I largely agree with the OP, but things can be quite a bit more concrete than that.
I think what's clear that so-called "mainstream" scholars have really dug themselves into a hole. The approach taken by myself, and others such as Tom Dykstra and David Oliver Smith, is to show the real complexity of how the Gospels were written. And much of this complexity has been denied by mainstream scholars for years and many such mainstreamers have gone to great lengths to try to conjure up Gospel authors as sort of simple laymen engaged in their first ever writing attempts, or humble field journalists jotting down oral accounts, etc. But any real study of the texts shows this is impossible.
The case I make in Deciphering the Gospels is that it is provable that the narrative of Mark was entirely invented by a single individual AFTER the First Jewish-Roman War. I go through all of the evidence that supports such as case. Well, not all, as in fact now I see that my case could have been made 10 times stronger, though I believe I put forward the strongest case to date when I published in 2018. But actually much more could have been said about the writing techniques used in Mark.
But clearly, the author of Mark was a sophisticated writer using a lot of complex symbolism and techniques that we also see in the DSS material. The writer of Mark wasn't some simpleton jotting down things he was being told, he was a master story teller writing a very complex narrative using chiastic structures, multiple layers of symbolism, parables like those found only at Qumran, hundreds of deep sculptural references, numerology and other advanced methods of Hellenistic prophetic writing. The whole plot is actually maddeningly complex with multiple layers of hidden foreshadowing and secretly coded hints about the future and the nature of Jesus. This is, very clearly, a literary masterpiece crafted by a literary genius, not some field report of urban legends.
But again what I come back to in all of my analysis is that none of it makes any sense from a pre-war perspective. Every aspect of the story, every scene, is clearly rooted in POST-WAR symbolism. The story cannot have any basis is any pre-war account of a real person.
But that's just the Gospel of Mark though, what about everything else? Well clearly once you realize that every scene in Mark is a post-war invention then obviously you have to acknowledge that every single account of the life of Jesus derives from this single story. As I show in DtG, every account, including every non-canonical account, of Jesus can be tied back to the Gospel of Mark. There is no account of Jesus the man that is independent of Mark. It all started with that one story and just evolved from there. And there was never any knowledge of Jesus apart from the Gospels and 2nd century scholars make very clear.
The case I make then is that it would only be the case that every account of Jesus the person would be derived from an entirely fictional post-war account if there was no real Jesus person to begin with. This is especially true when we get to Luke because clearly "Luke" was trying to find other sources, but the best Luke could do was make use of Mark, Matthew and Paul. Those are Luke's sources. Everything in Luke can be accounted for from those three sources, as David Oliver Smith and Mark Goodacre's work shows. So we have a researcher in Luke who was trying to find everything he could and all he could come up with is Mark, Matthew and Paul.
But what about Paul and other epistles? As I show, and other like Dyksra have shown, the Gospel of Mark is based on the letters of Paul. The continuity between Paul's letters and the Gospels is because the Gospels are derived from Paul's letters. Again, its all literary borrowing. But didn't Paul clarify that Jesus was a person? Well this is ironic because 20th century biblical scholarship was all about dismissing Paul as someone who clearly didn't know about Jesus and stating that the Gospels were all based on "pre-Pauline" sources. We had the development of the "oral traditions" explanation and Q. Paul was pushed out of the way, and it became all about how scholars could divine the "original sources" underlying the Gospels. Clearly that whole effort was a massive farce.
The real original sources underlying the Gospels are the letters of Paul and the LXX + the imagination of the writers. This is provable and demonstrable, whereas Q and oral traditions are not. Paul obviously knew nothing about any real Jesus and was talking about a heavenly Jesus who was revealed via scriptural divination a-la what we see taking place at Qumran. Indeed the DSS shows us exactly how "Jesus" (Joshua) was "discovered". The scriptural interpretations we see in the DSS are exactly how Paul describes the "revelation" of Jesus via "prophets".
So we have a Paul telling us that Jesus was made known by scriptural diviners (prophets) and that Jesus was revealed to him ecstatically or via dreams, and Paul's letters are then used as the basis for creating an allegory about Jesus after the destruction of the temple, to show that the Jews were destroyed by the Romans because they didn't listen to Paul's message about reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles.
And regardless, it is proven beyond any doubt that NOTHING described in the Gospels ever happened or is based in any way on the life of a real Jesus person. Even if you try to argue that Paul was talking "some Jesus person", Paul tells us nothing ABOUT that Jesus person other than that he was crucified. The Jesus worshiped by Christians is the Jesus of the Gospels, not the Jesus of Paul. The Jesus of the Gospels is a fictional literary invention full stop.
And if you want to argue that "Paul's Jesus" was real, then you have to explain why Paul tells us nothing meaningful about him, relays none of his teachings, and why Paul and others think that a real person died and rose from the grave - when clearly that wouldn't have actually happened.
I largely agree with the OP, but things can be quite a bit more concrete than that.
I think what's clear that so-called "mainstream" scholars have really dug themselves into a hole. The approach taken by myself, and others such as Tom Dykstra and David Oliver Smith, is to show the real complexity of how the Gospels were written. And much of this complexity has been denied by mainstream scholars for years and many such mainstreamers have gone to great lengths to try to conjure up Gospel authors as sort of simple laymen engaged in their first ever writing attempts, or humble field journalists jotting down oral accounts, etc. But any real study of the texts shows this is impossible.
The case I make in Deciphering the Gospels is that it is provable that the narrative of Mark was entirely invented by a single individual AFTER the First Jewish-Roman War. I go through all of the evidence that supports such as case. Well, not all, as in fact now I see that my case could have been made 10 times stronger, though I believe I put forward the strongest case to date when I published in 2018. But actually much more could have been said about the writing techniques used in Mark.
But clearly, the author of Mark was a sophisticated writer using a lot of complex symbolism and techniques that we also see in the DSS material. The writer of Mark wasn't some simpleton jotting down things he was being told, he was a master story teller writing a very complex narrative using chiastic structures, multiple layers of symbolism, parables like those found only at Qumran, hundreds of deep sculptural references, numerology and other advanced methods of Hellenistic prophetic writing. The whole plot is actually maddeningly complex with multiple layers of hidden foreshadowing and secretly coded hints about the future and the nature of Jesus. This is, very clearly, a literary masterpiece crafted by a literary genius, not some field report of urban legends.
But again what I come back to in all of my analysis is that none of it makes any sense from a pre-war perspective. Every aspect of the story, every scene, is clearly rooted in POST-WAR symbolism. The story cannot have any basis is any pre-war account of a real person.
But that's just the Gospel of Mark though, what about everything else? Well clearly once you realize that every scene in Mark is a post-war invention then obviously you have to acknowledge that every single account of the life of Jesus derives from this single story. As I show in DtG, every account, including every non-canonical account, of Jesus can be tied back to the Gospel of Mark. There is no account of Jesus the man that is independent of Mark. It all started with that one story and just evolved from there. And there was never any knowledge of Jesus apart from the Gospels and 2nd century scholars make very clear.
The case I make then is that it would only be the case that every account of Jesus the person would be derived from an entirely fictional post-war account if there was no real Jesus person to begin with. This is especially true when we get to Luke because clearly "Luke" was trying to find other sources, but the best Luke could do was make use of Mark, Matthew and Paul. Those are Luke's sources. Everything in Luke can be accounted for from those three sources, as David Oliver Smith and Mark Goodacre's work shows. So we have a researcher in Luke who was trying to find everything he could and all he could come up with is Mark, Matthew and Paul.
But what about Paul and other epistles? As I show, and other like Dyksra have shown, the Gospel of Mark is based on the letters of Paul. The continuity between Paul's letters and the Gospels is because the Gospels are derived from Paul's letters. Again, its all literary borrowing. But didn't Paul clarify that Jesus was a person? Well this is ironic because 20th century biblical scholarship was all about dismissing Paul as someone who clearly didn't know about Jesus and stating that the Gospels were all based on "pre-Pauline" sources. We had the development of the "oral traditions" explanation and Q. Paul was pushed out of the way, and it became all about how scholars could divine the "original sources" underlying the Gospels. Clearly that whole effort was a massive farce.
The real original sources underlying the Gospels are the letters of Paul and the LXX + the imagination of the writers. This is provable and demonstrable, whereas Q and oral traditions are not. Paul obviously knew nothing about any real Jesus and was talking about a heavenly Jesus who was revealed via scriptural divination a-la what we see taking place at Qumran. Indeed the DSS shows us exactly how "Jesus" (Joshua) was "discovered". The scriptural interpretations we see in the DSS are exactly how Paul describes the "revelation" of Jesus via "prophets".
So we have a Paul telling us that Jesus was made known by scriptural diviners (prophets) and that Jesus was revealed to him ecstatically or via dreams, and Paul's letters are then used as the basis for creating an allegory about Jesus after the destruction of the temple, to show that the Jews were destroyed by the Romans because they didn't listen to Paul's message about reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles.
And regardless, it is proven beyond any doubt that NOTHING described in the Gospels ever happened or is based in any way on the life of a real Jesus person. Even if you try to argue that Paul was talking "some Jesus person", Paul tells us nothing ABOUT that Jesus person other than that he was crucified. The Jesus worshiped by Christians is the Jesus of the Gospels, not the Jesus of Paul. The Jesus of the Gospels is a fictional literary invention full stop.
And if you want to argue that "Paul's Jesus" was real, then you have to explain why Paul tells us nothing meaningful about him, relays none of his teachings, and why Paul and others think that a real person died and rose from the grave - when clearly that wouldn't have actually happened.
http://www.decipheringthegospels.com/