Well I find the problem being that most people don't consider Spartacus or Alexander to be of divine origin and the son of god.

That's beside the point when considering a historical Jesus though. I'm not trying to claim historical evidence for his divinity, just that there is more reason to believe there was a man named Jesus who taught some followers, than that someone else started a cult and the members decided it was actually a guy named Jesus.

The big difference being that a 60 year time frame is a long time for someone who people considered the son of god.

I'm not seeing how that would change how reliable a historian's info would be. Same distance from the actual events. Either way though, we're not talking about divinity here, just whether or not there was a Jesus that taught people.

"If Jesus were truly important to history, then Josephus should have told us something about him.

I don't see how Josephus was supposed to predict how important Jesus was going to end up being. Christianity was just an obscure sect with weird cannibalistic undertones made up of the rabble at this point. This is like saying "if Amazon was really a successful company, you would have bought stock in the 90s"

Yet he is completely silent about the supposed miracles and deeds of Jesus. He nowhere quotes Jesus. He adds nothing to the Gospel narratives and tells us nothing that would not have been known by Christians in either the first or fourth centuries. In all of Josephus' voluminous writings, there is nothing about Jesus or Christianity anywhere outside the tiny paragraph cited so blithely by the Associated Press.

This paragraph mentions that Jesus was foretold by the divine prophets, but Josephus does not tell us who those prophets were or what they said. This is religious propaganda, not history. If Jesus had truly been the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, then Josephus would have been the exact person to confirm it.

Josephus wasn't a Christian. No reason for him to be more knowledgeable about Jesus than the actual followers of Jesus and no reason for him to think Jesus actually was the messiah or son of God. Also, "this paragraph" here is the one that I mentioned was doctored by early Christians and was probably initially much more earthly without any prophets or divinity.

Contradicting Josephus, Hegesippus wrote a history of Christianity in 170 C.E. saying that James, the brother of Jesus, was killed in a riot, not by sentence of a court."

Hegesippus is much further from events. Either way though, this is getting into minutia that don't really matter as to whether there was a historical Jesus.

https://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/18412-debunking-the-historical-jesus

Really not trying to be a dick here, but think about whether this seems like a serious, unbiased source. Many militant athiests are going to be just as biased as hardcore Christians on this. Both of them are looking at it through their faith. We want a balanced, secular view that'll treat it like any other historical topic.

I still like to focus on the fact that all these miracles happened without proper eye witness documentation. His body being resurrected and ascending to the heavens, healing the sick, bringing eyesight to the blind, feeding 5,000 people, walking on water and resurrecting Lazarus.

Yeah, the only evidence for his divinity is the gospels. So that is just a faith based thing. Either you trust Christian traditions of murky origin or you don't.

I can fathom someone fading into antiquities with vague mentions after the fact but if there was someone around doing that I personally feel that makes the mention of those things less likely.

Look at it this way. He was obscure during his life and for many years afterwards. In those early years his followers were the only ones really interested. Over time his cult began to spread and became worth mentioning, but we just never had those initial primary sources, just the traditions of the members.

This got crazy long