Jesus Christ, also called Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity and the one that the teachings of most Christian denominations, in addition to Messianic Jews, consider to be the Son of God. Christianity and Messianic Judaism regard Jesus as the awaited Messiah in the Old Testament and refer to him as Jesus Christ, a name also used outside the Christian context.
Virtually all contemporary scholars agree that Jesus actually existed, although there is no consensus on the historical reliability of the gospels and how close the biblical Jesus is to the historical Jesus. Most scholars agree that Jesus was a Jewish preacher from Galilee, was baptized by John the Baptist, and crucified on the orders of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.