There may not have been an historical Jesus at all; but there was a tradition around the early first century that he existed. Projects like the Jesus Forum (which used the grading system of probability
red, pink, gray, black that Crossan refers to below), or Crossan's
The Historical Jesus, have failed to distinguish sayings of Jesus and sayings merely attributed to Jesus beyond 'more likely in my opinion' to 'less likely in my opinion'.
Crossan, indeed, closes his book with these words ─
This book, then, is a scholarly reconstruction of the historical Jesus. And if one were to accept its formal methods and even their material investments, one could surely offer divergent interpretative conclusions about the reconstructable historical Jesus. But one cannot dismiss it or the search for the historical Jesus as mere reconstruction, as if reconstruction invalidated somehow the entire project. Because there is only reconstruction. For a believing Christian both the life of the Word of God and the text of the Word of God are alike a graded process of historical reconstruction, be it red, pink, gray, black or A, B, C, D. If you cannot believe in something produced by reconstruction, you may have nothing left to believe in.