Jesus existed, there is no doubt of that. The questions are what was the reality of his life in that era as opposed to the number of the myths that have arisen over the last 2000 years. There is just a lot not really known about Jesus.
Even in my lifetime JFK, Martin Luthor King, Jr,. Bobby Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan have taken on a lot of Myth as to the reality and those are very documented people. Yet we have historians and people who attribute all manner of things to them that are not true.
The letters of Paul were written in the first century. Paul was acquainted by with the Apostles, the Disciples of Jesus so he had access to the their experience and teaching. (Available to you to read!)
Then there is this:
The Oldest Known Fragments of Matthew
"'The world of New Testament scholarship is facing its most serious challenge since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. At issue is a reassessment for the date of the Gospel of Matthew, based on five tiny papyrus fragments.
'Earlier this year (1995) Dr. Carsten Thiede published a reassessment of three papyrus fragments from the library at Magdalen College in Oxford, England. His article appeared in German in the scholarly journal Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 105 (1995) and was subsequently reprinted in English in the Tyndale Bulletin 46.1 (1995). Thiede, a papyrologist and practicing Anglican, has marshalled some impressive arguments which are challenging long-held scholarly and theological beliefs.
'His conclusions are summarized as follows:
1. The three papyrus fragments from the Magdalen College library (P-64) are from the same manuscript as two other fragments at the Fundacion San Lucas in Barcelona, Spain (P-67). All are from the Gospel of Matthew.
2. All five scraps of papyrus, based on comparative epigraphy, should be dated to the SECOND HALF OF THE FIRST CENTURY AD. That suggests a copy of the Gospel of Matthew was in circulation in Egypt roughly one generation after the crucifixion. Accordingly, this is the earliest date for any known New Testament text and is much earlier than the majority of scholars had previously believed. The standard scholarly date for the original Gospel of Matthew's composition has been AD 80.
3. All five fragments are written on both sides, indicating they were sheets in a book and not sections of a scroll. That manuscript would also be the earliest known bound Christian book. Thiede suggests it may even signify a change in strategy among Christians. Changing from scroll to book might indicate a changed focus of missionary activity away from Jews.
4. The use of abbreviations for divine names (nomen sacrum), like the tetragrammaton (YHWH) for the name of God, had previously been the privilege of Jewish scribes. According to Thiede, such a palaeographic decision was clearly designed to put Jesus on par with YHWH."
And:
"On December 24, 1994, the Times of London ran a front-page story entitled “Oxford papyrus is ‘eyewitness record of the life of Christ.’” The article reported the claim that three papyrus fragments of Matthew’s Gospel in Magdalen College, Oxford, date to the mid-first century C.E. Instead of having been written a generation or more after Jesus’ death, as is—or was—the scholarly consensus, Matthew’s Gospel was written within a decade or so of the crucifixion by someone who was there at the time, so the article said. This, of course, would indeed be astounding and worthy of the treatment the Times gave it."
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