Jesus
Jesus (c. 4 BC – c. AD 30 / 33), also referred
to as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, was
a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He
is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion.
Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God
the Son and the awaited Messiah (the Christ) prophesied in
the Old Testament.
Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed
historically, although the quest for the historical Jesus has
yielded some uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and
on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the Bible reflects the historical
Jesus, as the only records of Jesus' life, are contained in the four Gospels. Jesus
was a Galilean Jew, who was baptized by John the
Baptist and began his own ministry. He preached orally and
was often referred to as "rabbi". Jesus debated with fellow Jews
on how to best follow God, engaged in healings, taught in parables, and
gathered followers. He was arrested and tried by the Jewish
authorities, turned over to the Roman government, and crucified on
the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect. After his death,
his followers believed he rose from the dead, and the community they
formed eventually became the early Church.
Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by
the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary,
performed miracles, founded the Christian Church, died by crucifixion as
a sacrifice to achieve atonement for sin, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven,
from where he will return Commonly, Christians believe Jesus enables
people to be reconciled to God. The Nicene Creed asserts that Jesus
will judge the living and the dead either before or after their bodily
resurrection, an event tied to the Second Coming of Jesus
in Christian eschatology. The great majority of Christians worship
Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, the second of three persons of
the Trinity. A small minority of Christian denominations reject
Trinitarianism, wholly or partly, as non-scriptural. The birth of Jesus is
celebrated annually on December 25 (on the Julian Calendar in some Eastern
Churches) as Christmas. His crucifixion is honored on Good Friday and
his resurrection on Easter Sunday. The widely used calendar era "AD",
from the Latin anno Domini ("year of the Lord"), and
the equivalent alternative "CE", are based on the approximate birth date of Jesus.
Jesus is also revered outside of Christianity. In Islam, Jesus
(commonly transliterated as Isa) is considered one of God's important prophets and
the Messiah. Muslims believe Jesus was born of a virgin but was
neither God nor a begotten God. The Quran states that Jesus never
claimed divinity. Muslims do not believe that he was killed or
crucified, but that he was physically raised into Heaven by God. In
contrast, Judaism rejects the belief that Jesus was the awaited Messiah,
arguing that he did not fulfill Messianic prophecies, and was neither
divine nor resurrected.
A typical Jew in Jesus' time had only one name,
sometimes followed by the phrase "son of [father's name]", or
the individual's hometown. Thus, in the New Testament, Jesus is commonly
referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth" (e.g., Mark 10:47). Jesus'
neighbors in Nazareth refer to him as "the carpenter, the son of Mary and
brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon" (Mark 6:3), "the
carpenter's son" (Matthew 13:55), or "Joseph's son" (Luke 4:22). In
the Gospel of John, the disciple Philip refers to him as "Jesus
son of Joseph from Nazareth" (John 1:45).
The English name Jesus is derived from the Latin Iesus,
a transliteration of the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs). The Greek form is a rendering of the Hebrew ישוע (Yeshua), a variant
of the earlier name יהושע (Yehoshua), or in English,
"Joshua", meaning "Yah saves". This was also
the name of Moses' successor and of a Jewish high priest in
the Old Testament.
The name Yeshua appears to have been in use in Judea at
the time of the birth of Jesus. The 1st-century works of historian Flavius
Josephus, who wrote in Koine Greek, the same language as that of the New
Testament, refer to at least twenty different people with the name Jesus
(i.e. Ἰησοῦς). The etymology of Jesus' name in the context of the New
Testament is generally given as "Yahweh is salvation".
Since the early period of Christianity, Christians have commonly referred
to Jesus as "Jesus Christ". "Jesus Christ" is the name
that the author of the Gospel of John claims Jesus gave to himself
during his high priestly prayer. The word Christ was
a title or office ("the Christ"), not a given name. It
derives from the Greek Χριστός (Christos), a translation
of the Hebrew mashiakh (משיח) meaning "anointed",
and is usually transliterated into English as "Messiah". In
biblical Judaism, sacred oil was used to anoint certain exceptionally
holy people and objects as part of their religious investiture (see Leviticus 8:10–12
and Exodus 30:29).
Christians of the time designated Jesus as "the Christ"
because they believed him to be the Messiah, whose arrival is prophesied in
the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. In postbiblical usage, Christ became
viewed as a name—one part of "Jesus Christ". The term Christian (meaning
a follower of Christ) has been in use since the 1st century.
