and fishes, which sounds like the dream of starving person; and we get tales of general misery - leprosy, fatal illness and the magical acts of reanimating dead bodies, which, I might add, is even less plausible than the Pinocchio story. Jesus is just tramping around with his miserable followers and everything on Earth is gloomy, while all joy is only available post-mortem. Why the gloom and doom? Because they were suffering unspeakable horrors under Roman oppression. Yet no mention of this overwhelming reality slips into the legend one iota. Paul never even mentions how his Jewish mother ended up in Tarsus (Turkey). We are left to realize that there were refugees of the war. Imagine how that must have scarred them. In any case he certainly comes after the fact. Yet he too seems to have lost all of his genetic memory. It would seem that his mom was a bit of a Hebrew scholar and he himself probably spoke 4 languages (Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew and the native language of Tarsus) - 5 if we assume his duties in the Roman legion included following orders given in Latin. Yet with all of that scholarship, what happened to their memory of the decades of hostilities and atrocity under Roman occupation of Judaea (his mother's experience, not his, or perhaps her parents')? It's virtually overridden by the blind faith in a legend that is set in an era entirely before his birth, probably before his mother's birth -- depending on what date you claim the tabernacle in Jerusalem came apart.
Indeed, I seriously doubt that any of the judicial records of Pontius Pilate and other judges of that era even exist nowadays, and were likely destroyed ages ago; just as the Jewish temple was destroyed by the Romans circa 70 A.D.
The Romans were bent on crushing the rebellion by a program of shock and awe against the stubborn little underground. They weren't trashing their own records and they wouldn't let the Jews touch their stuff. Besides when Pilate was recalled in ca. 36 CE they would have probably collected his records as part of the accountability process. In any case, it's only a legend so none of this applies.
As for the destruction of the Temple, it's left to theologians to decide whether such a crucifixion took place during Pilate's tenure or not. Next you must decide whether the paranormal phenomena taking place at the tabernacle at the moment of the Jesus' death really happened at the moment of some execution, and in which year?
This is a very slippery slope for the weavers of myth. They have to convince themselves that they are the chosen people and their God is the Supreme God above all others, yet he let some Jupiter-worshipping pagans trash his shrine? No, that wouldn't fly. But it does indicate that the legend grew up much later than the era of Pilate. And you sense this controversy in Jesus' own words "Father why have you abandoned me?" It's the voice of Judaic genetic memory, of all their failures and defeats at the hands of nonbelievers, even those which are merely legendary (captivity in Egypt is only a legend). They were hostages of Babylon (Iraq) then under the custody of Persians (Iran), Hellenized by Alexander the Great (Greece) and now had the boot of Rome firmly planted on their neck (Italy). Not counting the lesser wars and threats from Hittites, Assyrians and the troops using them as a layover as they crossed back and forth throughout history, they never really got that promised land. In fact God never really came through for them at all. This was an era of religious crisis. Eventually a movement got traction, but it contained elements of Egyptian, Iraqi, Iranian, Greek and Italian mythology. And indeed that's what you get in Jesus, all tied together under the mantle of a Hebrew Stoic, half Socrates, half freedom fighter, born of an magical Egyptian/Romanesque goddess (wed to a god), of Persian/Roman Mithraic character (a son of God, who had his last supper with 12 followers before his crucifixion) and all founded in remission of the Sin of Adam (probably a prehistoric king of Sumer) who was formed out of clay just like Enkidu, friend of Gilgamesh (demigod like Jesus) who was counseled by the archetypal Noah, Utnapishtim, who was told to build a raft and rescue to the animals from the Great Flood that was going to erase all the rest of humanity (Iraq). I could go on, but that's why the destruction of the temple is such a critical element in the appearance of Christianity. And yet the Gospels avoid it, and all references to the unprecedented scale of atrocities by Romans, like the plague.
But when the heck was this alleged crucifixion supposed to have even happened? In the days of Pilate (ca 26-36 CE), during the life of Josephus (after 37 CE) and/or during the destruction of the Temple (67-72 CE)? Answer that and you'll be on your way to explaining the facts behind the legend, and the nature of legend itself, and how to distinguish one from the other.