Exactly my point, John. He would have been, as you say, "unimportant outside of his immediate circle of friends & enemies".

That is equally true of most spiritual leaders of a relatively similar type today, and there are plently of them. I could name a few, but I very much doubt you will have heard of them, and you won't hear about them on the 6 O'Clock News either. They are mostly known only to their immediate circle of friends and enemies.    Nonetheless, they are VERY important to their immediate circle of followers...and detractors.

So the one thing you say that I would disagree with is your assertion that Jesuse was "probably not terribly important even to that immediate circle". I think it would have been quite to the contrary.

But the Romans would not have given a toot about it at the time.