Jesus and other religious founders as myth

The details of the lives and teachings of the great religious tradition founders is almost entirely myth, except maybe Mohamed and Joseph Smith, who more likely were pious frauds, one to justify brigandry and the other for psychological reasons.

It is not necessary for a kernel of a real person to have existed for there to arise a body of myth about a person.  That is to say, King Arthur did not exist, much as some people try to find something, anything, for it.

At the same time, it is also possible for the kernel to have really existed, as is almost certainly the case with Confucius, Lao Tse, and Gautama the Buddha.  That does not mean, however, that we need take all or even most of the stories about these figures at face value.  Myths can exist about real people.

I think "Jesus" of Christianity was pure myth, mainly because he doesn't appear in writing for about a century after he is supposed to have been around, and the stories are, to those informed and honest about it (especially to themselves) conflicting and out of touch with real history and geography.  Still, the possibility is there -- the thing is, it makes no real difference whether the myth is the man himself or only the stories and teaching about him.  Either way we end up with nothing but sand for the religious edifice.