They tend to go straight to the person's arrival on the public scene, often 20 or 30 years into their lives, and then look at the two or three big key things that they did or the big two or three key ideas. They'll also spend quite a lot of time concentrating on the actual death because the ancients believe that you couldn't sum up a person's life until you saw how they died. In their death, very often, they would die as they lived and then they would conclude with the events after the death - very often on dreams or visions about the person and what happened to their ideas afterwards.
The four gospels are four angles on one person and in the four gospels there are four angles on the one Jesus. It was a wonderful insight of the early Fathers, guided by the spirit of God, who recognised that these four pictures all reflect upon the same person. It's like walking into a portrait gallery and seeing four portraits, say, of Winston Churchill: the statesman or the war leader or the Prime Minister or the painter or the family man.
Of course we actually have to do all sorts of historical critical analysis and try to get back to what this tells us about the historical Jesus. It also shows us the way in which the early church tried to make that one Jesus relevant and to apply him to the needs of their own people of that day, whether they were Jews as in Matthew's case or Gentiles as in Luke's case and so on.
And so those four portraits give us a challenge and a stimulus today to actually try to work out how we can actually tell that story of the one Jesus in different ways that are relevant for the needs of people today. Christology is literally 'words about the Christ. Christology can involve the humanity of Jesus, but there is often a special focus on the fact that he is more than merely a mortal person, he is divine in some way and in some sense the different gospel writers come at this somewhat differently.
The synoptics - Matthew, Mark and Luke - have more a similar point of view than what you find in the Gospel of John which stands apart and alone. But none the less, they are all interested in this matter, they are certainly interested in what we would call Christology. Right from the very outset of this gospel he is presenting a particular theological interpretation of Jesus as the Messiah, as the divine son of God and he is going to pursue that agenda throughout his gospel and reveal those truths about him.
In Mark, at the the climax of the first part of the ministry and Peter stands up and says, 'you are the Christ, the son of God'. There's certainly a Christological agenda in all these books, even in the earliest gospel. There really isn't a non-Christological Jesus to be found under any of the rocks in the gospel; so thoroughly are our gospel writers concerned about that issue, that the portraits in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are all Christological through and through.
It's difficult to know how much of what's written in the Gospels is an insight into how Jesus saw himself and how much is comment of other people as to how they saw Jesus. In John's gospel for example, there are many 'I am' sayings: 'I am the light of the world', 'I am the good shepherd', 'I am the bread', 'I am the vine'.
These phrases, if they came from the lips of Jesus, don't tell us a great deal about his spiritual biography, but tell us more about his purpose and they kind of hang with you and you have to think them through. What does it mean that Jesus is the shepherd, what does it mean that Jesus is the light, what does it mean that Jesus is the bread of life? And you have to kind of puzzle over them. I don't think Jesus was interested in giving a great deal of information about himself.
I mean, Jesus said that whoever saw him, saw the Father. But I don't think he was very interested in padding that out; his mission was more to redeem people, to love people into goodness, to save people from the distress and errors of their ways and he doesn't make a big issue about himself.
There's that whole thing in the gospels of Matthew and Mark about how he's very wary of people nailing him as the Messiah. He does that sometimes because I think he wants to approach everybody on an equal basis, if he comes with his entourage and a lot of hype about himself, he'll not be able to relate to folk, they'll stand in awe of him rather than relate to him. I think Jesus thought of himself very much as a healer - he saw healing as a key to his work and presumably this arose because he just found out he was able to do it.
A lot of Jews in this period would have prayed for people for healing and Jesus must have done this and found that actually he was rather good at it and he had a real reputation for healing and that might have led him to Old Testament scriptures like Isaiah 35, that talks about healing in end days - maybe he thought that that was a sign that the end of days was on its way. Did Jesus think of himself as a teacher? Probably he did.
Nobody spends that much time standing up and teaching crowds of people such words that have stuck with us for centuries. Even people like Gandhi were inspired by it so it's not just Christians that are inspired by that. But I think if we limit Jesus to purely teaching and healing than we don't get the full measure of him.
I think he would also have seen himself as a prophet. There are real signs that he sees himself in continuity with Old Testament prophets and just as Old Testament prophets were persecuted and suffered, Jesus thought that was likely to be his end too.
He saw himself as following a line of prophets that had suffered for what they believed and sometimes even suffered from the hands of their own people as well as from others. The big question about Jesus is: did Jesus think of himself as Messiah, did he believe he was the distinctive person that had a really pivotal role to play in God's plan? Scholars are divided about this. I personally think that Jesus did think of himself as a Messiah, he did think that God had specifically anointed him to do his work and that he had a special task for him to do.
He also was convinced that he had to suffer as part of God's plan and this caused controversy with his disciples. It seems that Jesus wanted to push the idea that he was going to suffer and his disciples were really worried about this idea, probably expecting Jesus either to be some sort of priestly Messiah or some sort of warrior Messiah but certainly not a Messiah that would end up on a cross.
They saw this as hugely problematic and a lot of Christians said for years afterwards that this was still a stumbling block to many people, a scandal - the idea that the Jewish Messiah could be crucified.
This just didn't make sense to a lot of people. In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. Edward Stourton presents a journey in the footsteps of Jesus. Four programmes, showing four completely different understandings of Jesus, explore the man, his image and his message. This first episode looks at the essentials of what can really be said about Jesus with any degree of historical certainty and places him in the context of the wandering charismatics and faith healers who were about at the time.
It also explores how his Jewish roots were gradually airbrushed out of theology, culminating in Nazi theologians who produced a Bible excised of all references to Judaism and who portrayed Jesus as an Aryan.
It's only really modern scholarship, if you want to call it that, that's begun to say "Well hold on a minute. He was not a Christian, He was not born a Christian, he didn't live a Christian - He didn't even know what the term 'Christian' meant. Jesus was a Jew. With the crucifixion we move from the historical Jesus to the Christ of faith. But how aware was Jesus of his destiny?
And at what point does Jesus the Messiah break away from his Jewish roots? All the lines converge back on the fact that there must've been an empty tomb They knew all about ghosts and visions and so on - that, that wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
People had that sort of experience. This was different - this was bodily, but it was a transformed body. It wasn't a resuscitation - they believed Jesus had gone through death and out the other side, into a new physical body, which was now equally physical - only if anything more so rather than less so. He wasn't a ghost, He was alive, and the only way I can make sense of that as a historian is by saying that it actually happened.
When the Roman Emperor Constantine had a vision of Jesus just before his victorious battle for Rome it was arguably one of the most important moments in the history of the West. It was the start of the process whereby Christianity would go from a persecuted minority to the official religion of the largest Empire the world had seen. But how did that change Jesus and His message? We wanna say "Come on guys - live in the real world.
Things have moved on. Take all your ideals and translate them into the new world" - and that's what the Christians struggled to do. Christ, a historical Christ that you have referred to as a Jewish peasant, was not in the forefront of their minds.
They were thinking of Christ as Saviour and Christ who died for our sins. This is what Christ was to them at that time. And in fact their concentration was in all of the phases of His Passion.
This final journey in the footsteps of Jesus reaches what could be one of the oldest Christian communities in the world; in Kerala on the southwest coast of India, where in around 52AD the Apostle Thomas is said to have landed with the news of the Gospel. But it's also the place where the Jesus who is so much a part of European culture meets new worlds and new cultures and where the belief that he has a message for all humanity is really tested. In our western, traditional understanding of Jesus, the person of Jesus is very much objectified.
He's the Lord, the Saviour, the great, divine Tao whom we worship in liturgy for instance, whom we listen to as the great saviour and teacher Reflecting on the mystery of Christ in India Jesus Christ the sub-divine subject of our being more than an object of worship. This becomes very clear when we compare the traditional, western, Christian understanding of Jesus Christ which emphasises then 'I - Tao' relationship and the Indian vedandic approach where an 'I -I' relationship.
In oth Apart from being an inspirational leader and teacher, the Gospels describe many miraculous feats performed by Jesus. They can sound unbelievable today, but what would they have meant to first-century Jews?
The miracle of the raising of the widow's son takes place in the village of Nain in Galilee. Jesus arrives in Nain on the occasion of a funeral when he is approached by a widow whose only son has died.
When Jesus brings the man back to life the crowd are astonished, but what delights them more than this triumph over death is the meaning of the miracle.
The miracle reminds them of the great Jewish prophet Elijah who, eight centuries earlier, had also raised the only son of a widow in a town in Galilee. Elijah was famous as a miracle worker and as a prophet who rebuked those Jews who under the influence of pagan idolatry had strayed from devotion to God. Elijah never died - he was transported to heaven in a chariot of fire. The parallels between Jesus and Elijah were hugely significant. At the time the Jews were longing for an end to Roman oppression and the return of the kingdom of God - a new age in which peace, freedom, righteousness, faithfulness and the rule of God would prevail.
The first stage in that road to salvation was the arrival of a prophet who - like Elijah - would rail against sin. Maybe Jesus was that prophet - maybe even a reincarnation of Elijah? Clearly though, the Gospel writers believed Jesus was more than a prophet. In Matthew and Mark , just after the transfiguration,. The disciples asked him, "Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first? But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished.
In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands. The resonances between Jesus and Elijah would have been striking to first century Jews and to Christians familiar with the Old Testament. But as Christianity spread into the Roman Empire, the miracle of the raising of the widow's son acquired other meanings. The most important is that it prefigured Jesus' own resurrection. In fact the miracle in Nain is one of three times when Jesus raises the dead. But there was a key difference between these miracles and the resurrection of Jesus.
The widow's son, Jairus' daughter and Lazarus were resuscitated or revived: they would eventually die again. Jesus on the other hand would live forever. Dating in the 21st Century This light-hearted video illustration takes a look into what teenagers around the United States are saying about what it's like to date in the 21st century. A Brief History of Mankind In this complicated world, there exists only two paths. What is Grace? Freedom to Dissent People need to feel the freedom to disagree in the workplace.
Awake O Sleeper We're prone to live a sleepy faith. Am I Enough? How Do We Grow? Need help call: Twitter Facebook Instagram YouTube. Interested in learning more about RightNow Media? Add to Channel Select the channel that you want to add this piece of content to from the dropdown and click the "Add to Channel" button. You do not currently have any custom channels. Please visit your custom library to add channels. Add to Channel. Embed Code:.
Add New Contacts [x]. Enter or paste email addresses from others in your church or organization spouse, group members, pastors, etc. Separate multiple emails addresses with a comma , or semicolon ; or put each email address on a separate line. ROLE :. The series was a huge success and was watched by millions of people worldwide.
Even the Pope watched it, loving it so much he officially endorsed it, quite the review. The four-part series follows the actor as he travels through the Holy Land exploring the life of Jesus Christ, asking questions and challenging the perceptions we have. We caught up with the actor to find out more. This was one of the reasons I wanted to do the series. Originally, forty years ago, I was avoiding Jesus completely. Franco Zeffirelli and I originally thought that we could combine the divine Christ with the human one and that we would be able to show the human side of him, but we discovered that it was just not possible.
You go as an actor and work subjectively but the moment you start to try and play him as a real person you lose the divinity completely.
With this story, the most important element that this character has to be is extraordinary. So from that moment on, I played it objectively without any recourse to giving him any particular idiosyncrasies, quite deliberately avoiding the normal human things.
To try and play a god and get the idea of it is a shortcut to a nervous breakdown. So, I backed off completely. I found a way of doing it that was counter to the actor's normal approach. The reason for Jesus' success over 2, years plus is the fact that he is whoever you wish him to be. He is not a person.
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