Regardless of the religious claims he made, did Jesus of Nazareth really exist?

According to Jewish people for nearly 2,000 years, there was no dispute that Jesus of Nazareth existed. That was never contested by them. What they DID contest were His claims to be the promised Messiah, and the Son of God, and that He was resurrected from the dead.

This, of course, is the elephant in the room, for the Jewish nation has the most to lose if Jesus is who He claimed to be. The easiest thing for the Jews to do would be to deny there ever was such a man. They have never done that. That, alone, is monumental evidence in favor of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.

Maybe. In reality the only non-biblical source that mentions Jesus (as the messiah) is Josephus. Other sources mention Christ, not Jesus (as the messiah). Christ is a title not a name. If you trust the bible, which I do not. I would say there was most likely a person like Jesus. But, I also know that early New Testament writters/critics knew that the NT was written only to convince people to follow Jesus as the Christ.

The vast majority of historians, both secular and religious, accept that Jesus of Nazareth existed.

I would really be interested if you had the first idea what the "claims" were

His death and resurrection started a church that has been popping for 2000 years

We can trace the history back to the apostles and thus to Jesus

Jesus was at best, a compilation of several 'messiahs' of the previous era, or pure fiction by Romans for a purpose. In either case it is deception for nefarious reasons.

There was historically no such person.

Yes, ironically it was generally considered to be a historical fact until the 19th century when a German atheist proposed the "Christ Myth Theory", that Jesus was just a myth. And we know where that led Germany. When you say Jesus doesn't exist there is "hell to pay"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory

Yes. Absolutely.

The bible was written long after Jesus (if he ever lived) was dead.

Jesus was most likely a political agitator that was killed for annoying the status quo. Once he was dead, nothing got in the way of telling a good story - especially the truth.

If he did, the @sshole took all the evidence of his existence with him when he conveniently "resurrected," so good luck proving it by merely going by the "eye witness" accounts of four people (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that were likely in cahoots with each other.

There are no contemporary records of him actually existing in his supposed time period.

If he did exist no one seemed to notice. So I doubt if he did.