Reply #2: I'm opposed to people arguing he was based on a historic figure

[BurtWorm]

with nothing to back them up but truisms like "everyone knows he existed" (the most common evasion of the question) or bizarre notions like this "criterion of dissimilarity."

PS: To state it more positively, my position, based on the failure of historicists to come up with anything more philosophically satisfying to further their arguments than what I cited in my original post, is that the historicist position, whether held by a Christian or a non-Christian, is necessarily a faith-based position.

In other words, you can be an atheist (I've argued with many of them) and still have faith that Jesus is based on a real historic figure. I have yet to come upon anyone whose belief in Jesus as a historic figure is based on anything but blind faith.