What are some modern day historical views on Jesus Christ?

Answer 1

Ian Wilson (Jesus: The Evidence) says that it can come as quite a shock to discover that no-one can even be sure who wrote the gospels. Despite the versions printed in our Bibles long having borne the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, these names are mere attributions, and even as such are rather less reliable than attributions given to unsigned works of art. Despite talking about his "pro-Christian bias," Wislon effectively demolishes the idea that there is any real evidence of the mission of Jesus.

Rudolf Bultmann of Germany's Marburg University, acknowledged by many as the twentieth century's most influential theological thinker, condemned as useless further attempts to try to reconstruct the Jesus of history:

I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary.

Burton L. Mack (Who Wrote the New Testament: The Making of the Christian Myth) talks of a Jesus movement that he believes to have begun somewhere in northern Syria, probably in the city of Antioch, and spread through Asia Minor into Greece. He, along with some other scholars, believes that there never was a Jesus of Nazareth.