Jesus Christ (Greek
Ἰησοῦς Χριστός Iēsoûs
Khristós,
Aramaic ישׁוע
משׁיח Yēšûᵃ‘ Māšîᵃḥ; c.
4 BC – c.
30), also called Jesus of
Nazareth, is the central figure in
Christianity.
According to the New Testament, Jesus is the
Son of God who served a ministry in
Galilee
and Judaea and was ultimately
crucified in
Jerusalem by order of the
Roman governor
Pontius
Pilate before
rising from the dead three days later. Beyond the New
Testament, there are many opinions of Jesus' life:
- Most Christians believe Jesus was
God
incarnate (a man who was also God), who came to earth to
save
humanity from sin and
death through his own
blood sacrifice, and who returned from the dead to rejoin his father in
heaven.
- Many historians and critical Bible scholars accept the existence of the biblical
Jesus, but reject his divinity, miracles, and any other supernatural elements in accounts of his life. They believe he was a
Jewish
religious
teacher and
healer who was crucified, and was subsequently
the inspiration for Christianity whose adherents proclaimed him to be the sole incarnation of God.
- Some skeptics believe Jesus was not a real person, but a fictional invention of
Christians, based on morality stories and fables.
- Other skeptics believe Jesus was nothing more than a Jewish troublemaker who was put to death by the
Romans at the behest of the Jewish establishment.
There are different accounts and perspectives of Jesus within the religions of
Islam,
Judaism,
Gnosticism,
Manichaeism and
Mandaeanism.
(See later in this article). He is regarded as a
prophet by
Muslims and Manichaeists, as a false Messiah by Judaism and Mandaeanism, as a manifestation of
God by the Bahá'ís, a manifestation of
Maitreya by some Buddhists, as a
yogi, guru or even
avatar by some
Hindus, as the savior and bringer of
gnosis by various
Gnostic
sects and as a guru by many
New Agers.
The names and titles of Jesus
Personal name
Jesus is derived from the
Latin Iesus, which in turn comes from the
Greek Ἰησοῦς Iēsoûs). The
Greek form is a
transliteration of the
Aramaic name
Yeshua (ישוע), a short form
of
Hebrew Yehoshua (יהושע),
the name that Moses gave to his successor as leader of the Israelites, who is known in
English as Joshua. The Name means the Lord is salvation, literally
Yahweh saves.
Direct
English transliterations from the Aramaic
Yehoshua/Yeshua include Joshua, Jeshua, Yahshua, Yahoshua and
Yaohushua. These variations in English spelling can only approximate the sound of the Hebrew or Aramaic original.
Jesus was transliterated via Greek and thereby lost the "sh" sound,
which Greek lacks
Christ
Christ is not a name but a title, and comes, via
Latin,
from the
Greek Christos
(Χριστός Khristós), which means "anointed" (to anoint is to rub with perfumed oil). The Greek form is a literal translation of
Messiah from Hebrew mashiyakh (משיח) or Aramaic m'shikha
(משיחא), a word which occurs often in the
Old
Testament and typically signifies "high priest" or "
king" – a man, chosen
by God or descended from a man chosen by God, to serve as a religious, civil, and/or military authority. Other sources suggest
the title Christ is linked to Latin crestus, 'good'. To Muslims, Jesus is known as the prophet
Isa al Masih (عيسى المسيح ), from the
aforementioned Aramaic for Jesus the Messiah.
Other titles
In the Gospels, Jesus has many titles besides "messiah":
prophet,
lord,
son of
man, and
son of God. Together Christians understand these titles as
attesting to Jesus' divinity. Some historians argue that when used in other Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the time, these titles
have other meanings, and therefore may have other meanings when used in the Gospels as well. The material in the next four
subsections, on prophet, lord, son of man, and son of god, is taken from Geza Vermes' review of these arguments in Jesus the
Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels.
Prophet
According to such verses as Matthew 21:11 and Luke 7:16, Jews of the time thought of Jesus as a prophet; according to such
verses as Mark 6:4, Matthew 13: 57, and Luke 4:24, Jesus considered himself to be a prophet. In the Hebrew Bible, prophets were
generally men who spoke with God and proclaimed God's words to the people, often criticizing political and economic elites in the
process. The Pharisees seem to have believed that the age of the prophets ended
with Malachi (Daniel, for example, was not
considered a prophet, and the sages claimed that they had succeeded the prophets as transmitters of God's law); the author of
1 Maccabees, however, believed that prophets would one day reappear in
Judea.
Ecclesiasticus 48: 10
identifies the reappearance of a prophet with the messenger who will arrive as a harbinger of the end of time – Acts 3:
17–26 suggests that some early Christians may have identified the second coming of Jesus (rather than his original earthly
career) with this type of prophet. Nevertheless, neither the Gospels nor other early Christians seemed to have favored this
title, perhaps because
1st and
2nd century Roman Judea saw many
charlatans who claimed to be
prophets announcing the
end of days, and who were
executed by the Romans.
Prophets in the
Hebrew Bible were also advocates of
monotheism, and
healers. In Luke 4:
25–27, Jesus specifically refers to two such prophets,
Elijah and
Elisha. In this and in other contexts, historians conclude that the Gospels seem to use the
term "prophet" as synonymous with
miracle-worker and healer.
Lord
The Gospels and Acts frequently use "Lord" as a title for Jesus. Jesus himself never seems to have claimed the title –
it is only ascribed to him by others, which has led to various interpretations. Different scholars have come up with various
explanations: some believe that Jesus' disciples called him lord, but not because he was divine; this was merely a title used
when students addressed their
teachers.
Some believe that the New Testament uses the term lord to mean
divine, but that it was
only after Jesus' death and
resurrection that his followers ascribed to him
divinity. Others argue that neither Jesus nor his disciples used the Aramaic term for lord, mara, and that the Greek
term kyrios (meaning, "the Lord") was borrowed from pagan Hellenic usage by early
Gentile converts to Christianity. The Hebrew Bible distinguishes between "lord" (adon) and "God"; the word
"lord" does not necessarily imply divinity, although God is often described as "the Lord". Surviving inter-testamental Aramaic
texts frequently use the Aramaic mara to mean "the Lord", that is, God – but they also provide evidence of people
using mara and kyrios as personal titles (for example, used to address a
husband,
father, or king). There is little evidence that either term was
used specifically to mean "teacher", but there is much evidence of students using the term "mar" to refer to their teachers
respectfully, or to refer to an especially respected and authoritative teacher. A close reading of the Gospels suggests to
historians that most people addressed Jesus as lord as a sign of respect for a miracle-worker (especially in Mark and Matthew) or
as a teacher (especially in Luke). In most cases one can substitute the words "sir" or
"teacher" for "lord", and the meaning of the passage in question will not change.
Son of Man
Jesus is rarely described as "son of man" (bar nasha, in Aramaic) outside of the Gospels, but in the Synoptic Gospels
Jesus refers to himself as using this title over sixty times. Some take this as an allusion to Daniel 7:13, which associates "one
like a son of man" with a messianic vision. Six Gospel uses of the title directly refer to, and many others allude to, Daniel.
However, most of the uses in Mark, the oldest Gospel, and many examples from the other Gospels, are non-Danielic. Indeed, other
Aramaic texts reveal that the phrase was used frequently to mean simply "man", or as a way by which a speaker may refer to
himself. Thus, many historians conclude that it is possible that this phrase was actually not a title.
Son of God
The New Testament frequently refers to Jesus as the son of God; Jesus seldom does, but often refers to God as his father.
Christians universally understand this to mean that Jesus was literally God's son – according to the
Nicene Creed, God's only begotten son, one with the father. The phrase itself is
thus taken to be synonymous with divinity. The Hebrew Bible, however, uses the phrase "son of God" in other senses: to refer to
heavenly or
angelic beings; to refer to the
Children of Israel, and to refer to kings. There is no New
Testament evidence to suggest that early Christians thought of Jesus as an angel, so the first two usages seem not to apply.
However, Mark identifies Jesus as the son of
King David, and Matthew and Luke
provide lineages linking Jesus to King David. II Samuel 7: 14, Psalms 2: 7 and 89: 26–27, refer to David as the son of God,
although historians find no evidence that the authors of the Bible believed David to be divine or literally God's son. (Many
Christians interpret these and other Psalms as referring prophetically to Jesus, the "seed" referred to in Psalm 89. See
Christ in the Psalms by Father Patrick Reardon.)
In post-Biblical Judaism, the title was often applied to righteous men: Ecclesiasticus 4: 10 and the Wisdom of
Solomon 2: 17–18 use the term to refer to just men, and
Jubilees 1: 24–25 has God declaring all righteous men to be
his sons. Philo too wrote that good people are sons of God, and various
rabbis in the
Talmud declare that when Israelites are
good, they are sons of God. The Talmud provides one example that parallels that of Jesus: Rabbi Hanina, whom God referred to as
"my son", was also a miracle worker, and was able to resist Agrat,
queen of the
demons. Some scholars thus suggest that "son of God" was a title used in the
Galilee by miracle-workers. Other scholars have suggested that the identification of "son of
God" with divinity is
pagan in origin; the
Ptolemaic kings of
Egypt referred to themselves as sons of
Zeus or of
Helios;
Roman emperors used the title divi filius, or son
of God. They suggest that the belief that Jesus was in fact the "son of God",
and the association of his divine paternity with his being "messiah", were added
after Christianity broke with Judaism
Date of birth and death
The exact month or day or even the year of Jesus' birth cannot be exactly ascertained. Due to a mistaken calculation based on the
Roman Calendar by
Dionysius Exiguus in
525, it was long held that Jesus was born in the
year 1 BC (making the following year,
AD 1, the first
throughout which he was alive).
The Gospels are problematic, because they offer two accounts that chronologists find incompatible.
Matthew states that Jesus was born while
Herod the Great was still alive and that Herod ordered the slaughter of infants two years old and
younger (Matt. 2:16), and based on the date of Herod's death in
4 BC (contra Dionysius
Exiguus), many chronologists conclude that the year
6 BC is the most likely year of Jesus'
birth. Consequently, Jesus would have been about four to six years old in the year
AD 1.
On the other hand,
Luke's account places Jesus' birth
during a census conducted under the governorship of
Quirinius, who, according to
Josephus, conducted a census in
AD 6. In order to
reconcile the two Gospel accounts, some have suggested that Josephus was mistaken or that Quirinius had a separate period of rule
under Herod. In any case, the actual date of his birth remains historically unverifiable.
In recent years,
East Asian historians have attempted to match the birth of
Jesus with special events in their history. They found that, according to the oldest record of the
Comet Halley during the
Han Dynasty, "The comet
heads east with its tail pointing west at night, and was appearing in the sky for more than 70 days". in
6 BC. This has been suggested as an independent record of the "Star"
described in Matthew 2. If accepted, this suggestion would place the birthday of Jesus in
summer rather than
winter.
In the
6th century, Dionysius Exiguus proposed to make the birth of Jesus
the basis of the calendar but he miscalculated the death of Herod. Years reckoned in this way are labelled "B.C." and "A.D.",
which stand for Before Christ and
Anno Domini (meaning "in
the year of the Lord" in Latin). Since many non-Christians have come to use this calendar, an alternative notation "B.C.E." and
"C.E." is also used. While the "B." indicates "Before", it is presently uncertain what the original meaning of the latter
abbreviation was, although today it is taken to mean either the
Common Era or
the Christian Era: many references cite both.
Based on inferences from Gospel accounts, Jesus was executed by
crucifixion on a Friday, and on the 14th day of the
Jewish month of
Nisan under the administration of
Pontius Pilate. Pontius Pilate held his position from
26-36 and the only years in which Nisan 14 fell on a Friday are
27, 33, and
36 and possibly in
30 depending on when the
new moon would have been visible
in Jerusalem. Scholars have defended all of the dates.
This understanding of the Gospels is difficult to reconcile with the tradition that holds the
Last Supper took place on the first night of Passover which is defined in the Torah to be the 14th of
Nisan. Furthermore, at that time, the date of Passover was set by the court in Jerusalem based upon testimony of witnesses. It
was not until after 500 that the calendar was changed to be based upon calculation. Therefore, it is not possible to state on
which day of the week the 14 of Nisan occurred for any year before 500 without historical documents that attest to a particular
day of the week.
