Jesus, also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and by various other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader in the Roman province of Judaea. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most branches of Christianity consider Jesus the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah or Christ. Accounts of Jesus's life are contained in the Gospels, especially the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament. Since the Enlightenment, academic research has produced various views on the historical reliability of the Gospels and the extent to which they reflect the historical Jesus, but virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically.