For millennia the figure of Jesus has dominated the religious consciousness of the Western world. But the belief that the historical Jesus is the unique incarnation of God has long been a source of division both within Christendom and beyond, as Christianity comes into contact as never before with the other great religious systems of the world. What if the conviction that Jesus is God's only Son was founded in error? What if there never was a historical Jesus? What if the Gospels have been misre