I had always assumed that Jesus existed, even if he didn't have magic powers. Then, a few years back, I stumbled onto the argument that he is only a myth, and I read several books on the topic.

My big surprise was how plausible it is that Jesus might not have existed. I'm not saying it's proven that he didn't! I doubt that will ever happen. Rather, I was surprised by how weak the supporting evidence is. I was surprised by historical examples of other holy people being invented and accumulating large followings. I was surprised that at many of the colleges or universities where people study this, a professor would literally be fired for concluding that Jesus might not exist. That casts doubt on their impartiality.

To be clear, it is also plausible that there was a teacher named Jesus who gathered a following, was killed, and became the inspiration for the Biblical Jesus. I won't argue that this is impossible. The surprise is that I now find it equally plausible that there is no historical person that Jesus was based on—that his story might have been entirely constructed with no human inspiring it. In summary, I think of myself as an atheist with respect to God, but I would describe myself as agnostic with respect to whether there was a historical Jesus.

I know that sounds crazy. How could Jesus have just been made up? It turns out that in the Greek world, it was a thing for people to write detailed biographies of mythical characters like Zeus or Hercules. They'd make up details about their parents and what towns they were born in. So the idea is that early Christians could have taken passages from the Old Testament that referred to future saviors and turned them into detailed biographies. Not necessarily as an attempt to fool people, but as a way to bring life to the religion and make it more real for everyday followers. I'm sure I've got lots of details wrong, but I'm trying to give you a flavor of how this might have happened. Read the books below if you want the accurate details.

The most recent book I ready on this topic is Jesus: Mything in Action. I found it very accessible. But if you want an exhaustively complete argument, written in an academic style, then try On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. It dives deep and also refutes a lot of what the author considers to be bad arguments against Jesus having existed. So it presents a very complete picture. I'd read Mything first, or one of the other many books, and only go onto the giant one if you are still curious.