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 HOW MUCH CAN WE KNOW ABOUT JESUS – AND HOW MUCH IS LEGEND? Opinions on this vary between those who accept every word of the Gospel stories as... well, gospel, and those who say they are so full of fantasy and propaganda it's impossible to know what really happened. The vast majority would agree on the basics though: Jesus was a Palestinian Jew who was crucified around AD30, after maybe three years as a travelling preacher and healer. He was particularly known for telling parables, and he declared the coming of the kingdom of God. He was disliked by the religious establishment and executed by the Roman occupying forces. Did he heal the blind and perform catering miracles? Did he rise from the dead? Was he born to a virgin? These are questions you have to answer for yourself. It's worth thinking about this, though: if we strip away from the story everything that sounds improbable, are we left with anything that begins to explain the phenomenal impact Jesus had on his contemporaries? More questions about evidence |
Picture: the chi-rho symbol, one of the early Christian symbols for Jesus Christ, marked with other graffiti on a Roman brick. |
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