There is more to examining Jesus Christ as a character than nursery rhyme comparisons. A starting point for a less literal approach.

This. "Was the historical Jesus a real person or a composite?" and "Was the historical Jesus divine?" are really two separate questions.

While I'm not a believer, I certainly can accept that this person Jesus might have actually existed and was a PITA to both the Romans and the temple hierarchy.

With character comes characteristics and attributes. So a shift of asking what's real? moves towards how such attributes and characteristics are realistic.?

Do people succeed by loving their neighbors? Is praying in public foolish looking? If cruel authority is all that exists does proclaiming love like a law really stick it to them?

He asks for proof and you provide proof by claiming it was written in the bible?! Can I provide proof that dogs can talk, but saying it was written in a Scooby Do Book?

I am not a believer as well, but I think there is enough written evidence to surmise that Jesus was a real person and most likely a great Prophet. However, my beliefs are that there is no such thing as 'divinity', so he was just a mortal man that did great things. He was put on a pedestal for this and probably did some fairly crazy things that put his own harm in way for others, which was a rarity back then. Because of this, he was raised to 'divine' status after centuries of story-telling, written texts of the events being translated a few times, etc.

It is somewhat akin to the way people viewed Ghandi and to a lighter degree, Babe Ruth, and now Michael Jordan. People often mention them as 'Gods' and of being 'divine', but not in the literal sense. However, that was done in a time where there is greater education, greater understanding, better record keeping etc. This could have happened back then where a writer wrote a story of Jesus as being 'Divine', but not in the literal sense. However, then someone could have translated it as literal and the path of written history took off from there. I obviously have no idea what happened, this is just a theory, but a very plausible one shared by many historians.

Most historical references put the time frame anywhere between 40 years and 200 years after Jesus actually existed as to when most of the religious texts started mentioning Jesus. The 'Gospels' were written at the very earliest between 65-75ad. That is quite a long time for beliefs, stories, etc. to shift and change from what actually happened to what was written down as to what happened. Just my 2 cents that I am sure religious based posters will disagree with.

For some references:

http://www.ancient.eu/Jesus_Christ/

And how is that proof?