In case this helps (but cast it aside if you think otherwise) - it's very easy to see how the legend of Jesus could have arisen from entirely mythical beliefs.
In his letters Paul makes clear that he only came to believe in Jesus as the promised messiah because of a religious vision. That's a fact from his own letters.
Before that vision he says himself that he been vehement in preaching the traditional view of Jewish messiah belief, which was that God would send a princely/royal leader who would lead the Jewish people to a great military victory over all those who they had since 1000BC regarded as their bitter enemies and oppressors from other lands.
But as a direct result of that vision, Paul instantly changed his traditionalist messiah belief (promised since at least 500BC in the Old Testament) to belief in an apocalyptic messenger sent by God to gather the faithful in warning of God's now imminent day of the apocalypse.
However, that apocalyptic messiah belief was in fact the same belief found in the the Dead Sea Scrolls when they were discovered in that exact same region between 1946 to 1956. Those Scrolls are most often dated to have been written as an ongoing enterprise from about 200BC through to about 100AD.
If you read the book by Stephen Hodge (The Dead Sea Scrolls), he explains that by at least 100BC (if not earlier) preaching in that region had become very diverse, with people now preaching various versions of an apocalyptically religious messiah, as opposed to the earlier traditional Jewish belief in a princely leader taking the Jewish people to a great military victory.
IOW – Paul came to believe, from his vision, that people like the Essenes (who wrote the Scrolls) had been right in their interpretation of the promised messiah … Paul then began preaching exactly that same sort of apocalyptic view of a religious messiah.
So that, in brief, is a fairly clear explanation of how and why Paul was actually preaching about a spiritual Christ, and not a real living person.
And his letters say exactly the same for all the other people who he says were “in Christ before me” … when he describes all those people as “first Cephas, then the twelve, then more that 500 people at once, then all the apostles, and then James, and then last of all me “ … for all of those people, he only ever says that they too knew Christ from religious visions. And notice that group also includes the same James who was supposed to be “the Lords brother”, ie he too was only ever described by Paul as having met the Christ in a vision.
So just to summarise that - as far we actually know from Pauls letters -
(1) After his vision, Paul was preaching the same sort of Messiah as the Essenes and others in the same region. That appears to be a fact.
(2) Paul says that before his vision he persecuted people who were preaching against his earlier traditional Jewish belief of a princely military non-apocalyptic messiah. That also is a fact in the letters.
(3) Paul names all the people in the Church of God at Jerusalem as knowing Jesus only from visions (he never says or suggests anywhere that any of them had met a real living Jesus). That is also a fact in Pauls letters.
(4) In that scenario, Paul and the others inc. James are only known to have believed in Jesus as a spiritual leader of the far distant past who was written about from at least 200BC by the Essenes in that exact same small region. And that again apears to be a fact (if Pauls letters are to be believed, and if the usual interpration of the Dead Sea Scrolls is accepted).
(5) All these people including Paul himself, believed in Jesus from claiming a religious vision. It was a vision which matched what was being preached in that same region by various people at the time, and which was written about extensively in the Dead Sea Scrolls as the central belief since at least 200BC. Again that is apparently a fact (if we accept the standard dating for the Dead Sea Scrolls).
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