There is no historical evidence necessitating that Jesus had to exist or the evidence would be different.
You could probably say this about half of all the historical persons we assume existed. You could make the case; but probably they did exist, and probably Jesus existed, based on the evidence we have. There are many historical figures who probably existed but about whom we don't have certainty or there's "no historical evidence necessitating" that they existed.
Not one letter home talking about the great miracle worker, . . .
There are virtually no "letters from home" for this period talking about anything. 99.99999% of all the events that happened are not reported in any "letter from home" or any other document.
It all happened in 3 years or less, and virtually all the witnesses were illiterate. Every historical person we have writings about was active publicly for much longer than 3 years, even longer than 10 years for the vast majority. It is amazing that we have as much as we do about this person whose public life was so short.
The only "letters from home" are from a tiny minority of elitist rich people like Cicero and Pliny, etc., not from average folks.
. . . not a single pot-shard depicting the acts this person did, . . .
There are hardly any pot-shards depicting singular events.
But there are some
3rd-century depictions of Jesus:
One is of the miracle healing of the woman with the issue of blood (Mt. 9:20-22):
View attachment 5193
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...bleeding_women_Marcellinus-Peter-Catacomb.jpg
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus...bleeding_women_Marcellinus-Peter-Catacomb.jpg
This is identified as "From a Roman catacomb, end of the 3rd century A.D." in David Flusser,
Jesus p. 116, where this picture is shown.
Another early depiction of Jesus is of the healing of the paralytic who is told to take up his bed and and walk:
View attachment 5195
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura-Europos_church#/media/File:Dura-europos-paralytic.jpg
Another early depiction of Jesus, of pagan origin and intended as mockery of the Christians, is the "Alexamenos graffito" showing Jesus on the cross but with the head of a donkey:
View attachment 5197
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito#/media/File:Alexorig.jpg
This carving is dated to 200 AD, even less than 200 years after the depicted event.
Is 200 years after the alleged event too long? Do you insist that any interesting event that really happened must have been depicted in carvings or paintings or on pot-shards etc. at the time of the event? or within 20 years and no later? or 50 years?
OK, then destroy all your history books and defund all the history departments at our universities -- they are teaching lies. They are teaching events that never really happened, because there are no art works depicting the historical events within 50 years or even 100 years after the events.
One event depicted early is the Alexander Mosaic, showing Alexander the Great battling Darius III. The mosaic is dated about 100 BC, so more than 200 years later than the event depicted.
The earliest depictions of the Trojan Horse are around 700 BC, several centuries after the reputed event:
There are three known surviving classical depictions of the Trojan Horse. The earliest is on a fibula brooch dated about 700 BC. The other two are on relief pithos vases from the adjoining Grecian islands Mykonos and Tinos, both usually dated between 675 and 650 BC, the one from Mykonos being known as the Mykonos Vase. Historian Michael Wood, however, dates the Mykonos Vase to the 8th century BC, some 500 years after the supposed time of the war, but before the written accounts attributed by tradition to Homer. Wood concludes from that evidence that the story of the Trojan Horse was in existence prior to the writing of those accounts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Horse
If Homer invented the Trojan Horse story (in the
Odyssey), then could there be depictions of it at almost the same time or only a few decades later? No, the story must have already been circulating before Homer's mention of it.
Are there any depictions of a singular event in history, from before 1000 AD or so, which are dated less than 100 years after the alleged event happened? 200 years? Or even depictions of a
fictional event produced in such a short time after the story was invented?
The gap of 200+ years from the time of Jesus to the first depictions of him in particular events, such as those above, is a very short time by comparison to other events. Virtually all other depictions of particular events are dated several centuries after the event.
There is a bust of Caesar dated from the same time as Caesar, but no depiction of any event, like the assassination. The latter are virtually all later than 1000 AD. The Caesar assassination is clearly one of the most sensationalist events in ancient times, and yet it is not depicted in carvings or engravings etc. for over 1000 years. So why should we assume that the events of Jesus would have to appear in artwork within only 100 years or so?
There is probably no archaeological find of any depiction of a singular event, like an engraving or carving of any kind, which is dated this close to the event depicted.
All the depictions of Achilles dragging Hector's body behind a chariot are dated later than 1000 AD. There are very few depictions of a singular event like this. So it's quite
unusual that we have a few depictions of Jesus miracle acts even before 300 AD.
It makes no sense to insist that if the Jesus events really happened we must have art works depicting them dated less than 500 years after the alleged events happened. Even 1000 years later would be a rare case. We have virtually no depictions of any other particular events in history which meet this requirement.