Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Williams, A. Lukyn, Adversus Judaeos: a Bird's-eve View of Christian Apologiae Until the Renaissance (Cambridge: The University Press, 1935), as I recall, does not support the claim that the issue was whether Jesus existed.

No.
Again: are you claiming Pythagoras never existed?

Not really, unless you also claim Pythagoras never existed.

However one dates the four canonical gospels we have, they were written to be understood by a Greek-speaking audience. The majority of that audience, like the majority of ancient peoples, were illiterate, so many people had the gospels read to them. I suggest that these gospels were meant to be unde...

Speculations are different than well-history-established conclusions.
It might be interesting to hear whether maryhelena accepts those assertions of Charles Wilson.

To declare that gospel writers were secretly referring to the death (by which means is uncertain) of the last Hasmonean claimant, without evidence, is mere unsupported opinion, not history research.

There is also, with English translations, though in some respects less comprehensive:

The Essenes according to the classical sources
edited by Geza Vermes & Martin Goodman.
Sheffield : JSOT on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, c1989.

Is anyone here actually arguing that Christianity has nothing to do with history?

To assert that Gospel writers could not write about "salvation" is peculiar,
since they did.
Apparently, didn't ask your permission.

Declaring what Gospel writers could and could not have written and meant, based on retrojecting one individual's modern preference, for example that such was somehow really about the last Hasmonean, is sometimes called eisegesis.