Historical Jesus research in perspective. The quest for the historical Jesus has been a vitally central topic in New Testament scholarship. The article aims at explaining to non-scholars some of the premisses and methods of this historical critical enterprise. Issues concerning the question about who the 'real' Jesus is, the relevance of the quest seen from the angles of both the church and the university, the nature of historical inquiry and criteria applied in historical Jesus research, and the resurrection and the virginal conception are discussed. The article is written from the assumption that the Jesus who matters is both the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. It is shown that historical investigation reveals trajectories respectively with regard to reports about the resurrection and the virgininal conception of Jesus in the New Testament and with regard to creedal statements.