the smell test is irrelevant. This is a conversation about whether the scientific / historian community is at a concensus on the historical existence of the person in question.
really, mine and your individual opinions are also irrelevant, because even if both you and I never existed- the historical, academic consensus suggests the guy lived.
I’m happy to be the bad guy in that conversation because it’s really not me thats on trial here - it’s your personal faith/belief, that’s as vulnerable to subjectivity as a belief in the spritual Christian (or Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, etc) deity’s existence.
I am not commenting on whether I believe Jesus was a deity, nor am I commented on whether I personally believe there was a real Jesus as political and historical figure at the start of the Common Era - I am saying that to say definitively he did not exist is a faith/belief based assertion, and it’s misinformation to claim it as a fact, it is a belief/opinion that flies in the face of established, peer-reviewed consensus.