From the author's Preliminary Considerations: I have begun this discussion of the earliest historical sources for the life of Jesus with the 'Apostles' Creed' and the Fourth Gospel rather than with the documents that modern criticism regards as giving us materials for history, because I venture to think that the first thing needed to enable the modern investigator to judge the surviving documents aright is the attempt to look at them rather from the point of view of the early Christians than from that of our own aims and desires.
