Who was the historical Jesus according to scholars?

Answer 1

A great number of theologians from all parts of the world have studied what parts of Jesus' life could be documented by outside sources or could be considered 'plausible' in the light of that documentation. The outcome was fairly sobering. According to them, he in all probability did exist and he probably was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier and the Hebrew girl Miryam (Maria). Many of the stories about his early life - including his birth in Bethlehem - were very probably made up, especially by Matthew who was quite open in adding to many of his stories that he wrote them 'to make come true the prophesies about the Messiah as written in the Old Testament'. There is for instance not a shred of historical evidence of a census at the time of all Jews to be taken in their villages of origin (which supposedly made Maria go to Bethlehem), nor of Herod's mass murder of all first-born male children.

Even his later travelling around, followed by a group of disciples and performing miracles fits in a long-standing Jewish tradition that existed since well before Jesus' time: until the late 19th century, travelling "miracle rabbis", followed by disciples who spread stories about their man's performed wonders, were a common feature of Jewish communities in eastern Europe.

As to his teachings: there is no outside documentation to confirm what he thought or said; so in theory it is very well possible that among them, the evangelists have partly or even largely made up or interpreted Jesus' sayings to fit their own ideas. On the other hand there are no solid historical grounds to doubt that in essence, Jesus' teachings are authentic.

The final fact supported by outside (in this case, Roman) documentation was that around the time of Jewish Easter in the year that Jesus would have been in his early thirties, a lot of rioting took place in Jerusalem and that a number of 'ringleaders', Jesus among them, were picked up and excecuted.