Jesus of Nazareth was, in terms of his influence, the most important human being in history. He is also the most written about and discussed. The earliest surviving document dealing with him, St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, was circulated (that is, copied and published) in the fifties of the first century A.D., about twenty years after his death. By then, biographies of him written in the Aramaic tongue he normally spoke were circulating, but these have since disappeared. Within half a century of his death, however, four biographies, written in Greek, had been published, and all have come down to us. By the end of the century, forty-five authentic documents about him had appeared, and these have also survived. Since then, first documents, then entire books about him have been published in growing quantity, and in all languages. Today, there are over one hundred thousand printed biographies of Jesus in English alone, and many more monographs. More than one hundred were issued in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
- From Jesus: A Biography from a Believer by Paul Johnson
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