This is a very good answer
Probably the best single-piece of evidence is the work of the Roman Emperor Julian, aka Julian the Apostate (b. 330 C.E. -- d. 363 C.E.) and the logical inferences one can derive from his argumentation.
Flavius Claudius Iulianus (aka “Julian the Apostate”), reigned 361–363 C.E.[A.D.]
While there is a lot of other very very good multiple sets of evidence and sources and logical deductions for the life of a religious figure Jesus of Nazareth circa 30 C.E., Julian may have put forth the best single go-to item of evidence for there having been an actual historic Jesus of Nazareth.
Here’s why.
Julian as Emperor rejected the newly dominant religion of Christianity and fiercely sought to discredit and to reverse its influence. So he wrote and/or commissioned in his own name an entire treatise rather savagely disparaging Christianity and its founder Jesus, with intent to discredit the religion, using the extant historic record from the first century to his time.
But in doing so he never disputed Jesus’ historical existence and even somewhat separately offered to prove it.
Julian wrote a book (Contra Galileos) which is not challenged as to its authenticity though it only survives in quotings and copies of major portions of it by Christian adversaries, as well as smaller fragments.
In the book, he ridicules Christian believers and the alleged miracles, divine status, and wisdom of Jesus that are claimed for him by Christians. But there is no assertion or even hint made by Julian that Jesus the individual never was.
Why is that important & powerful evidence?
SLIGHT EDIT: Because he was a lot closer in time to the time of Jesus than today, living before the barbarian ravagings of Rome and the final collapse of the western empire, and he had access to and power over all the still extant rumors, hard record-keeping, and broad literature of the Roman Empire in which Jesus was said to have lived and die under, including all the earlier texts often cited separately and together by all sides of the debate on Jesus’ existence today. And he had every motive to use any evidence or even credible speculation he could find that was or had been going around in the few centuries during and after Jesus’ alleged lifetime, and which would throw doubt on the real existence of a Jesus of Nazareth.
All he had to do, if non-existence of the man was indeed the case, was to assert the absence of likely official records or accounts or reports about Jesus. Or just cite the presence of significant contemporary arguments, “buzz’ and primary reports questioning Jesus’s existence, or even pass along viable credible rumors. Such steps would fire a powerful solid direct arrow of doubt at the new religion whose discrediting was a major, even central, issue for him.
And he had the resources to do that effort. He was, after all, the Emperor of a still-unified Roman Empire which had not yet seen the heavy destructions of later centuries. He had access to imperial documentation, archives, great ancient libraries and so forth.
But when addressing and challenging his own Christian contemporaries, he ridicules Jesus as a charlatan and as someone of little greatness or worth or note, but he doesn’t even remotely question Jesus’ factual existence.
At one point, this ancient Roman anti-Christian researcher-writer even offers to independently prove the opposite: that Jesus was real:
Even Jesus, who was proclaimed among you, was one of Caesar's subjects. And if you do not believe me I will prove it a little later, or rather let me simply assert it now. However, you admit that with his father and mother he registered his name in the governorship of Cyrenius.
….
Further, he ridicules Jesus and Paul for being insignificant, and rather dishonest, preachers, and Julian then explicitly employs and endorses the process of critically reviewing and assessing contemporary documentary evidence specifically in order to ascertain the status and impact of Jesus and early followers. That indicates he was conscious of, and favorable towards, using methods of contemporary document research in disputes about Jesus. And that is precisely what modern skeptics argue as the vital methodology to use for analysis today —though with less documentation available to today’s disputants.
But when doing this method, Julian doesn’t at all conclude or contend from it that Jesus or Paul was fictional: he merely says the two were just fools from the backwater misleading other ignorant lower-class fools and of course— as he expresses further down below in the spirit of 4th century patriarchy — those gullible womenfolk.
Yet Jesus, who won over the least worthy of you, has been known by name for but little more than three hundred years: and during his lifetime he accomplished nothing worth hearing of, unless anyone thinks that to heal crooked and blind men and to exorcise those who were possessed by evil demons in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany can be classed as a mighty achievement.
Julian thus argues that Jesus and Paul were obscure and of very low impact, and not likely to have created much of a buzz in their day. But he does not contend even slightly that they were imaginary.
As for purity of life you do not know whether he so much as mentioned it; but you [Christians of Julian’s era] emulate the rages and the bitterness of the Jews [towards idols], overturning temples and altars, in the same fashion as yourselves. But these are rather your own doings; for nowhere did either Jesus or Paul hand down to you such commands.
Julian thus argues here that they (Jesus and Paul) were actual independent people distinct even from their own movement and who may have spoken differently from their followers.
In short, they were real people. The movement didn’t invent them or their original ideas. They had agency, as it is termed today.
Julian: The reason for this is that they never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; for they were content if they could delude maidservants and slaves, and through them the women, and men like Cornelius and Sergius. But if you can show me that one of these men is mentioned by the well-known writers of that time, – these events happened in the reign of Tiberius or Claudius, – then you may consider that I speak falsely about all matters.
Notice here that to discredit Jesus and Paul, he is again not questioning they existed (“these events happened” not “were alleged to have happened”}. And it clearly would have been to his advantage to make such an argument if it had any credible legs to stand on from the Roman documentation available to an emperor or even just by general logic.)
Instead, in terms of Jesus (and Paul’s) presence in history, Julian is just arguing that they were no big deal and wouldn’t rate, didn’t rate, and shouldn’t have rated any contemporary first-century chatter.
The fact that he confidently challenges his rival Christians regarding the literature of Jesus’ time suggests a solid broad familiarity with the documentation about Jesus from Jesus’ day. And Julian had far more primary literature and records available to him then than we do now. Someone would not make such a dare unless he’d done heavy homework in the documentation and literature of Jesus’ time.
Julian’s work is therefore a hostile, informed, ancient authority supporting the argument that a mere lack of very much immediate contemporary biographical evidence - a big obsessional point made by modern “skeptics”/”mythicists” - is not likely to be proof of non-existence.
Rather it is just strong proof or evidence of the relative obscurity of the historic Jesus (and Paul) in their original time.
Now, there are elsewhere in the fuller record of history, outside and before Julian, heaps and piles of corroborating primary and secondary evidence over time and/or supportive logic about the existence of a historical figure named Jesus (see some other Quora answers on this, for starters).
But perhaps the “best evidence”, meaning evidence found conveniently in one place, may simply be that the guy who had:
a) full access to the best independent primary record evidence of and argumentation about Jesus, and
b) full access to the same ancient sources that are kicked around in modern day debate (with far more material and information still extant in his day), and
c) every motivation to use against Christianity and its founder(s) whatever facts and arguments he could find in all that,
nevertheless he — the very capable and very anti-Christian Emperor Julian — never once, as far as we can tell, brought up the question of whether the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth existed at all.
Further, he even somewhat offers at one point to independently prove that Jesus DID exist historically, and in a specific personal legal status as a subject of Caesar.
Julian’s work is one-stop shopping for the entire historical Jesus evidence debate. His commentary and analysis is from someone who had access to far far more primary and contemporary reams of data and stacks of argumentation than we have today.
And who had the motive to use any and all credible negative arguments he could find there about Jesus of Nazareth.
If anyone would have had knowledge of any coherent total or partial usable or valid evidence, or even valid speculation, of Jesus of Nazareth’s historical non-existence in the ancient Roman world, and would have the overriding interest and broad resources to broadcast that fact loud and clear in a published work, it would have been Emperor Julian.
But he never went there.
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