In this lesson, we want to take a closer look at the importance of Jesus Christ by examining His identity inside and outside of the Bible. We are going to start by considering the claims made in the eye witness testimony recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. When that is done we will look at Jesus’ identity in the writings of historians as well as his identity in other world religions.

The Biblical Account of Jesus’ Humanity

A careful reading of the New Testament will show that Jesus Christ is presented as a Jewish man living in the first century world. According to Matthew’s genealogy he was a descendant of King David, who in turn had been a member of the tribe of Judah, the great grandson of Abraham.

Since Jesus was the oldest son in his immediate family, he had a right to sit on the throne of David as the King of Israel. The four Gospels all confirm that Jesus Christ never got married and never had any children. This fact made Jesus Christ the last person who has a valid claim to sit as an heir on David’s throne.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ into a life that never ends means there can never be another man to sit on David’s throne and rule the nation of Israel. This is how the Bible portrays Jesus Christ.

Discussion Question(s):

#1. Did you know Jesus was the last person who had the right to sit on the throne of Israel?

#2. Did you know the Resurrection of Jesus Christ means there can be no future kings in Israel?

The Importance of His Humanity

In the Bible, all four of the Gospels present Jesus Christ as a man. In the past there was an ancient religions known as Gnosticism which encouraged people to believe that being spiritual was a true religion, while being concerned about our lives in this world was a false religious ideal.

The Gnostic would have been offended by the idea that Jesus Christ was born in this world, and in response to that, the four Gospels proclaim Jesus’ humanity in events such as the virgin birth. The authors were being directed by the Holy Spirit to oppose first century Gnosticism, which became the Church’s biggest rival in the Roman Empire, and is still followed in our world today.

Discussion Question(s):

#1. Have you ever heard of Gnosticism before?

#2. Have you ever encountered a follower of Gnosticism before?

The Importance of His Deity

The four Gospels written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all present Jesus Christ as a first century Jewish man who lived as a traveling rabbi that claimed to be the God of Israel.

A careful reading of the Gospels shows that on several occasions, Jesus Christ claimed that he had appeared to Abraham and Moses in their lifetimes. The New Testament also shows that Jesus’ claims to deity was the reason the High Priest and the Jewish Sanhedrin wanted to have him condemned by Pontius Pilate.

Discussion Question(s):

#1. Did you know that the Jewish Sanhedrin’s reason for wanting to have Jesus Christ crucified was that He claimed to be their God?

#2. Did you know that they accused Jesus of treason against the Roman Emperor just to force Pilate to have him crucified?

The Historical Records Concerning Jesus Christ

Now that we have covered a summary of the Bible’s testimony concerning Jesus Christ, we should look to see if we can find any information about Jesus Christ outside of the Bible. Is there a historical Jesus we can find outside of the Bible in the writings of historians who wrote about the history of the Roman Empire?

The answer is yes. According to the Roman Historians in year 51 AD, Claudius Caesar made a decree saying that no Jewish people were allowed to live in the city of Rome. The reason given is because they kept having violent disagreements about someone named “Chrestus” that were disturbing the peace.

To be completely transparent I want you to know the official records and other documents do not explain in great detail who “Chrestus” was. The next matter of significance in the historical records of the old Roman Empire showed up a few years later. According to Roman Historians, in year 54 of the first century, a man named Nero had become the Emperor and during his reign, a fire broke out and burned most of the city of Rome down twice.

In a desperate effort to save himself, Nero organized an official investigation that produced a report saying that the Christians were responsible for starting the fire. Nero began punishing the Christians living in Rome with “refined cruelty,” to quote the Roman historian named Tacitus.

Tacitus was a Roman Senator who was born around 56 AD and wrote a book around 116 AD that we still have available today. Tacitus had this to say about the first century Christians who were punished with “refined cruelty” by Nero:

“Christ, from whom they take their name, was executed by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. Stopped for a moment, this evil superstition reappeared not only in Judea, where was the root of the evil, but also in Rome…”

Discussion Question(s):

#1. Did you know we have first century references to Jesus Christ written in the first century by Roman historians?

The Gnostic Version of Jesus

Earlier I mentioned Gnosticism became the Church’s biggest rival in the Roman Empire. I would like to explain more about it now. One of the cultural habits popular in Roman society was to just sit and listen to philosophical debates. This was one of their main forms of recreation. It was also a easy way to make money. There were traveling teachers who would come into a city, set up a school teaching new ideas and then they would leave looking for new audiences in the next city.

As Christianity began to spread inside the Roman Empire, a lot of these traveling teachers began trying to make money by including the name of Jesus into their belief system they were selling to the wealthy, upper middle class of Roman society.

The end result of this was there were other versions of “Jesus” available outside of the local Churches in the Roman Empire. In order for this to be profitable, these traveling teachers could not speak as experts on Jesus in their own name.

They would have to claim the name of Peter, Thomas or one of the other original twelve as the first person to proclaim their message. These alternative versions of “Jesus” led to the development of “false gospels” like the Gospel of Thomas, which made the ridiculous claim that women would have to become men in order to be worthy of entering the Kingdom of God.

Discussion Question(s):

#1. Did you know that the Jesus of Christianity was so popular, that other people began trying to make money off his reputation by telling myths and lies about him?

The Jesus of Hinduism

The habit of borrowing Jesus’ name to endorse some strange, unbiblical teachings was not limited to traveling teachers inside of the Roman Empire. Church tradition tells us that Thomas, who was one of the twelve spent the last years of his life living in modern day India.

This is important because it means at some point during the first century, the Christian Church made contact with Hinduism in India. Given the way that alternative versions of Jesus Christ appeared outside of the Church in the Roman Empire, it should not surprise us to find an alternative version of a different Jesus who moved to India.

This alternative version of Jesus learned how to be a Hindu holy man and then returned to the land of Israel and spent three years teaching in their synagogues before he was crucified in Jerusalem.

This is a really foolish thing to believe, because if Jesus Christ (or anyone else for that matter) had been promoting Hinduism in the first century Jewish synagogues and their sacred Temple there were a lot of people like Saul of Tarsus around who would have made sure that Jesus did not live long enough to be crucified by the Romans outside of Jerusalem.

Discussion Question(s):

#1. Have you encountered the “Jesus” found in Hinduism today?

The Jesus of Islam

The prophet Muhammad also wrote about Jesus in the Quran. The version of Jesus found in the Quran was not the Son of God. He was a prophet who was born to a virgin named Mary sent to proclaim the same message that Muhammad was given.

In Islam, Jesus was able to avoid being crucified because Judas Iscariot was killed in his place. This also means the Resurrection described in the Bible never happened. Muhammad encouraged his followers to trust the Bible, claiming it could not be corrupted or changed. Yet most Muslims today believe that it was corrupted and changed, and the prophet Muhammad came to set the record straight, which motivates Muslims to be terrorists in our world today. They want to prove the Bible has been corrupted by murdering anyone who questions the integrity of Islam’s prophet.

Discussion Question(s):

#1. Have you encountered the “Jesus” found in the Quran before?

Conclusion

I have said many things that you probably have not heard in the sermons and Bible studies shared in a local Church, and I want to briefly explain why. It is because we have been hiding. We have been hiding from Gnostics, Hindus, Muslims, skeptics and more.

In the English speaking world, there are a lot of skeptics who will claim the details of Jesus’ life recorded in the Bible are all wrong. The reason we have been hiding is because at our current point in time the English speaking world exists in a culture that assumes nothing supernatural ever happens.

That assumption includes supernatural evil. A lot of our social institutions (including our seminaries) are built on the idea that while God exists, there are no spiritual divine interventions of any kind available to help us with our problems today. These problems include the ones caused by supernatural evil. We tend to assume that evil spirits are not behind the spread of other world religions and anyone who believes otherwise is misinformed and should be ignored by anyone who wants to know the truth about anything.

This kind of skepticism has also infected the English Speaking Church, who as a whole never deals with these alternative versions of Jesus because we also have an anti supernatural bias against evil spirits that we use to avoid dealing with their efforts to distract and deceive in the name of another “Jesus.”

Discussion Question(s):

#1. Are you ready to ignore the propaganda that exists outside of the Bible that God’s enemies shared in order to promote rebellion against God and keep people from being on good terms with Him?