A follow up question, what about other legendary tales? The miracles of Moses? Noah's arc? Some of these, especially Noah's arc, recur throughout history- why? Where do they come from?
First of all I would like to state for full disclosure that I am a Christian but I have done my best to approach this from a purely historical standpoint. Apologies in advance if at any point I slip away from that as I know this is not the place for it.
In terms of the historical figure of Jesus there are a host of writings that confirm the existence of religious teacher in the Roman province that is now Israel/Palestine. These are mostly Roman since they have by far the richest surviving written record from the period.
http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/
This page, while admittedly prone to color commentary, actually gives a pretty good account of most of the ancient records that refer to Jesus in addition to the Gospels themselves. It is also not just to entirely dismiss the Gospels as a historical record as, though they have certainly been subject to many different translations and interpretations over the centuries the sequence of events they discuss can be traced to ancient manuscripts that until recently had had their earliest copies dated to the 2nd century CE. I say recently as there was news earlier this year that a fragment of the Gospel of Mark was found in a mummy mask that they estimate is from the mid-late 1st century CE.
http://www.livescience.com/49489-oldest-known-gospel-mummy-mask.html
Given this there is a tremendous amount of evidence for Jesus as a historical figure both from within Christian texts and outside them.
Given how long ago He lived Jesus is probably one of the most well documented ancient historical figures ever to exist.
As for the stories of the miracles that are attributed to Him, well, He was a religious figure and would probably be considered by Atheists to be the equivalent of a faith healer who was able to use the placebo effect to enable seemingly miraculous recoveries. Just a few of these such incidents could very easily be blown up in the re-telling and attributed to miraculous power by His followers who clearly had a zealous belief in Him given their willingness to be, in almost every case, tortured to death rather than renounce their belief.
Regarding Moses and Noah, unfortunately the only real records we have of them are those from Jewish religious writings and so it is harder to build a secular case for the stories surrounding them.
EDIT: Formatting