JESUS CHRIST

(‘Jesus’ is a personal name; ‘Christ,’ ‘The anointed One,’ a title) was b. between 8 and 4 B.C., and crucified at Jerusalem between 29 and 37 A.D. Despite all the ingenuity of scholars, the exact dates have never been arrived at with certainty. Our authorities for His life are the New Testament writings; Jewish tradition and extracanonical sources contribute hardly anything of value. A few of the non-canonical sayings may be authentic, but that is all. The apocryphal gospels are entirely untrustworthy. The life of Christ cannot be studied apart from New Testament criticism. It seems undoubted that we have in Mark a fairly primitive account of the life of Christ based partially on St. Peter's reminiscences, and that there are other independent sources, one particularly of Sayings of Jesus embedded in the First and Third Gospels. The historical value of the Fourth Gospel has been more questioned, but it is probable there are independent traditions enshrined in it. The chronology of the life of Christ is complicated by the Gospel narrative covering the same ground, but with varied arrangement. Mark is chronological, but the other material arranged and combined by Matthew and Luke is often uncertain in chronology. To combine the Johannine with the Synoptic is very difficult. The life of Christ can scarcely even be summarized here, but some facts stand out. His first thirty years, or thereabouts, were pa ed in obscurity; His public work immediately followed that of John the Baptist; Jesus’ work was not only healing and teaching, but had for its central point the proclamation of oe imminence of the kingdom of God;: proclamation of Himself as Me iah was not made public at first, though after Peter’s confe ion at Ozsarea Philippi made known to the disciples; the turning point in the life of Christ was His setting forth on the journey to Jerusalem, conscious of His own death as the result; it is impo ible not to see the impre ion of gloom and coming disaster in the later sayings and parables, which form one of the strongest proofs of the e ential historicity of the Gospel narrative; the difference of tone in the narrative of the earlier and latest parts of the ministry could not be due to accident or intention; it is undeniable that the Crucifixion meant to the Apostles the crushing of all their hopes, and that, whatever explanation of the Resurrection accounts we accept, it cannot be denied that within a short time of the death of Jesus those who had known a Him on earth were convinced that they had seen Him alive. For the teaching of Jesus on its practical side the Gospel evidence is clear and indisputable. Of its theological and personal side it is not so easy to speak with certainty. The phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ has been recently much discu ed. Did it mean the slow growth of righteousne in the world or a violent catastrophe in which the old order would be swept away? Many scholars now a ert that Jesus expected the immediate coming of the kingdom, and identified Himself with the Son of Man who in the later Judaism was expected to bring it in.