There were, of course, famous gods who never bothered to come down to earth. Both the Greeks and the Romans had a list of sky gods as long as your arm.
Rulers who decided they were gods were not in the sky until after they died. While on earth, however, one could argue they were not exactly common folk who roamed around the masses on market day. It is my impression they were quite aloof from the public and lived in splendor. In that sense they were more sky god than ordinary common folk gods.
The antidote to the aloof sky god was to be Jesus. Story tellers made sure he was not the son of a banker, trader or politician. He was a carpenter. But his path to being a popular god was not by working with his hands.
I've not seen anyone take on Bart Ehrman's evidence that Jesus was not regarded as an important god until the story spread that he was dead and then came back alive. Ehrman saw Jesus as a local god among many in part of the small region where he operated.
Jesus' cult following formed after the to back-to-life story. The big expansion came 300 years later with a Roman dictator. Thus, Jesus was important only as an invisible sky god. In this way he is similar to all the other Greek and Roman sky gods.
There is a reason a god needs to be invisible and only in the sky to be popular. It is because a mortal human would not measure up to the many different ideals people carry in their heads. When each person can make up what the god is or what the god approves it will be a popular god.
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