Jesus Christ
From Encyclopædia
Jesus, or Jeshua ben
Joseph, as he was known to his contemporaries, was a Jew who appeared as a prophet, a teacher, and a sage in
Palestine about AD 30. His followers believed him to be the
messiah of Israel, the one in whom God had acted definitively for the
salvation of his people (hence, the title CHRIST, a Greek rendition of the Hebrew Meshiah, meaning "anointed one"). This belief took distinctive form when, after the execution of Jesus by the Romans (acting on the recommendation of the Jewish authorities), he reportedly presented himself alive to some of his followers. The RESURRECTION of Jesus became a fundamental tenet of the religion that would soon be called
Christianity. According to Christian belief, Jesus was God made man (he was called both "Son of God" and "Son of Man" and identified as the second person of the
Trinity); his life and his death by crucifixion are understood to have restored the relationship between God and humankind--which had been broken by the latter's sinfulness (see ATONEMENT; ORIGINAL SIN); and his resurrection (the event celebrated by EASTER) affirms God's total sovereignty over his creation and offers humankind the hope of
salvation.These core beliefs about Jesus are summed up in the words of the Nicene Creed (see CREED): "I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of his Father before all
worlds, God of God,
light of
light, Very God of very God, Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the Father, By whom all things were made: Who for us men, and for our
salvation came
Down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin
Mary, And was made man, And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, And Ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right
hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead: Whose kingdom shall have no end."THE HISTORICAL JESUSThe Christ-myth school of the early 20th century held that Jesus never lived but was invented as a peg on which to hang the myth of a dying and rising God. Yet the
evidence for the historical existence of Jesus is good.Non-Christian SourcesAmong Roman historians, TACITUS (Annals 15.44) records that the Christian movement began with Jesus, who was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate.
Suetonius (Claudius 25.4) refers to the expulsion of the
Jews from Rome because of a riot instigated by one "Chrestus" in AD c.48, and this is usually taken to be a confused reference to the Christians and their founder.
Pliny the Younger (
epistles 10.96), writing to
emperor Trajan, says that the early Christians sang a hymn to Christ as God. Most of the Jewish
evidence is late and anti-Christian
propaganda, but an early reference in the Babylonian
Talmud says that Jeshu ha-Nocri was a false prophet who was hanged on the eve of the
Passover for sorcery and false
teaching. The
evidence from the historian JOSEPHUS is problematical. He recounts (Antiquities 20.9.1) the martyrdom of JAMES, "the brother of Jesus called the Christ," in AD 62. Another passage in the Antiquities (18.3.3) gives an extended account of Jesus and his career, but some features of it are clearly Christian
interpolations. Whether this passage has an authentic
nucleus is debated.Thus the Roman sources show a vague awareness that Jesus was a historical figure as well as the object of a cult; the reliable Jewish sources tell us that he was a Jewish teacher who was put to death for sorcery and false prophecy and that he had a brother named James. The Jewish
evidence is especially valuable because of the hostility between
Jews and Christians at the time: it would have been easy for the Jewish side to question the existence of Jesus, but this they never did.The GospelsThe Gospels According to MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE, and JOHN, the first four books of the New Testament of the
Bible, are the principal sources for the life of Jesus. These works are primarily testimonies to the faith of the early Christian community, however, and have to be used critically as
evidence for the historical Jesus. The methods include source, form, and redaction criticism. Source criticism studies the literary relationships between the Gospels, and the generally accepted view is that Mark was written prior to and was used by Matthew and Luke, and that Matthew and Luke also had another source in common, unknown to Mark, which consisted mostly of sayings of Jesus. Some would add two other primary sources, the material peculiar to Matthew and that peculiar to Luke. There is a growing consensus that the fourth Gospel, despite a heavy overlay of Johannine
theology in the arrangement of the episodes and in the discourses, also enshrines useful historical information and authentic sayings of Jesus. Form criticism investigates the history of the oral traditions behind the written Gospels and their sources, whereas redaction criticism isolates and studies the
theology of the editorial work of the evangelists.These methods provide criteria to sift through the redaction and tradition and reconstruct the message and the mission of the historical Jesus. The criteria of authenticity are dissimilarity both to contemporary
Judaism and to the
teachings of the post-Easter church; coherence; multiple attestation; and linguistic and environmental factors. The criterion of dissimilarity establishes a primary
nucleus of material unique to Jesus. The criterion of coherence adds other materials consistent with this
nucleus. Multiple attestation--material attested by more than one primary source or in more than one of the forms of oral tradition established by form criticism--provides
evidence for the primitivity of the Jesus tradition. Palestinian cultural background and Aramaic
speech forms provide an additional test.The Life of JesusApplication of the critical methods described above reveals that the gospel tradition apparently started originally with Jesus'
baptism by JOHN THE BAPTIST (Matt. 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22; John 1:29-34). The stories concerning the birth of Jesus were probably later additions. These stories--the annunciations to
Mary and
Joseph, their journey to Bethleh?m for the Roman census, and Jesus' birth there (Luke 2:1-7); the visits of the shepherds (Luke 2:8-20) and the three
magi from the East (Matt. 2:1-12); and the flight of the family to
Egypt to escape the massacre of young boys that had been ordered by King Herod (Matt. 2:13-23)--may be characterized conveniently, if loosely, as "Christological
midrash," expressions of Christological faith cast into narrative form. If there are any factual elements in them, these will be found among the items on which Matthew and Luke agree: the names of
Mary,
Joseph, and Jesus; the dating of Jesus' birth toward the end of the reign of Herod the Great (d. 4 BC); and, less certainly, the Bethlehem location of the birth. Some would add the conception of Jesus between the first and second
stages of the
marriage rites between
Mary and
Joseph; Christians interpreted this in terms of a conception through the Holy Spirit (see
virgin birth).Following his
baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus embarked on a ministry of possibly three years duration, primarily in Galilee (he had grown up in the Galilean town of
Nazareth). The Gospels record his choosing of 12 disciples (see
APOSTLE), and he preached both to them and to the population at large, often attracting great crowds (as when he delivered the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. 4:25-7:29; cf. Luke 6:17-49). He proclaimed the kingdom of God--the inbreaking of God's final saving act through his own word and work (Mark 1:14; Matt. 12:28). He confronted his contemporaries with the challenge of this inbreaking reign of God in his
parables of the kingdom (Mark 4). He laid
Down God's radical demand of obedience (Matt. 5:21-48).In
prayer Jesus addressed God uniquely as "Abba" (the intimate address of the child to his earthly father in the family), not "my" or "our" Father as in
Judaism, and he invited his disciples in the LORD'S
prayer to share the privilege of addressing God thus (Luke 11:2). He ate with the outcasts, such as tax collectors and prostitutes, and interpreted his conduct as the activity of God, seeking and saving the lost (as in the
parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son, Luke 15). He performed exorcisms and healings as signs of the inbreaking of God's final reign, in triumph over the powers of evil (Matt. 11:4-6; 12:28).Finally, Jesus went up to Jerusalem at the time of the
Passover to deliver his challenge of imminent judgment and
salvation at the heart and center of his people's life. One of the actions attributed to him there was the expulsion of the
money-changers from the
temple (Matt. 21:12-17; Mark 11:15-19; Luke 19:45-46). Earlier, Jesus had incurred the hostility of the
Pharisees, who attacked him for breaking the Law and whom he denounced for their formalistic precepts and self-righteousness (Matt. 23:13-36; Luke 18:9-14). In Jerusalem his opponents were the other principal Jewish religious party, the
Sadducees, who included the priestly authorities of the
temple. Aided by one of the disciples, JUDAS ISCARIOT, the authorities arrested Jesus in the Garden of
Gethsemane. He was examined by the SANHEDRIN and handed over to the Roman
governor, Pontius PILATE, who sentenced him to crucifixion. At a time of considerable political unrest in
Palestine and high messianic expectations among certain Jewish groups (for example, the revolutionary ZEALOTS), Jesus and his following undoubtedly appeared to represent some political threat.
