Historians have noted that around any great person there are always legends that spring up about them, eventually making it difficult for us to discern fact from fiction. This is the principle at work in the distinction between what is termed ‘the Christ of history’ and ‘the Christ of faith.’ The questions that a study of the ‘historical Jesus’ seeks to answer are whether or not the Christ of history (the living, God-Man, Jesus) and the Christ of faith (what the Bible tells us to believe about Jesus) are the same, and whether or not it matters. This lesson will seek merely to introduce the study of the historical Jesus and to argue that our salvation is based, not upon empirical history, but upon the true witness to Jesus given to us by the evangelists who wrote our four gospels.