Just going off memory from my interest in this topic during my college years decades ago, I recall that Flavius Josephus, one of the great historians of that era, wrote one very small comment about Jesus. A one line comment of "and then there was Jesus who was crucified in Canaan" or something to that effect. A number of modern historians suspect it was in fact inserted into his writings centuries later. The other great historian of that era, Seneca, made no mention of Jesus at all in his extensive writings about the history of his time.

The parallels of the Jesus story with that of Zoroastrianism and other early middle eastern religions is striking. Zoroaster and others walked on water, fed the poor, healed the sick, rose from the dead, etc. Early christianity can be considered the Middle East's greatest hits. It is for this reason a significant number of historians question whether Jesus ever actually exists.

My personal belief is someone named Jesus existed and was crucified, but he was probably a madman who heard voices and his story was picked up on and embellished a couple centuries later by the writers of the New Testament.