Essay On Modern Quest

While numerous scholars say that John is the Gospel to the world (and Matthew to the Jews, Mark to the Romans, and Luke to the Greeks), a Jewish scholar such as Israel Abrahams might very well believe that the Gospel of John is the most Jewish Gospel of the four by the way it reflects Jewish traditions and symbolisms. According to David Wenham[i], there is more attention given to Jesus as the Messiah in the Gospel of John than in any of other Gospels. In John, from chapter one onwards people are directly talking about Jesus as Messiah, and then there is intense public debate about whether Jesus is Messiah or not in John 7:25-31, 41-44[ii], which indicates that John is quite mindful of Jewish issues.

Some scholars argue that evidence of Jesus of Nazareth 's existence can only be found within the writings of the New Testament. They believe that the New Testament is a biased and unreliable source for the existence of Jesus. They therefore claim that Jesus did not exist. The historical existence of Jesus is necessary to demonstrate the truth of Christianity. While Christian scholars do not discount the reliability of the New Testament as a historical document, they are also able to point to other historical documents and consider non-Christian writings which support the existence of Jesus. In this paper I will argue that Jesus the Nazarene was an actual, historical person and that this can be demonstrated through extra-Biblical resources.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke which contain Jesus’ birth narrative, ministry, and, of course, his execution, became canon. Some believe that the early church had motive behind rejecting the Q’s inclusion into the New Testament. This belief, fueled by the fact that the Q has only been made available to the public through lengthy discourses and treatises make the exclusivity of the Q even more intriguing. Marcus Borg emphasizes the importance of the Q’s significance and distinguishes it from any other

Prior to the twentieth century, theologians limited their discussion of Christ to the views set forth in their respective denominational or confessional traditions.” But, doubt that Christ in tradition was different from the actual Christ created a shift from metaphysical to historical Christology. This sparked the search for the historical Jesus in which two approaches, “Christology from Above” and “Christology from Below arose.

N.T. Wright releases “How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels” with the affirmation that the church has come to emphasis almost exclusively on Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection. Although, the gospels devote the majority of their time on Jesus’ life. Jesus’s life, death, resurrection and rise did not hint the end of the old Israel story, but redirected it further to a worldwide effort of adaptation. Wright addresses several New Testament documented interpreters who present the gospels as simply “the prognosis of early Christian faith, reflecting the disputes and predicaments of the early church,” something Wright calls a “half-truth”. Wright argues that notwithstanding the gospels countless differences, none of

While the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon allow for a more elucidated understand of Christ, the reality of other factors inhibits its full potential. There are factors that exist which produce the opposite effect. Several issues, including history, philosophy, and language, impede the attempt to better apprehend Jesus Christ. In regards to the issue with history, there is an inverse relationship between the desire for Jesus’ history with the current amount of information that humanity has recorded of him. For a religious figure who has left an immeasurable amount of influence onto mankind with his abilities, interactions with others, humility, and ultimate sacrifice, procuring more knowledge on this being would a great benefit to Christological studies. There would be no amount of books large enough to contain the knowledge of the Messiah’s actions that are not already detailed (O’Collins 2). This unquantifiable yearning for learning is unfortunately contrasted with the amount of detailed information on him currently available after nearly two millennia. There are not many details that the world knows about Jesus Christ since “he left no letters or other personal documents” (O’Collins 2). Not a lot of information is known about the Redeemer before he established his “public ministry”

Power struggles have always been occurrences that have had the ability to plague an entire nation. While evidence of this fact can be seen all throughout history, it is especially evident within medieval times. Specifically, power struggles developed between the Roman church and various groups such as non-believers, Muslims, kings, and even common people all throughout the High Middle Ages. As a result, Christian fighters, known as “crusades,” were asked to fight for their beliefs by the pope in order to take back land that non-believers lived on as well as eliminate anyone who challenged the authority of the church hierarchy. It was not hard to convince most people to become crusaders and many documents throughout history can show one

Christianity has long faced attacks on the historical authenticity of Jesus, His claims, works and resurrection. This skepticism took a new turn when the Jesus Seminar took it upon themselves to study the authenticity of the Gospels and the historical accuracy of their contents. The article in Time magazine, Gospel Truth? by David Van Biema explores the arguments of the Seminar and the counter-arguments brought forth by Christians who defend the historical authenticity of the Gospels. My reading of the arguments put forward by the Seminar, have not found their conclusions consistent with the evidence found in the Bible, historical records or personal experience.

The quest for the knowledge on the historical Jesus started as a protest against the traditional dogma of Christianity, but when the neutral historians joined the movement, all they saw was Jesus without features. Even when these scholars decided that other biblical figures such as John the evangelist, John the Baptist, Paul, and others were at home in a symbolic and richly storied world. Jesus himself

N.T. Wright the author of “The Challenge of Jesus” set out to prove a point. When studying the life, behavior, and ministry of Jesus one is to do so in the context in which he lived. If I had to form a thesis statement from this book it would be; too truly understand who Jesus was the student must view the natural behaviors of Jesus in the concept of Judaism. In result the student will be able to more accurately discover or even rediscover who Jesus was and still is today. Wright on pages 16-17 makes a statement that illuminated me to the idea of wanting ask new questions about Jesus; as my knowledge of Jesus becomes more in depth over the years. Wright speaks that the fact of the readers having their own opinion or concept of Jesus through

Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew is a book that presents the life of Christ in a chronological manner. Yancey is successful in relating the life of Jesus and the events thereof to personal experiences and draws supporting evidence from historical events and other works of literature. Throughout the book, he draws parallel comparisons of these events and teachings with the mission of Jesus. Yancey, at times, comes across as a critic of Jesus and questions his own beliefs and ideas about Jesus. As Yancey states, “I have found that the doubts that afflict me from many sources-from science, from comparative religion, from an innate defect of skepticism, from aversion to the church-take on a new

Luke informs the reader of three things. First, reliable traditions about Jesus and the early Christian movement have been handed down by eyewitnesses.

Wright analyze and arrive to the conclusion that Jesus and the Spirit are two main pilars in which Paul redefine the traditional Jewish doctrine of the one God, he shows through exegesis that Paul believed in the triune God and that Jesus was the revelation of this insight as well as the Spirit. Likewise, it is through the Spirit that God dwells in us, and the Spirit is the one that causes heathen pagans to be moved in this unusual gospel of the one God revealed in a crucified Jew. It is also explained the rework of the Jewish doctrine about the election around Jesus and the Spirit. The author then entered in the explanation of justification, which is a subset of election, it is not the people centered on the law and therefore only Jews that

In his book Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, Wright attempts to clarify the importance of the Old Testament for Christians by explaining how the Old Testament points to the coming of Jesus. Wright explained in his preface, “the deeper you go into understanding the Old Testament, the closer you come to the heart of Jesus. It is with this mindset that Wright unfolds the intricate and direct connection between the Old Testament texts and their importance in acquiring a complete and accurate understanding of their relationship to Jesus and how his coming was a fulfillment of both Old Testament law and prophecy. However, some liberal theologians argued that the Old Testament should no longer be deemed canonical, since historical criticism

The New Testament is a collection of books which contains the writings concerning the significant events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. These books appeared after the physical death of Jesus Christ. In this regard, Jesus had left no records concerning him, and all that is written about him depends wholly on what other people have written about him. The first four books of the New Testament are part of the several biographies of Jesus which were written by the end of the first century of the era of Christianity. Then before any of these biographies have been drafted, there were Christian communities which were being instructed through epistles on how to live like Jesus and how to solve their problem like Christians. A good number of these letters were written by a man called Paul. After Paul death, some other new leaders of the Christian movement continued to write letters to the churches to encourage and strengthen them. As Christians grew in number persecution arose, and some letters have been drafted to support them and also to counter the false doctrines. These letters are part of the New Testament. The twenty-seven books of the New Testament were selected from the list of writings in that period (Bruce, 1988)