"Biblical Scholar" might be giving me a little too much credit but I thank you anyways. :)

I think something like that would make me dig a bit deeper to understand the implications but I have no fear that Jesus, the person, was real. Other sources from that era such as Josephus (Jewish historian who worked for Rome) or Tacitus (arguably the greatest historian of the 1st century who was also Roman) mention Jesus the man or at the least his early followers. Tacitus takes sort of an "they are an annoyance who get what they deserve" approach in book 15 of the Annals of Rome (part in brackets added by myself):

"Consequently, to get rid of the report [of him being the cause of the fire], Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the worldfind their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired." - http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.11.xv.html

All this to say that I'm confident that Jesus was a real person and that his followers have nearly always been on the short end of the stick.