This article is part of theJesus series. |
Historical view of Jesus |
Islamic view of Isa (Jesus) |
Jewish view of Jesus |
Other perspectives on Jesus |
Sources about Jesus |
Historicity of Jesus |
Fictional portrayals of Jesus |
Jesus Christ as the Messiah is the Christian account of Jesus' life (which is represented both in texts and in images). Jesus is the central focus of attention and worship in Christianity and is held by most Christians to be the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew Bible. He is believed to be the saviour of mankind, the son of God the Father, and God himself.
The vast majority of self-described Christians regard belief in the divinity of Jesus to be part of what defines Christianity. According to traditional Christian theology, Jesus is one of the three persons of the Trinity, along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, who are one and the same.
Some relatively new denominations do not believe in the Trinity, believing that Jesus is in fact a separate and distinct being from God the Father and the Holy Ghost, and that Biblical references to the Father and the Son being one do not indicate a unity of being.
These groups, such as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses refer to themselves as Christian. Most other Christians reject them as being part of Christianity. This subject is discussed in the article on Christology.
Christians see many passages in the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament affirming the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Of the four Gospels, the Nativity (birth) is mentioned only in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Both infancy accounts support the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, in which Jesus was miraculously conceived in his mother's womb by the Holy Spirit, when his mother was still a virgin.
According to these accounts, Jesus was born as Joseph and Mary, his betrothed, were visiting Bethlehem from their native Nazareth. Mary is also commonly referred as "the Virgin Mary" or, as the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox call her, "Mother of God" (see Theotokos).
Details of the two accounts appear to be at variance with each other. For example, Luke reports that the parents lived at Nazareth, but, according to Matthew, they settled in Nazareth after their return from Egypt, an event that Luke does not mention. Matthew further explained that Joseph and Mary fled with the baby Jesus to Egypt after they had been warned by an angel of the Massacre of the Innocents.
While Mark reports that Jesus had brothers, that he was "Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon," and also suggests that Jesus had sisters, some churches reject this interpretation, saying that they were all either Jesus' cousins, or else half brothers, children of Joseph and Joseph's previous wife. This latter tradition sees Joseph as a much older man than Mary, a widower at the time of his betrothal to Mary, with their planned marriage being primarily a social arrangement to ensure Mary was economically provided for.
The New Testament tells little more about Jesus's childhood or young adulthood. However, by the time he reached his 30s, the gospels all report that he had become known as a religious teacher.
Although the synoptic gospels focus mainly on the last year of Jesus's ministry, the Gospel of John indicates that his ministry spanned at least three Passovers from the time he was baptized by John the Baptist until his crucifixion. In his ministry, Jesus traveled as wandering rabbi and performed miracles.
Jesus advocated universal love between people, and adherence to the will of God. His message seems to have been that universal love is a more direct fulfilling of God's will, rather than observing the laws which were contained in the Hebrew Bible.
Jesus' message was sometimes taught by him through the use of paradox. He taught that the first would be last, and that non-violence was the best way to combat violence. He said that he gives peace to those who believe in him, yet he warned that he was bringing strife to the world, setting family members against one another (due to disagreement regarding belief in him). The use of paradox is a recognised form of attempting to break through established forms of thinking to allow new insight. For example, the use of koans in some branches of Buddhism, which seek to transcend harmful or false ways of thinking, is similar.
Jesus preached an apocalyptic message, saying that the end of the current world would come unexpectedly; as such, he called on his followers to abandon their worldly concerns, make disciples, and to wait for the immanent coming of the kingdom of God on Earth.
The early fathers of the church further expanded on his message, and much of the rest of the New Testament is concerned with the meaning of Jesus's death and resurrection, and its implications for humanity. One idea that has remained constant through Christian theology is the idea that humanity was redeemed, saved, or given an opportunity to achieve salvation through Jesus's death. "Jesus died for our sins" is a common Christian aphorism.
However, the idea of "salvation" has been interpreted in many ways, and a wide spectrum of Christian viewpoints exist and have existed throughout history up to the present day.
Some especially important or well-known events in the ministry of Jesus, recounted in the Gospels, include:
There is renewed interest in the teachings of Jesus, after decades of decline in Church membership in the developed world.The Alpha Course has allowed many people to study the message of Jesus in non-evangelistic settings.
According to the Gospels, Jesus, riding a colt, entered Jerusalem on a Sunday—celebrated now as Palm Sunday—and was greeted by throngs of people waving palm branches, and shouting "Hosanna".
On Thursday of that week, he shared the Last Supper, and afterward took a walk to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he felt overwhelming sadness and anguish, and said "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it." Then, a little while later, he said, "If this cup cannot pass by, but I must drink it, your will be done!"
Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus' twelve disciples, who had left in the middle of the Last Supper, had in the meantime betrayed Jesus by informing the Jewish authorities of his location. The authorities had decided to arrest Jesus, since some of them had come to consider him a threat to their power due to his growing popularity, his new interpretations of scripture, and his revelations of their hypocrisy.
Judas and a group of men armed with swords and clubs then appeared, and Judas helped to identify Jesus by kissing him, a pre-arranged signal. Although one of the bystanders drew a sword, cutting off the ear of one of the armed men, Jesus rebuked the follower, saying, "Put your sword back, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."
Then the disciples deserted him and ran away. Jesus was brought before the Jewish authorities, and, after implying the affirmative when asked if he was the son of God, was handed over to Pontius Pilate, the local governor in the occupying Roman government.
Pilate asked Jesus whether he considered himself the "king of the Jews", which would have been considered an attempt at usurping Roman authority, and either received no answer from Jesus, or the reply, "It is you who say it". Pilate then allowed a crowd that had gathered to decide whether Jesus or another prisoner should be released.
The crowd decided that Jesus should not be released, so Pilate, attempting to placate the crowd, had Jesus scourged, and some Roman soldiers fashioned a crown out of thorns and placed it on Jesus' head. But the crowd demanded that Jesus be crucified, and Pilate relented. That same day, having carried his own cross, he was crucified on Golgotha, with a sign reading (in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek) "Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews" placed on the cross upon the direction of Pilate.
According to the Gospel of Luke, as he was crucified, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing." As he hung on the cross, he was mocked by passersby, and, according to the Gospel of John, was visited by his mother and others, then died; his death was confirmed by a Roman soldier piercing his side with a sword.
While hanging on the cross, the Gospel of Mark has Jesus asking,"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Many readers find this theologically perplexing, believing that God left him to die on the cross. According to a common interpretation of the scriptures, God the Father was turning away from Jesus at this time because He was suffering in the place of sinners.
Others recognise this as an exact quotation of the first verse of Psalm 22, a common way at the time to refer to an entire Psalm. That Psalm begins with cries of despair, but ends on a note of hope and trust in God's triumph and deliverance. It also contains several details that have been taken to apply to Jesus' crucifixion, such as the soldiers casting lots for Jesus' garments and leaving his bones unbroken.
The Gospel of John, on the other hand, has Jesus in total control from the cross, saying "It is finished" upon his death, and instead of asking the "bitter cup" to be taken away from him while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before, he actually asks for it in John's account.
According to the New Testament, he rose from the dead on the third day following his crucifixion and appeared to his disciples; the Acts of the Apostles reports that forty days later he ascended bodily into Heaven.
Paul's letters to the Romans, Ephesians and Colossians, as well as the letter to the Hebrews (traditionally attributed to Paul) claim that Jesus presently exercises all authority in heaven and on earth for the sake of the Church, until all of the earth is made subject to his rule through the preaching of the Gospel.
Based on the New Testament, Christians believe that Jesus will return bodily from heaven at the end of the age, to judge the living and the dead.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) believe that Jesus appeared in the Western Hemisphere after his resurrection. Church members believe that Jesus taught the ancestors of modern Native Americans, whom they believe to be one of the lost tribes of Israel.
Miracles performed by Jesus, as recounted in the Gospels, include:
Well-known quotations of Jesus include:
Adherents of Judaism, as well as some modern Bible scholars, reject the idea that the Hebrew Bible ever prophetically referred specifically to Jesus. One reason for these differences of interpretation is the use of different versions of the Bible. Christians have historically relied on the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. In it, many prophecies have a much clearer correlation to Jesus than in the Masoretic Hebrew text we have now available. For instance, one passage says in the Septuagint that the Messiah would be born of a "virgin", while in the Hebrew it says "young woman." The Septuagint was translated by a group of about 70 Jews more than 200 years before the birth of Jesus Christ; the oldest surviving complete manuscript dates to the third or fourth century A.D. It was widely accepted among the Alexandrian Jewish community, but was not accepted by the Jewish community elsewhere. The text accepted by the rest of the Jewish world was known as the Tanakh, and had a number of differences, none of which had anything to do with the messiah. The oldest surviving Hebrew Masoretic text dates to the eighth or ninth century A.D., although parts of it have been corroborated by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Jesus of Nazareth came to be seen as a possible Messiah (or Greek Khristos, thus the appellation "Jesus the Christ") to the Jews, some believed and followed him. This caused a division in the Jewish religion; those who followed Jesus were eventually called (at first pejoratively) Christians. Jews then and now interpreted the prophecies to mean a great political or military leader, who would liberate them from the oppressive Roman rule. The reason that Jesus was not accepted by the majority of the Jewish community was that he did not fulfill any of the conditions that moshiach is required to fulfill by Jewish law and tradition. Jesus was accepted as a messiah mainly by non-Jewish converts in the Roman Empire, though there was for a time a Jewish Christian sect, sometimes called the Ebionites.
Lists
General
Jesus
Religious
Christian
Gospels, Epistle, and acts
OtherBelief in the divinity
Life biography
of important years from
biblical and historical sources.
(see also brief timeline)
c. 6 BC -
c. 5 BC -
c. 4 BC -
c. 1 AD -
c. 6 AD -
c. 7 AD -
c.25 AD -
26 AD -
c.26 AD -
c.27 AD -
c.28 AD -
c.29 AD -
c.30 AD -
c.33 AD -
c.36 AD -
''Lazarus raised from the grave by Jesus
painting by the Swedish artist Karl Isakson (c. 1920)''
Birth and childhood
The ministry and message of Jesus
Some contemporary scholars are focusing on Jesus' parables, a unique type of teaching story found only in the three synoptic gospels. Much of this work gained a foothold in America during the early 1980s by a group of biblical scholars known as the Jesus Seminar.Arrest, sentencing, and crucifixion
Resurrection, Ascension, and Second Coming
Miracles performed
Quotes
Differences in interpretation
See also
List of Bible stories |
List of Biblical figures |
List of Biblical names starting with C |
List of Latin phrases |
List of famous suicides |
List of people by name: J |
List of political entities named after people |
List of religious topics |
AD |
Advocate |
Aloes |
Anno Domini |
Anoint |
Antichrist |
Apostle |
Aramaic language |
Ascension |
Baptism |
BC |
Behistun Inscription |
Bible story |
Bible |
Blessed Sacrament |
Blood Atonement |
Blood |
Capernaum |
Christus Dominus |
Church of the Nativity |
Cross |
Crucifix |
Crucifixion |
Deicide |
God and gender |
Lamb of God |
Jesus Christ Superstar |
Jesus Movement |
Jesus Only doctrine |
Jesus and John the Baptist |
Jesus of Nazareth |
Abrahamic religion |
Abhidhamma |
Adoptionism |
Adventist |
Allah |
Altar |
Anabaptist |
Apocrypha |
Arguments for the existence of God |
Basilica of the Sacre Coeur |
Baptist General Convention of Texas |
Baptist |
Billy Graham |
Bishop Henry |
Book of Mormon controversies |
Born again |
Children of Israel |
Chosen people |
Comparing and contrasting Judaism and Christianity |
Clerical celibacy |
Confessing Church |
Council of Chalcedon |
Covenant |
Creed |
Damnation |
Dispensationalism |
Doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses |Eucharist |
Evangelicalism |
Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus |
First Council of Nicaea |
First Vision |
Fundamentalism |
Fundamentalist Christianity |
God |Holy Grail |
Holy Spirit |
Immanuel |
Judeo-Christian tradition |
Kingdom of Heaven |
Isa |
Jehovah's Witnesses |
Jewish Messiah |
Jews for Jesus |
Jews in the New Testament |
Religion |
Religious Society of Friends |
Religious conversion |
Religious festival |
Religious law |
Religious pluralism |
The nature of God in Western theology |
The nature of God |
Christian Identity |
Christian cross |
Christian theosophy |
Christian view of marriage |
Christian |
Christianity and Jewish prophecy |
Christianity |
Christianity |
Christianity |
Christo-Islamic tradition |
Christological argument |
Decalogue
Acts of Pilate |
Epistle of Jude |
Epistle to the Colossians |
Epistle to the Ephesians |
Epistle to the Romans |
Gospel of John |
Gospel of Mark |
Gospel of Matthew |
Gospel of Peter |
Gospel |
A Plea for Captain John Brown |
And did those feet in ancient time |
Corcovado |
Dating the Bible |
Emich of Leiningen |
End times |
Enlightenment |
Gnosticism |
Good Friday |
Government Warehouse |
Grace |
Halo |
Heresy |
Hippolytus |
History of Christianity |
Holiness movement |
Holy Orders |
Holy Prepuce |
Hot cross bun |
INRI |
Icon |
Iconoclasm |
Idolatry |
Images of Jesus |
Impeccability |
Incarnation |
John the Baptist |
Jude |
Julian calendar |
Knights Hospitaller |
Laurentius Valla |
Laying on of hands |
Leviticus |
Life-death-rebirth deity |
Logos |
Lord's Prayer |
Lord |
Madonna |
Mannerism |
Marcionism |
Mary Magdalene |
Mary, sister of Lazarus |
Massacre of the Innocents |
Medieval art |
Medieval poetry |
Messiah |
Midwest Christian Outreach |
Millennialism |
Monoenergism |
Morning Star |
Mount of Olives |
Names for books of Judeo-Christian scripture |
Names given to the divine |
National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc |
Native American Church |
Nativity scene |
Nativity |
Nazarene |
Nazareth |
Near sacrifice of Isaac |
Nestorianism |
Notre-Dame de Reims |
Old Testament |
Original sin |
Parable |
Paschal candle |
Passe-dix |
Passion flower |
Passion play |
Passion |
Peace symbol |
Pentecostalism |
Persecution of Christians |
Perseverance of the saints |
Peter the Hermit |
Pharisee |
Philipp Melanchthon |
Pietà |
Pontius Pilate |
Pope |
Prayer |
Predestination |
Presbyterian Church in America |
Priest |
Promise Keepers |
Prophet |
Q document |
Rapture |
Rastafarianism |
Reconcilation |
Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America |
Relic |
Repentance |
Resurrection of the dead |
Resurrection |
Revelation |
Revised Standard Version |
Righteousness |
Rio de Janeiro |
Sabbath |
Sacrament |
Sacred Heart |
Sacred language |
Salvation |
Samaritan's Purse |
Sea of Galilee |
Season of advent |
Second Coming |
Semiotic literary interpretation |
Sermon on the Mount |
Seventh-day Adventist Church |
Silent Night |
Simeon |
Sin-offering |
Sin |
Slogan 'Jesus is Lord' |
Solemnity |
Son of God |
Soul |
Spear of Destiny |
Spiritual warfare |
Stations of the Cross |
Superman |
Supernatural |
Ten Commandments |
The Antichrist and the last days |
The Bible and history |
The Chronicles of Narnia |
The Four Spiritual Laws |
The Golden Bough |
The Last Supper (Leonardo) |
The Last Supper |
The Lesser Key of Solomon |
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe |
The Magician card |
The Passion |
The Robe |
The supernatural in monotheistic religions |
Theology |
Thirteen |
Three Wise Men |
Throne |
Tomb |
Torah |
Transfiguration |
Transubstantiation |
Trinity |
True Cross |
Turin |
Twelve |
Veil |
WWJD (What would Jesus Do) |
Zacheus the Tax Collector |