(Mark 15:32)“but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.””
2 possibilities:
1) They believed that the man Jesus was the Christ since they called him "king of Jews" before Pilate. But then Jesus was not the Christ (for the author of the story).
2) they believed that Jesus was not the Christ. But then Jesus had to be the Christ (for the author of the story).
In both the cases we have evidence of Christians (since the scribes allegorize rival Christians, too) who didn't identify Jesus and Christ.
It is not a coincidence that the only place in all the NT where there is no distinction between Jesus and Christ are the pauline epistles. The only way the interpolator had to make historicist these otherwise mythicist epistles was to insert in them the name of Jesus.