Back in the late 60’s when I was a freshman in college I ran across a book that was one of those 
“eye opening” experiences for me. The book, by John Wick Bowman, was titled Which Jesus? It was Bowman’s attempt to provide the reader with what was, at that time, the current state of the research on the so-called Quest of the Historical Jesus. Albert Schweitzer had defined (though not begun) the “Quest” at the beginning of the last century with the publication of his book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906). He was reacting to the publication (by scholars like H. S. Reimarus, Ernst Renan, D. F. Strauss, and Wilhelm Wrede) of what has been called the “Liberal Lives of Christ,” highly imaginative “biographies” of Jesus all of which minimized (or eliminated) his deity and magnified his humanity (as the German title of Schweitzer’s book made clear: von Reimarus zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, “From Reimarus to Wrede: A History of the Life of Jesus Research”). The sticking point in most of these “Liberal Lives” was the fact that the canonical Gospels consistently portray Jesus as a first-century Jewish apocalyptic prophet who heralded the end of the world and the advent of the Kingdom of God in his own life and ministry.
“eye opening” experiences for me. The book, by John Wick Bowman, was titled Which Jesus? It was Bowman’s attempt to provide the reader with what was, at that time, the current state of the research on the so-called Quest of the Historical Jesus. Albert Schweitzer had defined (though not begun) the “Quest” at the beginning of the last century with the publication of his book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906). He was reacting to the publication (by scholars like H. S. Reimarus, Ernst Renan, D. F. Strauss, and Wilhelm Wrede) of what has been called the “Liberal Lives of Christ,” highly imaginative “biographies” of Jesus all of which minimized (or eliminated) his deity and magnified his humanity (as the German title of Schweitzer’s book made clear: von Reimarus zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, “From Reimarus to Wrede: A History of the Life of Jesus Research”). The sticking point in most of these “Liberal Lives” was the fact that the canonical Gospels consistently portray Jesus as a first-century Jewish apocalyptic prophet who heralded the end of the world and the advent of the Kingdom of God in his own life and ministry.