Iirc the current consensus among critical/secular Bible scholars is that he was probably a real guy, but the stories about him in the Bible are mostly fictional (eg, he was probably born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem, did not have any supernatural abilities, and did not resurrect after being executed). Pretty sure Josephus, a historian who wrote a few decades after the historical Jesus would have died mentioned him, and iirc there’s at least one or two other mentions of him in non-Christian sources (or non Christian adjacent, Christian orthodoxy hadn’t really formed yet) from the first century CE.
Imo the most likely scenario is that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic Jewish preacher who publicly opposed the Roman state and was executed for it, and most of what we consider modern Christianity was invented by Paul and his clique.
Iirc the current consensus among critical/secular Bible scholars is that he was probably a real guy, but the stories about him in the Bible are mostly fictional (eg, he was probably born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem, did not have any supernatural abilities, and did not resurrect after being executed). Pretty sure Josephus, a historian who wrote a few decades after the historical Jesus would have died mentioned him, and iirc there’s at least one or two other mentions of him in non-Christian sources (or non Christian adjacent, Christian orthodoxy hadn’t really formed yet) from the first century CE.
Imo the most likely scenario is that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic Jewish preacher who publicly opposed the Roman state and was executed for it, and most of what we consider modern Christianity was invented by Paul and his clique.