page_title: Historicity of Jesus
section_title: Portraits of the historical Jesus
hierarchical_section_title: Historicity of Jesus / Historical Jesus / Portraits of the historical Jesus
caption_attribution_description: Spanish&#58; Bautismo de Cristolabel QS:Les,"Bautismo de Cristo"
context_page_description: The historicity of Jesus relates to whether Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure. Virtually all scholars who have investigated the history of the Christian movement find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain, and standard historical criteria have aided in reconstructing his life. Scholars differ on the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the details of his life that have been described in the gospels, but virtually all scholars support the historicity of Jesus and reject the Christ myth theory that Jesus never existed.
  The question of the historicity of Jesus is part of the study of the historical Jesus as undertaken in the quest for the historical Jesus and the scholarly reconstructions of the life of Jesus, based primarily on critical analysis of the gospel texts and applying the standard criteria of critical-historical investigation, and methodologies for analyzing the reliability of primary sources and other historical evidence.
context_section_description: The portraits of Jesus constructed in the quests have often differed from each other, and from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts. There are overlapping attributes among the portraits, and while pairs of scholars may agree on some attributes, those same scholars may differ on other attributes, and there is no single portrait of the historical Jesus that satisfies most scholars. The mainstream profiles in the third quest may be grouped together based on their primary theme as apocalyptic prophet; charismatic healer; Cynic philosopher; Jewish Messiah; and prophet of social change; but there is little scholarly agreement on a single portrait, or the methods needed to construct it. There are, however, overlapping attributes among the portraits, and scholars who differ on some attributes may agree on others.
caption: The criterion of embarrassment has been used to argue for the historicity of the baptism of Jesus, shown here in The Baptism of Christ by Juan Fernández Navarrete.
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