When and where was Jesus Christ born?

Where was Jesus Christ born? It would seem that this man is the most famous historical figure on the whole planet. And certainly not equal to him on the European continent. What questions can there be if all the answers have not just been given for a long time, moreover, they are built into the canon and can not be revised? Where Jesus Christ was born, who he was, how and when he died - all this is known. This is the case for the believing half of the Christian world. The second half, represented by atheists, answers all these questions even easier: Jesus did not exist. After all, this is the simplest logical chain: if there is no God, consequently, there could not be his son. Where was Jesus Christ born? Yes, nowhere! According to the results of social surveys of the last several years, more than ten percent of respondents from Western Europe and America, not related to religion, believe that this character never really existed.

The problem of historical personality

However, everything is somewhat more complicated. Many modern researchers agree that such a person still existed. Of course, for centuries his life has grown into mythological details and fantastic additions. The task of separating the grains from the chaff and set themselves scientists, engaged in research on the historical personality of Christ. Important are the questions about what year Jesus Christ was born, what his real life was like. However, an exact answer to them has not yet been found.

For the first time, the rationalistic criticism of the Bible and doubts about the absolute truthfulness of what is written in it were born in the 17th-18th centuries. The main sources of study were ancient documents that date back to the very beginning of our era and contain any mention of this person. Valuable sources to this day are Josephus Flavius' Jewish Antiquities, Tacitus Annals, the correspondence of Trajan and Pliny the Younger, and others. The Bible itself also contains a number of facts that can indirectly serve as evidence of the real existence of Christ. For example, the indication of some of its shortcomings, such as incontinence, as in the episode with the expulsion of merchants from the temple, or an insufficiently respectful attitude towards parents.

Current historians point out that a completely fictional character would certainly be absolutely idealized, without any flaws. One of the modern researchers of this person - the historian Charles Ginebier - on the question of when and where Jesus Christ was born answered that it really happened somewhere in Galilee in a poor family during the reign of Emperor Augustus. According to him, there is no reason to deny the real existence of Jesus. Relying on the studied picture of the history of the Roman Empire in the noted period, everyday life and the order of its eastern provinces, and also on the critical analysis of the reports about Christ, today's historians reconstruct the life path of an unusual but absolutely real person. Thus, Jesus Christ was born in the Middle East, was an unknown theologian, and turned into one of the most mysterious personalities of world history.