Is Jesus The Most Historically Supported Figure?

The historical evidence for the existence of Jesus is not nonexistent, trivial, or irrelevant to modern life.  Two of the more prominently discussed primary sources (historical accounts of an event other than those written later on in order to compile or react to the works of other historians) include Tacitus's Annals and Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, yet there are other documents referencing him.  Somehow, this was distorted into grounds for the claim that there is no historical figure as evidentially supported as Jesus.  Significant evidence is not the same as a higher amount of evidence, even though a large amount of evidence can be significant.

There is not even necessarily more evidence for the existence of Jesus than any other historical figure, however.  To say otherwise moves beyond the actual analysis of historical references to Jesus, focusing on something that is actually irrelevant to whether there is evidence for him as a historical figure.  No one needs to know if there are more primary texts (other texts might occasionally be helpful for understanding primary texts, but citing a contemporary historian's words as "evidence" for the occurrence of the American Civil War is asinine) talking about Jesus than primary texts addressing anyone else, but it is hardly difficult to demonstrate that the works of Josephus and Tacitus, among others, clearly refer to Jesus.

There is even evidence that it is not the case that Jesus is the most thoroughly documented historical figure.  After all, are there really more direct historical references (in primary sources) to Jesus than there are references to Julius Caesar, George Washington, or Adolf Hitler?  Even if this was true, many of the Christians who would support this idea have likely never counted the primary sources that mention any of these figures, others, or Jesus.  They are simply passing on an appealing claim they almost certainly did not even think of on their own and that they have never attempted to independently verify for the sake of truth.

Of course, whether someone heard the claim prior to thinking about it or came up with it on their own does not make it true, but it does mean that some people who affirm the notion have no real idea if it is even probably true--and it is the type of claim that almost no one would ever make or think of left to themselves with nothing but reason and historical texts.  At that point, it becomes a propaganda tool for the kind of irrationalistic or pseudo-"rational" apologetics put forth by those like William Lane Craig who are merely concerned with persuasion instead of proof.

The manipulation of historical information and sources is certainly something that interferes with sound Christian apologetics.  To make a historically unsupportable claim is irrational, and therefore untruthful, which contradicts Biblical ethics on multiple levels.  Moreover, it is simply unnecessary.  Anyone willing to assess historical documents without making assumptions and without looking to modern historians rather than the texts they claim to represent can easily discover that there are indeed direct references to a first-century Jew named Jesus without ever making red herring claims about the number of sources.