Isaiah is the most quoted Hebrew prophet in the New Testament of the Bible. was called Israel or Ephraim, while Judah and Benjamin became the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Justice (also judgment in the AKJV) refers to a rule of law or retributive 2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken .
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He is God in the flesh John 1: He is the personal, living Word of God. This does not demean the value of the Bible, but fulfills it. Jesus is now in Heaven. We can pray to Him and love Him, even though we do not see or hear Him directly. We hear Him when we read His Bible. It is not a collection of merely human books I Thess.
It is the Word of God already, whether we believe it or not. It is already perfect. In Biblical days, God spoke through prophets, dreams, visions and angels. But that has ceased. The Bible continues as the only Word of God. Similarly, preaching is not the Word of God. Preaching should be based on the Bible, but is not the same as the Bible. Also, the Bible is qualitatively different from every other book ever written. It alone is the Word of God.
Even the books of the Apocrypha contain only human wisdom. The Bible is the Written Word of God. God was pleased to commit His Word to writing. It was inscripturated, or written down in human script. The finger of God directly wrote the 10 Commandments Ex. God used the human authors of Scripture as His fingers to write the Bible. God did this so that we would have His Word in black and white, in a permanent form to read and study and consult. We need not depend on a series of priests who passed it on down the ages by word of mouth to be contaminated by fallible human memory.
We have it in writing. God did not breath something into the Bible; God breathed the Bible out of His own mouth. Jesus referred to this in Matt. God sent forth the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God John 3. He moved certain prophets and apostles so that they then put down in writing the exact words God wanted them to write. Technically, it is the Bible, not the writers, which is inspired. Also, it is inspired because of its source, not its effect. It is divinely inspired regardless of whatever effect it has on us.
All of the Bible is Inspired by God. Rather, the text says that all of the Scripture is inspired. This means that all parts are equally inspired. Ruth is as inspired as Romans, Joel as much as John. Therefore, it all carries divine authority and we should read all of it. All parts of it are profitable to our spiritual well-being. The Very Words of the Bible are Inspired.
God breathed out specific words, not just vague ideas or feelings which the human authors were left to interpret and write down. The Bible is verbally inspired. God inspired the words of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. This does not refer to any translation into English or any other language. Still, the authority of the original language carries over to accurate translations. God Controlled the Writers of the B i ble.
They did not simply sit down and decide to write the Bible. God chose who would do the writing, then He worked miraculously in them so that He controlled what they wrote. It was not left to the fallibility of humans. Some parts of the Bible were directly dictated by an audible voice e. In most cases, God moved in a deep and mysterious way on their hearts and minds in other ways, such as by dreams and visions. They certainly knew that the words they wrote were not merely their own I Cor. God gave them the very words, not an-inner illumination of wisdom. Also, this special inspiration has ceased.
What we need now is illumination to understand what has been inspired. The light is on; we need to have our eyes opened. Because of sin, the natural Man is incapable of understanding the true meaning of the Bible 1 Cor. God Proves that the Bible is the Word of God. Scripture carries with it certain marks of divine authorship. Among them are its high spirituality and morality, its enormous popularity in history, its durability against persecution, its record of fulfilled prophecy, etc.
But these alone are insufficient to prove divine inspiration. The Spirit is the witness because the Spirit is the truth I John 5: Even unbelievers are impacted by this power cf. Like the men with Paul on the Damascus road, they hear the sound but do not know the voice. The Word of God carries with it the very power of God.
It is compared to a hammer that breaks rocks, light that overcomes darkness, fire that cannot be extinguished, etc. Just as God created all things by the power of His Word, so He changes lives today by that same power. God spoke to the prophets and through the prophets. He still speaks today through His Word. Let us listen and be transformed by this powerful book, the Holy Bible. The Bible is true. Some other books may be true, in that their contents are correct; but only the Bible is truth itself. It is the only reliable guide to ultimate truth. Being holy, it is free of all impurity of error.
The Bible is inerrant; it contains no errors. Truth and error are incompatible, like light and darkness. It is also infallible; it cannot fail to speak the truth. It does not and cannot err. Thus, Scripture has no contradictions between its parts, such as the four Gospels They are complementary, not contradictory. The Bible also contains no myths Scripture itself warns against myths I Tim. Parables are not myths. It contains deep mysteries and paradoxes, but no errors. Nor does the Bible contain any forgeries or frauds cf. The Bible is completely true, in whole and in part, in all details as well as in the general content.
It is true whenever it speaks of things we could otherwise study or observe, such as history and science. It is true in all areas, not just the spiritual, religious and theological. If we do not believe God in the areas we could verify, how could we believe Him in the areas that we cannot verify? Man can err; God cannot. But it is not true that to be human one must necessarily err. Adam did not err before the Fall, nor did Christ ever err, and they were fully human.
The divine side of Scripture guarantees purity from error in the human side, just as the divine nature of Christ protected the purity of His human side. Yes, the Bible uses round numbers, hyperbole, figures of speech, symbols, and phenomenological language. But these are usual for human language and are not errors. God is truth and cannot lie Tit. What Scripture says, God says.
This is not to deify the Bible, as we are falsely accused of teaching. Rather, it is but to recognize what God says about His Word. To believe the Bible is to believe God. To believe God is to agree that God is and speaks truth John 3: But let God be true and every man a liar Rom.
To judge it is to condemn oneself. God tells us to test all things I Thess. By the Word of God, as the noble Bereans did in Acts Anything that contradicts the Bible is automatically wrong Isa. We err if we do not know the Bible or if we contradict it Matt. God curses those who preach false gospels contrary to the one true Gospel Gal. Sola Scriptura — Scripture alone is our final authority in all areas, such as faith and practice. It carries with it the very authority of God Almighty Himself. They appealed to their tradition; Jesus rebuked them by appealing to Scripture. Church tradition must be subject to the Bible, otherwise it nullifies Scripture.
Roman Catholicism repeats the same error as the Pharisees with their tradition. They say that the Church gave us the Bible, therefore the Church is in authority. But this is wrong. That includes all creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms and church constitutions. Men can and do err, but God cannot err. The Bible is therefore over the authority even the delegated authority of people who exercise some degree of influence and authority. While Scripture tells us to obey parents, preachers and politicians, we must obey God and not them if they ever go against the Bible Acts 5: The words and books of theologians must be weighed by Scripture, as well as all sermons and Sunday School lessons.
Any preacher, priest, pope or rabbi who sets himself up as an equal authority to God is automatically a false prophet, for the true prophets themselves were under the authority of the Word of God. Thus, all philosophy, psychology, logic, reason, science and opinion are subject to the truth and authority of the Bible. Because of common grace, Man may learn and teach some truths. But if they contradict Scripture — whether implicitly or explicitly, whether in doctrine or in method — then they thereby condemn themselves as false.
This applies to our own thoughts as well. Even Adam before the Fall was subject to the spoken Word of God. He fell into sin when he rebelled against that authority. We dare not trust our fallen minds, which are prone to err. The Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit.
He never contradicts Himself, for that would be contrary to His nature as the Spirit of Truth. Some groups need to remember this in their zeal for the work of the Spirit. All spiritual feelings, impressions and intuitions must be subject to the Word. We dare not invent exceptions because we feel that the Spirit is leading us — otherwise we are no different from the fanatic who murders his neighbor with an axe because he said that God told him to.
The Holy Spirit never contradicts what He says in the Bible. The Bible alone is our source of all spiritual authority. We must trust in God and His Word, even when we do not understand it. We must not lean on our own understanding or inclinations Pro. We ought to read it, study it, believe it and obey it.
Our attitude to the Bible is to be the same as our attitude to God, for it is His Word. This means we are to love it, even as we love God. Love God, love His Word. We Should Study the Bible.
God gave us the Bible to read and study. It is a textbook to study, not a picture-book to browse through. There is a big difference between simply reading a book and seriously studying it. One is leisure, the other is work. God wants us to study our Bibles, not use them for pressing flowers. To study the Bible is to research it to discover its meaning. Eisegesis is twisting the Scriptures to suit our preconceived notions 2 Pet.
When we study the Bible, we should set aside wrong presuppositions and preconceived ideas. We need to be teachable. We should pray before and during Bible study, and rely on the Holy Spirit in us to teach us what He says in the Bible. Faith comes to us by the Word of God Rom. Without faith, we can understand the Bible only in a natural way, not a supernatural way.
Studying the Bible profits us nothing unless it is mixed with faith Heb. Search and you will find. Dig deep and you will find new treasures of gold hidden in this field. Alas, some Christians have not even read the entire Bible yet. Others try to read it through every year. It takes work, but the Holy Spirit enables us to understand cf. A lacksadaisical attitude betrays low respect for the Bible and little faith in God. But serious Bible study is work which brings rest. Though the Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, it is still understandable through reliable translations not to mention the scholarly study of the original languages.
We may profit from preachers and teachers who explain the Bible to us Acts 8: The Bible is for everyone. Though some parts are harder to understand than others 2 Pet. Even a cursory study of the Bible will yield great results. We study the historical setting of Scripture human author, original readers, date, geography, manners and customs, archeology, etc , as well as the normal meaning of the language its lexical meaning, grammar, syntax, context, etc. We should study all of it, not just our favorite parts. Use a concordance and cross references to compare Scripture with Scripture.
It has great variety. All Scripture is inspired and deserves our study. Just as God used many human authors, so he used their backgrounds and a variety of literary styles. In these, we find prayer and praise to God, and wisdom in dealing with life. Then other books are mainly laws Exodus-Deuteronomy, parts of others. Some laws are straight-forward commands or prohibitions, while others are case laws. Then other books are mainly prophecy, recording direct messages from God, including accurate predictions of the future. Lastly, there are the epistles of Paul and others.
All these styles form a wonderful harmony. One important principle of Bible study is knowing and noticing that Christ is the center of Scripture. The Old Testament is filled with prophecies, types and symbols of the coming Messiah Gen. Jesus fulfilled these prophecies. Some are explained in the New Testament see Luke And sandwiched between the Old Testament predictions of the future and the New Testament explanations of the past, we find the four Gospels which describe the person and work of Christ in a special way.
Since it is a book about Christ, the Bible is therefore a book about how we may be saved from our sins through Him. It makes us wise unto salvation 2 Tim. Some parts of the Bible more directly discuss salvation, such as the four Gospels, Acts and Romans. But all parts of Scripture fit into this comprehensive entity. Thus, the Bible was given to us that we may know how to be saved and how to have the assurance of salvation John We can also use it to tell other people the Gospel of salvation.
The Bible is frequently compared to food. We ought to thirst for it like a baby thirsts for milk I Pet. The basic message of the Bible is like milk; the additional details are like meat Heb. The Bible is the means that God uses to nourish His children. It gave us the new birth and sustains our new life. We grow spiritually anemic when we ignore it.
So, we need to regularly read and study it, and meditate on it like a cow chews the cud. The more we do, the stronger we will grow spiritually. We study the Bible to learn about God. When we study it, we always need to find what God wants us to do in light of that passage. It teaches us how to live for God and helps us resist Satan and temptation, worship God in the way acceptable to Him, and witness in the world. It encourages us through its many promises, aids us in prayer, points out our sins and assures us of forgiveness, strengthens our faith, answers the basic questions we have for guidance, and so much more.
So let us diligently read it, study it, believe it and obey it cf. The Bible is a Unity. Though it has many individual books in it, the Bible is a unity. It is both one book and many books. It has unity and diversity. It is basically one book, The Book. Though it has many human authors for its parts, it is primarily one book by God Himself.
God used the many authors over a period of approximately years to write the Bible progressively, each building on what has already been given. Since it is an infallible unity, all parts agree. The individual authors and books ought not to be seen as contradictory, but complementary to each other.
The most obvious and significant division in the Bible is that it has two large sections known as testaments. A testament is a covenant, or holy contract between God and Man. The first is the Old Covenant. It makes up about three-fourths of the Bible, of which about a third is by Moses. It revolves around the special covenant which God made with Israel, described in the first 5 books.
The rest of the O. Psalms is the longest, then Isaiah. Some books are in pairs 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and several of the epistles , only 1 is a set of three 1,2,3 John. Luke and Acts form a unique pair. There is occasional overlap of content and matter Samuel-Kings-Chronicles, the 4 Gospels, etc. The books of the Apocrypha are not part of the Bible. Though Romanism accepts them, neither the ancient Jews nor Protestants have ever accepted them. Nor are any of the books of the Pseudepigrapha in the Bible, such as the Book of Enoch. And of course, not the Book of Mormon, or other pretended books.
The canon is closed. Other authors wrote only a single short book. Some books are anonymous such as Hebrews. All books were written by men, though two books are entirely about women Ruth and Esther. The human authors were prophets, priests, kings, apostles, shepherds, generals, a doctor, court officials, and other occupations. Hebrew is a Semitic language written from right to left, each word based around three consonants, with a grammar and vocabulary very different than English, but much in common with other ancient languages.
Parts of Daniel and Ezra, and a few words and verses elsewhere, were written in Aramaic. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the ancient near east until superceded by Arabic. It was very similar to Hebrew. There are a few Latin words, too, and also a few Egyptian and others in Job. The actual original parchments and papyri have long ago perished, but the inspired Word has been preserved by God through the ages. Jesus promised that His Word would never pass away Matt. We call this Providential Preservation. There are no lost books, sentences, words or even letters.
Nor will any yet be found, otherwise they would have been lost until now. Scripture is the means of salvation and the main means of revelation in this age. Its very nature requires its preservation. Satan has tried to destroy it, but the Bible is an anvil that has worn out many hammers. There are over 5, Greek manuscripts and over Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible, plus ancient translations and quotations. Since the Bible is a complete unity, it is very serious to tamper with it.
God warns against this in Rev. Some English translations are based on the minority of ancient manuscripts which are faulty. They tend to subtract portions such as Mark A few ancient manuscripts tend to add to the real text, such as the Codex Bezae. But the vast majority of manuscripts agree almost in complete detail, so it is wisest to stick to the middle and neither add to on the right side or subtract from on the left side.
Nor may we substitute other words. This is known as the Septuagint. Other Greek translations followed. The Jews also produced paraphrased translations of most of the O. Most were done after the time of Jesus. The Samaritans translated the Pentateuch into their language, with alterations. Some were better than others, and all are useful for study by scholars. There have been more translations of the Bible into English than into any other language.
First there were bits and pieces by Bede and medieval monks. Then John Wycliffe translated the Bible from the Latin in the 14th century. The 16th century saw many other fine translations, especially the Geneva Bible. The Authorized Version of , known as the King James Version, has been the most popular one in history, even with its various slight revisions.
The New King James Version is a slight revision and is very good. The New International Version is now the best-selling translation. There have also been Jewish and Catholic translations. Overall, over translations have appeared. The Bible is the Book of God. It was inspired by God, written by God through the instrumentality of various human authors, and is primarily about God.
It talks about Man, salvation, animals, the cosmos and other topics, but mainly about God. Its ethics come from God. Its stories tell how God has worked in history. Its songs sing to and about God. Specifically, it is a book about Jesus, the only mediator between God and Man. Praise God for His Word. He is the real God, the God who really exists. He exists eternally without origin or change. He has necessary existence, not conditional or contingent existence.
He has perpetual existence in and of Himself. He has pure existence, compared to whom everything else is but a shadow. God not only exists, He lives. A stone exists, a person lives. God is the living God, as opposed to the false and dead gods of pagan religions. He is life itself, self-life.
He has life in Himself, not from another. He is the source of all life. He has aseity, or life in Himself John 1: He has permanent and perpetual life. God is pure life. Therefore He is immortal. He had no birthday, therefore no father or mother; He has no death-day, therefore no undertaker. God is the creator of everything else Gen. Creator of all, created by none. He is the first cause of everything else, but caused by nothing.
God is certainly not the creation of Man. Man did not create God by imagination, nor by projecting himself to the cosmos, as atheists suggest. Nor is God self-created. He simply exists and lives of Himself. The Creator is not the Creation. Idolatry worships the Creation rather than the Creator Rom. He is separate from His Creation. We are not part of God. God is everywhere, but is not everything. He has a separate and divine substance that is fundamentally different from the universe.
Monism is also wrong to suggest that all things are one, i. Romans 1 and Psalm 19 state that God has made His existence known to all men. He is a fool who tries to deny this Psa. Therefore, there are no real atheists or agnostics. They already know God exists. They are merely lying in order to try to run from God. We merely build upon what God has already revealed about Himself in Natural Revelation by bringing Special Revelation.
Indeed, a God whose existence needed to be proved would not be the true God. It is an insult to God to attempt to prove His existence, for that doubts the fact that He has already made His existence known. Man already knows God exists, but he must acknowledge this openly in order to come to know God personally Heb. But God is personal. Not exactly like we are personal, but more than we are. Specifically, as we shall see later, God is actually Tri-personal in the Trinity. God is a He, not an It. God is also a He, not a She. He is personal in that He speaks, feels, thinks, remembers, recognizes, etc.
God is Incomprehensible but Not Inscrutable. God has told us He exists and also gives us the privilege of knowing Him personally. Agnostics and Deists are wrong to say God cannot be known. Yet we can never know everything about God. Finite Man can never know all about the infinite God, not even in eternal Heaven. It would take a second God to know God fully. His attributes are beyond full knowledge Eph. God is incomprehensible to us Job There will always be something about God that only God knows Rev. Nor will we know God as God knows Himself.
Man in sin does not know God 2 Thess. The basic message of Ecclesiastes is that life has no meaning, only vanity, without knowing God. God created Man to know Him, and Man has a dreary existence without knowing God.
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH
God has allowed Himself to be known personally. This is only possible through Christ Matt. Knowing God is eternal life John Is it thrown away so the next victim can use his own cross? Or dug up and taken back for the next victim to carry back up? See in the picture where the executioner is removing nails from a previous victim to make the cross available for the next. When I asked Terry Gilliam why he did something so subversive, he just said it was probably his morbid senses. But clearly it was also just so logical. Why does this totally undermine the story in the Bible?
Because, surely the purpose of Crucifixion is to put the body on show, as a deterrent, as long as possible. Upright like a banner, struggling with pain, degraded and dehumanized, till it rotted. They make a cross for a man, he carries it to Golgotha, they nail him up, and after a few hours he drops dead and Pilate says: What an absurd amount of effort and time, not to mention a ridiculous use of a valuable tree, to kill a man.
Cheeky, the guy crucified next to Brian is revealing. Eric is suggesting that death does not come that quickly? Lots of people get rescued. My brother usually rescues me, if he can keep off the tail for more than twenty minutes. Up and down like the Assyrian Empire. Every Easter in the Philippines, they perform a Passion play culminating with the actual nailing up of at least three penitents on to crosses. Ruben Enage, age fifty-three, has been crucified twenty-seven times. He began his yearly rite after surviving a fall from a three-story building.
The wounds can take two weeks to heal. So the likelihood of someone dying in such a short period of time seems impossible. To cover this criticism one Gospel, John, tries to suggest Jesus was speared in the side to prove he was dead. Problem is it says: Look at this from the Jewish historian Josephus, writing at the time: How can these numbers possibly be? Where are all these trees coming from, not to mention the tons of nails 6,? The answer strangely is just a matter of translation. The word we always translate as crucifix, stauros does not actually mean crucifix at all.
Here is the full dictionary definition: At best he was a ghostly appearance. But the message of the miracle is that they should 'take heart' and not be 'afraid': Jesus had not abandoned them, he was with them. It was a message which helped Christians endure persecution through the centuries. Jesus and his mother Mary are invited to a wedding in the Galilean town of Cana. Jewish wedding feasts lasted all week and everyone in the village was invited, so it's not surprising that the hosts' wine is said to run out.
Jesus asks one of the servants to fill the large water jars with water, and soon there is plenty of wine again. The miracle would have carried many messages. When the Jewish scriptures looked forward to the kingdom of God, they used a number of metaphors to describe it.
One of the most frequently used images is that of a marriage. The Book of Isaiah says:. Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame For your Maker is your husband The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit - a wife who married young, only to be rejected. On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine - the best of meats and the finest of wines. I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them.
They will plant vineyards and drink their wine. The Gospels contain records of over 35 miracles and of these the majority were healings of the lame, the deaf and the blind, exorcism of those possessed by demons. The meaning of the healings and exorcisms is best understood against the background of Jewish purity laws which stipulated that those deemed impure could not enter the sacred precinct of the Temple in Jerusalem to make their sacrifice to God.
The Jewish scriptures tell us that the impure included the lame, the sick, the blind and those possessed by demons. By implication, such people could not under Jewish law enter the Kingdom of God.
In healing the sick and casting out demons Jesus was sending a powerful signal - that they were now able to fulfill their obligations as Jews, and by implication that they were now entitled to enter the Kingdom of God. The fact that the cures are done by Jesus himself carried a further layer of meaning - that Jesus had the authority to decide who could enter the Kingdom of God. This becomes explicit in the healing of the paralysed man in Capernaum. Jesus heals the man by forgiving his sin - an act that would have been considered a blasphemy by Jews: By forgiving sins Jesus was acting with an authority that the Jews believed only God possessed.
In the healing of the Syro-Phoenician woman's daughter Jesus goes a step further and effectively signals that Gentiles too are eligible to enter the Kingdom of God. Authors have applied this first-century meaning of the miracle to modern life. Jesus and the disciples were on one of their many trips on the Sea of Galilee, when the Gospels say they were hit by an unexpected and violent storm. The disciples were struggling for their lives.
But by comparison Jesus' reaction is bewildering. He's said to have been asleep. And when awoken, his response couldn't have been less reassuring. But what the disciples didn't know was that they were about to receive help in a way they could never have imagined. Jesus stood up and rebuked the wind and sea. The disciples must have wondered who on earth Jesus was: But just as with other miracles, what amazed them wasn't what Jesus did, it was what it revealed about his identity. They would have known the ancient Jewish prophecies which said very clearly, there was only one person who had the power to control the stormy seas - God.
One passage from the Book of the Psalms recalls an occasion where God had shown his power to save his people from distress in exactly the same way as Jesus had on the Sea of Galilee - by stilling a storm. The similarities wouldn't have been lost on the disciples. Jesus' actions seemed to suggest that he had the power of God himself. Later in the century this miracle took on a new meaning - a meaning that would resonate down the centuries.
The Gospel writers saw that the miracles could speak directly to the Christians suffering persecution in Rome. Like that boat in peril, the Christians in Rome might well have feared that their Church was in danger of sinking. And like Jesus asleep on the boat, they might have worried that Jesus had forgotten them.
But the message of the evangelists was this: The belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead became the foundation of the early Christian Church. What the early Christians made of the resurrection can be gleaned from the letters of St Paul, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. It is a complex picture: The earliest sources are the letters of St Paul. His belief in the resurrection of Jesus is based on a vision of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.
Like the letters of St Paul, the Gospel writers also report appearances of Jesus to the disciples. But the evangelists also report the story of the empty tomb - the discovery of the disappearance of the corpse of Jesus from his tomb on the third day after his crucifixion. The clear implication from this account is that the early Christians took Jesus to have been physically raised from the dead. That in itself would have been hailed as a miracle. But a series of religious experiences convinced the early Christians that the resurrection meant much more than that.
First, Jesus was the divine son of God. The Acts of the Apostles reports that during the feast of Pentecost the disciples were gathered together when they heard a loud noise like a wind from heaven, and saw tongues of fire descend on them. The Bible says they were filled with the Holy Spirit - and they took that as a sign that Jesus had been resurrected by God. The experience brought about a sudden and powerful transformation in the disciples. Until then Jesus had been a memory.
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH
Now for the first time Jesus became the focus of something unprecedented. A new faith flickered into life, a faith that worshipped Jesus as the son of God. Another meaning attached to the miracle of the resurrection is that it conferred eternal life to Christians. At the time Jews believed that there would be an after-life - but only at the very end of time.
Some Jews believed that at the last judgement the dead would be resurrected, and that it would begin in the cemetery on the Mt of Olives, which overlooks Jerusalem. But the dead would have to wait an eternity before they could taste resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus changed everything. There was no need to wait for the last judgement. If Jesus could conquer death so could others. All one had to do is commit completely to Jesus and follow his path.
This would be the new way to an eternal life. This meaning gave the early Christians - and Christians throughout history - the strength to endure suffering. The Romans executed thousands of Christian martyrs but the resurrection of Jesus gave people renewed hope. If his resurrection signified victory over death - if it meant eternal life - then death could hold no terror. Because of what the resurrection symbolised, Christian martyrs like St Peter and St Paul were fearless in the face of such persecution.
He talks about his claim that there's historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Neil McGregor, Director of the British Museum, surveys the face of Jesus portrayed in art, starting with what may well be the earliest image there is: Sayings and Stories in Islamic literature , Tarif Khalidi, pub.
Harvard University Press The new illustrated companion to the Bible: Duncan Baird Publishers Continuum International Publishing Group This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience.
Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Jesus Last updated Introduction We know more about Jesus than we know about many ancient historical figures, a remarkable fact given the modesty of his upbringing and the humility of his death. Gospel accounts Map of the locations in Jesus's story Our most important resource for the study of Jesus, though, is the literature of early Christianity and especially the Gospels.
Who Jesus is Given the similarities in wording and order between the Synoptic Gospels, it is certain that there is some kind of literary link between them. Mark, the earliest of the four, certainly believes that Jesus is God's Son, but he also includes this extraordinary passage: Reverend John Bell, leader in the Iona Community and minister of the Church of Scotland I think Jesus thought of himself very much as a healer - he saw healing as a key to his work and presumably this arose because he just found out he was able to do it.
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Jesus - an audio journey Edward Stourton presents a journey in the footsteps of Jesus. Galilee Jesus the Jew This first episode looks at the essentials of what can really be said about Jesus with any degree of historical certainty and places him in the context of the wandering charismatics and faith healers who were about at the time. Tom Wright, author of Who was Jesus? Tom Wright, theologian and Bishop of Durham. Iris Carulli, art historian. Sebastian Painadath, Jesuit priest in Kerala. Jesus's miracles Apart from being an inspirational leader and teacher, the Gospels describe many miraculous feats performed by Jesus.
The raising of the widow's son The miracle of the raising of the widow's son takes place in the village of Nain in Galilee. The Gospels repeatedly make the link between Jesus and Elijah: