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File:Christ.jpg
The Christ Redeemer Statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.


Jesus Christ is accepted by Christians as the Son of God and the Messiah. Others call him 'Jesus of Nazareth', Christ, or Jesus, The Christ. His name derives from the Hebrew 'יהושע ', meaning 'YHWH is 'salvation', whereas 'Christ' is more accurately a title; it comes from the Hebrew 'משיחא', or 'anointed one', which was translated into Greek as 'Χριστός'.

The historical importance of Jesus is memorialized by the modern calendar, which sets the year one to the traditional year of his birth.


Jesus' Life

In the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Judea) to Mary, who at the time was a virgin, by the Holy Spirit. The Gospel of Luke relates that the angel Gabriel visited Mary in order to announce to her that she had been chosen to bear the Son of God (Luke 1:26–38). An order of Caesar Augustus, that a survey of the Roman Empire should be made caused Mary and Joseph to leave Nazareth and go to the home of Joseph's forebears - to the house of King David. After Jesus' birth, they were forced to use a manger for a crib because the town's inn was full. According to Luke 2:8–20, an angel spread word of Jesus' birth to several shepherds who came to visit the newborn. Matthew also tells of the "Magi", (Zoroastrian priests), who brought many gifts to the infant Jesus (among which were gold, frankincense, and myrrh; this has led to the incorrect assumption that three Magi were present, whereas the actual number is not given) after following a star which they believed was an indication that the Messiah, or King of the Jews, had been born.

Jesus' early home is stated to have been in the town of Nazareth in Galilee, and except for an escape to Egypt in early childhood, to avoid Herod's massacre of the other male infants, all other events in the Gospels take place in ancient Israel. Luke's Finding in the Temple (Luke 2:41–52), where Jesus impressed the priests by discoursing in scripture with them, is the only detailed event between Jesus' infancy and adult life mentioned in any of the canonical Gospels.

The Gospel of Mark begins with the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, which appears to be the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. Jesus came to the River Jordan, where John was preaching and baptizing people in the crowd. After Jesus had been baptized, and had risen up out of the water, Mark states Jesus 'saw the heavens torn apart and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased' (Mark 1:10–11). Luke adds the chronological anchor that John the Baptist had begun preaching in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, approximately in 28 AD/CE (Luke 3:1) and that Jesus was thirty years old when he was baptized (Luke 3:23).

After this baptism, according to Matthew, Jesus was brought into the desert by God where he fasted for forty days nights. During this period, the Satan appeared before him and tried three times to tempted Jesus into demonstrating his supernatural powers as a proof of his divine status; each temptation was refused by Jesus, with a scriptural quote from the Book of Deuteronomy. <to be finished...>

Jesus Christ (Conceptualization)

The Historical Jesus

It may surprise some readers to learn that modern historians generally place the actual date of his birth between 7 and 4 B.C. due to problems reconciling the Roman and Jewish calendars with the Gregorian Calendar which is in use today throughout the civilized world.

Occasionally non-historians deny the existence of Jesus, [1] [2] but few scholars take this seriously. Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote about Jesus in A.D. 115[3], and Josephus, a Jewish historian who did not believe in Jesus' divinity, wrote about him. [4]. Dr. Gary Habermas wrote an extensive analysis of the historicity of the existence of Jesus in his work The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ which discusses many historical sources which mention Jesus.

Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ contains a number of interviews with experts on the historical Jesus and a defense of Jesus's resurrection, and is a good resource on this subject.

Defense of the resurrection of Jesus

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is critical to the Christian faith. The Apostle Paul wrote, "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain" (I Cor:15:14). Traditionally, Christianity has believed in a physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. [5]

In recent history Christian apologists Gary Habermas is considered the foremost apologist for defending the resurrection of Jesus. [6][7][8][9][10][11] Dr. Habermas had a debate against the philosopher Anthony Flew regarding the resurrection which was chronicled in the work Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate and the debate had a panel of debate judges. J. Hampton Keathley, III , Th.M. in his essay Evidences for the Resurrection wrote: "The decision of the judges were as follows. The panel of philosophers judging content cast four votes for Habermas who argued for the fact of the resurrection, none for Flew, and one draw. The panel of professional debate judges voted three to two, also in favor of Habermas, this time regarding the method of argumentation technique." [12]

In recent history some notable defenders of the resurrection include: William Lane Craig, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, Edwin M. Yamauchi, N.T. Wright and Michael Horner. [13][14][15][16][17]

Legal scholars such as Simon Greenleaf, John Warwick Montgomery and many others have asserted that western legal standards argue for the resurrection of Christ. [18][19][20][21] Defenders of the resurrection of Christ also cite many distinguished legal authorities regarding the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. [22]

There is also simple logic: Why would Jesus submit to the crucifixion in as passive of a manner as is reported in the gospels unless he knew there would be a resurrection afterward?

Another reason to believe the resurrection is the fact that many people who claimed to be eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus voluntarily preached the news of this despite extreme persecution, and died for their efforts. Unlike the early members of most religions, these people had the opportunity to be direct eyewitnesses to what verified the claims of Christianity.

Other people in the Bible named "Jesus"

The author of Ecclesiastius, a book which Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians consider deuterocanonical, but Protestants place in the Apocrypha, is known as Jesus of Sira.

The name Joshua from the old testament is the same name as Jesus, it just hasn't gone through the Greek.

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ "Book Article Denies the Existence of a Historical Jesus Figure" NewswireToday
  2. ↑ "David H. Lewis [debates] the historicity of Jesus, arguing that New Testament and contemporaneous writings give very little evidence that Jesus actual ever lived." Escaping the Gravitational Pull of the Gospels
  3. ↑ http://www.digisys.net/users/ddalton/evidence_of_jesus_outside_the_bible.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.christian-thinktank.com/jesusref.html
  5. ↑ http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/crj0056a.txt
  6. ↑ http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/dialog_rexperience/dialog_rexperiences.htm
  7. ↑ http://www.tektonics.org/books/lichabrvw.html
  8. ↑ http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/NTeSources/NTArticles/CTR-NT/Habermas-Resurrection1-CTR.pdf
  9. ↑ http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/NTeSources/NTArticles/CTR-NT/Habermas-Resurrection2-CTR.pdf
  10. ↑ http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/crj_explainingaway/crj_explainingaway.htm
  11. ↑ http://www.apologetics.com/default.jsp?bodycontent=/articles/historical_apologetics/habermas-nt.html
  12. ↑ http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=639
  13. ↑ http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/historical.html
  14. ↑ http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html
  15. ↑ http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/yama.html
  16. ↑ http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Early_Traditions.htm
  17. ↑ http://www.michaelhorner.com/articles/resurrection/index.html
  18. ↑ http://www.bibleteacher.org/sgtestimony.htm
  19. ↑ http://www.mtio.com/articles/bissart1.htm
  20. ↑ http://lawreligionculturereview.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_lawreligionculturereview_archive.html
  21. ↑ http://www.trinitysem.edu/journal/philjohnsonpap.html
  22. ↑ http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/apologetics/AP0302W3.htm
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