But I have to say this is true for mythicism as well. I acknowledge that it's true - most scholarship just assumes that Jesus existed because, hey, what else could he have been? But on the mythicists side there is very little effort to attempt to explain how or why a belief could have been sustained in a Jewish culture (or a culture affiliated with Judaism) if he was just made up. Indeed I think there is a tendency for each side to see each other as caricatures - i.e. on the one side 'atheists' who hate Jesus promoting 'mythicism' and 'believers' 'clinging' to their traditional beliefs.
Since I am a contrarian by nature I will tell you what drives me crazy about mythicists. In fact I will tell you several things which drive me crazy about mythicists. Here's what bothers me today
1. they tend to hate 'authority' when it works against them but then all of a sudden if they can find a claim that sounds 'authoritative' that helps their side they parade it around like a flag. Like the stupid belief that Christianity wasn't Jewish. This drives me batty. Let's start with Paul. Mythicism begins and ends with Paul and Paul is filled with references to the Jewish scriptures. Now even if we boil down that set of writings down to the Marcionite recension there were references to the Pentateuch, Isaiah etc. Not as many of course. But it was still there. What fucking kind of white people do mythicists imagine Paul was writing to with these offhand references to "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings?" Who the fuck would this make any sense to other than someone who was brought up in a Jewish culture.
To this end, while there is no reason to believe that the early Christians were as 'Jewish' as let's say Hebrew National Hot Dogs, his audience had been 'initiated' in to Judaism already. This is impossible to argue with. The first Christians weren't white people like Barbara Bush (even a white person from New York has some familiarity with what Jews believed - much more in fact that what we should expect from the average Roman). Indeed the leadership of early Christian communities were remarkably 'fluent' in Jewish cultural ideas and especially the scriptures. Much more than Barbara Bush.
In my mind this severely curtails what is possible about Jesus the invented founder of Christianity. If he was a supernatural man he was a supernatural man compatible with or found in the Jewish scriptures.
Now we are all very limited in terms of figuring out what sort of an invented man Jesus was. And I think most mythicists demonstrate their lack of scholarly interest by basically poking holes in the story of the historical Jesus. Ok, we get that Jesus wasn't who everyone says he was. Now get off your ass and come up with a plausible explanation for how this relatively large Jewish affiliated community of believers believed in a fictitious heavenly man. The problem is they can't do it because they are only this for the hate.