...Jesus: Advocating Community Some would say God, or the author of Genesis, got it right: "It is not good for man to be alone." For as long as there have been humans, there have been communities. We are communal beings. From the first small tribes to the modern day mega cities, communities have evolved just as much as the human species. There are many ways that one can identify with a community. Human beings as well as many other species, especially primates, need these groupings as much as most social animals. Watch as every Sunday thousands sit distant from their closest sports field, straining to see the players, although they can far more easily watch the game at home in the comfort of their living rooms. Yet, in modern times, the community seems to be falling apart. They are not as strong as they once were. It is time we look back to the social climate that forged one of the most influential revolutionaries of all time. The historical Jesus of Nazareth. As John Crossan said “If the supreme value for the twentieth-century American imagination is individualism , based on economics and property, that for the first-century Mediterranean imagination can be called, to the contrary, groupism.” Our society has experienced major social shifts that would be unimaginable to a small Jewish town in ancient Palestine. Individuals no longer realize they need to rely on others in the way they once did. Modern technology has pushed us farther and farther into our own homes and away...
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...Christians through faith. In this regard, Luther explored the dissimilarities between the righteousness accorded to Christians as a gift through faith and Christian’s own proper righteousness which works in the power of the gift through Jesus to do different works of mercy and love. Consequently, Luther presented a Latin phrase that further described Christian justification, “Simul Justus et Peccator” which is directly interpreted as “simultaneously just and sinners.” Therefore, this paper will explain and evaluate Martin Luther’s ideas of the double righteousness possessed by Christians using his commentaries on Galatians and Romans as well as his 1519 sermon on two kinds of righteousness. Luther’s ideas on Simul Justus et Peccator and Justification Luther’s sermon on the two kinds of righteousness is associated with the reformers belief of salvation and living by faith and not works. The original justice presented by Luther is the alien righteousness that comes from without. This kind of righteousness is the righteousness of Jesus Christ and is ascribed through faith. Luther quotes the Bible in John 14:6 where Jesus Christ says ‘I Am the way, the truth, and the life.’ this form of righteousness is accorded to people in baptism after believing in Jesus Christ and beyond doubt being repentant. Luther’s argument is that the...
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...Rosemarie Stanislaus Term Paper August 1, 2014 The Quest for the Historical Jesus INTRODUCTION Over the centuries scholars from around the world have written a lot about religion, its meaning, relevance and contribution to humanity. There have been many speculations upon the nature and historical background of Jesus Christ. Many scholars have tried to dig into the few clues as to His identity and come up with a human side to which we can all relate. The study of Christianity and how it relates to Jesus Christ is very important to the whole world. Concerning the issue of Christianity, for example, the majority of people are taught in most schools and churches that Jesus Christ was an actual historical figure and that the only controversy regarding him is that some people accept him as the Son of God and the Messiah, while others do not. While the historicity of Jesus is the most debated subject in the field of religion today, the most enduring and profound controversy in this subject is whether or not Jesus Christ really existed. This paper will discuss who Jesus is, the controversy and biblical sources based on the views of scholars surrounding the historicity of Jesus. Finally, this paper will give Biblical evidence that Jesus existed. WHO IS JESUS? It is generally accepted that Jesus was truly a man who walked the earth 2000 years ago. Almost every religion teaches that Jesus was a prophet, excellent teacher or a Godly man. The Bible tells...
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...Christology Quest For Historical Jesus There have been three modern quests for the historical Jesus influenced by the 27 books of the New Testament, especially the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, since the first century C.E. The first quest began with the Enlightenment movement, which began as a result of increased value placed on individual thought and discovery, questioning of the truthfulness of the Bible and other church doctrines, and distinguishing the actual historical Jesus from the interpretations of Jesus that mixed small portions of history with greater amounts of theology. Hermann S. Reimarus was one of the first scholars to identify discrepancies. After his death philosopher Gotthold Lessing published Reimarus’ claim that Jesus was a Jewish reformer that encouraged Israel to replace Rome with the kingdom of God. After Jesus’ death the disciples presented him as a divine Savior, resurrected from death. Reimarus believed the disciples committed fraud; however David Strauss believed their writings to be mythological communication. These myths alone were not valuable, but were valuable in communicating religious truths. The second quest for the historical Jesus was initiated by Ernst Kasemann in 1953, as a reaction to Rudolf Bultmann’s rejection of the original quest. Bultmann dominated debates in the middle decades of the twentieth century. He was a Lutheran and helped move theology into the age of dialectical theology, where God was thought...
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...particularly its views on the doctrine of justification (discussed below) and first-century Judaism, and has caused considerable controversy amongst other Christians, particularly those who hold to more tradition perspectives. However, although various authors are all termed ‘New Perspective’, there are probably as many ‘New Perspectives’ as there are group members, as each has distinctive contributions to Pauline theology (ibid., p. 12). Specifically this paper will consider justification (and the actual meaning of the term) and the three different types of languages used when talking about justification: covenant language, law-court language and eschatological language. The paper will also be discussing Wright’s opinion on the death of Jesus and how its occurrence has actually transformed this current age in which we live in,...
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...information sharing have broken long-standing barriers once separating countries and cultures. As a result, diversification is being experienced throughout our neighborhoods, schools and places of work. People of different religious backgrounds and beliefs are now living in closer proximity. Christians must acknowledge and understand this shift in community demographics so they can respond accordingly. They must evangelize in selfless ways that are relevant and effective in order to fulfill their primary mandate set forth in The Great Commission. Jesus successfully bridged cultural gaps when befriending people very different than himself. Observing how he relationally encountered diverse people provides the necessary model for Christians. This is clearly seen in the lives of the Apostle Paul and Charles De Foucauld. By living his model of relational evangelism Christians can influence others. Relational evangelism, embodied by Jesus, is critical in reaching diversified communities. Globalization Globalization is a concept not easily defined. Thomas Larsson described it as being a “process of world shrinkage, of distances getting shorter, things moving closer.” Communities once separated geographically and culturally are more integrated today. In large part, this integration is the result of boundless communication as Larsson points out, “increasing [the] ease with which somebody on one side of the world can interact, to mutual benefit, with somebody on the other side of...
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...Introduction N. T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England (2003-2010) and one of the world's leading Bible scholars. He is now serving as the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. He has been featured on ABC News, Dateline NBC, The Colbert Report, and Fresh Air, and he has taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford universities. Wright is the award-winning author of Surprised by Hope, Simply Christian, The Last Word, The Challenge of Jesus, The Meaning of Jesus (coauthored with Marcus Borg), as well as the much heralded series Christian Origins and the Question of God. Thesis, Purpose & Description The major underlying thesis of Wright’s book is that the pursuit of a moral ideal, or what he calls virtues, is not contradictory to a grace-driven Christian life, but demanded by it. Wright considers how people who believe that Jesus is God’s offer of redemption should respond to this belief. He writes primarily to Western Christians, steeped in the mistaken idea that Christianity is about getting into heaven after dying. He suggests replacing this belief with a question, What is Christianity for right now and does it impact life today? To understand his answer, we need to understand three words: character, virtue, and wisdom. Major Ethical Insights Communicated In the very first chapter of the book, Wright goes into what happens after you are saved...
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...Historical quest as a search or pursuit made to acquire meaning and historical as a systematic account of events and time relating human race. Therefore Quest for historical Jesus is the attempt made by a number of people to discover who Jesus was and is. Before the period of enlightenment, the church had only one image of Jesus Christ. He was unanimously and harmoniously accepted as presented by the gospels, the church doctrines and traditions and the liturgy. However, the emergences of the enlightenment period in the 18th century twisted events, minds and the faith of the people. Enlightenment was a period of philosophical movement characterized by belief in the power of the human reason and by innovations in political, religious and educational doctrines. Hence, human reason was the most appealing phenomenon. Everything was subjected to critical analysis and assessment by the intellect and those that were found plausible were treasured and the non-plausible rejected or considered as myth. In the light of this, to ascertain the truth regarding the what the gospels, the doctrines of the church and traditions taught Jesus they began questioning their faith so as to know what is truth and what is false, what to belief and what not to belief. As a result, many things which were not very clear to the mind about Jesus came up and as such the need for scientific rediscovery of the historical Jesus. Examples of such issues among others were the true historical identity of Jesus...
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...David Trobisch and David Parker on the Origin of the New Testament, the Historical Jesus, and How Manuscripts Can Reveal What Texts Conceal Tom Dykstra I grew up with a picture of Paul traveling through Asia and Europe, founding congregations, counseling and teaching the men and women who had given their life to Jesus. If he could not visit them, he sent letters. When Paul died, his letters were kept as treasures. Each church that had received one of his letters saved it, had it read during worship services, and exchanged copies of the letter with other congregations close by. Later the congregations tried to complete their collection. But this view does not match the uniformity of manuscript evidence. --David Trobisch 1 It is even more remarkable that attempts to reconstruct the supposed document 'Q' (the lost collection used by both Matthew and Luke postulated by those who argue that Matthew and Luke are independent) use text-critical terminology to describe their activities. However, since all they are doing is making selections from a twentieth-century printed text, which does not even presume to provide confidently the text of the four-Gospel collection, never mind that of the independent first-century texts, this use of language must be dismissed as illusory. --David Parker 2 Modern scholarship has produced detailed biographies of Paul, massive multi-volume inquiries into “the historical Jesus,” and mountains of exegetical literature that claims to extract the author’s...
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...metaphysical to historical Christology. This sparked the search for the historical Jesus in which two approaches, “Christology from Above” and “Christology from Below arose. Christology from above, associated closely with Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Barth, and Emil Brunner, was born from the idea that rather than studying the historical Jesus as a man, the best study would be of the resurrected Christ, His works and the relationship established by faith from His disciples. The ideas of this approach include: 1. The kerygma regarding Christ is a better basis for understanding than the historical account of His life. 2. Paul’s writings and the Book of John are preferred for study over the Synoptic Gospel’s historical accounts. 3. Faith in Christ is not contingent on rational proof. Brunnner does not concede a need to study the historical account of Christ’s life with respect to His different facets, one as God becoming incarnate in the flesh and the other revealed by Christ after the flesh. Brunner asserts the study of Christ in the flesh gives us greater insight to His Person in a historical sense than the alternative of Christ after the flesh which necessitates faith to fully comprehend. Therefore, the “Christology from above” approach takes church’s proclamation of Christ with the testimonies of “Christ after the flesh” with the study of Scriptural accounts of Christ for a better understanding of Him. Another approach to discover the historical Jesus came in reaction...
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...Four Portraits, One Jesus: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels Chapter 1: What are the Gospels? | Four Gospels, One Jesus | What are the four Gospels? | * Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each paint a unique portrait of Jesus Christ | | * The Gospels exhibit both unity and diversity, bearing witness to the same Jesus | | (unity) but viewing them from unique perspectives (diversity) | What are the four unique portraits | * Matthew presents Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, the fulfillment of the Old | each Gospel paints of Jesus Christ? | Testament hopes | | * Mark portrays Jesus as the suffering Son of God, who offers himself as a | | sacrifice for sins | | * Luke portrays Jesus as the Savior for all people, who brings salvation to all | | nations and people groups | | * John portrays Jesus as the eternal son of God, the self-revelation of God the | | Father | | * Christology refers to Jesus’ person and work | What is the difference between the | * Mark is more dramatic, it is a powerful and vivid story; Matthew is the most | four Gospels? | structured of the Gospels; Luke is the most thematic, like God’s love for the lost, | | the role of the Spirit, and Jerusalem’s role in God’s plan resurfacing repeatedly; | | John is the most theological of the four, with more explicit statements | | concerning Jesus’ identity and purpose. | What are synoptic Gospels? | * Synoptic Gospels (from the Greek word synopsis...
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...Jaimie Scherer GS 2210 Jesus of Nazareth The Existence of Jesus Final Paper 2.27.15 Introduction To this day, the existence of Jesus Christ is still a debate. Not a debate on whether or not He turned water into wine, or was the Son of God, but His actual, human existence is still questioned. The existence of Jesus, and who He was, is a basis of world history. To dispel Jesus’ existence would be rewriting history and the Christianity religion as a whole. Not everyone has to believe the gospels, but Jesus did exist and was an important political figure to the world. Religion is something that is meant to bring people together to create family outside of our bloodline. However, religion is putting larger walls up between us and is the cause of the world’s wars, both past and present. Jesus didn’t want religion to break us down, but bring us together, without judgment, prejudice, or different beliefs. Even though there is much documentation, including outside of the gospels, of Jesus’ existence, people are still skeptical and question His existence. Including documentation, there has been physical, archeologist evidence supporting the places Jesus visited, walked through, and stayed. This paper will outline that Jesus was a person that walked this earth and was very impactful in our history. Continuous efforts of debating this topic should be put to rest and we should discuss Jesus in our history lessons, not as a religious figure, but as a historian who made...
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...Jesus: Fact from Fiction Christianity is currently the largest religion in the world with approximately 2.1 billion people identifying themselves as Christians. Jesus is the central focus of attention and worship in Christianity, and is held by most Christians to be the Messiah, foretold in the Hebrew Bible or “Old Testament”. They believe him to be the savior of mankind, and the son of God. However, in modern times, the use of critical scholarship in analysis of the Bible and to the New Testament Gospels in particular, has lead to an accelerating rate of disintegration in the traditional Christian belief system. The term "scholarship" implies the application of the scientific method of the evaluating evidence on the basis of objective standards unhindered from any personal involvement or biases. The main source of information on Jesus is from the Christian Gospels. Some scholars claim that the sources on which the Gospels are based were written within the living memory of Jesus' lifetime. There are four such Gospels the earliest being Mark (68-73 AD), followed by Matthew (70-100 AD), Luke (80-100 AD), and John (90-110 AD). Many conservative Christians accept these writings as evidence for a historical Jesus and as an account of his life and death. According to the Christian Gospels, Jesus was born in Bethlehem between 6 BC and 6 AD. The Gospel Mark, reports that Jesus was "the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon" he also states that Jesus had sisters. Nothing of Jesus...
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...BIBL 110 DB1 Forum Knowing the Cultural and Historical Backgrounds of the New Testament It is my belief that it is necessary to know both the cultural and historical background of the New Testament. This would help in giving invaluable insight into the core understanding of what the scriptures are saying to us with the cultures and history as the backdrop. Culture was a large influence on the mindset of beliefs and practices during those times. This caused tradition to set in that was not easily changed. Jesus shook up this mindset by going against what was the normal culture and historical practices by showing and proving that He is the way, the truth and the life. The story of the woman at the well gives us a clear example of this. When Jesus encountered the woman at the well, Jesus broke three cultural customs. First He spoke to a woman; second, she was a Samaritan who the Jews traditionally did not like; and third, He asked her to get Him a drink of water, which would have made Him ceremonially unclean because He used her cup. He Jesus showed that his mission was to the entire earth, not just the Jews. In studying the historical background of the New Testament, we can tap into the occasions and events of the divinely inspired writers’ views. For we know that history itself is a lesson that can provide real-time life changing answers. For there to be a culture, there first had to be a history to build upon. The history that the New Testament builds upon is...
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...the bible, the historical-cultural context must be considered to provide the necessary insight to grasp the intended message. The first background to investigate would be the writer. Understanding the writer’s faith would tell a lot about why he is writing and under what circumstance(s). Secondly, the historical setting would provide some insight into the definitions and types of wording and sentence structures used. This would significantly allow the reader to “convert” into modern day literary styles. Thirdly, the culture during the times of the writings will significantly provide insight into the why the message is being given. Including these aspects into your study of God’s Word, as written during ancient times, will provide you a correct understanding of the message and application today. John 2:1-21 documents Jesus’ first documented miracle. The historical reference that I feel needs to be understood is that Mary’s relationship with Jesus. She is well aware of His origin as God’s son before His birth as well as the events surrounding His birth. This accounts for her statement to the servants in John 2:5 “His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it””. Based on this historical background, she knew who He truly was and He could provide. The first cultural reference to be investigated would be the wedding itself. Is it the same ceremony as practiced today? The Jewish weddings during this time were longer and since Mary, Jesus, and His disciples...
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