some of this elusiveness may be traced back to Jesus himself.
When he talked he often spoke in riddles and parables, and when asked who he was, he replied:'who do you say I am?'.
He laid down few clear rules, left no systematic body of teaching, and founded no school to pass on his wisdom
The mystery is also a function of the sources on which we have to rely. We cannot consult the books Jesus wrote because he wrote no books, and we cannot turn to contemporary accounts of his life and works for there are no such accounts. We have only interpretations, and interpretations of interpretations. Our most important sources of information are already embroiled in the debate about his significance and already take sides. What is more, where Jesus is concerned the parameters of interpretation are particularly broad. It is hard enough to give a reliable account of the life of any individual; biographers make a living out of the fact that there can never be a single, definitive interpretation. But when considering Jesus, the difficulty is multiplied, for the issue is not simply what sort of a man are we dealing with?" but are we dealing with man or God? This chapter will review the answers that were given to this question in the first centuries after Jesus' death, answers that would prove enormously influential for subsequent Christian thought and life.
possible dating of the earliest written sources on which our knowledge of jesus depends