The Trials of Christ from His Arrest to His Death on the Cross

Today I will be comparing these two late Medieval Italian paintings which have a story that arranged throughout the chapel, both paintings show Mary saying goodbye to her late son, Jesus.

It is possible to write on the life of Jesus from the information gathered from the bible. I will be dividing my essay into three parts. In the first part of the paper, I will talk about the nature of the gospels, John’s views vs. the Synoptic, discuss if the authors of the gospels are eyewitnesses and how they used written sources. Also I will talk about the Q source. Then I will elaborate on the topic of how Matthew and Luke were similar. Then I will continue on by discussing how the Old Testament uses Moses, Samuel and Elijah to interpret Jesus, and finally whether or not the Sermon on the Mount happened. In the second part of my paper, I will talk about Jesus’s birth and childhood, his miracles, his resurrection, and what Jesus did to cure people, spirits and how they are interpreted to the prophet, magician and the mad man compared to Saul and Elijah. The final part of the paper I will talk about what Jesus talked about as regards to the Kingdom of God vs. the Kingdom of the Romans and what he intended by speaking of the end of the world. I will also speak of the reasons behind the Romans executing him. My sources for this paper will be the New Jerusalem Bible Readers edition as my primary source and lecture notes from Professor Trumbach.

The Crusades were a bloody war that the church deemed holy and necessary for salvation of the knights soul. The Crusades are a highly controversial and very dark stain on the Catholic church and Hierarchies past. The war was brought to the church from there Roman allies who they had tense dealings with. The where seeking aid in the fight against the muslim turks. The church decreed there act holy and justified. The people who were under the churches thumb had no objections to the slaughter that their beloved God had suposably justified.

Peter Paul Reubens, “The Raising of The Cross” found on page 265 in our art book, was created 1610-1611 by the use of oil on panel, dimensions 462 x 339 cm. Many facets of this painting caught my attention, but the prime facet was the geometric support it influences and the sentimental effect it distributes to the spectators, also Reuben’s motive and content behind the painting.

Through Matthew 27:11-66 it is evident that the governor Pontius Pilate plays a crucial role in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Scholars throughout history have provided support to see Pilate as positive, negative, or neutral role in the retelling of the crucifixion. Warren Carter is one of the many scholars who have taken note of Pilate’s role in history and within the source “Pontius Pilate. Portraits of a Roman Governor” Carter argues that Pilate is a negative character. He goes as far to claim that Pilate was one to actively seek conflict. While Carter argues that Pilate’s role is one of negativity, I would argue, that through a socio-culture view, that Pilate is not a negative figure, but an ambivalent one, due to his lack to enforce.

Two thousand years ago, the birth of Jesus, arguably the most influential man the world has ever seen, altered history forever. Christians know him as the Messiah, the son of God who came to save all of mankind, and for others, he may just be a great teacher and person of history. It is the latter that Reza Aslan attempts to shed an unbiased light on by comparing the Jesus that modern Christians believe in to the Jesus that Aslan believes would have fit into first-century Palestine: a violet revolutionary, dedicated to the eradication of the Roman government in Israel and the deposition of the rich priestly class. Aslan paints a portrayal of Jesus using knowledge of the time period, Scripture that has been taken out of context and misinterpreted, and most of all, the author’s imagination and powerful rhetoric to cover up his faulty argumentation. In his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan recreates an interesting but purely speculative image of the historical Jesus through exploring the political and social history of first-century Palestine, the life and teachings of Jesus, and the development of early Christianity.

Killing Jesus, like its predecessors Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, goes into thorough detail about the life and death of a prominent historical figure. Not only does the book cover the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but also encompasses the history surrounding him. The book spans from 5 B.C. to A.D. 30. and is broken up into three parts. The first part starts before Jesus is born, when Joseph and Mary are traveling to Bethlehem.

Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, was raised in a Jewish household, but he also had exposure to Roman culture because his father was also a Roman citizen. After his family relocated to Jerusalem, he became the apprentice of Gamaliel, who was a Hillelites Pharisee member. Paul on the other hand, had become a member of the Shammaites Pharisee, who strictly followed the Jewish law, and believed that those who did not follow the Jewish law were preventing the coming of God’s kingdom. As a member of this Pharisee, Paul too part in the persecution of Christians who were accused of heresy, because he along with the other members believed that they were spreading and supporting a belief in a failed messiah, who we have come to know as Jesus Christ.

This paper is a review of the book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Michael Licona. This book is comprised of pages that “investigate the question of the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection while providing unprecedented interaction with the literature of professional historians outside of the community of biblical scholars on both hermeneutical and methodological considerations.” The book is separated into five long chapters: “Chapter 1: Important Consideration pertaining to Historical Truth” , “Chapter 2: The Historians and Miracles”, “Chapter 3: Historical Sources Pertaining to the Resurrection of Christ”, “Chapter 4: The Historical Bedrock Pertaining to the Fate of Jesus”, and “Chapter 5: Weighing Hypothesis”.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Jesus worked as a carpenter and lived a traditional Jewish life until he was thirty. In his thirties, he began religious teachings and displayed miracles in public. His key teachings were about loving one another, reality of judgement day, and the good news to enter heaven. His works of miracles, such as curing diseases, walking on water, and calming the storms were appealing to many people that they decided to follow him. Despite his efforts to keep low profile, his reputation spread nation-wide. Jesus claimed to be God, which violated the Jewish law, so many Jewish leaders asked the Roman government to execute him. Though, he was not guilty of breaking any Roman law, he was brutally tortured and hung by his hand on the cross. He rose from the dead after three days and rose up to heaven.

John Dominic Crossan is a well-renowned scholar of the historical Jesus, so one would expect his book to be full of some of the best scholarship on the topic. He provides a way to humanize Jesus and explain whom he was, and what his world looked like at the time. However, despite his ability to bring Jesus to life on the page, he skips over several large ideas, thus leaving much to be desired. While his book, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, does a good job as an introduction to the historical Jesus, it leaves the reader wanting more out of it than what he provided. This book review functions with two parts. In the first part, I discuss how Crossan seems to provide a shallow investigation on women and what they meant to Jesus and his followers.

Discuss the distinction between the Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History. What are the implication did it have within our social location

Christ with Symbols of the Passion by Lavinia Fontana is a small but interesting piece. It depicts Christ being supported by two wingless angels between two wingless angels carrying the cross and two wingless angels holding the column that Christ had been tied to after his arrest. At Christs feet are the other symbols of the passion: The crown of thorns, the whip, and the stones that were cast upon him. In the hand of one of the angels carrying the column are the nails that were used to pin Christ to the cross. At the bottom left corner is a what looks like a gravestone or a carved tablet signed and dated by the artist. They appear to be on a path entering a wooded area and a mountain can be seen in the far background. The subject of the piece is “a scene that does not occur in the Christian Scriptures” (The plaque accompanying the piece) but what makes this piece so interesting is the style of which it was painted. It can’t be stated as a full manneristic piece, but it can be said to have mannerisms main features of unnatural proportions, affected poses, spatial ambiguity, contextual ambiguity, compositional complexity, unnatural palette, and high anxiety varying degrees.

In W.H. Auden’s Musée des Beaux, there is an allusion at the end of the first stanza to the Crucifixion of Jesus and it is used to signify that suffering has always been around and will stay around until the end of time. When the speaker says, “Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse [s]cratches its innocent behind on a tree” (12-13), they are alluding to a painting of Jesus’ Crucifixion. In the painting, Jesus is suffering as they prepare to kill him. While there is actually a clueless dog playing in the background and a horse belonging to a torturer, scratching itself on a tree, both are oblivious to the suffering that is going on around them. The allusion shows that even when the suffering is nearby, the world does not see it.

Now-a-days it seems like religion has become somewhat of a taboo. It has fallen on the back burners, pushed behind things such as famous actors that people look up to or things portrayed in the media. The thing is, the most important figure in history is part of religion and should be revered much more than the idolized actors of today. The human population has become blind to spiritual life and has become engulfed by a social lifestyle. If you look around, people have forgotten what it’s like to know Jesus and any aspect of religion. Religion is the biggest part of any person’s life because it is the building block for everything we have.