Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed. [8] [9] [31] Historian Michael Grant asserts that if conventional standards of historical criticism are applied to the New Testament, "we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned."
Part of the 6th-century Madaba Map asserting two possible baptism locations The crucifixion of Jesus as depicted by Mannerist painter Bronzino (c. 1545). There is no scholarly consensus concerning most elements of Jesus's life as described in the Christian and non-Christian sources, and reconstructions of the "historical Jesus" are broadly debated for their reliability, [note 7] [note 6] but ...
However, the Pauline letters clearly indicate that for Paul, Jesus was a real person (born of a woman as in Gal 4.4), a Jew ("born under the law", Romans 1.3) who had disciples (1 Corinthians 15.5), who was crucified (as in 1 Corinthians 2.2 and Galatians 3.1) and later resurrected (1 Corinthians 15.20, Romans 1.4 and 6.5, Philippians 3:10–11).
Christians regard Jesus as the awaited Messiah (or "Christ") of the Old Testament and refer to him as Jesus Christ, [a] a name that is also used in non-Christian contexts. He is also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth. He is a religious, cultural, worldwide icon, and is among the most influential people in human history.
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), a historian of theology, presented an important critical review of the history of the search for Jesus's life in The Quest of the Historical Jesus – From Reimarus to Wrede (1906, 1st ed.), denouncing the subjectivity of the various writers who injected their own preferences in Jesus's character.
The existence of Jesus as an actual historical figure has been questioned by few biblical scholars and historians, some of the earliest being Constantin-François Volney and Charles François Dupuis in the 18th century and Bruno Bauer in the 19th century. Each of these proposed that the Jesus character was a fusion of earlier mythologies.
With the world's annual celebration of his birth mere weeks away, it turns out one of the most revered figures who ever walked the Earth likely didn't look like the pictures of him.
Christ Between Peter and Paul, 4th century, Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter on the Via Labicana Most scholars who study the historical Jesus and early Christianity believe that the canonical gospels and the life of Jesus must be viewed within their historical and cultural context, rather than purely in terms of Christian orthodoxy.