The historical Jesus.

Over the past two-and-a-half centuries, a field of study has arisen that is termed the search for the historical Jesus. It has produced thousands of books attempting to discover more about this Jesus of Nazareth. Some of these writers accepted the Scriptures as inspired, infallible, and inerrant and proceeded from there. Others did not, and saw no reason to treat the Bible any differently than any other book. So they approached the scriptural accounts critically, preferring instead to augment or discredit them using other historical sources, human reasoning, and naturalistic speculation.

During the past 15 to 20 years many more historical-Jesus books have been written speculating upon and trying to find an alternative Jesus—i.e., the “real,” “true,” “other,” “third” or “simply” Jesus, etc. Hence, Jesus remains a “hot topic.” Some of the questions continuing to be asked are: Who really was this Jesus? What did He really say and do? How did He view Himself and his mission? Why was He crucified? Was He really resurrected from the dead? But whatever the various answers might be from different authors, one thing is sure. He’s not like that anymore!

Sources:

1 The Greater Jesus by John Noe

2 The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey

3 The Quest of the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer