Christianity is a religion rooted in history - it depends on the reality that Jesus was born, died, resurrected, ascended - and necessarily in some place and time.
Although what Jesus does not, it seems to me, hinge upon him being born in any particular place or time - these things must have-happened, and during human history.
Therefore; Christianity cannot be - as apparently Buddhism is (at least, to Western scholars) - almost indifferent to whether any particular Buddha ever existed at all any actual point of history. Or whether that Buddha is instead 'merely' a vehicle for education, a story pointing at truth, the symbolic exemplification of a particular teaching.
Yet, although Jesus must be historical; on the other hand he should not be primarily historical.
It is a snare when Christians become so fixed upon the historical aspects of Christianity; that they become slaves to the academic historical disciplines - comparative study of ancient languages, the study of ancient texts, archaeology etc.
This is not a solid basis for faith - as evidenced by the fact that Christian churches have declined and collapsed over the past couple of centuries, while Christian scholarship has waxed, and accumulated vast amounts of contextual evidence and interpretative sophistication.
Christianity (it seems to me) needs to be rooted in personal interaction between the individual and Jesus Christ.
This means that a Christianity that depends on academic historical knowledge is at second-hand - just as a Christianity rooted in obedience to a church is secondhand, or a Christianity rooted in adherence to tradition is secondhand...
This despite the potentially great value of such secondary supports and knowledge-bases. The root needs to be personal.
What we seem to end-up-with is the 'paradox' that Christianity cannot be derived from any kind of "history", but neither can Christianity be something essentially symbolic - that is, subjectively-created, like a poem.
But paradox indicates that we have asked the wrong question, or made false assumptions. In this case we have assumed a too-restricted understanding of knowledge sources, and of history.
We have conflated the secondary social and the primary personal...
Conflated the business of attaining and enforcing scholarly consensus by agreeing upon a limited and simplified models and approved methods, by professional training and accreditation etc (all of which social institutions and mechanisms can-be, and have-been, corrupted to anti-Christian aims)...
And we are mixing-this-up with the qualitatively different matter of achieving a strong, adequately true and accurate, and sufficiently-stable, personal faith that we may live-by.
In other words; the paradox of history in Christianity points us at the need to consider an altogether other form of knowing the past - a different way of getting historical knowledge that is neither symbolic nor academic.
It is a way of knowing that is 'objective' in the sense that it regards the history of Jesus as real, happening in a real place and time; and also 'subjective' in the sense that this knowledge is derived from personal - and spiritual - ways of knowing.
In sum: I think we each need to seek whatever historical knowledge is necessary, primarily by personal endeavor and from the guidance of the Holy Ghost - by direct-knowing, mind-to-mind.
Often by formulating our own ideas (using whatever sources we regard as authoritative, and we can discover and grasp sufficiently) - and seeking for intuitive divine endorsement of those ideas.
This is, of course, a trial-and-error process - since it depends on our own capacities and is affected by our own motivations. Nonetheless; if we are genuinely seeking the truth, we will (by living personal interaction with the Holy Ghost, by the divine within each of us) be guided through our own errors; will zig-zag to sufficient truth for our purposes.
