Jesus

Hebrew religious teacher on whose teachings Christianity was founded. It is difficult to give a historically accurate account of his life. According to the four Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Palestine, son of God and the Virgin Mary, and brought up by Mary and her husband Joseph as a carpenter in Nazareth. After adult baptism, he gathered 12 disciples, but his preaching antagonized the Jewish and Roman authorities and he was executed by crucifixion. Three days later there came reports of his resurrection and, later, his ascension to heaven.

Judaism and Islam recognize Jesus as a prophet, but Christianity holds him to be the ‘Son of God’. Furthermore, Christians believe that the prophesies of Jewish prophets regarding the coming of the Messiah were fulfilled in his life.

Through his legal father Joseph, Jesus belonged to the tribe of Judah and the family of David, the second king of Israel, a heritage prophesied for the Messiah. In AD 26 or 27 his cousin John the Baptist proclaimed the coming of the promised Messiah and baptized Jesus, who then made two missionary journeys through the district of Galilee. His teaching, summarized in the Sermon on the Mount, aroused both religious opposition from the Pharisees and secular opposition from the party supporting the Roman governor Herod Antipas. When Jesus returned to Jerusalem (probably AD 29), a week before the festival of Pesach (Passover), he was greeted by the people as the Messiah, though he rode into the city on a donkey, a sign of humility. The Hebrew authorities (aided by the apostle Judas Iscariot) had him arrested and condemned to death, after a hurried trial by the Sanhedrin (supreme Jewish court). The Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, confirmed the sentence, stressing the threat posed to imperial authority by Jesus' teaching.