Ask the world's most renowned group of Jesus experts what they think of Christianity's most basic beliefs, and they'll tell you most are myth. Stories of virgin births were common in the Greco-Roman world. The story is meant to be read as an allegory.
Most scholars say no.
He was essentially Jewish and wanted to reform his own faith. Just about the only thing a group of seven internationally-known Jesus historians could agree on at a recent conference was that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and crucified by Pontius Pilate. But it was questions about the rest of Jesus' life that drew an eclectic group of 360 clergy and lay people to Chapel Hill, legal pads in tow, to take notes and learn about the new historical scholarship at a three-day conference sponsored by Duke University. In recent years, Christians have been hungry for new insights into the life of Jesus. Books on the subject have achieved a kind of pop-culture following and have been accompanied by magazine stories and TV documentaries that have been snapped up by individuals and Sunday School classes alike.