Defining Jesus: The Earthly, the Biblical, the Historical, and the Real Jesus, and How Not to Confuse Them

Defining Jesus is about the semantic content of the name Jesus. To what does the name refer, especially when modifying adjectives are attached, such as "the historical Jesus," "the Jesus of history," "the earthly Jesus," "the biblical Jesus," "the real Jesus"? Problems arise when commercial writers and scholars, without the necessary caveat, equate their hypothetical portrait of "the historical Jesus" with "the real Jesus"--none other than the Jesus of the first century "as he actually was....