At one point in time, these questions would never have been asked. The historicity of Jesus was taken for granted as was the reliability of the accounts of his life. Thanks largely to the rise of form criticism and theologians such as Rudolph Bultmann, the Gospels came to be doubted. Today, in our post-modern culture in which all historical information is considered suspect, we are faced with having to defend the Bible and the fact that Jesus did indeed walk this earth. This task is made easier by scholars such as Richard Bauckham who has delved into the issue of the dependability of the Gospels in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
as well as his 
