@rosborne979,
It would depend upon what you mean by "biblical scholars." There are a great many "biblical scholars" whose work is to history what "intelligent design" is to science. They start from the proposition that Jesus did exist, and they work from there to bend the data to fit the assumption.
There are two main documentary sources of contention, and reputable scholars consider them to be interpolations (new text inserted into existing text). One is in
The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus, which alleges that Nero blamed the fire at Rome on the christians and persecuted them for it. There are several problems for it, such as that even christians did not call themselves christians at that time, and that Seutonius, who was born a few years later, doesn't mention it. But there are two major objections. One is that, as is the case with all interpolations, if you remove the suspect text, the passage still scans, and it reads reasonably. But the real clincher is that the interpolation was not found until the 15th century in a copy of Tacitus (there are not complete copies of that book by Tacitus) in the Vatican library. Even the Vatican has declared that it is an interpolation, and them boys are no friends of those who claim there was no Jesus. There is no other copy of Tacitus which contains that passage, and which is as old as or older than the Vatican copy.
The other alleged source for non-christian evidence is a passage in one of the histories of Flavius Josephus. Once again, there are several objections of an inferential nature (like the objection that even christians didn't call themselves christians either when the fire took place at Rome, or when Tacitus wrote his book), one of the strongest being the way all the Essenes, and according to scripture, Jesus himself constantly bad-mouthed the Pharisees. Well, Flavius Josephus was a Jew,
and he was a Pharisee. It's rather a bit much to think that a Pharisee would go out of his way to tout someone who constantly condemned the Pharisees. Once again, if you remove the interpolation, the text scans properly, and it makes sense even though you've removed that portion of the text.
You have the same problem with the text of Josephus that you do with the account of fire in Tacitus--no one in the lifetime of Josephus called themselves christians, and no one else called them christians, either. Origen of Alexandria, who lived from the late 2nd to the mid-3rd century, and who wrote more than 250,00 words of textual and scripture commentary and criticism, and who frequently mentions Josephus as a source for Jewish history, never metions that passage. In fact, it doesn't show up until the fourth century, and the soruce is Eusebius, called "the father of church history." Eusebius, for obvious reasons, had a stake in making the claim.
Louis Feldman, an American expert in Hellenistic history and culture (i.e., the cutlure and history of the middle east after Alexander and before Islam), who holds a chair at Yeshiva University, did a review of modern scholars' views of the Josephus passage. Referring to 87 articles and textual passages, he stated that the overwhelming majority of scholars question the authenticity of the passage in whole or in part.
Seutonius only refers to the Jews, and it's a piece of christian gymnastics to make that out to be about the Christians. More importantly, Seutonius is the source for the report that Nero didn't blame anyone (major fires in Rome were common, and had occured a few years before and occured again and again after the particular fire to which Tacitus refers), and that the only measures Nero took were for the relief of the population of the city.
There is correspondence between Pliny and the emperor Trajan about christians who refuse to pay lip service to the civic religion. All people in the empire were required, occasionally, to offer sacrifice at the local temple to the Roman civic religion. As long as you did that, you were free to espouse and practice any other religion. The burden wasn't onerous, either--from time to time, the local governor would be required to report on compliance (that's why Pliny was writing to Trajan), and people would hurry on down to the temple, buy a chicken and give it to the priests to sacrifice (and literally a chicken--from the earliest days, the Romans performed diviniation by examining the entrails of birds). The Jews were odious to their fellow citizens because they would steadfastly refuse to do this, and soon, the christians attracted the same resentment. Most of the early accounts of persecution of christians were actually cases of the locals going batshit on these clowns who, in the view of the local population, might bring the wrath of the empire down on their collective heads.
Pliny wrote to the emperor to ask how he should handle it, and Trajan basically articulated a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. So long as there were no civil strife, and so long as the locals met the occasional and light obligations of the civic religion, Trajan didn't see any resason for Pliny to hunt down Jews and christians, nor anyone else, or that matter.
Among reputable scholars, who are prepared to defend their work among other scholars, the majority do not find credible evidence of contemporary or even near contemporary corroboration. Two obvious problems arise--the first is that mentioning christians (nevermind that they didn't even call themselves christians then) is not evidence that your boy Jesus ever existed--just that people might have thought he did (see the objection to the use of the term christian at the time of Nero). The real problem, though, is that none of the gospels had been written at that time, and no church scholar until Eusebius at the beginning of the fourth century even mention these alleged sources.
Personally, i don't have a problem with the proposition that Jesus might have existed. I have real objections, though, to the bullshit which is contained within the so-called gospels, and the major problem that the three synoptic gospels don't agree with the gospel of John, the only evangelist who is claimed to have known Jesus. The reason i don't have a problem with the issue of whether or not the boy ever actually existed is that people believe he did, and that's more important than whether or not he actually did.