The passage tombs, archaeology and landscape of Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site, Essential Revision Notes
© irevise.com 2016.
All revision notes have been produced by mockness ltd for irevise.com.
Table of Contents
How do we know about Jesus’ history, and by ‘history’, what do we mean? 4
So, what do our sources tell us about Jesus of Nazareth? 5
What are secular sources of evidence for Jesus of Nazareth? 7
Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels 9
Is it true that Jesus performed miracles? 9
Is it true that Jesus forgave sins? 9
Is it true that people bowed down before Jesus to worship Him? 9
Jesus’ Death: Conflict with Establishment 10
Jesus at the Passover Feast 10
Events in Jerusalem and Jesus’ Betrayal 11
The Consequences of Jesus’ Death 12
Jesus is “Lord” and “Christ” 13
Jesus’ Ministry
Jesus’ ministry in rural Palestine lasted from only one to three years, reached a limited number of people, and ended in apparent failure, with the abandonment of his followers and his execution by Roman authorities. Nevertheless, responsible historical inquiry yields important statements concerning Jesus as a person of the 1st-century Mediterranean world.
Inquiry of this nature involves using all available sources (insider and outsider); testing the sources for bias; determining lines of convergence among sources; and resisting the urge to speculate beyond what the evidence allows.
Although historians cannot establish a full story concerning Jesus that’s independent of the Gospels, they can state (with greater and lesser degrees of probability) important facts about him.
Jesus was likely a 1st-century Palestinian Jew who was executed by the Romans around the year 30 C.E. and in whose name, shortly thereafter, a movement arose and spread across the Mediterranean, gener...