Historicity of Jesus
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The historicity of Jesus is the scholarly question in Biblical criticism and early Christian history of whether Jesus historically existed or was a purely mythological figure. Scholarly discussions questioning the historical existence of Jesus have remained marginal within academic circles for over two hundred years, and the question of historicity was generally settled in scholarship in the early 20th century. Modern scholars agree that a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth existed in the Herodian Kingdom of Judea and the subsequent Herodian tetrarchy in the 1st century AD, upon whose life and teachings Christianity was later constructed. However scholars distinguish between the 'Christ of faith' as presented in the New Testament and the subsequent Christian theology and a minimal 'Jesus of history', of whom almost nothing can be known.
Beyond this, there is no scholarly consensus concerning most elements of Jesus's life as described in the Bible, and only two key events of the biblical story of Jesus's life are widely accepted as historical, based on the criterion of embarrassment, namely his baptism by John the Baptist and his crucifixion by the order of Pontius Pilate. Furthermore, the historicity of supernatural elements like his purported miracles and resurrection are deemed to be solely a matter of 'faith' or of 'theology', or lack thereof.
The Christ myth theory, developed in 19th century scholarship and gaining popular attraction since the turn of the 20th century, is the view that Jesus is purely a mythological figure and that Christianity began with belief in such a figure. Proponents use a three-fold argument developed in the 19th century: that the New Testament has no historical value with respect to Jesus's existence, that there are no non-Christian references to Jesus from the first century, and that Christianity had pagan or mythical roots. The idea that Jesus was a purely mythical figure has a fringe status in scholarly circles and has no support in critical studies, with most such theories going without recognition or serious engagement.
Academic efforts in biblical studies to determine facts of Jesus's life are part of the "quest for the historical Jesus", and several criteria of authenticity are used in evaluating the authenticity of elements of the Gospel-story. The criterion of multiple attestation is used to argue that attestation by multiple independent sources confirms his existence. There are at least fourteen independent sources for the historicity of Jesus from multiple authors within a century of the crucifixion of Jesus such as the letters of Paul (contemporary of Jesus who personally knew eyewitnesses), the gospels, and non-Christian sources such as Josephus (Jewish historian and commander in Galilee) and Tacitus (Roman historian and Senator).