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The Acts of the Apostles is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message to the Roman Empire.
The Gospel of Mark is the second of the four canonical Gospels and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to his death, the burial of his body, and the discovery of his empty tomb. It portrays Jesus as a teacher, an exorcist, a healer, and a miracle worker, though it does not mention a miraculous birth or divine pre-existence. Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man. He is called the Son of God but keeps his messianic nature secret; even his disciples fail to understand him. All this is in keeping with the Christian interpretation of prophecy, which is believed to foretell the fate of the messiah as suffering servant.
The Gospel of Luke is the third of the New Testament's four canonical Gospels. It tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts, accounting for 27.5% of the New Testament. The combined work divides the history of first-century Christianity into three stages, with the gospel making up the first two of these – the life of Jesus the messiah (Christ) from his birth to the beginning of his mission in the meeting with John the Baptist, followed by his ministry with events such as the Sermon on the Plain and its Beatitudes, and his Passion, death, and resurrection.
The Gospel of John is the fourth of the New Testament's four canonical Gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "signs" culminating in the raising of Lazarus and seven "I am" discourses culminating in Thomas's proclamation of the risen Jesus as "my Lord and my God". The gospel's concluding verses set out its purpose, "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."
John the Evangelist is the name traditionally given to the author of the Gospel of John. Christians have traditionally identified him with John the Apostle, John of Patmos, and John the Presbyter, although there is no consensus on how many of these may actually be the same individual.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. It is about a traveler who is stripped of clothing, beaten, and left half dead alongside the road. A Jewish priest and then a Levite come by, both avoiding the man. A Samaritan happens upon him and, though Samaritans and Jews were generally antagonistic toward each other, helps him. Jesus tells the parable in response to a provocative question from a lawyer in the context of the Great Commandment: "And who is my neighbor?" The conclusion is that the neighbor figure in the parable is the one who shows mercy to their fellow man or woman.
The Jesus Seminar was a group of about 50 biblical criticism scholars and 100 laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk that originated under the auspices of the Westar Institute. The seminar was very active through the 1980s and 1990s, and into the early 21st century.
The historicity of Jesus is the question of whether Jesus historically existed. The question of historicity was generally settled in scholarship in the early 20th century. Today scholars agree that a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth did exist in the Herodian Kingdom of Judea and the subsequent Herodian tetrarchy in the 1st century AD, upon whose life and teachings Christianity was later constructed, but a distinction is made by scholars between 'the Jesus of history' and 'the Christ of faith'.
The term "historical Jesus" refers to the life and teachings of Jesus as interpreted through critical historical methods, in contrast to what are traditionally religious interpretations. It also considers the historical and cultural contexts in which Jesus lived. Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and the idea that Jesus was a mythical figure has been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory. Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events being supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: Jesus was baptized and Jesus was crucified.
Jesus, also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christian denominations believe Jesus to be the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited messiah, or Christ, a descendant from the Davidic line that is prophesied in the Old Testament. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically. Accounts of Jesus's life are contained in the Gospels, especially the four canonical Gospels in the New Testament. Academic research has yielded various views on the historical reliability of the Gospels and how closely they reflect the historical Jesus.
John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity and former Catholic priest who was a prominent member of the Jesus Seminar, and emeritus professor at DePaul University. His research has focused on the historical Jesus, the theology of noncanonical Gospels, and the application of postmodern hermeneutical approaches to the Bible. His work is controversial, portraying the Second Coming as a late corruption of Jesus' message and saying that Jesus' divinity is metaphorical. In place of the eschatological message of the Gospels, Crossan emphasizes the historical context of Jesus and of his followers immediately after his death. He describes Jesus' ministry as founded on free healing and communal meals, negating the social hierarchies of Jewish culture and the Roman Empire.
The quest for the historical Jesus consists of academic efforts to determine what words and actions, if any, may be attributed to Jesus, and to use the findings to provide portraits of the historical Jesus. Conventionally, since the 18th century three scholarly quests for the historical Jesus are distinguished, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during each specific phase. These quests are distinguished from earlier approaches because they rely on the historical method to study biblical narratives. While textual analysis of biblical sources had taken place for centuries, these quests introduced new methods and specific techniques to establish the historical validity of their conclusions.
Géza Vermes, was a British academic, Biblical scholar, and Judaist of Jewish–Hungarian descent—one who also served as a Roman Catholic priest in his youth—and scholar specialized in the field of the history of religion, particularly ancient Judaism and early Christianity. He is best known for his complete translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls into English; his research focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Ancient Hebrew writings in Aramaic such as the Targumim, and on the life and religion of Jesus. Vermes was one of the most important voices in contemporary Jesus research, and he has been described as the greatest Jesus scholar of his time. Vermes' written work on Jesus focuses principally on the Jewishness of the historical Jesus, as seen in the broader context of the narrative scope of Jewish history and theology, while questioning and challenging the basis of the Christian doctrine on Jesus.
Ed Parish Sanders was a liberal and secularized New Testament scholar and a principal proponent of the "New Perspective on Paul". He was a major scholar in the scholarship on the historical Jesus and contributed to the view that Jesus was part of a renewal movement within Judaism. Sanders identified himself as a "liberal, modern, secularized Protestant" in his book Jesus and Judaism; fellow scholar John P. Meier called him a postliberal Protestant. He was Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion at Duke University, North Carolina from 1990 until his retirement in 2005.
Gerd Theißen is a German Protestant theologian and New Testament scholar. He is Professor of New Testament Theology at the University of Heidelberg.
Robert Walter Funk was an American biblical scholar, founder of the Jesus Seminar and the nonprofit Westar Institute in Santa Rosa, California. Funk sought to promote research and education on what he called biblical literacy. His approach to hermeneutics was historical-critical, with a strongly skeptical view of orthodox Christian belief, particularly concerning the historical Jesus. He and his associates described Jesus' parables as containing shocking messages that contradicted established religious attitudes.
Bruce D. Chilton is an American scholar of early Christianity and Judaism, and an Episcopalian priest. He is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College, formerly Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale University, and Rector of the Church of St John the Evangelist He holds a PhD in New Testament from Cambridge University. He has previously held academic positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Münster.
In textual criticism of the New Testament, the L source is a hypothetical oral or textual tradition which the author of Luke–Acts may have used when composing the Gospel of Luke.
Karl Ludwig Schmidt was a German Protestant theologian and professor of New Testament studies at the University of Basel. He taught that the accounts of the New Testament were to be regarded as fixed written versions of oral Gospel tradition. In 1919, his book Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu showed that Mark's chronology is the invention of the evangelist. Using form criticism, Schmidt showed that an editor had assembled the narrative out of individual scenes that did not originally have a chronological order. This finding challenged historians' ability to discern a historical Jesus and helped bring about a decades-long collapse in interest in the topic.
Scholars have given various interpretations of the elements of the Gospel stories.
References
- ↑ Prof.dr. A.B. Merz (1965 - ) at the Catalogus Professorum Academiæ Rheno-Traiectinæ
- ↑ McGill University. Faculty of Religious Studies (1999). Arc. Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University. p. 227. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ↑ "Areas of Research". University of Utrecht. Archived from the original on 3 August 2012. Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ↑ Milavec, Aaron (7 October 2007). Salvation Is from the Jews (John 4:22): Saving Grace in Judaism and Messianic Hope in Christianity. Liturgical Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-0-8146-5989-2 . Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ↑ Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler (1 August 2001). Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-8264-1366-6 . Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ↑ Allison Jr., Dale C. (1 November 2010). Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History. Baker Academic. p. 206. ISBN 978-0-8010-3585-2 . Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ↑ Anderson, Paul N.; Just, Felix; Thatcher, Tom (2007). John, Jesus, and History. Society of Biblical Lit. p. 219. ISBN 978-1-58983-293-0 . Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ↑ Cameron, Ron; Miller, Merrill P. (2004). Redescribing Christian Origins. BRILL. p. 355. ISBN 978-90-04-13064-7 . Retrieved 24 April 2012.
- ↑ Annette Merz - Home
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