Was Jesus an Historical Figure?

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Secular Web co-founder, Jeffery Jay Lowder, makes the case that independent confirmation of a man named Jesus is not necessary, and I agree. He writes: There simply is nothing epistemically improbable about the mere existence of a man named Jesus. (Just because Jesus existed does not mean that he was born of a virgin, that he rose from the dead, etc.). I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament ‘the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material,’ we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed.”
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Lowder is talking about textual evidence. If we discounted all textual evidence unless we could corroborrate it then we would have to be agnostic about all historical conclusions, not just about Jesus, which is far too rigid and stringent of a demand.

Besides, I'm not sure I grant that there was no independent corroboration of the Christian movement. There are notable silences, particularly Philo, which is a telling silence when compared to the exaggerated claims in the Gospels and Acts that many people were followers of Jesus.

I'm not sure the Gospels are all 2nd century products either, since "The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, dated between 100- 160 CE, sets the upper limits of the Gospel writings because it contains a small portion of John's Gospel which was written last (even though I know that we don't know what else that manuscript had in it).

The textual evidence leads me to believe there was a historical Jesus even if not corrobaorrated independently. I don't understand how a movement like the Jesus cult could be started without a charismatic leader, and unless we dismiss much of the textual evidence because it doesn't fit with our preconceived notions, it was not Paul.

I don't understand why Christians would invent the embarrassing story of a crucified Messiah.

I don't understand why the authors of the New Testament would include the embarrassing apocalyptic elements in it that had to continually be watered down and explained away.

I don't understand why the New Testament authors didn't completely eliminate from the words of Jesus some other embarrasing elements, most notably when he purportedly said, "No one is good but God alone" (Mark 10:17-18), which had to be doctored over in Matthew to read "There is only One who is good." (19:16; leaving open who that person is).
Who the historical Jesus was must be figured out from historical analysis of the texts using what we believe is possible based on our control beliefs about how cults arise.