Jesus Christ

General / Advanced Information
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 (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: "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 Jesus
The 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 Sources
Among 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 Gospels
The 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 Jesus
Application 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 Bethlehem 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.

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, 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. The passion narratives of the Gospels contain major theological motifs. First Jesus' sufferings and death are presented as the fulfillment of God's will announced in the Old Testament writings. Second, the accounts of the Last Supper, a farewell meal held before Jesus' arrest, proclaim the atoning significance of Jesus' death in the words over the bread and wine. Third, great emphasis is placed on the statement that Jesus died as Messiah or king. Fourth, some of the events described contain theological symbolism, for example, the rending of the Temple veil.

Jesus' Self Understanding
Since titles of majesty were used only by the post - Easter church to proclaim Jesus, these titles cannot, by the criterion of dissimilarity, be used as firm evidence for the self understanding of Jesus during his earthly ministry. That self understanding has to be inferred indirectly from his words and works. In all of them Jesus confronts his contemporaries with a great sense of authority (Mark 2:27; 11:27 - 33). This quality in Jesus evoked messianic hopes in his followers and messianic fears in his enemies. The hopes of his friends were shattered by the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus but restored and reinforced by the Easter event, faith in his resurrection on the third day following death and entombment.
During his earthly life Jesus was addressed as rabbi and was regarded as a prophet. Some of his words, too, place him in the category of sage. A title of respect for a rabbi would be "my Lord." Already before Easter his followers, impressed by his authority, would mean something more than usual when they addressed him as "my Lord." Jesus apparently refused to be called Messiah because of its political associations (Mark 8:27 - 30; Matt. 26:64, correcting Mark 14:62). Yet the inscription on the cross, "The King of the Jews," provides irrefutable evidence that he was crucified as a messianic pretender (Mark 15:26).

Although it is possible that Jesus' family claimed to be of Davidic descent, it is unlikely that the title "Son of David" was ascribed to him or accepted by him during his earthly ministry. "Son of God," in former times a title of the Hebrew kings (Psa. 2:7), was first adopted in the post Easter church as an equivalent of Messiah and had no metaphysical connotations (Rom. 1:4). Jesus was conscious of a unique filial relationship with God, but it is uncertain whether the Father / Son language (Mark 18:32; Matt. 11:25 - 27 par.; John passim) goes back to Jesus himself.

Most problematical of all is the title "Son of Man." This is the only title used repeatedly by Jesus as a self designation, and there is no clear evidence that it was used as a title of majesty by the post Easter church. Hence it is held by many to be authentic, since it passes the criterion of dissimilarity. Those who regard it as unauthentic see in it the post Easter church's identification of Jesus with the "Son of Man" either of Dan. 7:13 or - if the title really existed there before Jesus - in Jewish apocalyptic tradition. One possible view, based on the distinction Jesus makes between himself and the coming "Son of Man" (Luke 12: 8 - 12; Mark 8:38), is that he invoked this figure to underline the finality of his own word and work - this finality would be vindicated by the "Son of Man" at the end.

In that case the post Easter church was able to identify Jesus with that "Son of Man" because the Easter event was the vindication of his word and work. The post Easter church then formed further "Son of Man" sayings, some speaking in highly apocalyptic terms of his return in the Second Coming (for example, Mark 14:62); others expressing the authority exercised during the earthly ministry (for example, Mark 2:10, 28); and still others expressing his impending suffering and certainty of vindication (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33).

Christology
Although it is true that there was a basic difference between Jesus' message of the kingdom and the post Easter church's message of him as the saving act of God, all of Jesus' words and work imply a Christology. Thus the critical quest for the historical Jesus yields a sufficient basis for the message of the post Easter church and is therefore necessary to legitimate it.

Message of the Post Easter Church
The Christology of the earliest Palestinian Christian community apparently had two focuses. It looked backward to the earthly life of Jesus as prophet and servant of God and forward to his final return as Messiah (Acts 3:21). Meanwhile Jesus was thought of as waiting inactively in heaven, to which he was believed to have ascended after the resurrection (Acts 1:9).
Soon their experience of the Holy Spirit, whose descent is recorded in Acts 2, led the early Christians to think in terms of a two stage Christology: the first stage was the earthly ministry and the second stage his active ruling in heaven. This two stage Christology, in which Jesus is exalted as Messiah, Lord, and Son of God (Acts 2:36; Rom. 1:4), is often called adoptionist. It is not the Adoptionism of later heresy, however, for it thinks in terms of function rather than being. At his exaltation to heaven Jesus began to function as he had not previously. Another primitive Christological affirmation associates the birth of Jesus with his Davidic descent, thus qualifying him for the messianic office at his exaltation (for example, Rom. 1:3). This introduced the birth of Jesus as a Christologically significant moment.

As Christianity spread to the Greek speaking world between AD 35 and 50, further Christological perspectives were developed. The sending - of - the - Son pattern was one of them. This pattern is threefold: (1) God sent (2) his Son (3) in order to . . . (with a statement of the saving purpose - for example, Galatians 4:4 - 5). The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke combine the Davidic descent with the sending - of - the - Son Christology. Another major development of this period is the identification of Jesus as the incarnation of the heavenly wisdom of Jewish speculation (Prov. 8:22 - 31; Sir. 24:1 - 12; Wisd. 7:24 - 30).

Hence a three stage Christology emerges: the preexistent wisdom or Logos (Word), who was the agent of creation and of general revela - tion and also of the special revelation of Israel, becomes incarnate in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, and then in the resurrection and exaltation returns to heaven (Php. 2:6 - 11; Col. 1:15 - 20; Heb. 1:1 - 3; John 1:1 - 14). With this three stage Christology there is a shift from purely functional interpretation to the question of the being or person of Jesus. Thus the later phases of the New Testament lay the ground for the Christological controversies of the Patristic Age.

Christological Controversies of the Patristic Age
The rise of Gnosticism as a Christian deviation began in the 2d century and led to the development of Docetism, the view that the humanity of Jesus was apparent rather than real. Catholic Christianity insisted on his true humanity - hence the statement in the Apostles' Creed, "conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."
In the 3d and 4th centuries there were some who continued to question the full humanity of Jesus and others who questioned his full deity. When Arius denied that the preexistent Son, or Word, was fully God, the Council of Nicea (325) formulated a creed (the Nicene Creed) containing the phrases "of one substance with the Father" and "was made man." Next, Apollinarius, anxious to assert the Son's deity, taught that the Logos replaced the human spirit in the earthly Jesus (Apollinarianism). This teaching was condemned at the Council of Constantinople (381). Next, the theologians of the school of Antioch were so anxious to maintain the reality of Jesus' humanity that they seemed to compromise his deity. Thus Theodore of Mopsuestia and his pupil Nestorius (Nestorianism) separated the deity from the humanity almost to the point of denying the unity of his person.

To preserve this unity the Council of Ephesus (431) affirmed that Mary was the "God - bearer" (Theotokos, later popularly rendered as "Mother of God"). Eutyches from the Alexandrian school then claimed that the two natures of Christ were, at the incarnation, fused into one. This view was ruled out at the Council of Chalcedon (451), which insisted that Christ was one person in two natures (divine and human) "without confusion, without change, without division and without separation."

Modern Christologies generally start "from below" rather than "from above," finding Jesus first to be truly human, and then discovering his divinity in and through his humanity: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19).

Reginald H Fuller

Bibliography
R Augstein, Jesus Son of Man (1977); G Aulen, Jesus in Contemporary Historical Research (1976); C K Barrett, Jesus and the Gospel Tradition (1967); G Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth (1960); R Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (1954); and Jesus Christ and Mythology (1958); Congar, Yves, Jesus Christ (1966); C M Connick, Jesus: The Man, the Mission, and the Message (1974); H Conzelmann, Jesus (1973); P Fredericksen, From Jesus to Christ (1988); R H Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (1965); E J Goodspeed, A Life of Jesus (1950); M Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (1977);

F Hahn, The Titles of Jesus in Christology (1969); A T Hanson, Grace and Truth (1975); M Hengel, The Son of God (1976); J Hick, ed., The Myth of God Incarnate (1976); J Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (1971); W Kasper, Jesus the Christ (1976); L E Keck, A Future for the Historical Jesus (1971); H C Kee, Jesus in History (1977) and What Can We Know about Jesus (1990); J Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth, His Life, Times and Teaching (1925); J L Mays, ed., Interpreting the Gospels (1981); W Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man (1977);

J Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries (1987); P Perkins, Jesus as Teacher (1990); J M Robinson, The New Quest of the Historical Jesus (1959); J A T Robinson, The Human Face of God (1973); F Schleiermache, Life of Jesus (1974); P Schoonenberg, The Christ (1971); A Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1910) and The Mystery of the Kingdom of God (1985); G Vermes, Jesus and the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (1974); A N Wilder, Eschatology and Ethics in the Teaching of Jesus (1950).

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Je'sus

Advanced Information
Jesus is the proper, as Christ is the official, name of our Lord. To distinguish him from others so called, he is spoken of as "Jesus of Nazareth" (John 18:7), and "Jesus the son of Joseph" (John 6:42). This is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, which was originally Hoshea (Num. 13:8, 16), but changed by Moses into Jehoshua (Num. 13:16; 1 Chr. 7:27), or Joshua. After the Exile it assumed the form Jeshua, whence the Greek form Jesus. It was given to our Lord to denote the object of his mission, to save (Matt. 1:21).

The life of Jesus on earth may be divided into two great periods, (1) that of his private life, till he was about thirty years of age; and (2) that of his public life, which lasted about three years.

In the "fulness of time" he was born at Bethlehem, in the reign of the emperor Augustus, of Mary, who was betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter (Matt. 1:1; Luke 3:23; comp. John 7:42). His birth was announced to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-20). Wise men from the east came to Bethlehem to see him who was born "King of the Jews," bringing gifts with them (Matt. 2:1-12). Herod's cruel jealousy led to Joseph's flight into Egypt with Mary and the infant Jesus, where they tarried till the death of this king (Matt. 2:13-23), when they returned and settled in Nazareth, in Lower Galilee (2:23; comp. Luke 4:16; John 1:46, etc.). At the age of twelve years he went up to Jerusalem to the Passover with his parents. There, in the temple, "in the midst of the doctors," all that heard him were "astonished at his understanding and answers" (Luke 2:41, etc.). Eighteen years pass, of which we have no record beyond this, that he returned to Nazareth and "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man" (Luke 2:52).

He entered on his public ministry when he was about thirty years of age. It is generally reckoned to have extended to about three years.

Each of these years had peculiar features of its own.

The first year may be called the year of obscurity, both because the records of it which we possess are very scanty, and because he seems during it to have been only slowly emerging into public notice. It was spent for the most part in Judea.

The second year was the year of public favour, during which the country had become thoroughly aware of him; his activity was incessant, and his fame rang through the length and breadth of the land. It was almost wholly passed in Galilee.

The third was the year of opposition, when the public favour ebbed away. His enemies multiplied and assailed him with more and more pertinacity, and at last he fell a victim to their hatred. The first six months of this final year were passed in Galilee, and the last six in other parts of the land.

(from Stalker's Life of Jesus Christ, p. 45).
The only reliable sources of information regarding the life of Christ on earth are the Gospels, which present in historical detail the words and the work of Christ in so many different aspects. (See the presentation on Christ.)

(Easton Illustrated Dictionary)

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Other Biblical People Named Je'sus

Advanced Information
(1.) Joshua, the son of Nun (Acts 7:45; Heb. 4:8; R.V., "Joshua"). (2.) A Jewish Christian surnamed Justus (Col. 4:11).

(Easton Illustrated Dictionary)

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Jesus Christ

Advanced Information
The expression is a combination of a name, "Jesus" (of Nazareth), and the title "Messiah" (Hebrew) or "Christ" (Greek), which means "anointed." In Acts 5:42, where we read of "preaching Jesus the Christ," this combination of the name and the title is still apparent. As time progressed, however, the title became so closely associated with the name that the combination soon was transformed from the confession, Jesus (who is) the Christ, to a confessional name, Jesus Christ. The appropriateness of this title for Jesus was such that even Jewish Christian writers quickly referred to Jesus Christ rather than Jesus the Christ (Cf. Matt. 1:1; Rom. 1:7; Heb. 13:8; James 1:1; I Pet. 1:1).

Sources of Information
The sources for our knowledge of Jesus Christ can be divided into two main groups: non-Christian and Christian.

Non-Christian Sources
These sources can be divided again into two groups: pagan and Jewish. Both are limited in their value. There are essentially only three pagan sources of importance: Pliny (Epistles x.96); Tacitus (Annals xv.44); and Suetonius (Lives xxv.4). All these date from the second decade of the second century. The main Jewish sources are Josephus (Antiquities xviii.3.3 and xx.9.1) and the Talmud. The non-Christian sources provide meager information about Jesus, but they do establish the fact that he truly lived, that he gathered disciples, performed healings, and that he was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate.

Christian Sources
The nonbiblical Christian sources consist for the most part of the apocryphal gospels (A.D. 150-350) and the "agrapha" ("unwritten sayings" of Jesus, i.e., supposedly authentic sayings of Jesus not found in the canonical Gospels). Their value is quite dubious in that what is not utterly fantastic (cf. Infancy Gospel of Thomas) or heretical (cf. Gospel of Truth) is at best only possible and not provable (cf. Gospel of Thomas 31, 47).
The biblical materials can be divided into the Gospels and Acts through Revelation. The information we can learn from Acts through Revelation is essentially as follows: Jesus was born a Jew (Gal. 4:4) and was a descendant of David (Rom. 1:3); he was gentle (II Cor. 10:1), righteous (I Pet. 3:18), sinless (II Cor. 5:21), humble (Phil. 2:6), and was tempted (Heb. 2:18; 4:15); he instituted the Lord's Supper (I Cor. 11:23-26), was transfigured (II Pet. 1:17-18), was betrayed (I Cor. 11:23), was crucified (I Cor. 1:23), rose from the dead (I Cor. 15:3ff), and ascended to heaven (Eph. 4:8). Certain specific sayings of Jesus are known (cf. I Cor. 7:10; 9:14; Acts 20:35), and possible allusions to his sayings are also found (e.g., Rom. 12:14, 17; 13:7, 8-10; 14:10).

The major sources for our knowledge of Jesus are the canonical Gospels. These Gospels are divided generally into two groups: the Synoptic Gospels (the "look-alike" Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and John. The former are generally understood to "look alike" due to their having a literary relationship. The most common explanation of this literary relationship is that Mark wrote first and that Matthew and Luke used Mark and another source, now lost, which contained mostly teachings of Jesus (called "Q") and that they used other materials as well ("M"= the materials found only in Matthew; "L" = the materials found only in Luke).

Jesus of Nazareth
In Matthew and Luke we find accounts of the birth of Jesus. Both accounts point out that Jesus was born of a virgin by the name of Mary in the city of Bethlehem (Matt. 1:18-2:12; Luke 1:26-2:7; attempts to find allusions to the virgin birth in Gal. 4:4 and John 8:41 are quite forced). Attempts to explain these accounts as parallels to Greek myths stumble on the lack of any really substantial parallels in Greek literature and above all by the Jewish nature of these accounts.
The ministry of Jesus began with his baptism by John (Mark 1:1-15; Acts 1:21-22; 10:37) and his temptation by Satan. His ministry involved the selection of twelve disciples (Mark 3:13-19), which symbolized the regathering of the twelve tribes of Israel; the preaching of the need of repentance (Mark 1:15) and the arrival of the kingdom of God in his ministry (Luke 11:20); the offer of salvation to the outcasts of society (Mark 2:15-17; Luke 15; 19:10); the healing of the sick and demon-possessed (which are referred to in the Jewish Talmud); and his glorious return to consummate the kingdom.

The turning point in Jesus' ministry came at Caesarea Philippi when, after being confessed as the Christ by Peter, he acknowledged the correctness of this confession and proceeded to tell the disciples of his forthcoming death (Mark 8:27-31; Matt. 16:13-21). Advancing toward Jerusalem, Jesus cleansed the temple and in so doing judged the religion of Israel (note Mark's placement of the account between 11:12-14 and 11: 20-21 as well as the contents of the following two chapters). On the night in which he was betrayed he instituted the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, which refers to the new covenant sealed by his sacrificial blood and the victorious regathering in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:25; Matt. 26:29; Luke 22:18; I Cor. 11:26). Thereupon he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, tried before the Sanhedrin, Herod Antipas, and finally Pontius Pilate, who condemned him to death on political charges for claiming to be the Messiah (Mark 15:26; John 19:19). On the eve of the sabbath Jesus was crucified for the sins of the world (Mark 10:45) outside the city of Jerusalem (John 19:20) at a place called Golgotha (Mark 15:22) between two thieves who may have been revolutionaries (Matt. 27:38).

He gave up his life before the sabbath came, so that there was no need to hasten his death by crurifragium, i.e., the breaking of his legs (John 19:31-34). He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea (Mark 15:43; John 19:38) on the eve of the sabbath. On the first day of the week, which was the third day (Friday to 6 P.M. = day 1; Friday 6 P.M. to Saturday 6 P.M. = day 2; Saturday 6 P.M. to Sunday A.M. = day 3), he rose from the dead, the empty tomb was discovered, and he appeared to his followers (Mark 16; Matt. 28; Luke 24; John 20-21). He abode forty days with the disciples and then ascended into heaven (Acts 1:1-11).

So ended the three-year ministry (John 2:13; 5:1; 6:4; 13:1) of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christ of Faith
The unique self-understanding of Jesus can be ascertained by two means: the implicit Christology revealed by his actions and words, and the explicit Christology revealed by the titles he chose to describe himself.

Implicit Christology
Jesus during his ministry clearly acted as one who possessed a unique authority. He assumed for himself the prerogative of cleansing the temple (Mark 11:27-33), of bringing the outcasts into the kingdom of God (Luke 15), and of having divine authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:5-7; Luke 7:48-49).
Jesus also spoke as one who possessed authority greater than the OT (Matt. 5:31-32, 38-39), than Abraham (John 8:53), Jacob (John 4:12), and the temple (Matt. 12:6). He claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28). He even claimed that the destiny of all people depended on how they responded to him (Matt. 10:32-33; 11:6; Mark 8: 34-38).

Explicit Christology
Along with the implicit Christology of his behavior Jesus also made certain Christological claims by means of the various titles he used for himself. He referred to himself as the Messiah or Christ (Mark 8:27-30; 14:61-62), and his formal sentence of death on political grounds (note the superscription on the cross) only makes sense on the basis of Jesus' having acknowledged that he was the Messiah. He referred to himself also as the Son of God (Mark 12:1-9; Matt. 11:25-27), and a passage such as Mark 13:32 in which he clearly distinguished between himself and others must be authentic, for no one in the church would have created a saying such as this in which the Son of God claims to be ignorant as to the time of the end. Jesus' favorite self-designation, due to its concealing as well as revealing nature, was the title Son of man. Jesus in using this title clearly had in mind the Son of man of Dan. 7:13, as is evident from Mark 8:38; 13:26; 14:62; Matt. 10:23; 19:28; 25:31. Therefore, rather than being a title which stresses humility, it is clear that this title reveals the divine authority Jesus possesses as the Son of man to judge the world and his sense of having come from the Father (cf. here also Mark 2:17; 10:45; Matt. 5:17; 10:34). Many attempts have been made to deny the authenticity of some or all of the Son of man sayings, but such attempts founder on the fact that this title is found in all the Gospel strata (Mark, Q, M, L, and John) and satisfies perfectly the "criterion of dissimilarity," which states that if a saying or title like this could not have arisen out of Judaism or out of the early church, it must be authentic. The denial of the authenticity of this title is therefore based not so much on exegetical issues as upon rationalistic presuppositions which a priori deny that Jesus of Nazareth could have spoken of himself in this way.
Within the NT numerous claims are made concerning Jesus Christ. Through his resurrection Jesus has been exalted and given lordship over all creation (Col. 1:16-17; Phil. 2:9-11; I Cor. 15:27). The use of the title "Lord" for Jesus quickly resulted in the association of the person and work of Jesus with the Lord of the OT, i.e., Yahweh. (Cf. Rom. 10:9-13 with Joel 2:32; II Thess. 1:7-10, I Cor. 5:5 with Isa. 2:10-19; II Thess. 1:12 with Isa. 66:5; I Cor. 16:22 and Rev. 22:20; Phil 2:11.) His preexistence is referred to (II Cor. 8:9; Phil. 2:6; Col. 1:15-16); he is referred to as creator (Col. 1:16); he is said to possess the "form" of God (Phil. 2:6) and be the "image" of God (Col. 1:15; cf. also II Cor. 4:4). He is even referred to explicitly in a number of places as "God" (Rom. 9:5; II Thess. 1:12; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:5-8; I John 5:20; John 1:1; 20:28; although the exegesis of some of these passages is debated, it is clear that some of them clearly refer to Jesus as "God").

The Quest for the Historical Jesus
The beginning of the quest for the historical Jesus can be dated to 1774-78 when the poet Lessing published posthumously the lecture notes of Hermann Samuel Reimarus. These notes challenged the traditional portrait of Jesus found in the NT and the church. For Reimarus, Jesus never made any messianic claim, never instituted any sacraments, never predicted his death nor rose from the dead. The story of Jesus was in fact a deliberate imposture of the disciples. In so portraying Jesus, Reimarus raised the question, "What was Jesus of Nazareth really like?" And so the quest to find the "real" Jesus arose. During the earliest part of the nineteenth century the dominating method of research in the quest was rationalism, and attempts were made to explain "rationally" the life of Christ (cf. K. H. Venturini's A Non-Supernatural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth).
A major turning point came when D. F. Strauss's The Life of Christ was published in 1835, for Strauss in pointing out the futility of the rationalistic approach argued that the miraculous in the Gospels was to be understood as nonhistorical "myths." This new approach was in turn succeeded by the liberal interpretation of the life of Jesus, which minimized and neglected the miraculous dimension of the Gospels and viewed it as "husk" which had to be eliminated in order to concentrate on the teachings of Jesus. Not surprisingly, this approach found in the teachings of Jesus such liberal doctrines as the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the infinite value of the human soul.

The "death" of the quest came about for several reasons. For one, it became apparent, through the work of Albert Schweitzer, that the liberal Jesus never existed but was simply a creation of liberal wishfulness. Another factor that helped end the quest was the realization that the Gospels were not simple objective biographies which could easily be mined for historical information. This was the result of the work of William Wrede and the form critics. Still another reason for the death of the quest was the realization that the object of faith for the church throughout the centuries had never been the historical Jesus of theological liberalism but the Christ of faith, i.e., the supernatural Christ proclaimed in the Scriptures. Martin kahler was especially influential in this regard.

During the period between the two World Wars, the quest lay dormant for the most part due to disinterest and doubt as to its possibility. In 1953 a new quest arose at the instigation of Ernst Kasemann. Kasemann feared that the discontinuity in both theory and practice between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith was very much like the early docetic heresy, which denied the humanity of the Son of God. As a result he argued that it was necessary to establish a continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. Furthermore he pointed out that the present historical skepticism about the historical Jesus was unwarranted because some historical data were available and undeniable. The results of this new quest have been somewhat disappointing, and the enthusiasm that greeted it can be said, for the most part, to have disappeared. New tools have been honed during this period, however, which can assist in this historical task.

The major problem that faces any attempt to arrive at the "historical Jesus" involves the definition of the term "historical." In critical circles the term is generally understood as "the product of the historical-critical method." This method for many assumes a closed continuum of time and space in which divine intervention, i.e., the miraculous, cannot intrude. Such a definition will, of course, always have a problem seeking to find continuity between the supernatural Christ and the Jesus of history, who by such a definition cannot be supernatural.

If "historical" means nonsupernatural, there can never be a real continuity between the Jesus of historical research and the Christ of faith. It is becoming clear, therefore, that this definition of "historical" must be challenged, and even in Germany spokesmen are arising who speak of the need for the historical-critical method to assume an openness to transcendence, i.e., openness to the possibility of the miraculous. Only in this way can there ever be hope of establishing a continuity between the Jesus of historical research and the Christ of faith.

R H Stein
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

Bibliography
F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the NT; D. Guthrie, A Shorter Life of Christ; E. F. Harrison, A Short Life of Christ; J. G. Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ; G. E. Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus; T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus; J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus and The Problem of the Historical Jesus; R. H. Stein, The Method and Message of Jesus' Teachings and An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus; I. H. Marshall, The Origins of NT Christology and I Believe in the Historical Jesus; R. N. Longenecker, The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity; A. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus; M. Kahler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ; H. Anderson, Jesus and Christian Origins; R. H. Stein, "The 'Criteria' for Authenticity," in Gospel Perspectives, I; D. E. Aune, Jesus and the Synoptic Gospels.

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