According to the Bible, who was the only apostle to witness the crucifixion of Jesus?
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Bible Apostle (Christian) Crucifixion of Jesus Jesus
The Bible (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía, "the books"  ) is a collection of texts sacred in Judaism and Christianity. It is a collection of scriptures written at different times by different authors in different locations. Jews and Christians consider the books of the Bible to be a product of divine inspiration or an authoritative record of the relationship between God and humans.

The canonical Bible varies depending on traditions or groups; a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents.  The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint; the Hebrew Bible is known in Judaism as the Tanakh. The New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, and apocalyptic writings. Among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily in the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect.

Attitudes towards the Bible also vary amongst Christian groups. Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians stress the harmony and importance of the Bible and sacred tradition, while Protestant churches focus on the idea of sola scriptura, or scripture alone. This concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today continue to support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching.

With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the best-selling book of all time.   It has estimated annual sales of 100 million copies,  and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West where the Gutenberg Bible was the first mass-printed book. It was the first book ever printed using movable type.

Etymology

The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the same word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin and ultimately from Koine Greek  ta biblia "the books" (singular  biblion). 

Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra "holy book", while biblia in Greek and Late Latin is neuter plural (gen. bibliorum). It gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae) in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. 
Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek  ta biblia ta hagia, "the holy books". 

The word  itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book".
It is the diminutive of  byblos, "Egyptian papyrus", possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos (also known as Gebal) from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece.
The Greek ta biblia (lit. "little papyrus books")  was "an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books (the Septuagint).   Christian use of the term can be traced to c. 223 CE. The biblical scholar F.F. Bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer (in his Homilies on Matthew, delivered between 386 and 388) to use the Greek phrase ta biblia ("the books") to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. 

Textual history

	
By the 2nd century BCE, Jewish groups had called the Bible books the "scriptures" and referred to them as "holy," or in Hebrew כִּתְבֵי הַקֹּדֶשׁ (Kitvei hakkodesh), and Christians now commonly call the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible "The Holy Bible" (in Greek , tà biblía tà ágia) or "the Holy Scriptures" (, e Agía Graphḗ).  The Bible was divided into chapters in the 13th century by Stephen Langton and into verses in the 16th century by French printer Robert Estienne  and is now usually cited by book, chapter, and verse. 

The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, and known as the Codex Vaticanus. The oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates to the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin (Vulgate) Bible is the Codex Amiatinus, dating from the 8th century. 

Development

 

Professor John K. Riches, Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, in an Oxford University Press introduction to the Bible, says that "the biblical texts themselves are the result of a creative dialogue between ancient traditions and different communities through the ages",  and "the biblical texts were produced over a period in which the living conditions of the writers – political, cultural, economic, and ecological – varied enormously".  Timothy H. Lim, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh, says that the Old Testament is "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing."  He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind.
Parallel to the solidification of the Hebrew canon (c. 3rd century BCE), only the Torah first and then the Tanakh began to be translated into Greek and expanded, now referred to as the Septuagint or the Greek Old Testament. 

In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from oral traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that:

Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, but the results have not been too encouraging. The period of transmission is short: less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Mark's Gospel. This means that there was little time for oral traditions to assume fixed form. 

The Bible was later translated into Latin and other languages. John Riches states that:

The translation of the Bible into Latin marks the beginning of a parting of the ways between Western Latin-speaking Christianity and Eastern Christianity, which spoke Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and other languages. The Bibles of the Eastern Churches vary considerably: the Ethiopic Orthodox canon includes 81 books and contains many apocalyptic texts, such as were found at Qumran and subsequently excluded from the Jewish canon. As a general rule, one can say that the Orthodox Churches generally follow the Septuagint in including more books in their Old Testaments than are in the Jewish canon.

Hebrew Bible

The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh.  It defines the books of the Jewish canon, and also the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and accentuation.

The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the 9th century CE,  and the Aleppo Codex (once the oldest complete copy of the Masoretic Text, but now missing its Torah section) dates from the 10th century.

The name Tanakh (Hebrew: ) reflects the threefold division of the Hebrew Scriptures, Torah ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and Ketuvim ("Writings").

Torah

The Torah (תּוֹרָה) is also known as the "Five Books of Moses" or the Pentateuch, meaning "five scroll-cases".   

The Hebrew names of the books are derived from the first words in the respective texts. The Torah consists of the following five books:
* Genesis, Beresheeth (בראשית)
* Exodus, Shemot (שמות)
* Leviticus, Vayikra (ויקרא)
* Numbers, Bamidbar (במדבר)
* Deuteronomy, Devarim (דברים)

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel) and Jacob's children, the "Children of Israel", especially Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of Ur, eventually to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. He leads the Children of Israel from slavery in Ancient Egypt to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation was ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses. 

The Torah contains the commandments of God, revealed at Mount Sinai (although there is some debate among traditional scholars as to whether these were all written down at one time, or over a period of time during the 40 years of the wanderings in the desert, while several modern Jewish movements reject the idea of a literal revelation, and critical scholars believe that many of these laws developed later in Jewish history).     These commandments provide the basis for Jewish religious law. Tradition states that there are 613 commandments (taryag mitzvot).

Nevi'im

Nevi'im (, "Prophets") is the second main division of the Tanakh, between the Torah and Ketuvim. It contains two sub-groups, the Former Prophets (, the narrative books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets (, the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Twelve Minor Prophets).

The Nevi'im tell the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy and its division into two kingdoms, ancient Israel and Judah, focusing on conflicts between the Israelites and other nations, and conflicts among Israelites, specifically, struggles between believers in "the  God"  and believers in foreign gods,   and the criticism of unethical and unjust behavior of Israelite elites and rulers;    in which prophets played a crucial and leading role. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians followed by the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Former Prophets

The Former Prophets are the books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. They contain narratives that begin immediately after the death of Moses with the divine appointment of Joshua as his successor, who then leads the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and end with the release from imprisonment of the last king of Judah. Treating Samuel and Kings as single books, they cover:
* Joshua's conquest of the land of Canaan (in the Book of Joshua),
* the struggle of the people to possess the land (in the Book of Judges),
* the people's request to God to give them a king so that they can occupy the land in the face of their enemies (in the Books of Samuel)
* the possession of the land under the divinely appointed kings of the House of David, ending in conquest and foreign exile (Books of Kings)

Latter Prophets

The Latter Prophets are divided into two groups, the "major" prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets, collected into a single book. The collection is broken up to form twelve individual books in the Christian Old Testament, one for each of the prophets:

* Hosea, Hoshea (הושע)
* Joel, Yoel (יואל)
* Amos, Amos (עמוס)
* Obadiah, Ovadyah (עבדיה)
* Jonah, Yonah (יונה)
* Micah, Mikhah (מיכה)
* Nahum, Nahum (נחום)
* Habakkuk, Havakuk (חבקוק)
* Zephaniah, Tsefanya (צפניה)
* Haggai, Khagay (חגי)
* Zechariah, Zekharyah (זכריה)
* Malachi, Malakhi (מלאכי)

Ketuvim

Ketuvim or Kəṯûḇîm (in  "writings") is the third and final section of the Tanakh. The Ketuvim are believed to have been written under the Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) but with one level less authority than that of prophecy. 

The poetic books

In Masoretic manuscripts (and some printed editions), Psalms, Proverbs and Job are presented in a special two-column form emphasizing the parallel stichs in the verses, which are a function of their poetry. Collectively, these three books are known as Sifrei Emet (an acronym of the titles in Hebrew, איוב, משלי, תהלים yields Emet אמ"ת, which is also the Hebrew for "truth").

These three books are also the only ones in Tanakh with a special system of cantillation notes that are designed to emphasize parallel stichs within verses. However, the beginning and end of the book of Job are in the normal prose system.

The five scrolls (Hamesh Megillot)

The five relatively short books of Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, the Book of Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Book of Esther are collectively known as the Hamesh Megillot (Five Megillot). These are the latest books collected and designated as "authoritative" in the Jewish canon even though they were not complete until the 2nd century CE. 

Other books

Besides the three poetic books and the five scrolls, the remaining books in Ketuvim are Daniel, Ezra–Nehemiah and Chronicles. Although there is no formal grouping for these books in the Jewish tradition, they nevertheless share a number of distinguishing characteristics:
* Their narratives all openly describe relatively late events (i.e., the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent restoration of Zion).
* The Talmudic tradition ascribes late authorship to all of them.
* Two of them (Daniel and Ezra) are the only books in the Tanakh with significant portions in Aramaic.

Order of the books

The following list presents the books of Ketuvim in the order they appear in most printed editions. It also divides them into three subgroups based on the distinctiveness of Sifrei Emet and Hamesh Megillot.

The Three Poetic Books (Sifrei Emet)
* Tehillim (Psalms) תְהִלִּים
* Mishlei (Book of Proverbs) מִשְלֵי
* Iyyôbh (Book of Job) אִיּוֹב
The Five Megillot (Hamesh Megillot)
* Shīr Hashshīrīm (Song of Songs) or (Song of Solomon) שִׁיר הַשׁשִׁירִים (Passover)
* Rūth (Book of Ruth) רוּת (Shābhû‘ôth)
* Eikhah (Lamentations) איכה (Ninth of Av) [Also called Kinnot in Hebrew.]
* Qōheleth (Ecclesiastes) קהלת (Sukkôth)
* Estēr (Book of Esther) אֶסְתֵר (Pûrîm)
Other books
* Dānî’ēl (Book of Daniel) דָּנִיֵּאל
* ‘Ezrā (Book of Ezra-Book of Nehemiah) עזרא
* Divrei ha-Yamim (Chronicles) דברי הימים

The Jewish textual tradition never finalized the order of the books in Ketuvim. The Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 14b-15a) gives their order as Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Daniel, Scroll of Esther, Ezra, Chronicles. 

In Tiberian Masoretic codices, including the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, and often in old Spanish manuscripts as well, the order is Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Esther, Daniel, Ezra. 

Canonization

The Ketuvim is the last of the three portions of the Tanakh to have been accepted as biblical canon. While the Torah may have been considered canon by Israel as early as the 5th century BCE and the Former and Latter Prophets were canonized by the 2nd century BCE, the Ketuvim was not a fixed canon until the 2nd century of the Common Era. 

Evidence suggests, however, that the people of Israel were adding what would become the Ketuvim to their holy literature shortly after the canonization of the prophets. As early as 132 BCE references suggest that the Ketuvim was starting to take shape, although it lacked a formal title.  References in the four Gospels as well as other books of the New Testament indicate that many of these texts were both commonly known and counted as having some degree of religious authority early in the 1st century CE.

Many scholars believe that the limits of the Ketuvim as canonized scripture were determined by the Council of Jamnia c. 90 CE. Against Apion, the writing of Josephus in 95 CE, treated the text of the Hebrew Bible as a closed canon to which "... no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable..."  For a long time following this date the divine inspiration of Esther, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes was often under scrutiny. 

Original languages

The Tanakh was mainly written in biblical Hebrew, with some small portions ( and , , ) in biblical Aramaic, a sister language which became the lingua franca for much of the Semitic world. 

Septuagint 

The Septuagint, or LXX, is a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and some related texts into Koine Greek, begun in the late 3rd century BCE and completed by 132 BCE,   initially in Alexandria, but in time elsewhere as well.  It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where; some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, and then revised. 

As the work of translation progressed, the canon of the Greek Bible expanded. The Torah always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon but the collection of prophetic writings, based on the Nevi'im, had various hagiographical works incorporated into it. In addition, some newer books were included in the Septuagint, among these are the Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach. However, the book of Sirach, is now known to have existed in a Hebrew version, since ancient Hebrew manuscripts of it were rediscovered in modern times. The Septuagint version of some Biblical books, like Daniel and Esther, are longer than those in the Jewish canon.  Some of these deuterocanonical books (e.g. the Wisdom of Solomon, and the second book of Maccabees) were not translated, but composed directly in Greek.

Since Late Antiquity, once attributed to a hypothetical late 1st-century Council of Jamnia, mainstream Rabbinic Judaism rejected the Septuagint as valid Jewish scriptural texts. Several reasons have been given for this. First, some mistranslations were claimed. Second, the Hebrew source texts used for the Septuagint differed from the Masoretic tradition of Hebrew texts, which was chosen as canonical by the Jewish rabbis.  Third, the rabbis wanted to distinguish their tradition from the newly emerging tradition of Christianity.  
Finally, the rabbis claimed a divine authority for the Hebrew language, in contrast to Aramaic or Greek – even though these languages were the lingua franca of Jews during this period (and Aramaic would eventually be given a holy language status comparable to Hebrew). 

The Septuagint is the basis for the Old Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament.  The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches use most of the books of the Septuagint, while Protestant churches usually do not. After the Protestant Reformation, many Protestant Bibles began to follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional texts, which came to be called Biblical apocrypha. The Apocrypha are included under a separate heading in the King James Version of the Bible, the basis for the Revised Standard Version. 

Incorporations from Theodotion

In most ancient copies of the Bible which contain the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel is not the original Septuagint version, but instead is a copy of Theodotion's translation from the Hebrew, which more closely resembles the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint version was discarded in favour of Theodotion's version in the 2nd to 3rd centuries CE. In Greek-speaking areas, this happened near the end of the 2nd century, and in Latin-speaking areas (at least in North Africa), it occurred in the middle of the 3rd century. History does not record the reason for this, and St. Jerome reports, in the preface to the Vulgate version of Daniel, "This thing 'just' happened."  One of two Old Greek texts of the Book of Daniel has been recently rediscovered and work is ongoing in reconstructing the original form of the book. 

The canonical Ezra–Nehemiah is known in the Septuagint as "Esdras B", and 1 Esdras is "Esdras A". 1 Esdras is a very similar text to the books of Ezra–Nehemiah, and the two are widely thought by scholars to be derived from the same original text. It has been proposed, and is thought highly likely by scholars, that "Esdras B" – the canonical Ezra–Nehemiah – is Theodotion's version of this material, and "Esdras A" is the version which was previously in the Septuagint on its own.

Final form

Some texts are found in the Septuagint but are not present in the Hebrew. These additional books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah (which later became chapter 6 of Baruch in the Vulgate), additions to Daniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Odes, including the Prayer of Manasseh, the Psalms of Solomon, and Psalm 151.

Some books that are set apart in the Masoretic Text are grouped together. For example, the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings are in the LXX one book in four parts called Βασιλειῶν ("Of Reigns"). In LXX, the Books of Chronicles supplement Reigns and it is called Paralipomenon (Παραλειπομένων—things left out). The Septuagint organizes the minor prophets as twelve parts of one Book of Twelve.

Christian Bibles

A Christian Bible is a set of books that a Christian denomination regards as divinely inspired and thus constituting scripture. Although the Early Church primarily used the Septuagint or the Targums among Aramaic speakers, the apostles did not leave a defined set of new scriptures; instead the canon of the New Testament developed over time. Groups within Christianity include differing books as part of their sacred writings, most prominent among which are the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books.

Significant versions of the English Christian Bible include the Douay-Rheims Bible, the Authorized King James Version, the English Revised Version, the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version,  the New American Standard Version, the New King James Version, the New International Version, and the English Standard Version.

Old Testament

The books which make up the Christian Old Testament differ between the Catholic (see Catholic Bible), Orthodox, and Protestant (see Protestant Bible) churches, with the Protestant movement accepting only those books contained in the Hebrew Bible, while Catholics and Orthodox have wider canons. A few groups consider particular translations to be divinely inspired, notably the Greek Septuagint and the Aramaic Peshitta.

Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books

In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. The Septuagint was generally abandoned in favour of the 10th-century Masoretic Text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages. Some modern Western translations since the 14th century make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic Text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts, e.g., those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.  

A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible (i.e., among the protocanonical books) are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e., deutero) canon, that canon as fixed definitively by the Council of Trent 1545–1563.   It includes 46 books for the Old Testament (45 if Jeremiah and Lamentations are counted as one) and 27 for the New.

Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them in Apocrypha sections until the 1820s. However, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes: 
* Tobit
* Judith
* 1 Maccabees
* 2 Maccabees
* Wisdom
* Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
* Baruch
* The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch Chapter 6)
* Greek Additions to Esther (Book of Esther, chapters 10:4 – 12:6)
* The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children verses 1–68 (Book of Daniel, chapter 3, verses 24–90)
* Susanna (Book of Daniel, chapter 13)
* Bel and the Dragon (Book of Daniel, chapter 14)

In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following: 
* 3 Maccabees
* 1 Esdras
* Prayer of Manasseh
* Psalm 151

Russian and Georgian Orthodox Churches include:
* 2 Esdras i.e., Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles

There is also 4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it is therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.

The Syriac Orthodox tradition includes:
* Psalms 151–155
* The Apocalypse of Baruch
* The Letter of Baruch

The Ethiopian Biblical canon includes:
* Jubilees
* Enoch
* 1–3 Meqabyan
and some other books.

The Anglican Church uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix. 

Pseudepigraphal books 

The term Pseudepigrapha commonly describes numerous works of Jewish religious literature written from about 300 BCE to 300 CE. Not all of these works are actually pseudepigraphical. It also refers to books of the New Testament canon whose authorship is misrepresented. The "Old Testament" Pseudepigraphal works include the following:Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985.

* 3 Maccabees
* 4 Maccabees
* Assumption of Moses
* Ethiopic Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)
* Slavonic Book of Enoch (2 Enoch)
* Hebrew Book of Enoch (3 Enoch) (also known as "The Revelation of Metatron" or "The Book of Rabbi Ishmael the High Priest")
* Book of Jubilees
* Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch)
* Letter of Aristeas  (Letter to Philocrates regarding the translating of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek)
* Life of Adam and Eve
* Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah
* Psalms of Solomon
* Sibylline Oracles
* Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (3 Baruch)
* Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

Book of Enoch 

Notable pseudepigraphal works include the Books of Enoch (such as 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, surviving only in Old Slavonic, and 3 Enoch, surviving in Hebrew, c. 5th to 6th century CE). These are ancient Jewish religious works, traditionally ascribed to the prophet Enoch, the great-grandfather of the patriarch Noah. They are not part of the biblical canon used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel. Most Christian denominations and traditions may accept the Books of Enoch as having some historical or theological interest or significance. It has been observed that part of the Book of Enoch is quoted in the Epistle of Jude (part of the New Testament) but Christian denominations generally regard the Books of Enoch as non-canonical or non-inspired.  However, the Enoch books are treated as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

The older sections (mainly in the Book of the Watchers) are estimated to date from about 300 BC, and the latest part (Book of Parables) probably was composed at the end of the 1st century BCE. 

Denominational views of Pseudepigrapha 

There arose in some Protestant biblical scholarship an extended use of the term pseudepigrapha for works that appeared as though they ought to be part of the biblical canon, because of the authorship ascribed to them, but which stood outside both the biblical canons recognized by Protestants and Catholics. These works were also outside the particular set of books that Roman Catholics called deuterocanonical and to which Protestants had generally applied the term Apocryphal. Accordingly, the term pseudepigraphical, as now used often among both Protestants and Roman Catholics (allegedly for the clarity it brings to the discussion), may make it difficult to discuss questions of pseudepigraphical authorship of canonical books dispassionately with a lay audience. To confuse the matter even more, Eastern Orthodox Christians accept books as canonical that Roman Catholics and most Protestant denominations consider pseudepigraphical or at best of much less authority. There exist also churches that reject some of the books that Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants accept. The same is true of some Jewish sects. Many works that are "apocryphal" are otherwise considered genuine.

Role of Old Testament in Christian theology

The Old Testament has always been central to the life of the Christian church. Bible scholar N.T. Wright says "Jesus himself was profoundly shaped by the scriptures."  He adds that the earliest Christians also searched those same Hebrew scriptures in their effort to understand the earthly life of Jesus. They regarded the "holy writings" of the Israelites as necessary and instructive for the Christian, as seen from Paul's words to Timothy (2 Timothy 3:15), and as pointing to the Messiah, and as having reached a climactic fulfillment in Jesus himself, generating the "new covenant" prophesied by Jeremiah. 

New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of 27 books  of 4 different genres of Christian literature (Gospels, one account of the Acts of the Apostles, Epistles and an Apocalypse). Jesus is its central figure. The New Testament presupposes the inspiration of the Old Testament. (2 Timothy 3:16) Nearly all Christians recognize the New Testament as canonical scripture. These books can be grouped into:

The Gospels
* Synoptic Gospels
** Gospel According to Matthew
** Gospel According to Mark
** Gospel According to Luke
* Gospel According to John

Narrative literature, account and history of the Apostolic age
* Acts of the Apostles

Pauline Epistles
* Epistle to the Romans
* First Epistle to the Corinthians
* Second Epistle to the Corinthians
* Epistle to the Galatians
* Epistle to the Ephesians
* Epistle to the Philippians
* Epistle to the Colossians
* First Epistle to the Thessalonians
* Second Epistle to the Thessalonians

Pastoral epistles
* First Epistle to Timothy
* Second Epistle to Timothy
* Epistle to Titus
* Epistle to Philemon
* Epistle to the Hebrews

General epistles, also called catholic epistles
* Epistle of James
* First Epistle of Peter
* Second Epistle of Peter
* First Epistle of John
* Second Epistle of John
* Third Epistle of John
* Epistle of Jude

Apocalyptic literature, also called Prophetical
* Revelation, or the Apocalypse

The New Testament books are ordered differently in the Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant tradition, the Slavonic tradition, the Syriac tradition and the Ethiopian tradition.

Original language

The mainstream consensus is that the New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek,   which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean     from the Conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 BCE) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600).

Historic editions

The original autographs, that is, the original Greek writings and manuscripts written by the original authors of the New Testament, have not survived.  But historically  copies exist of those original autographs, transmitted and preserved in a number of manuscript traditions.  There have been some minor variations, additions or omissions, in some of the texts. When ancient scribes copied earlier books, they sometimes wrote notes on the margins of the page (marginal glosses) to correct their text—especially if a scribe accidentally omitted a word or line—and to comment about the text. When later scribes were copying the copy, they were sometimes uncertain if a note was intended to be included as part of the text. Over time, different regions evolved different versions, each with its own assemblage of omissions and additions. 

The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the Alexandrian text-type (generally minimalist), the Byzantine text-type (generally maximalist), and the Western text-type (occasionally wild). Together they comprise most of the ancient manuscripts.

Development of the Christian canons

The Old Testament canon entered into Christian use in the Greek Septuagint translations and original books, and their differing lists of texts. In addition to the Septuagint, Christianity subsequently added various writings that would become the New Testament. Somewhat different lists of accepted works continued to develop in antiquity. In the 4th century a series of synods produced a list of texts equal to the 39, 46(51),54, or 57 book canon of the Old Testament and to the 27-book canon of the New Testament that would be subsequently used to today, most notably the Synod of Hippo in 393 CE. Also c. 400, Jerome produced a definitive Latin edition of the Bible (see Vulgate), the canon of which, at the insistence of the Pope, was in accord with the earlier Synods. With the benefit of hindsight it can be said that this process effectively set the New Testament canon, although there are examples of other canonical lists in use after this time.

The Protestant Old Testament of today has a 39-book canon—the number of books (though not the content) varies from the Jewish Tanakh only because of a different method of division—while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books (51 books with some books combined into 46 books) as the canonical Old Testament. The Eastern Orthodox Churches recognise 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151 in addition to the Catholic canon. Some include 2 Esdras. The Anglican Church also recognises a longer canon. The term "Hebrew Scriptures" is often used as being synonymous with the Protestant Old Testament, since the surviving scriptures in Hebrew include only those books, while Catholics and Orthodox include additional texts that have not survived in Hebrew. Both Catholics and Protestants (as well as Greek Orthodox) have the same 27-book New Testament Canon. 

The New Testament writers assumed the inspiration of the Old Testament, probably earliest stated in , "All scripture is given by inspiration of God".

Ethiopian Orthodox canon

The Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is wider than the canons used by most other Christian churches. There are 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. The Ethiopian Old Testament Canon includes the books found in the Septuagint accepted by other Orthodox Christians, in addition to Enoch and Jubilees which are ancient Jewish books that only survived in Ge'ez but are quoted in the New Testament, also Greek Ezra First and the Apocalypse of Ezra, 3 books of Meqabyan, and Psalm 151 at the end of the Psalter. The three books of Meqabyan are not to be confused with the books of Maccabees. The order of the other books is somewhat different from other groups', as well. The Old Testament follows the Septuagint order for the Minor Prophets rather than the Jewish order.

Divine inspiration

The Second Epistle to Timothy says that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness". ()  Various related but distinguisahle views on divine inspiration include:

* the view of the Bible as the inspired word of God: the belief that God, through the Holy Spirit, intervened and influenced the words, message, and collation of the Bible  
* the view that the Bible is also infallible, and incapable of error in matters of faith and practice, but not necessarily in historic or scientific matters
* the view that the Bible represents the inerrant word of God, without error in any aspect, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans

Within these broad beliefs many schools of hermeneutics operate. "Bible scholars claim that discussions about the Bible must be put into its context within church history and then into the context of contemporary culture." Fundamentalist Christians are associated with the doctrine of biblical literalism, where the Bible is not only inerrant, but the meaning of the text is clear to the average reader. 

Jewish antiquity attests to belief in sacred texts,   and a similar belief emerges in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention divine agency in relation to its writings.  In their book A General Introduction to the Bible, Norman Geisler and William Nix write: "The process of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the result of this process is a verbal, plenary, inerrant, and authoritative record."  Most evangelical biblical scholars    associate inspiration with only the original text; for example some American Protestants adhere to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy which asserted that inspiration applied only to the autographic text of Scripture.  Among adherents of Biblical literalism, a minority, such as followers of the King-James-Only Movement, extend the claim of inerrancy only to a particular translation. 

Versions and translations

The original texts of the Tanakh were mainly in Hebrew, with some portions in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible. There are several different ancient versions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, mostly differing by spelling, and the traditional Jewish version is based on the version known as Aleppo Codex. Even in this version there are words which are traditionally read differently from written, because the oral tradition is considered more fundamental than the written one, and presumably mistakes had been made in copying the text over the generations.

The primary biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint. In addition, they translated the Hebrew Bible into several other languages. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translations of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.

The earliest Latin translation was the Old Latin text, or Vetus Latina, which, from internal evidence, seems to have been made by several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included books not in the Hebrew Bible.

Pope Damasus I assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Council of Rome in 382 CE. He commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a reliable and consistent text by translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin. This translation became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible, in the fourth century CE. And in 1546, at the Council of Trent, Jerome's Vulgate translation was declared by the Roman Catholic Church to be the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin Church.

Since the Protestant Reformation, Bible translations for many languages have been made. The Bible continues to be translated to new languages, largely by Christian organisations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, New Tribes Mission and Bible societies.

Views

John Riches, professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, provides the following view of the diverse historical influences of the Bible:

It has inspired some of the great monuments of human thought, literature, and art; it has equally fuelled some of the worst excesses of human savagery, self-interest, and narrow-mindedness. It has inspired men and women to acts of great service and courage, to fight for liberation and human development; and it has provided the ideological fuel for societies which have enslaved their fellow human beings and reduced them to abject poverty. ... It has, perhaps above all, provided a source of religious and moral norms which have enabled communities to hold together, to care for, and to protect one another; yet precisely this strong sense of belonging has in turn fuelled ethnic, racial, and international tension and conflict. 

Other religions

In Islam, the Bible is held to reflect true unfolding revelation from God; but revelation which had been corrupted or distorted (in Arabic: tahrif); which necessitated the giving of the Qur'an to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, to correct this deviation.

Members of other religions may also seek inspiration from the Bible. For example, Rastafaris view the Bible as essential to their religion  and Unitarian Universalists view it as "one of many important religious texts". 

Biblical studies

Biblical criticism refers to the investigation of the Bible as a text, and addresses questions such as authorship, dates of composition, and authorial intention. It is not the same as criticism of the Bible, which is an assertion against the Bible being a source of information or ethical guidance, or observations that the Bible may have translation errors. 

Higher criticism

In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes collected the current evidence to conclude outright that Moses could not have written the bulk of the Torah. Shortly afterwards the philosopher Baruch Spinoza published a unified critical analysis, arguing that the problematic passages were not isolated cases that could be explained away one by one, but pervasive throughout the five books, concluding that it was "clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses . . ."  

Archaeological and historical research

Biblical archaeology is the archaeology that relates to and sheds light upon the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures (or "New Testament"). It is used to help determine the lifestyle and practices of people living in biblical times. There are a wide range of interpretations in the field of biblical archaeology. One broad division includes biblical maximalism which generally takes the view that most of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is based on history although it is presented through the religious viewpoint of its time. It is considered the opposite of biblical minimalism which considers the Bible a purely post-exilic (5th century BCE and later) composition. Even among those scholars who adhere to biblical minimalism, the Bible is a historical document containing first-hand information on the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and there is universal scholarly consensus that the events of the 6th century BCE Babylonian captivity have a basis in history.

The historicity of the biblical account of the history of ancient Israel and Judah of the 10th to 7th centuries BCE is disputed in scholarship. The biblical account of the 8th to 7th centuries BCE is widely, but not universally, accepted as historical, while the verdict on the earliest period of the United Monarchy (10th century BCE) and the historicity of David is unclear. Archaeological evidence providing information on this period, such as the Tel Dan Stele, can potentially be decisive. The biblical account of events of the Exodus from Egypt in the Torah, and the migration to the Promised Land and the period of Judges are not considered historical in scholarship.  

Bibles Gallery

File:Bibel Kloster Paleokastritsa.jpg|Old Bible from a Greek monastery
File:Imperial Bible.jpg|  Imperial Bible, or Vienna Coronation Gospels from Wien (Austria), c 1500.
File:Kennicott Bible.jpg |The Kennicott Bible, 1476
File:A religious Baroque Bible - 7558.jpg|A Baroque Bible
File:Lincoln inaugural bible.jpg |The bible used by Abraham Lincoln for his oath of office during his first inauguration in 1861
File:Bible and Key Divination.jpg|A miniature Bible
File:19th century Victorian living room, Auckland - 0843.jpg|19th century Victorian Bible
File:Bizzell Bible Collection.jpg |Shelves of the Bizzell Bible Collection at Bizzell Memorial Library 

Illustrations

Most old Bibles were illuminated, they were  manuscripts in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders (marginalia) and miniature illustrations. 
Up to the twelfth century, most manuscripts were produced in monasteries in order to add to the library or after receiving a commission from a wealthy patron. Larger monasteries often contained separate areas for the monks who specialized in the production of manuscripts called a scriptorium, where “separate little rooms were assigned to book copying; they were situated in such a way that each scribe had to himself a window open to the cloister walk.”   
By the fourteenth century, the cloisters of monks writing in the scriptorium started to  employ laybrothers from the urban scriptoria, especially in Paris, Rome and the Netherlands.    
Demand for manuscripts grew to an extent that the Monastic libraries were unable to meet with the demand, and began employing secular scribes and illuminators.  These individuals often lived close to the monastery and, in certain instances, dressed as monks whenever they entered the monastery, but were allowed to leave at the end of the day. 

The manuscript was “sent to the rubricator, who added (in red or other colors) the titles, headlines, the initials of chapters and sections, the notes and so on; and then – if the book was to be illustrated – it was sent to the illuminator.”  In the case of manuscripts that were sold commercially, the writing would “undoubtedly have been discussed initially between the patron and the scribe (or the scribe’s agent,) but by the time that the written gathering were sent off to the illuminator there was no longer any scope for innovation.” 

File:Bible chartraine - BNF Lat116 f193.jpg|Bible from 1150, from Scriptorium de Chartres, Christ with angels
File:Bible of St Louis detail.jpg |Blanche of Castile and Louis IX of France Bible, 13th century
File:Bible moralisée - Vienne Cod.1179 -frontispice.jpg| Bible moralisée : Christ  the architect of the Universe. 
File:Maciejowski Bible Leaf 37 3.jpg| Maciejowski Bible, Leaf 37, the 3rd image, Abner (in the center in green) sends Michal back to David.

File:Jephthah's daughter laments - Maciejowski Bible.JPG|Jephthah's daughter laments - Maciejowski Bible (France, ca. 1250)
File:Whore-babylon-luther-bible-1534.jpg|Colored version of the Whore of Babylon illustration from Martin Luther's 1534 translation of the Bible. 
File:Malnazar - Bible - Google Art Project.jpg |An Armenian Bible, illuminated by Malnazar, Armenian) illuminator.

File:Foster Bible Pictures 0031-1.jpg|Fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah, Foster Bible In Christian theology and ecclesiology, the apostles (), particularly the Twelve Apostles (also called the Twelve Disciples), were the primary historical disciples of Jesus, the central figure in Christianity. During the life and ministry of Jesus in the 1st century AD, the apostles were his closest followers and became the primary teachers of the gospel message of Jesus. The word disciple is sometimes used interchangeably with apostle; for instance, the Gospel of John makes no distinction between the two terms. In modern usage, prominent missionaries are often called apostles, a practice which stems from the Latin equivalent of apostle, i.e. ', the source of the English word missionary. For example, Saint Patrick (AD 373–463) was the "Apostle of Ireland", and Saint Boniface (680–755) was the "Apostle to the Germans".

While Christian tradition often refers to the apostles as being 12 in number, different gospel writers give different names for the same individual, and apostles mentioned in one gospel are not mentioned in others. The commissioning of the Twelve Apostles during the ministry of Jesus is recorded in the Synoptic Gospels. After his resurrection, Jesus sent 11 of them (minus Judas Iscariot, who by then had died) by the Great Commission to spread his teachings to all nations.  This event is commonly called the Dispersion of the Apostles. There is also an Eastern Christian tradition derived from the Gospel of Luke of there having been as many as 70 apostles during the time of Jesus' ministry. Prominent figures in early Christianity, notably Paul, were often called apostles, even though their ministry or mission came after the life of Jesus.

The period of early Christianity during the lifetimes of the apostles is called the Apostolic Age. During the 1st century AD, the apostles established churches throughout the territories of the Roman Empire and, according to tradition, through the Middle East, Africa, India, and modern-day Ukraine.

Although not one of the apostles commissioned during the life of Jesus, Paul, a Jew named Saul of Tarsus, claimed a special commission from the resurrected Jesus and is considered "the apostle of the Gentiles", for his missions to spread the gospel message after his conversion. In his writings, the epistles to Christian churches established Christianity throughout the Levant, Paul did not restrict the term "apostle" to the Twelve, and often refers to his mentor Barnabas as an apostle.  The restricted usage appears in the Revelation to John. 

By the 2nd century AD, association with the apostles was esteemed as an evidence of authority. Churches which are believed to have been founded by one of the apostles are known as apostolic sees. Paul's epistles were accepted as scripture, and two of the four canonical gospels were associated with apostles, as were other New Testament works. Various Christian texts, such as the Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions, were attributed to the apostles. Bishops traced their lines of succession back to individual apostles, who were said to have dispersed from Jerusalem and established churches across great territories. Christian bishops have traditionally claimed authority deriving, by apostolic succession, from the Twelve. Early Church Fathers who came to be associated with apostles, such as Pope Clement I with St. Peter, are referred to as the Apostolic Fathers. The Apostles' Creed, popular in the West, was said to have been composed by the apostles themselves.

Background

The word "apostle" comes from the Greek word  (apóstolos), formed from the prefix  (apó-, "from") and root  (stéllō, "I send", "I depart") and originally meaning "messenger, envoy". It has, however, a stronger sense than the word messenger, and is closer to a "delegate".[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01626c.htm Coppieters, Honoré. "Apostles." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 9 Aug. 2014] The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament argues that its Christian use translated a Jewish position known in Hebrew as the sheliach (). This ecclesiastical meaning of the word was later translated into Latin as ', the source of the English "missionary".

In the New Testament, the names of the majority of the apostles are Hebrew names, although some had Greek names.  Even Paul, the "apostle of the Gentiles", who said that Jesus revealed himself to him only after his ascension and appointed him to his mission,  was a Jew by birth and proud of it, although after his conversion he adopted the Roman cognomen Paul, rendered in English as Paul, as his name. Paul claimed with much insistency this title and its rights, and made the case to the Corinthian Church that he was an apostle by the evidence of the fruits of his ministry, of which they themselves were .

 states that Jesus initially sent out these twelve in pairs (cf. , ) to towns in Galilee. The text states that their initial instructions were to heal the sick and drive out demons. They are also instructed to "take nothing for their journey, except a staff only: no bread, no wallet, no money in their purse, but to wear sandals, and not put on two tunics", and that if any town rejects them they ought to shake the dust off their feet as they leave, a gesture which some scholars think was meant as a contemptuous threat (Miller 26). Their carrying of just a staff (Matthew and Luke say not even a staff) is sometimes given as the reason for the use by Christian bishops of a staff of office in those denominations that believe they maintain an apostolic succession.

Later in the Gospel narratives the twelve apostles are described as having been commissioned to preach the Gospel to "all the nations,"  regardless of whether Jew or Gentile.  Paul emphasized the important role of the apostles in the church of God when he said that the household of God is "built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone".

Each of the four listings of apostles in the New Testament (, , , and ) indicate that all the apostles were men.

Canonical gospels and Acts of the Apostles

The canonical gospels and the book of Acts give varying names of the twelve apostles. The list in the Gospel of Luke differs from Matthew and Mark at two points. It lists "Judas the son of James" instead of "Thaddeus". (For more information, see Jude the Apostle.) In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus selected Peter, James, and John to witness his transfiguration and to be near him when he prayed at Gethsemane. In Mark, the twelve are obtuse, failing to understand the importance of Jesus' miracles and parables. 

Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John does not offer a formal list of apostles. Although it refers to "the Twelve" (), the gospel does not present any elaboration of who these twelve actually were and the author of the Gospel of John does not mention them all by name. There is also no separation of the terms "apostles" and "disciples" in John.

Those "whom he also named apostles" were:

Calling by Jesus

The three Synoptic Gospels record the circumstances in which some of the disciples were recruited, Matthew only describing the recruitment of Simon, Andrew, James, and John. All three Synoptic Gospels state that these four were recruited fairly soon after Jesus returned from being tempted by the devil.

Despite Jesus only briefly requesting that they join him, they are all described as immediately consenting, and abandoning their nets to do so. Traditionally the immediacy of their consent was viewed as an example of divine power, although this statement isn't made in the text itself. The alternative and much more ordinary solution is that Jesus was simply friends with the individuals beforehand, as implied by the Gospel of John, which states that  Peter (Simon) and Andrew are the disciples of John the Baptist, and started following Jesus as soon as Jesus had been baptized. The Bible identifies Jesus as a tekton, a Greek word meaning builder or artisan,  traditionally translated as carpenter. Considering this profession, it is plausible that Jesus had been employed to build and repair fishing vessels, thus having many opportunities to interact with and befriend such fishermen.

Albright and Mann extrapolate from Simon's and Andrew's abandonment of their nets that Matthew is emphasizing the importance of renunciation by converting to Christianity, since fishing was profitable, although required large start-up costs, and abandoning everything would have been an important sacrifice. Regardless, Simon and Andrew's abandonment of what were effectively their most important worldly possessions was taken as a model by later Christian ascetics.

Matthew describes Jesus meeting James and John, also fishermen and brothers, very shortly after recruiting Simon and Andrew. Matthew and Mark identify James and John as sons of Zebedee. Luke adds to Matthew and Mark that James and John worked as a team with Simon and Andrew. Matthew states that at the time of the encounter, James and John were repairing their nets, but readily joined Jesus without hesitation.

This parallels the accounts of Mark and Luke, but Matthew implies that the men have also abandoned their father (since he is present in the ship they abandon behind them), and Carter feels this should be interpreted to mean that Matthew's view of Jesus is one of a figure rejecting the traditional patriarchal structure of society, where the father had command over his children; most scholars, however, just interpret it to mean that Matthew intended these two to be seen as even more devoted than the other pair.

The synoptic go on to describe that much later, after Jesus had later begun his ministry, he noticed, while teaching, a tax collector in his booth. The tax collector, 'Levi' according to some Gospels, 'Matthew' according to others, is asked by Jesus to become one of his disciples. Matthew/Levi is stated to have accepted and then invited Jesus for a meal with his friends. Tax collectors were seen as villains in Jewish society, and the Pharisees are described by the synoptic as asking Jesus why he is having a meal with such disreputable people. The reply Jesus gives to this is now well known: "it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners".

Replacement of Judas

After Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ and then in guilt committed suicide before Christ's resurrection (in one Gospel account), the apostles numbered eleven. When Jesus had been taken up from them, in preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit that he had promised them, Peter advised the brethren:

So, between the ascension of Christ and the day of Pentecost, the remaining apostles elected a twelfth apostle by casting lots, a traditional Israelite way to determine the will of God (see ). The lot fell upon Matthias.

Paul the Apostle in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, appears to give the first historical reference to the twelve apostles:

Paul, Apostle of the Gentiles

In his writings, Paul, originally named Saul, though not one of the original twelve, described himself as an apostle, one "born out of due time" (e.g., , 1 Corinthians 15:8 and other letters). He was called by the resurrected Jesus himself during his Road to Damascus vision and given the name "Paul." With Barnabas, he was allotted the role of apostle in the church. He referred to himself as the apostle of the Gentiles.

As the Catholic Encyclopedia states, "It is at once evident that in a Christian sense, everyone who had received a mission from God, or Christ, to man could be called 'Apostle'"; thus extending the original sense beyond the twelve.

Since Paul claimed to have received the gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ  after the latter's death and resurrection (rather than before like the twelve), he was often obliged to defend his apostolic authority () and proclaim that he had seen and was anointed by Jesus while on the road to Damascus.

James, Peter and John in Jerusalem accepted his calling to the apostleship from the Lord to the Gentiles (specifically those not circumcized) as of equal authority as Peter's to the Jews (specifically those circumcized) according to Paul. "James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars ... agreed that we [Paul and Barnabas] should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews."

Paul, despite his divine calling as an apostle, considered himself perhaps inferior to the other apostles because he had originally persecuted Christ's followers. In addition, despite the Little Commission of Matthew 10, the twelve did not limit their mission to solely Jews as Cornelius the Centurion is widely considered the first Gentile convert and he was converted by Peter, and the Great Commission of the Resurrected Jesus is specifically to "all nations".

Other apostles mentioned in the New Testament

Deaths

Of the twelve Apostles to hold the title after Matthias' selection, Christian tradition has generally passed down that all but one were martyred, with John surviving into old age. Only the death of James, son of Zebedee is described in the New Testament.

 says that Judas Iscariot threw the silver he received for betraying Jesus down in the Temple, then went and hanged himself.  says that he purchased a field, then "falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out".

According to Edward Gibbon, early Christians (second half of the second century and first half of the third century) believed that only SS. Peter, Paul, and James, son of Zebedee, were martyred.  The rest of claims of martyred apostles do not rely upon historical evidence.  Citing 

Tombs of the Twelve

The relics of the apostles are claimed by various churches, mostly in Italy.
*St. Peter: buried in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome
*St. Andrew: buried in the Basilica of Patras
*St. James, son of Zebedee: buried in the Santiago Cathedral
*St. John the Apostle: buried in the St. John Lateran Archbasilica in Rome
*St. Philip: buried in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome
*St. Bartholomew: buried in the Basilica of Benevento
*St. Matthew: buried in the Cathedral of Salerno
*St. James, son of Alpheus: buried in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome
*St. Thomas: buried in the Basilica of Ortona
*St. Simon: buried in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome
*St. Jude Thaddeus: buried in the Church of St. Augustine in Lanciano
* St. Matthias: buried in the Basilica of Trier The crucifixion of Jesus occurred in 1st century Judea, most probably between the years 30 and 33 AD. Jesus' crucifixion is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament epistles, attested to by other ancient sources, and is established as an historical event confirmed by non-Christian sources,  although, among historians, there is no consensus on the precise details of what exactly occurred.Christopher M. Tuckett in The Cambridge companion to Jesus edited by Markus N. A. Bockmuehl 2001 Cambridge Univ Press ISBN 978-0-521-79678-1 pages 123–124

According to the canonical gospels,  Jesus the Son of God as well as the Messiah (Christ), was arrested, tried, and sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged, and finally crucified by the Romans.Evidence of Greek Philosophical Concepts in the Writings of Ephrem the Syrian by Ute Possekel 1999 ISBN 90-429-0759-2 pages 29–30Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the State of Current Research edited by Bruce Chilton, Craig A. Evans 1998 ISBN 90-04-11142-5 pages 455–457The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum 2009 ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3 page 110The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum 2009 ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3 page 104–108   Jesus was stripped of his clothing and offered wine mixed with gall to drink, before being crucified. He was then hung for six hours (according to Mark's Gospel) between two convicted thieves. During this time, the soldiers affixed a sign to the top of the cross stating "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" in three languages. They then divided his garments among them, but cast lots for his seamless robe. After Jesus' death they pierced his side with a spear to be certain that he had died. The Bible records seven statements that Jesus made while he was on the cross, as well as several supernatural events that occurred.

Collectively referred to as the Passion, Jesus' suffering and redemptive death by crucifixion are the central aspects of Christian theology concerning the doctrines of salvation and atonement.

Historicity

The baptism of Jesus and his crucifixion are considered to be two historically certain facts about Jesus.Jesus of Nazareth by Paul Verhoeven (Apr 6, 2010) ISBN 1-58322-905-1 page 39 James Dunn states that these "two facts in the life of Jesus command almost universal assent" and "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical facts" that they are often the starting points for the study of the historical Jesus.Jesus Remembered by James D. G. Dunn 2003 ISBN 0-8028-3931-2 page 339 Bart Ehrman states that the crucifixion of Jesus on the orders of Pontius Pilate is the most certain element about him.  John Dominic Crossan states that the crucifixion of Jesus is as certain as any historical fact can be.  Eddy and Boyd state that it is now "firmly established" that there is non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus. Craig Blomberg states that most scholars in the third quest for the historical Jesus consider the crucifixion indisputable.Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey by Craig L. Blomberg 2009 ISBN 0-8054-4482-3 pages 211–214 Christopher M. Tuckett states that, although the exact reasons for the death of Jesus are hard to determine, one of the indisputable facts about him is that he was crucified. 

While scholars agree on the historicity of the crucifixion, they differ on the reason and context for it, e.g., both E. P. Sanders and Paula Fredriksen support the historicity of the crucifixion, but contend that Jesus did not foretell his own crucifixion, and that his prediction of the crucifixion is a "church creation" (p. 126).  Geza Vermes also views the crucifixion as a historical event but provides his own explanation and background for it.A Century of Theological and Religious Studies in Britain, 1902–2007 by Ernest Nicholson 2004 ISBN 0-19-726305-4 pages 125–126 [https://books.google.com/books?idE-UkAAAAYAAJ&q
%22Sanders+and+Fredriksen%22 Link 126]

John P. Meier views the crucifixion of Jesus as historical fact and states that based on the criterion of embarrassment Christians would not have invented the painful death of their leader.John P. Meier "How do we decide what comes from Jesus" in The Historical Jesus in Recent Research by James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight 2006 ISBN 1-57506-100-7 pages 126–128 Meier states that a number of other criteria, e.g., the criterion of multiple attestation (i.e., confirmation by more than one source) and the criterion of coherence (i.e., that it fits with other historical elements) help establish the crucifixion of Jesus as a historical event.John P. Meier "How do we decide what comes from Jesus" in The Historical Jesus in Recent Research by James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight 2006 ISBN 1-57506-100-7 pages 132–136

Although almost all ancient sources relating to crucifixion are literary, the 1968 archeological discovery just northeast of Jerusalem of the body of a crucified man dated to the 1st century provided good confirmatory evidence that crucifixions occurred during the Roman period roughly according to the manner in which the crucifixion of Jesus is described in the gospels.  The crucified man was identified as Yehohanan ben Hagkol and probably died about 70 AD, around the time of the Jewish revolt against Rome. The analyses at the Hadassah Medical School estimated that he died in his late 20s. Another relevant archaeological find, which also dates to the 1st century AD, is an unidentified heel bone with a spike discovered in a Jerusalem gravesite, now held by the Israel Antiquities Authority and displayed in the Israel Museum.  

New Testament narrative

The earliest detailed accounts of the death of Jesus are contained in the four canonical gospels. There are other, more implicit references in the New Testament epistles. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus predicts his death in three separate episodes.  All four Gospels conclude with an extended narrative of Jesus' arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, and accounts of resurrection. In each Gospel these five events in the life of Jesus are treated with more intense detail than any other portion of that Gospel's narrative. Scholars note that the reader receives an almost hour-by-hour account of what is happening.Powell, Mark A. Introducing the New Testament. Baker Academic, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8010-2868-7

Combining statements in the canonical Gospels produces the following account: Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane following the Last Supper with the Twelve Apostles, and then stood trial before the Sanhedrin (a Jewish judicial body), Pontius Pilate (a Roman authority in Judaea), and Herod Antipas (king of Judea, appointed by Rome), before being handed over for crucifixion by the chief priests of the Jews.  After being flogged, Jesus was mocked by Roman soldiers as the "King of the Jews", clothed in a purple robe, crowned with thorns, beaten and spat on. Jesus then had to make his way to the place of his crucifixion.

Once at Golgotha, Jesus was offered wine mixed with gall to drink. Matthew's and Mark's Gospels record that he refused this. He was then crucified and hung between two convicted thieves. According to some translations from the original Greek, the thieves may have been bandits or Jewish rebels.  According to Mark's Gospel, he endured the torment of crucifixion for some six hours from the third hour, at approximately 9 am,  until his death at the ninth hour, corresponding to about 3 pm.  The soldiers affixed a sign above his head stating "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" in three languages, divided his garments and cast lots for his seamless robe. The Roman soldiers did not break Jesus' legs, as they did to the other two men crucified (breaking the legs hastened the crucifixion process), as Jesus was dead already. Each gospel has its own account of Jesus' last words, seven statements altogether.Ehrman, Bart D.. Jesus, Interrupted, HarperCollins, 2009. ISBN 0-06-117393-2 In the Synoptic Gospels, various supernatural events accompany the crucifixion, including darkness, an earthquake, and (in Matthew) the resurrection of saints. Following Jesus' death, his body was removed from the cross by Joseph of Arimathea and buried in a rock-hewn tomb, with Nicodemus assisting.

According to all four gospels, Jesus was brought to the "Place of a Skull"  and crucified with two thieves,  with the charge of claiming to be "King of the Jews",  and the soldiers divided his clothes  before he bowed his head and died.  Following his death, Joseph of Arimathea requested the body from Pilate,  which Joseph then placed in a new garden tomb. 

The three Synoptic gospels also describe Simon of Cyrene bearing the cross,  the multitude mocking Jesus  along with the thieves/robbers/rebels,  darkness from the 6th to the 9th hour,  and the temple veil being torn from top to bottom.  The Synoptics also mention several witnesses, including a centurion,  and several women who watched from a distance  two of whom were present during the burial. 

Luke is the only gospel writer to omit the detail of sour wine mix that was offered to Jesus on a reed,  while only Mark and John describe Joseph actually taking the body down off the cross. 

There are several details that are only found in one of the gospel accounts. For instance, only Matthew's gospel mentions an earthquake, resurrected saints who went to the city and that Roman soldiers were assigned to guard the tomb,  while Mark is the only one to state the actual time of the crucifixion (the third hour, or 9 am) and the centurion's report of Jesus' death.  The Gospel of Luke's unique contributions to the narrative include Jesus' words to the women who were mourning, one criminal's rebuke of the other, the reaction of the multitudes who left "beating their breasts", and the women preparing spices and ointments before resting on the Sabbath.  John is also the only one to refer to the request that the legs be broken and the soldier's subsequent piercing of Jesus' side (as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy), as well as that Nicodemus assisted Joseph with burial. 

According to the First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:4), Jesus was raised from the dead ("on the third day" counting the day of crucifixion as the first) and according to the canonical Gospels, appeared to his disciples on different occasions before ascending to heaven.  The account given in Acts of the Apostles, which says Jesus remained with the apostles for forty days, appears to differ from the account in the Gospel of Luke, which makes no clear distinction between the events of Easter Sunday and the Ascension.   However, most biblical scholars agree that St. Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a follow-up volume to his Gospel account, and the two works must be considered as a whole. 

In Mark, Jesus is crucified along with two rebels, and the day goes dark for three hours.Funk, Robert W. and the Jesus Seminar. The acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1998. "Mark," p. 51–161 ISBN 978-0060629786 Jesus calls out to God, then gives a shout and dies. The curtain of the Temple is torn in two. Matthew follows Mark, adding an earthquake and the resurrection of saints.Funk, Robert W. and the Jesus Seminar. The acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1998. "Matthew," p. 129–270 ISBN 978-0060629786 Luke also follows Mark, though he describes the rebels as common criminals, one of whom defends Jesus, who in turn promises that he (Jesus) and the criminal will be together in paradise.Funk, Robert W. and the Jesus Seminar. The acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1998. "Luke," p. 267–364 ISBN 978-0060629786 Luke portrays Jesus as impassive in the face of his crucifixion.  John includes several of the same elements as those found in Mark, though they are treated differently.Funk, Robert W. and the Jesus Seminar. The acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1998. "John" pp. 365–440 ISBN 978-0060629786

Other accounts and references

An early non-Christian reference to the crucifixion of Jesus is likely to be Mara Bar-Serapion's letter to his son, written sometime after AD 73 but before the 3rd century AD. The letter includes no Christian themes and the author is presumed to be a pagan.Jesus outside the New Testament: an introduction to the ancient evidence by Robert E. Van Voorst 2000 ISBN 0-8028-4368-9 pages 53–55 The letter refers to the retributions that followed the unjust treatment of three wise men: Socrates, Pythagoras, and "the wise king" of the Jews. Some scholars see little doubt that the reference to the execution of the "king of the Jews" is about the crucifixion of Jesus, while others place less value in the letter, given the possible ambiguity in the reference.Jesus and His Contemporaries: Comparative Studies by Craig A. Evans 2001 ISBN 978-0-391-04118-9 page 41

In the Antiquities of the Jews (written about 93 AD) Jewish historian Josephus, stated (Ant 18.3) that Jesus was crucified by Pilate, writing that:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, ... He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles ... And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross ...

Most modern scholars agree that while this Josephus passage (called the Testimonium Flavianum) includes some later interpolations, it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate. James Dunn states that there is "broad consensus" among scholars regarding the nature of an authentic reference to the crucifixion of Jesus in the Testimonium. 

Early in the second century another reference to the crucifixion of Jesus was made by Tacitus, generally considered one of the greatest Roman historians.Van Voorst, Robert E (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence Eerdmans Publishing ISBN 0-8028-4368-9 pages 39–42  Writing in The Annals (c. 116 AD), Tacitus described the persecution of Christians by Nero and stated (Annals 15.44) that Pilate ordered the execution of Jesus:Theissen 1998, pp. 81–83 

Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.

Scholars generally consider the Tacitus reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate to be genuine, and of historical value as an independent Roman source.Jesus as a figure in history: how modern historians view the man from Galilee by Mark Allan Powell 1998 ISBN 0-664-25703-8 page 33Jesus and His Contemporaries: Comparative Studies by Craig A. Evans 2001 ISBN 0-391-04118-5 page 42    Eddy and Boyd state that it is now "firmly established" that Tacitus provides a non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion of Jesus.Eddy, Paul; Boyd, Gregory (2007). The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition Baker Academic, ISBN 0-8010-3114-1 page 127

Another possible reference to the crucifixion ("hanging" cf. ; ) is found in the Babylonian Talmud:

Although the question of the equivalence of the identities of Yeshu and Jesus has at times been debated, many historians agree that the above 2nd-century passage is likely to be about Jesus, Peter Schäfer stating that there can be no doubt that this narrative of the execution in the Talmud refers to Jesus of Nazareth.  Robert Van Voorst states that the Sanhedrin 43a reference to Jesus can be confirmed not only from the reference itself, but from the context that surrounds it. 

Muslims maintain that Jesus was not crucified and that those who thought they had killed him had mistakenly killed Judas Iscariot, Simon of Cyrene, or someone else in his place.George W. Braswell Jr., [https://books.google.com/books?id
ZRenjUoud3kC&pgPA127#v
onepage&qJudas%20Simon&f
false What You Need to Know about Islam and Muslims], page 127 (B & H Publishing Group, 2000). ISBN 978-0-8054-1829-3 They hold this belief based on various interpretations of , which states: "they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them [or it appeared so unto them], ... Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself".

Some early Christian Gnostic sects, believing Jesus did not have a physical substance, denied that he was crucified.   In response, Ignatius of Antioch insisted that Jesus was truly born and was truly crucified and wrote that those who held that Jesus only seemed to suffer only seemed to be Christians.  

The Crucifixion

Chronology

There is no consensus regarding the exact date of the crucifixion of Jesus, although it is generally agreed by biblical scholars that it was on a Friday on or near Passover (Nisan 15), during the governorship of Pontius Pilate (who ruled AD 26–36).  Scholars have provided estimates for the year of crucifixion in the range 30–33 AD,Paul L. Maier "The Date of the Nativity and Chronology of Jesus" in Chronos, kairos, Christos: nativity and chronological studies by Jerry Vardaman, Edwin M. Yamauchi 1989 ISBN 0-931464-50-1 pages 113–129The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum 2009 ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3 page 114Jesus & the Rise of Early Christianity: A History of New Testament Times by Paul Barnett 2002 ISBN 0-8308-2699-8 pages 19–21 with the majority of modern scholars favouring the date April 7, 30 AD.   Another popular date is Friday, April 3, 33 AD.  

Since an observational calendar was used during the time of Jesus, including an ascertainment of the new moon and ripening barley harvest, the exact day or even month for Passover in a given year is subject to speculation.   . Various approaches have been used to estimate the year of the crucifixion, including the canonical Gospels, the chronology of the life of Paul, as well as different astronomical models.

The consensus of modern scholarship is that the New Testament accounts represent a crucifixion occurring on a Friday, but a Thursday or Wednesday crucifixion have also been proposed.The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum 2009 ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3 pages 142–143 Some scholars explain a Thursday crucifixion based on a "double sabbath" caused by an extra Passover sabbath falling on Thursday dusk to Friday afternoon, ahead of the normal weekly Sabbath.  Some have argued that Jesus was crucified on Wednesday, not Friday, on the grounds of the mention of "three days and three nights" in  before his resurrection, celebrated on Sunday. Others have countered by saying that this ignores the Jewish idiom by which a "day and night" may refer to any part of a 24-hour period, that the expression in Matthew is idiomatic, not a statement that Jesus was 72 hours in the tomb, and that the many references to a resurrection on the third day do not require three literal nights. 

In Mark 15:25 crucifixion takes place at the third hour (9 a.m.) and Jesus' death at the ninth hour (3 p.m.).The Gospel of Mark, Volume 2 by John R. Donahue, Daniel J. Harrington 2002 ISBN 0-8146-5965-9 page 442 However, in John 19:14 Jesus is still before Pilate at the sixth hour. Scholars have presented a number of arguments to deal with the issue, some suggesting a reconciliation, e.g., based on the use of Roman timekeeping in John but not in Mark, yet others have rejected the arguments.Death of the Messiah, Volume 2 by Raymond E. Brown 1999 ISBN 0-385-49449-1 pages 959–960Colin Humphreys, The Mystery of the Last Supper Cambridge University Press 2011 ISBN 978-0-521-73200-0, pages 188–190 Several notable scholars have argued that the modern precision of marking the time of day should not be read back into the gospel accounts, written at a time when no standardization of timepieces, or exact recording of hours and minutes was available, and time was often approximated to the closest three-hour period.Steven L. Cox, Kendell H Easley, 2007 Harmony of the Gospels ISBN 0-8054-9444-8 pages 323–323 The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum 2009 ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3 page 538

Path to the crucifixion

The three Synoptic Gospels refer to a man called Simon of Cyrene who is made to carry the cross,  while in the Gospel of John, Jesus is said to "bear" his own cross. 

Luke's gospel also describes an interaction between Jesus and the women among the crowd of mourners following him, quoting Jesus as saying "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"

The Gospel of Luke has Jesus address these women as "daughters of Jerusalem", thus distinguishing them from the women whom the same gospel describes as "the women who had followed him from Galilee" and who were present at his crucifixion. 

Traditionally, the path that Jesus took is called Via Dolorosa (Latin for "Way of Grief" or "Way of Suffering") and is a street in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is marked by nine of the fourteen Stations of the Cross. It passes the Ecce Homo Church and the last five stations are inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

There is no reference to the legendary  Veronica in the Gospels, but sources such as Acta Sanctorum describe her as a pious woman of Jerusalem who, moved with pity as Jesus carried his cross to Golgotha, gave him her veil that he might wipe his forehead.    

Location

The precise location of the crucifixion remains a matter of conjecture, but the biblical accounts indicate that it was outside the city walls of Jerusalem,  accessible to passers-by  and observable from some distance away. Eusebius identified its location only as being north of Mount Zion,  which is consistent with the two most popularly suggested sites of modern times.

Calvary as an English name for the place is derived from the Latin word for skull (calvaria), which is used in the Vulgate translation of "place of a skull", the explanation given in all four Gospels of the Aramaic word Gûlgaltâ which was the name of the place where Jesus was crucified.  The text does not indicate why it was so designated, but several theories have been put forward. One is that as a place of public execution, Calvary may have been strewn with the skulls of abandoned victims (which would be contrary to Jewish burial traditions, but not Roman). Another is that Calvary is named after a nearby cemetery (which is consistent with both of the proposed modern sites). A third is that the name was derived from the physical contour, which would be more consistent with the singular use of the word, i.e., the place of "a skull". While often referred to as "Mount Calvary", it was more likely a small hill or rocky knoll. 

The traditional site, inside what is now occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, has been attested since the 4th century. A second site (commonly referred to as Gordon's Calvary  ), located further north of the Old City near a place popularly called the Garden Tomb, has been promoted since the 19th century.

People present

The Gospel of Matthew describes many women at the crucifixion, some of whom are named in the Gospels. Apart from these women, the three Synoptic Gospels speak of the presence of others: "the chief priests, with the scribes and elders";  two robbers crucified, one on Jesus' right and one on his left,  whom the Gospel of Luke presents as the penitent thief and the impenitent thief;  "the soldiers",  "the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus";  passers-by;  "bystanders",  "the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle";  and "his acquaintances" 

The Gospel of John also speaks of women present, but only mentions the soldiers  and "the disciple whom Jesus loved". 

The Gospels also tell of the arrival, after the death of Jesus, of Joseph of Arimathea  and of Nicodemus. 

Method and manner

Whereas most Christians believe the gibbet on which Jesus was executed was the traditional two-beamed cross, the Jehovah's Witnesses hold the view that a single upright stake was used. The Greek and Latin words used in the earliest Christian writings are ambiguous. The Koine Greek terms used in the New Testament are stauros () and xylon (). The latter means wood (a live tree, timber or an object constructed of wood); in earlier forms of Greek, the former term meant an upright stake or pole, but in Koine Greek it was used also to mean a cross. The Latin word crux was also applied to objects other than a cross. 

However, early Christian writers who speak of the shape of the particular gibbet on which Jesus died invariably describe it as having a cross-beam. For instance, the Epistle of Barnabas, which was certainly earlier than 135,  and may have been of the 1st century AD,  the time when the gospel accounts of the death of Jesus were written, likened it to the letter T (the Greek letter tau, which had the numeric value of 300),  and to the position assumed by Moses in .  Justin Martyr (100–165) explicitly says the cross of Christ was of two-beam shape: "That lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was a symbol of the suffering of the cross which Christ would undergo. For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross. For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb."  Irenaeus, who died around the end of the 2nd century, speaks of the cross as having "five extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which [last] the person rests who is fixed by the nails." 

The assumption of the use of a two-beamed cross does not determine the number of nails used in the crucifixion and some theories suggest three nails while others suggest four nails.  However, throughout history larger numbers of nails have been hypothesized, at times as high as 14 nails.Encyclopedia of Biblical Literature, Part 2 by John Kitto 2003 ISBN 0-7661-5980-9 page 591 These variations are also present in the artistic depictions of the crucifixion.Renaissance art: a topical dictionary by Irene Earls 1987 ISBN 0-313-24658-0 page 64 In the Western Church, before the Renaissance usually four nails would be depicted, with the feet side by side. After the Renaissance most depictions use three nails, with one foot placed on the other. Nails are almost always depicted in art, although Romans sometimes just tied the victims to the cross. The tradition also carries to Christian emblems, e.g. the Jesuits use three nails under the IHS monogram and a cross to symbolize the crucifixion. 

The placing of the nails in the hands, or the wrists is also uncertain. Some theories suggest that the Greek word cheir (χειρ) for hand includes the wrist and that the Romans were generally trained to place nails through Destot's space (between the capitate and lunate bones) without fracturing any bones.The Crucifixion and Death of a Man Called Jesus by David A Ball 2010 ISBN 1-61507-128-8 pages 82–84 Another theory suggests that the Greek word for hand also includes the forearm and that the nails were placed near the radius and ulna of the forearm.The Chronological Life of Christ by Mark E. Moore 2007 ISBN 0-89900-955-7 page 639–643 Ropes may have also been used to fasten the hands in addition to the use of nails. 

Another issue has been the use of a hypopodium as a standing platform to support the feet, given that the hands may not have been able to support the weight. In the 17th century Rasmus Bartholin considered a number of analytical scenarios of that topic. In the 20th century, forensic pathologist Frederick Zugibe performed a number of crucifixion experiments by using ropes to hang human subjects at various angles and hand positions. His experiments support an angled suspension, and a two-beamed cross, and perhaps some form of foot support, given that in an Aufbinden form of suspension from a straight stake (as used by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp during World War II), death comes rather quickly. 

Words of Jesus spoken from the cross

The New Testament gives three different accounts of the words of Jesus on the cross. In Mark and Matthew Jesus utters only one saying on the cross, while Luke and John each describe three statements unique to them. 

Mark / Matthew
* "E′li, E′li, la′ma sa‧bach‧tha′ni?"   (Aramaic for "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?").

The only words of Jesus on the cross in the Mark and Matthew accounts, this is a quotation of Psalm 22. Since other verses of the same Psalm are cited in the crucifixion accounts, it is often considered a literary and theological creation. Geza Vermes, however, points out that the verse is cited in Aramaic rather than the Hebrew in which it usually would have been recited, and suggests that by the time of Jesus, this phrase had become a proverbial saying in common usage.  Compared to the accounts in the other Gospels, which he describes as 'theologically correct and reassuring', he considers this phrase 'unexpected, disquieting and in consequence more probable'.  He describes it as bearing 'all the appearances of a genuine cry'.  Raymond Brown likewise comments that he finds 'no persuasive argument against attributing to the Jesus of Mark/Matt the literal sentiment of feeling forsaken expressed in the Psalm quote'. 

Luke
* "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." [Some early manuscripts do not have this]
* "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
* "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!"

The Gospel of Luke does not have the cry of Jesus found within Matthew and Mark, possibly playing down the suffering of Jesus and replacing a cry of desperation with one of hope and confidence, in keeping with the message of the Gospel which Jesus as dying confident that he would be vindicated as God's righteous prophet. 

John
* "Woman, behold, your son!" 
* "I thirst."
* "It is finished."

The words of Jesus on the cross, especially his last words, have been the subject of a wide range of Christian teachings and sermons, and a number of authors have written books specifically devoted to the last sayings of Christ.       The difference between the accounts is cited by James Dunn as a reason to doubt their historicity. 

Reported extraordinary occurrences

The synoptics report various miraculous events during the crucifixion.    Mark mentions darkness in the daytime during Jesus' crucifixion, and the Temple veil being torn in two when Jesus dies. Luke follows Mark; as does Matthew, adding an earthquake and the resurrection of dead saints. No mention of any of these appears in John. 

Darkness

In the synoptic narrative, while Jesus is hanging on the cross, the sky over Judea (or the whole world) is "darkened for three hours," from the sixth to the ninth hour (noon to mid-afternoon). There is no reference to darkness in the Gospel of John account, in which the crucifixion does not take place until after noon. 

Some Christian writers considered the possibility that pagan commentators may have mentioned this event, mistaking it for a solar eclipse - although this would have been impossible during the Passover, which takes place at the full moon. Christian traveller and historian Sextus Julius Africanus and Christian theologian Origen refer to Greek historian Phlegon, who lived in the 2nd century AD, as having written "with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place" 

Sextus Julius Africanus further refers to the writings of historian Thallus: "This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun. For the Hebrews celebrate the passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the passion of our Saviour falls on the day before the passover; but an eclipse of the sun takes place only when the moon comes under the sun."  Christian apologist Tertullian believed the event was documented in the Roman archives. 
 
Colin Humphreys and W. G. Waddington of Oxford University considered the possibility that a lunar, rather than solar, eclipse might have taken place.Colin J. Humphreys and W. G. Waddington, The Date of the Crucifixion  Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 37 (March 1985)[http://www.asa3.org/aSA/PSCF/1985/JASA3-85Humphreys.html]  They concluded that such an eclipse would have been visible, for thirty minutes, from Jerusalem and suggested the gospel reference to a solar eclipse was the result of a scribe wrongly amending a text. Historian David Henige dismisses this explanation as 'indefensible'  and astronomer Bradley Schaefer points out that the lunar eclipse would not have been visible during daylight hours.  

Modern biblical scholarship treats the account in the synoptic gospels as a literary creation by the author of the Mark Gospel, amended in the Luke and Matthew accounts, intended to heighten the importance of what they saw as a theologically significant event, and not intended to be taken literally.  This image of darkness over the land would have been understood by ancient readers, a typical element in the description of the death of kings and other major figures by writers such as Philo, Dio Cassius, Virgil, Plutarch and Josephus.  Géza Vermes describes the darkness account as  typical of "Jewish eschatological imagery of the day of the Lord", and says that those interpreting it as a datable eclipse are "barking up the wrong tree". 

Temple veil, earthquake and resurrection of dead saints

The synoptic gospels state that the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom.

The Gospel of Matthew adds an account of earthquakes, splitting rocks, and the opening of the graves of dead saints  - stock motifs from Jewish apocalyptic literature - and describes how these resurrected saints went into the holy city and appeared to many people. 

In the Mark and Matthew accounts, the centurion in charge comments on the events: "Truly this man was the Son of God!" or "Truly this was the Son of God!". In the Gospel of Luke this becomes, "Certainly this man was innocent!"

Medical aspects

A number of theories to explain the circumstances of the death of Jesus on the cross have been proposed by physicians and Biblical scholars. In 2006, Matthew W Maslen and Piers D Mitchell reviewed over 40 publications on the subject with theories ranging from cardiac rupture to pulmonary embolism. 

In 1847, based on the reference in the Gospel of John () to blood and water coming out when the Jesus' side was pierced with a spear, physician William Stroud proposed the ruptured heart theory of the cause of Christ's death which influenced a number of other people.  

The cardiovascular collapse theory is a prevalent modern explanation and suggests that Jesus died of profound shock. According to this theory, the scourging, the beatings, and the fixing to the cross would have left Jesus dehydrated, weak, and critically ill and that this would have led to cardiovascular collapse.  

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, physician William Edwards and his colleagues supported the combined cardiovascular collapse (via hypovolemic shock) and exhaustion asphyxia theories, assuming that the flow of water from the side of Jesus described in the Gospel of John was pericardial fluid. 

In his book The Crucifixion of Jesus, physician and forensic pathologist Frederick Zugibe studied the likely circumstances of the death of Jesus in great detail.   Zugibe carried out a number of experiments over several years to test his theories while he was a medical examiner. These studies included experiments in which volunteers with specific weights were hanging at specific angles and the amount of pull on each hand was measured, in cases where the feet were also secured or not. In these cases the amount of pull and the corresponding pain was found to be significant.

Pierre Barbet, a French physician, and the chief surgeon at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Paris,   hypothesized that Jesus would have had to relax his muscles to obtain enough air to utter his last words, in the face of exhaustion asphyxia.  Some of Barbet's theories, e.g., location of nails, are disputed by Zugibe.

Orthopedic surgeon Keith Maxwell not only analyzed the medical aspects of the crucifixion, but also looked back at how Jesus could have carried the cross all the way along Via Dolorosa.  

In an article for the Catholic Medical Association, Phillip Bishop and physiologist Brian Church suggested a new theory based on suspension trauma. 

In 2003, historians FP Retief and L Cilliers reviewed the history and pathology of crucifixion as performed by the Romans and suggested that the cause of death was often a combination of factors. They also state that Roman guards were prohibited from leaving the scene until death had occurred. 

Theological significance

Christians believe that Jesus’ death was instrumental in restoring humankind to relationship with God.   Christians believe that through faith in Jesus’ substitutionary death and triumphant resurrection   people are reunited with God and receive new joy and power in this life as well as eternal life in heaven after the body’s death. Thus the crucifixion of Jesus along with his resurrection restores access to a vibrant experience of God’s presence, love and grace as well as the confidence of eternal life. 

Christology of the crucifixion

The accounts of the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection of Jesus provide a rich background for Christological analysis, from the canonical Gospels to the Pauline epistles.  Christians believe Jesus' suffering was foretold in the Hebrew Bible, such as in Psalm 22, and Isaiah's songs of the suffering servant. 

In Johannine "agent Christology" the submission of Jesus to crucifixion is a sacrifice made as an agent of God or servant of God, for the sake of eventual victory.The Christology of the New Testament by Oscar Cullmann 1959 ISBN 0-664-24351-7 page 79  This builds on the salvific theme of the Gospel of John which begins in John 1:29 with John the Baptist's proclamation: "The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world".Johannine Christology and the Early Church by T. E. Pollard 2005 ISBN 0-521-01868-4 page 21Studies in Early Christology by Martin Hengel 2004 ISBN 0-567-04280-4 page 371 Further reinforcement of the concept is provided in Revelation 21:14 where the "lamb slain but standing" is the only one worthy of handling the scroll (i.e. the book) containing the names of those who are to be saved.Studies in Revelation by M. R. DeHaan, Martin Ralph DeHaan 1998 ISBN 0-8254-2485-2 page 103

A central element in the Christology presented in the Acts of the Apostles is the affirmation of the belief that the death of Jesus by crucifixion happened "with the foreknowledge of God, according to a definite plan".New Testament christology by Frank J. Matera 1999 ISBN 0-664-25694-5 page 67 In this view, as in Acts 2:23, the cross is not viewed as a scandal, for the crucifixion of Jesus "at the hands of the lawless" is viewed as the fulfilment of the plan of God. 

Paul's Christology has a specific focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus. For Paul, the crucifixion of Jesus is directly related to his resurrection and the term "the cross of Christ" used in Galatians 6:12 may be viewed as his abbreviation of the message of the gospels.Christology by Hans Schwarz 1998 ISBN 0-8028-4463-4 pages 132–134 For Paul, the crucifixion of Jesus was not an isolated event in history, but a cosmic event with significant eschatological consequences, as in 1 Corinthians 2:8. In the Pauline view, Jesus, obedient to the point of death (Philippians 2:8) died "at the right time" (Romans 4:25) based on the plan of God. For Paul the "power of the cross" is not separable from the Resurrection of Jesus.

However, the belief in the redemptive nature of Jesus' death predates the Pauline letters and goes back to the earliest days of Christianity and the Jerusalem church.  The Nicene Creed's statement that "for our sake he was crucified" is a reflection of this core belief's formalization in the fourth century.Christian Theology by J. Glyndwr Harris (Mar 2002) ISBN 1-902210-22-0 pages 12–15

John Calvin supported the "agent of God" Christology and argued that in his trial in Pilate's Court Jesus could have successfully argued for his innocence, but instead submitted to crucifixion in obedience to the Father.Calvin's Christology by Stephen Edmondson 2004 ISBN 0-521-54154-9 page 91  This Christological theme continued into the 20th century, both in the Eastern and Western Churches. In the Eastern Church Sergei Bulgakov argued that the crucifixion of Jesus was "pre-eternally" determined by the Father before the creation of the world, to redeem humanity from the disgrace caused by the fall of Adam.The Lamb of God by Sergei Bulgakov 2008 ISBN 0-8028-2779-9 page 129 In the Western Church, Karl Rahner elaborated on the analogy that the blood of the Lamb of God (and the water from the side of Jesus) shed at the crucifixion had a cleansing nature, similar to baptismal water. 

Atonement 

Jesus' death and resurrection underpin a variety of theological interpretations as to how salvation is granted to humanity. These interpretations vary widely in how much emphasis they place on the death of Jesus as compared to his words.  According to the substitutionary atonement view, Jesus' death is of central importance, and Jesus willingly sacrificed himself as an act of perfect obedience as a sacrifice of love which pleased God.  By contrast the moral influence theory of atonement focuses much more on the moral content of Jesus' teaching, and sees Jesus' death as a martyrdom.  Since the Middle Ages there has been conflict between these two views within Western Christianity. Evangelical Protestants typically hold a substitutionary view and in particular hold to the theory of penal substitution. Liberal Protestants typically reject substitutionary atonement and hold to the moral influence theory of atonement. Both views are popular within the Roman Catholic church, with the satisfaction doctrine incorporated into the idea of penance.

In the Roman Catholic tradition this view of atonement is balanced by the duty of Roman Catholics to perform Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ  which in the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor of Pope Pius XI were defined as "some sort of compensation to be rendered for the injury" with respect to the sufferings of Jesus.  Pope John Paul II referred to these Acts of Reparation as the "unceasing effort to stand beside the endless crosses on which the Son of God continues to be crucified." 

Among Eastern Orthodox Christians, another common view is Christus Victor.  This holds that Jesus was sent by God to defeat death and Satan. Because of his perfection, voluntary death, and resurrection, Jesus defeated Satan and death, and arose victorious. Therefore, humanity was no longer bound in sin, but was free to rejoin God through faith in Jesus. 

Islam

 

Islamic texts categorically deny the idea of crucifixion or death attributed to Jesus (Isa) by the New Testament.   The Quran states that people (i.e., the Jews and Romans) sought to kill Jesus, but they did not crucify or kill him, although "this was made to appear to them".

Contrary to Christian teachings, Islam teaches that Jesus ascended to Heaven without being put on the cross, but that God transformed another person to appear exactly like him and to be then crucified instead of him. According to Irenaeus, the 2nd-century Alexandrian Gnostic Basilides gave a similar account.  Isa ascended bodily to Heaven, there to remain until his Second Coming in the End Days.

In art, symbolism and devotions

Since the crucifixion of Jesus, the cross has become a key element of Christian symbolism, and the crucifixion scene has been a key element of Christian art, giving rise to specific artistic themes such as Ecce Homo, The Raising of the Cross, Descent from the Cross and Entombment of Christ.

The Crucifixion, seen from the Cross by Tissot presented a novel approach at the end of the 19th century, in which the crucifixion scene was portrayed from the perspective of Jesus.  

The symbolism of the cross which is today one of the most widely recognized Christian symbols was used from the earliest Christian times and Justin Martyr who died in 165 describes it in a way that already implies its use as a symbol, although the crucifix appeared later.   Masters such as Caravaggio, Rubens and Titian have all depicted the Crucifixion scene in their works.

Devotions based on the process of crucifixion, and the sufferings of Jesus are followed by various Christians. The Stations of the Cross follows a number of stages based on the stages involved in the crucifixion of Jesus, while the Rosary of the Holy Wounds is used to meditate on the wounds of Jesus as part of the crucifixion .

The presence of the Virgin Mary under the cross has in itself been the subject of Marian art, and well known Catholic symbolism such as the Miraculous Medal and Pope John Paul II's Coat of Arms bearing a Marian Cross. And a number of Marian devotions also involve the presence of the Virgin Mary in Calvary, e.g., Pope John Paul II stated that "Mary was united to Jesus on the Cross".   Well known works of Christian art by masters such as Raphael (e.g., the Mond Crucifixion), and Caravaggio (e.g., his Entombment) depict the Virgin Mary as part of the crucifixion scene.

Gallery of art

File:Gotland-Dalhem Kyrka Glasmalerei 04.jpg|Betrayal of Christ, stained glass, Gotland, Sweden, 1240
File:Mateo Cerezo d. J. 001.jpg|Mateo Cerezo, Ecce Homo, 1650
File:14th-century fresco of Jesus Christ bearing the cross, Visoki Dečani, Kosovo.jpg|Carrying the Cross fresco, Decani monastery, Serbia, 14th century
File:MCB icon3.jpg|Orthodox Crucifixion icon, Athens, Greece
File:Miguel Angel Crucifixion La Redonda Logrono Spain.jpg| Crucifixion of Christ, Michelangelo, 1540
File:Paolo Veronese 010.jpg|Calvary by Paolo Veronese, 16th century
File:Raffael 004.jpg|Descent from the Cross, Raphael, 1507
File:Pietro lorenzetti, compianto (dettaglio) basilica inferiore di assisi (1310-1329).jpg|Pietro Lorenzetti fresco, Assisi Basilica, 1310–1329
File:History of the Kings (f.38) the Crucifixion of Christ.jpg|From a 14th-15th century Welsh Manuscript
File:Christ Santarém May 2015-1a.jpg|The Christ of Mont'Iraz, Portugal. Unknown Iberian master, 13th century Jesus (  ; ;  c. 4 BC  – c. AD 30), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ, was a Jewish preacher  who became the central figure of Christianity. Christians believe him to be the Son of God and the awaited Messiah (Christ, the Anointed One) prophesied in the Old Testament.

Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically, and they consider the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to be the best sources for investigating the historical Jesus. Often referred to as "rabbi";  Jesus preached his message orally,  was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. In the current mainstream view, Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher and the founder of a renewal movement within Judaism, although some prominent scholars argue that he was not apocalyptic. Jesus debated with Jewish authorities on how to best follow God's will, performed some healings, taught in parables and gathered followers. After Jesus' death, his followers believed he was resurrected, and the community they formed eventually became the Christian Church. His birth is celebrated annually on December 25 (or various dates in January for some eastern churches) as a holiday known as Christmas, his crucifixion is honored on Good Friday, and his resurrection is celebrated on Easter. The widely used calendar era "AD", from the Latin "Anno Domini" ("in the year of our Lord"), and the alternative "CE", are based on the birth of Jesus.   

Christians believe that Jesus has a "unique significance" in the world.  Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary, performed miracles, founded the Church, died by crucifixion as a sacrifice to achieve atonement, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven, whence he will return. Most Christians believe Jesus enables humans to be reconciled to God. The Nicene Creed asserts that Jesus will judge the dead  either before or after their bodily resurrection,   an event tied to the Second Coming of Jesus in Christian eschatology;  though some believe Jesus's role as savior has more existential or societal concerns than the afterlife,  and a few notable theologians have suggested that Jesus will bring about a universal reconciliation.  The great majority of Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, the second of three persons of a Divine Trinity. A minority of Christian denominations reject Trinitarianism, wholly or partly, as non-scriptural.

In Islam, Jesus (commonly transliterated as ) is considered one of God's important prophets and the Messiah.   Muslims believe Jesus was a bringer of scripture and was born of a virgin but was not the Son of God. The Quran states that Jesus himself never claimed divinity. To most Muslims, Jesus was not crucified but was physically raised into Heaven by God. Judaism rejects the belief that Jesus was the awaited Messiah, arguing that his death on the cross signifies that he was rejected by God and that his resurrection is a Christian legend. 

Etymology 

A typical Jew in Jesus' time had only one name, sometimes supplemented with the father's name or the individual's hometown. Thus, in the New Testament, Jesus is commonly referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth" (e.g., Mark 10:47). Jesus' neighbors in Nazareth refer to him as "the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon" (Mark 6:3), "the carpenter's son" (Matthew 13:55), or "Joseph's son" (Luke 4:22). In John, the disciple Philip refers to him as "Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth" (John 1:45).

The name Jesus is derived from the Latin Iesus, a transliteration of the Greek  (').  The Greek form is a rendering of the Hebrew  (Yeshua), a variant of the earlier name  (Yehoshua), in English "Joshua".   The name Yeshua appears to have been in use in Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus.  The first century works of historian Flavius Josephus, who wrote in Koine Greek, the same language as that of the New Testament,  refer to at least twenty different people with the name Jesus (i.e. Ἰησοῦς). The etymology of Jesus' name in the context of the New Testament is generally given as "Yahweh is salvation".

Since early Christianity, Christians have commonly referred to Jesus as "Jesus Christ". The word Christ is derived from the Greek  (Christos),  which is a translation of the Hebrew  (Meshiakh), meaning the "anointed" and usually transliterated into English as "Messiah".  Christians designate Jesus as Christ because they believe he is the awaited Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. In postbiblical usage, Christ became viewed as a name—one part of "Jesus Christ"—but originally it was a title.  The term "Christian" (meaning "one who owes allegiance to the person Christ" or simply "follower of Christ") has been in use since the first century. 

Canonical gospel accounts

The four canonical gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John) are the only substantial sources for the life and message of Jesus.  Other parts of the New Testament, such as the Pauline epistles, which were probably written decades before the gospels, also include references to key episodes in his life, such as the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. Acts of the Apostles (10:37–38 and 19:4) refers to the early ministry of Jesus and its anticipation by John the Baptist.  Acts 1:1–11 says more about the Ascension of Jesus (also mentioned in 1 Timothy 3:16) than the canonical gospels do.

Some early Christian and Gnostic groups had separate descriptions of the life and teachings of Jesus that are not included in the New Testament. These include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and the Apocryphon of James, among many other apocryphal writings. Most scholars consider these much later and less reliable accounts than the canonical gospels.

Canonical gospels 

The canonical gospels are four accounts, each written by a different author. According to the Marcan priority, the first to be written was the Gospel of Mark (written AD 60–75), followed by the Gospel of Matthew (AD 65–85), the Gospel of Luke (AD 65–95), and the Gospel of John (AD 75–100).  They often differ in content and in the ordering of events. 

Traditionally, the writing of the gospels has been attributed to four evangelists with close ties to Jesus:  Mark was written by John Mark, an associate of Peter; Matthew was written by one of Jesus' disciples; Luke was written by a companion of Paul, someone mentioned in a few epistles; and John was written by another of Jesus' disciples, in fact part of an inner group of disciples, along with Peter and John's brother James.

Three of them, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are known as the Synoptic Gospels, from the Greek σύν (syn "together") and ὄψις (opsis "view").  They are similar in content, narrative arrangement, language and paragraph structure. Scholars generally agree that it is impossible to find any direct literary relationship between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. While the flow of some events (such as Jesus' baptism, transfiguration, crucifixion and interactions with the apostles) are shared among the Synoptic Gospels, incidents such as the transfiguration do not appear in John, which also differs on other matters, such as the Cleansing of the Temple. 

Most scholars agree, following what is known as the "Marcan hypothesis", that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source when writing their gospels. Matthew and Luke also share some content not found in Mark. To explain this, many scholars believe that in addition to Mark, another source (commonly called the "Q source") was used by the two authors.

According to a broad scholarly consensus, the Synoptic Gospels, and not John, are the primary sources of historical information about Jesus. However, not everything contained in the New Testament gospels is considered to be historically reliable. Elements whose historical authenticity is disputed include the Nativity, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Jesus' miracles, and the Sanhedrin trial, among others.   
Historians, according to Gerd Theissen, are right to be skeptical of miracles such as walking on water, but exorcisms and healings are well-documented in many cultures and should be considered possible. 
Views on the gospels range from their being inerrant descriptions of the life of Jesus to their providing little historical information about his life beyond the basics.

The Synoptics emphasize different aspects of Jesus. In Mark, Jesus is the Son of God whose mighty works demonstrate the presence of God's Kingdom. He is a tireless wonder worker, the servant of both God and man.  This short gospel records few of Jesus' words or teachings. The Gospel of Matthew emphasizes that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's will as revealed in the Old Testament, and he is the Lord of the Church.May, Herbert G. and Bruce M. Metzger. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. 1977. "Matthew" p. 1171–1212. He is the kingly Messiah, referred to repeatedly as "king" and "Son of David." A noteworthy feature of this gospel are the five discourses, collections of teachings on particular themes, including the Sermon on the Mount. Luke presents Jesus as the divine-human savior who shows compassion to the needy.May, Herbert G. and Bruce M. Metzger. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. 1977. "Luke" p. 1240-1285. He is the friend of sinners and outcasts, come to seek and save the lost. This gospel includes Jesus' most beloved parables, such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.

The Synoptics and John agree on the main outline of Jesus' life. John the Baptist precedes Jesus, their ministries overlap, and John witnesses to Jesus' identity. Jesus teaches and performs miracles, at least partly in Galilee. He then visits Jerusalem, where the leaders have him crucified, and he is buried. After his tomb is found empty on Sunday, the risen Jesus presents himself to his followers.

The prologue to the Gospel of John identifies Jesus as an incarnation of the divine Word (Logos).May, Herbert G. and Bruce M. Metzger. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. 1977. "John" p. 1286-1318.
As the Word, Jesus was eternally present with God, active in all creation, and the source of humanity's moral and spiritual nature. With this prologue, the evangelist establishes that Jesus is not only greater than any past human prophet but greater than any prophet could be. He not only speaks God's Word; he is God's Word. In the Gospel of John, Jesus reveals his divine role publicly. Here he is the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the True Vine and more.

In general, the authors of the New Testament showed little interest in an absolute chronology of Jesus or in synchronizing the episodes of his life with the secular history of the age. As stated in John 21:25, the gospels do not claim to provide an exhaustive list of the events in the life of Jesus.  The accounts were primarily written as theological documents in the context of early Christianity, with timelines as a secondary consideration. One manifestation of the gospels as theological documents rather than historical chronicles is that they devote about one third of their text to just seven days, namely the last week of the life of Jesus in Jerusalem, referred to as the Passion. Although the gospels do not provide enough details to satisfy the demands of modern historians regarding exact dates, it is possible to draw from them a general picture of the life story of Jesus.

Genealogy and nativity 

Matthew and Luke each offer a genealogy of Jesus. Matthew traces Jesus' ancestry to Abraham through David. Luke traces Jesus' ancestry through Adam to God. The lists are identical between Abraham and David, but differ radically from that point. Traditional Christian scholars (starting with the historian Eusebius) have put forward various theories that seek to explain why the lineages are so different,  such as that Matthew's account follows the lineage of Joseph, while Luke's follows the lineage of Mary. Modern biblical scholars such as Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan see both genealogies as inventions, conforming to Jewish literary convention. 

Matthew and Luke each describe Jesus' nativity (or birth), especially that Jesus was born of a virgin in Bethlehem in fulfillment of prophecy. Luke's account emphasizes events before the birth of Jesus and centers on Mary, while Matthew's mostly covers those after the birth and centers on Joseph.  Both accounts state that Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary, his betrothed, in Bethlehem, and both support the doctrine of the virgin birth, according to which Jesus was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb when she was still a virgin.  The virgin birth has been a consistent tenet of orthodox Christian belief, although a number of liberal theologians have questioned it in the last 150 years. Matthew repeatedly cites the Old Testament to support the belief that Jesus is the Jews' promised Messiah.

In Matthew, Joseph is troubled because Mary, his betrothed, is pregnant (Matthew 1:19–20), but in the first of Joseph's three dreams an angel assures him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because her child was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
In Matthew 2:1–12, wise men or Magi from the East bring gifts to the young Jesus as the King of the Jews. Herod hears of Jesus' birth and, wanting him killed, orders the murders of male infants in Bethlehem. But an angel warns Joseph in his second dream, and the family flees to Egypt—later to return and settle in Nazareth. 

In Luke 1:31–38 Mary learns from the angel Gabriel that she will conceive and bear a child called Jesus through the action of the Holy Spirit. When Mary is due to give birth, she and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Joseph's ancestral home in Bethlehem to register in the census ordered by Caesar Augustus. While there Mary gives birth to Jesus, and as they have found no room in the inn, she places the newborn in a manger (Luke 2:1–7). An angel announces the birth to some shepherds, who go to Bethlehem to see Jesus, and subsequently spread the news abroad (Luke 2:8–20). After the presentation of Jesus at the Temple, Joseph, Mary and Jesus return to Nazareth.

Early life, family, and profession 

Jesus' childhood home is identified in the gospels of Luke and Matthew as the town of Nazareth in Galilee where he lived with his family. Although Joseph appears in descriptions of Jesus' childhood, no mention is made of him thereafter.  His other family members—his mother, Mary, his brothers James, Joses (or Joseph), Judas and Simon and his unnamed sisters—are mentioned in the gospels and other sources.  

According to Stephen L. Harris, Gospel of Mark says that Jesus comes into conflict with his neighbors and family.
Jesus' mother and brothers come to get him (3:31–35) because people are saying that he is crazy (3:21).
Jesus responds that his followers are his true family.
In John, Mary follows Jesus to his crucifixion, and he expresses concern over her well-being (19:25–27).

Jesus is called a τέκτων (tekton) in Mark 6:3, traditionally understood as carpenter but could cover makers of objects in various materials, including builders.  The gospels indicate that Jesus could read, paraphrase, and debate scripture, but this does not necessarily mean that he received formal scribal training.  When Jesus is presented in the temple per Jewish Law, a man named Simeon says to Mary and Joseph that Jesus "shall stand as a sign of contradiction, while a sword will pierce your own soul. Then the secret thoughts of many will come to light."(Luke 2:28-35) When Jesus goes missing, they find him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions, and the people are amazed at his understanding and answers; Mary scolds Jesus for going missing, to which Jesus replies that he must "be in his father's house."(Luke 2:41-52)

Baptism and temptation 

The Synoptic accounts of Jesus' baptism are all preceded by information about John the Baptist. They show John preaching penance and repentance for the remission of sins and encouraging the giving of alms to the poor (Luke 3:11) as he baptizes people in the area of the River Jordan around Perea and foretells (Luke 3:16) the arrival of someone "more powerful" than he. 
Later, Jesus identifies John as "the Elijah who was to come" (Matthew 11:14, Mark 9:13-14), the prophet who was expected to arrive before the "great and terrible day of the Lord" (Malachi 4:5). Likewise, Luke says that John had the spirit and power of Elijah (Luke 1:17).

In Mark, John baptizes Jesus, and as he comes out of the water he see the Holy Spirit descending to him like a dove and he hears a voice from heaven declaring him to be God's son (Mark 1:9–11). This is one of two events described in the gospels where a voice from Heaven calls Jesus "Son", the other being the Transfiguration. The spirit then drives him into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan (Mark 1:12–13). Jesus then begins his ministry after John's arrest (Mark 1:14). Jesus' baptism in Matthew is similar. Here, before Jesus' baptism, John protests, saying, "I need to be baptized by you" (Matthew 3:14). Jesus instructs him to carry on with the baptism "to fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). Matthew also details the three temptations that Satan offers Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:3–11). In Luke, the Holy Spirit descends as a dove after everyone has been baptized and Jesus is praying (Luke 3:21-22). John implicitly recognizes Jesus from prison after sending his followers to ask about him (Luke 7:18–23). Jesus' baptism and temptation serve as preparation for his public ministry. 

The Gospel of John leaves out Jesus' baptism and temptation. Here, John the Baptist testifies that he saw the Spirit descend on Jesus (John 1:32). John publicly proclaims Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God, and some of John's followers become disciples of Jesus. In this Gospel, John denies that he is Elijah (John 1:21). Before John is imprisoned, Jesus leads his followers to baptize disciples as well (John 3:22-24), and they baptize more people than John (John 4:1).

 Public ministry 

The Synoptics depict two distinct geographical settings in Jesus' ministry. The first takes place north of Judea in Galilee, where Jesus conducts a successful ministry; and the second shows Jesus rejected and killed when he travels to Jerusalem.  Jesus preached his message orally, Notably, Jesus forbids those who recognize his identity as the Messiah to speak of it, including people he heals and demons he exorcises (see Messianic Secret).

John depicts Jesus' ministry as largely taking place in and around Jerusalem rather than in Galilee. In this Gospel, Jesus' divine identity is publicly proclaimed and immediately recognized.

Scholars divide the ministry of Jesus into several stages. The Galilean ministry begins when Jesus returns to Galilee from the Judaean Desert after rebuffing the temptation of Satan. Jesus preaches around Galilee, and in Matthew 4:18–20, his first disciples, who will eventually form the core of the early Church, encounter him and begin to travel with him. This period includes the Sermon on the Mount, one of Jesus' major discourses,  as well as the calming of the storm, the feeding of the 5,000, walking on water and a number of other miracles and parables. It ends with the Confession of Peter and the Transfiguration.  

As Jesus travels towards Jerusalem, in the Perean ministry, he returns to the area where he was baptized, about a third of the way down from the Sea of Galilee along the Jordan (John 10:40–42). The final ministry in Jerusalem begins with Jesus' triumphal entry into the city on Palm Sunday. In the Synoptic Gospels, during that week Jesus drives the money changers from the Temple and Judas bargains to betray him. This period culminates in the Last Supper and the Farewell Discourse.

Disciples and followers 

Near the beginning of his ministry, Jesus appoints twelve apostles. In Matthew and Mark, despite Jesus only briefly requesting that they join him, Jesus' first four apostles, who were fishermen, are described as immediately consenting, and abandoning their nets and boats to do so (Matthew 4:18–22, Mark 1:16–20). In John, Jesus' first two apostles were disciples of John the Baptist. The Baptist sees Jesus and calls him the Lamb of God; the two hear this and follow Jesus. In addition to the Twelve Apostles, the opening of the passage of the Sermon on the Plain identifies a much larger group of people as disciples (Luke 6:17). Also, in Luke 10:1–16 Jesus sends seventy or seventy-two of his followers in pairs to prepare towns for his prospective visit. They are instructed to accept hospitality, heal the sick and spread the word that the Kingdom of God is coming. 

In Mark, the disciples are notably obtuse. They fail to understand Jesus' miracles (Mark 4:35–41, 6:52), his parables (Mark 4:13), or what "rising from the dead" would mean (Mark 9:9–10). When Jesus is later arrested, they desert him (see below).

 Teaching, preaching, and miracles 

In the Synoptics, Jesus teaches extensively, often in parables, about the Kingdom of God (or, in Matthew, the Kingdom of Heaven). The Kingdom is described as both imminent (Mark 1:15) and already present in the ministry of Jesus (Luke 17:21). Jesus promises inclusion in the Kingdom for those who accept his message (Mark 10:13–27). Jesus talks of the "Son of Man," an apocalyptic figure who would come to gather the chosen.

Jesus calls people to repent their sins and to devote themselves completely to God.  Jesus tells his followers to adhere to Jewish law, although he is perceived by some to have broken the law himself, for example regarding the Sabbath. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus replies: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind ... And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37–39). Other ethical teachings of Jesus include loving one's enemies, refraining from hatred and lust, and turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:21–44).   In the Gospel of John, when an adulteress is about to be stoned to death in accordance with Moses' Law, the Pharisees ask Jesus what he will say in this situation, to which Jesus replied "Let anyone among you who has no sin be the first to throw a stone at her", causing the accusers to go away, and Jesus says to the woman that he does not condemn her for no one has, and tells her to not sin again (John 8:1-11).

John's Gospel presents the teachings of Jesus not merely as his own preaching, but as divine revelation. John the Baptist, for example, states in John 3:34: "He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure." In John 7:16 Jesus says, "My teaching is not mine but his who sent me." He asserts the same thing in John 14:10: "Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works."  

In the gospels, the approximately thirty parables form about one third of Jesus' recorded teachings.   The parables appear within longer sermons and at other places in the narrative.  They often contain symbolism, and usually relate the physical world to the spiritual.   Common themes in these tales include the kindness and generosity of God and the perils of transgression.  Some of his parables, such as the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32), are relatively simple, while others, such as the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26–29), are sophisticated, profound and abstruse.  When asked by his disciples about why he speaks in parables to the people, Jesus replies that the chosen disciples have been given to "know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven", unlike the rest of their people, "For the one who has will be given more and he will have in abundance. But the one who does not have will be deprived even more.", going on to say that the majority of their generation have grown "dull hearts" and thus are unable to understand (Matthew 13:10-17).

In the gospel accounts, Jesus devotes a large portion of his ministry performing miracles, especially healings. The miracles can be classified into two main categories: healing miracles and nature miracles. The healing miracles include cures for physical ailments, exorcisms, and resurrections of the dead. The nature miracles show Jesus' power over nature, and include turning water into wine, walking on water, and calming a storm, among others. Jesus states that his miracles are from a divine source. When Jesus' opponents suddenly accuse him of performing exorcisms by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, Jesus counters that he performs them by the "Spirit of God" (Matthew 12:28) or "finger of God", arguing that all logic suggests that Satan would not let his demons assist the Children of God because it would divide Satan's house and bring his kingdom to desolation; furthermore, he asks his opponents that if he exorcises by Beel'zebub, "by whom do your sons cast them out?"(Luke 11:20).   In Matthew 12:31-32, he goes on to say that while all manner of sin, "even insults against God" or "insults against the son of man", shall be forgiven, whoever insults goodness (or "The Holy Spirit") shall never be forgiven; he/she carries the guilt of his/her sin forever.  

In John, Jesus' miracles are described as "signs", performed to prove his mission and divinity.  However, in the Synoptics, when asked by some teachers of the Law and some Pharisees to give miraculous signs to prove his authority, Jesus refuses, saying that no sign shall come to corrupt and evil people except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Also, in the Synoptic Gospels, the crowds regularly respond to Jesus' miracles with awe and press on him to heal their sick. In John's Gospel, Jesus is presented as unpressured by the crowds, who often respond to his miracles with trust and faith. One characteristic shared among all miracles of Jesus in the gospel accounts is that he performed them freely and never requested or accepted any form of payment.  The gospel episodes that include descriptions of the miracles of Jesus also often include teachings, and the miracles themselves involve an element of teaching. Many of the miracles teach the importance of faith. In the cleansing of ten lepers and the raising of Jairus' daughter, for instance, the beneficiaries are told that their healing was due to their faith. 

Proclamation as Christ and Transfiguration 

At about the middle of each of the three Synoptic Gospels, two related episodes mark a turning point in the narrative: the Confession of Peter and the Transfiguration of Jesus.  These events mark the beginnings of the gradual disclosure of the identity of Jesus to his disciples and his prediction of his own suffering and death. These two events are omitted in the Gospel of John.

In his Confession, Peter tells Jesus, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."   Jesus affirms that Peter's confession is divinely revealed truth. 

In the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–9, Mark 9:2–8, and Luke 9:28–36),  Jesus takes Peter and two other apostles up an unnamed mountain, where "he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white." A bright cloud appears around them, and a voice from the cloud says, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him" (Matthew 17:1–9). In 2 Peter 1:16-18, Peter himself affirms that he witnessed Jesus' Transfiguration, stating that the apostolic tradition is based on eyewitness testimony. 

Passion Week 

The description of the last week of the life of Jesus (often called Passion Week) occupies about one third of the narrative in the canonical gospels, starting with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem and ending with his Crucifixion.

Activities in Jerusalem 

In the Synoptics, the last week in Jerusalem is the conclusion of the journey through Perea and Judea that Jesus began in Galilee.
Jesus rides a young donkey into Jerusalem, reflecting an oracle from the Book of Zechariah in which the Jews' humble king enters Jerusalem this way (Zechariah 9:9). People along the way lay cloaks and small branches of trees (known as palm fronds) in front of him and sing part of Psalm 118:25–26.

Jesus next expels the money changers from the Temple, accusing them of turning it into a den of thieves through their commercial activities. Jesus then prophesies about the coming destruction, including false prophets, wars, earthquakes, celestial disorders, persecution of the faithful, the appearance of an "abomination of desolation," and unendurable tribulations (Mark 13:1–23). The mysterious "Son of Man," he says, will dispatch angels to gather the faithful from all parts of the earth (Mark 13:24–27). According to Stephen L. Harris, Jesus warns that these wonders will occur in the lifetimes of the hearers (Mark 13:28–32). In John, the Cleansing of the Temple occurs at the beginning of Jesus' ministry instead of the end John 2:13–16.

Also in the Synoptics, Jesus comes into conflict with the Jewish elders, such as when they question his authority and when he criticizes them and calls them hypocrites. Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve apostles, secretly strikes a bargain with the Jewish elder, agreeing to betray Jesus to them for 30 silver coins. 

The Gospel of John recounts of two other feasts in which Jesus taught in Jerusalem before the Passion Week (John 7:1–10:42). He returns near Jerusalem, in Bethany, when he raises Lazarus from the dead, which increases the tension between him and the authorities. The authorities then conspire to kill him (John 11). Raising Lazarus is Jesus' most potent sign yet. In Bethany, Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus' feet, foreshadowing his entombment. Jesus then makes his Messianic entry into Jerusalem.
The cheering crowds greeting Jesus as he enters Jerusalem add to the animosity between him and the establishment. In John, Jesus has already cleansed the Temple during an earlier Passover visit to Jerusalem. John next recounts Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples.

Last Supper 

The Last Supper is the final meal that Jesus shares with his 12 apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. The Last Supper is mentioned in all four canonical gospels; Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (11:23–26) also refers to it. During the meal, Jesus predicts that one of his apostles will betray him. Despite each Apostle's assertion that he would not betray him, Jesus reiterates that the betrayer would be one of those present. Matthew 26:23–25 and John 13:26–27 specifically identify Judas as the traitor.

In the Synoptics, Jesus takes bread, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you". He then has them all drink from a cup, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:19–20). The Christian sacrament or ordinance of the Eucharist is based on these events.  Although the Gospel of John does not include a description of the bread-and-wine ritual during the Last Supper, most scholars agree that John 6:22–59 (the Bread of Life Discourse) has a eucharistic character and resonates with the institution narratives in the Synoptic Gospels and in the Pauline writings on the Last Supper.

In all four gospels, Jesus predicts that Peter will deny knowledge of him three times before the rooster crows the next morning.   In Luke and John, the prediction is made during the Supper (Luke 22:34, John 22:34). In Matthew and Mark, the prediction is made after the Supper; Jesus also predicts that all his disciples will desert him (Matthew 26:31–34, Mark 14:27–30). The Gospel of John provides the only account of Jesus washing his disciples' feet after the meal. John also includes a long sermon by Jesus, preparing his disciples (now without Judas) for his departure. Chapters 14–17 of the Gospel of John are known as the Farewell Discourse and are a significant source of Christological content.

Agony in the Garden, betrayal, and arrest 

After the Last Supper, Jesus takes a walk to pray, and then Judas and the authorities come and arrest him.
* In Mark, they go to the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prays to be spared his coming ordeal. His disciples fall asleep while they should be watching (Mark 37–41). Then Judas comes with an armed mob, sent by the chief priests, scribes and elders. He kisses Jesus to identify him to the crowd, which then arrests Jesus. In an attempt to stop them, one of Jesus' disciples uses a sword to cut off the ear of a man in the crowd. After Jesus' arrest, his disciples go into hiding, and Peter, when questioned, thrice denies knowing Jesus. After the third denial, he hears the rooster crow and recalls the prediction as Jesus turns to look at him. Peter then weeps bitterly.
* In Matthew, Jesus criticizes the disciple's attack with the sword, enjoining his disciples not to resist his arrest. He says, "All who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52).
* In Luke, Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives to pray, and Jesus miraculously heals the ear that a disciple severed (Luke 22:51).
* In John, Jesus does not pray to be spared his crucifixion, as the gospel portrays him as scarcely touched by such human weakness. The people who arrest him are soldiers and Jewish officers (John 18:3). Instead of being betrayed by a kiss, Jesus proclaims his identity, and when he does, the soldiers and officers fall to the ground (John 18:4–7). The gospel identifies Peter as the disciple who used the sword, and Jesus rebukes him for it (John 18:10–11).

Trials by the Sanhedrin, Herod, and Pilate 

After his arrest, Jesus is taken to the Sanhedrin, a Jewish judicial body. The gospel accounts differ on the details of the trials.  In Matthew 26:57, Mark 14:53 and Luke 22:54, Jesus is taken to the house of the high priest, Caiaphas, where he is mocked and beaten that night. Early the next morning, the chief priests and scribes lead Jesus away into their council. John 18:12–14 states that Jesus is first taken to Annas, Caiaphas' father-in-law, and then to the high priest.

During the trials Jesus speaks very little, mounts no defense, and gives very infrequent and indirect answers to the priests' questions, prompting an officer to slap him. In Matthew 26:62 Jesus' unresponsiveness leads Caiaphas to ask him, "Have you no answer?" In Mark 14:61 the high priest then asks Jesus, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus replies, "I am", and then predicts the coming of the Son of Man. This provokes Caiaphas to tear his own robe in anger and to accuse Jesus of blasphemy. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus' answer is more ambiguous: in Matthew 26:64 he responds, "You have said so", and in Luke 22:70 he says, "You say that I am". 

They take Jesus to Pilate's Court, but Pilate proves extremely reluctant to condemn Jesus; according to Robert W. Funk, it is the Jewish elders who are to blame for Jesus' crucifixion.Funk, Robert W. and the Jesus Seminar. The acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1998. "Mark," p. 51-161 Augustine of Hippo says that Pilate was not free from blame, since he exercised his power to execute Jesus.  The Jewish elders ask the Roman governor Pontius Pilate to judge and condemn Jesus, accusing him of claiming to be the King of the Jews. The use of the word "king" is central to the discussion between Jesus and Pilate. In John 18:36 Jesus states, "My kingdom is not from this world", but he does not unequivocally deny being the King of the Jews.   In Luke 23:7–15 Pilate realizes that Jesus is a Galilean, and thus comes under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas. Pilate sends Jesus to Herod to be tried, but Jesus says almost nothing in response to Herod's questions. Herod and his soldiers mock Jesus, put an expensive robe on him to make him look like a king, and return him to Pilate, who then calls together the Jewish elders and announces that he has "not found this man guilty".

Observing a Passover custom of the time, Pilate allows one prisoner chosen by the crowd to be released. He gives the people a choice between Jesus and a murderer called Barabbas. Persuaded by the elders (Matthew 27:20), the mob chooses to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus. Pilate writes a sign in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek that reads "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" (abbreviated as INRI in depictions) to be affixed to Jesus' cross (John 19:19–20), then scourges Jesus and sends him to be crucified. The soldiers place a Crown of Thorns on Jesus' head and ridicule him as the King of the Jews. They beat and taunt him before taking him to Calvary, also called Golgotha, for crucifixion.

Crucifixion and entombment 

Jesus' crucifixion is described in all four canonical gospels. After the trials, Jesus is led to Calvary carrying his cross; the route traditionally thought to have been taken is known as the Via Dolorosa. The three Synoptic Gospels indicate that Simon of Cyrene assists him, having been compelled by the Romans to do so. In Luke 23:27–28 Jesus tells the women in the multitude of people following him not to weep for him but for themselves and their children. At Calvary, Jesus is offered a concoction usually offered as a painkiller. According to Matthew and Mark, he refuses it.

The soldiers then crucify Jesus and cast lots for his clothes. Above Jesus' head on the cross is Pilate's inscription, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews"; soldiers and passersby mock him about it. Jesus is crucified between two convicted thieves, one of whom rebukes Jesus, while the other defends him. The Roman soldiers break the two thieves' legs (a procedure designed to hasten death in a crucifixion), but they do not break those of Jesus, as he is already dead. In John 19:34, one soldier pierces Jesus' side with a lance, and blood and water flow out. In Matthew 27:51–54, when Jesus dies, the heavy curtain at the Temple is torn and an earthquake breaks open tombs. Terrified by the events, a Roman centurion states that Jesus was the Son of God.

On the same day, Joseph of Arimathea, with Pilate's permission and with Nicodemus' help, removes Jesus' body from the cross, wraps him in a clean cloth, and buries him in his new rock-hewn tomb. In Matthew 27:62–66, on the following day the chief Jewish priests ask Pilate for the tomb to be secured, and with Pilate's permission the priests place seals on the large stone covering the entrance and post a guard.

Resurrection and Ascension 

In all four gospels, Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus' tomb on Sunday morning and is surprised to find it empty. Jesus, she learns, has risen from the dead. Despite Jesus' teaching, the disciples had not understood that Jesus would rise again. After the discovery of the empty tomb, Jesus makes a series of appearances to the disciples.
* In Mark, Salome and a second Mary are with her (Mark 16:1). A young man in a white robe (an angel) tells them that Jesus will meet his disciples in Galilee, as he had told them (referring to Mark 14:28).May, Herbert G. and Bruce M. Metzger. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. 1977. "Mark" p. 1213-1239 The gospel then ends abruptly.
* In Matthew, there's an earthquake when the women discover the tomb, and an angel of the Lord descends from heaven, terrifying the guards. Jesus appears to the eleven remaining disciples in Galilee and commissions them to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
* In Luke, Mary and the other women meet two angels, and the eleven disciples do not believe their story (Luke 25:1–12). Jesus appears that same day to his disciples in Jerusalem (Luke 24:13–43). Although he appears and vanishes mysteriously, he also eats and lets them touch him to prove that he is not a spirit. He repeats his command to bring his teaching to all nations (Luke 24:51).
* In John, Mary is alone at first, but Peter and the beloved disciple come and see the tomb as well. Jesus then appears to Mary at the empty tomb. He later appears to the disciples, breathes on them, and gives them the power to forgive and retain sins. In a second visit, he proves to a doubting disciple ("Doubting Thomas") that he is flesh and blood. The catch of 153 fish is a miracle by the Sea of Galilee, after which Jesus encourages Peter to serve his followers.

Jesus' Ascension into Heaven is described in Luke 24:50-53, Acts 1:1–11 and mentioned in 1 Timothy 3:16. In Acts, forty days after the Resurrection, as the disciples look on, "he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight". 1 Peter 3:22 states that Jesus has "gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God".

The Acts of the Apostles describes several appearances of Jesus in visions after his Ascension. Acts 7:55 describes a vision experienced by Stephen just before his death.  On the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul is converted to Christianity after seeing a blinding light and hearing a voice saying, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:5). In Acts 9:10–18, Jesus instructs Ananias of Damascus to heal Paul. It is the last conversation with Jesus reported in the Bible until the Book of Revelation, in which a man named John receives a revelation from Jesus concerning the last days,  when Jesus is predicted to return victoriously (Revelation 19:11–21).
In the closing lines of the New Testament, Jesus promises that he is coming soon (Revelation 22:12-21).

Historical views 

Prior to the Enlightenment, the gospels were usually regarded as accurate historical accounts, but since then scholars have emerged who question the reliability of the gospels and draw a distinction between the Jesus described in the gospels and the Jesus of history. Since the 18th century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during the quest that applied them. While there is widespread scholarly agreement on the existence of Jesus, and a basic consensus on the general outline of his life,  the portraits of Jesus constructed in the quests have often differed from each other, and from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts.  

Approaches to the historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus have varied from the "maximalist" approaches of the 19th century, in which the gospel accounts were accepted as reliable evidence wherever it is possible, to the "minimalist" approaches of the early 20th century, where hardly anything about Jesus was accepted as historical.  In the 1950s, as the second quest for the historical Jesus gathered pace, the minimalist approaches faded away, and in the 21st century, minimalists such as Price are a very small minority. Although a belief in the inerrancy of the gospels cannot be supported historically, many scholars since the 1980s have held that, beyond the few facts considered to be historically certain, certain other elements of Jesus' life are "historically probable".  Modern scholarly research on the historical Jesus thus focuses on identifying the most probable elements. 

Judea and Galilee in the 1st century 

In AD 6, Judea, Idumea, and Samaria were transformed from a client kingdom of the Roman Empire into an imperial province. A Roman prefect, rather than a client king, ruled the land. The prefect ruled from Caesarea, leaving Jerusalem to be run by the high priest. As an exception, the prefect came to Jerusalem during religious festivals, when religious and patriotic enthusiasm sometimes inspired unrest or uprisings. Gentile lands surrounded the Jewish territories of Judea and Galilee, but Roman law and practice allowed Jews to remain separate legally and culturally. Galilee was evidently prosperous, and poverty was limited enough that it did not threaten the social order. Jewish religion was unusual in that Jews acknowledged only one God, they considered themselves chosen by him, and they wanted Gentiles to accept their God as the only God. Jews based their faith and religious practice on the Torah, five books said to have been given by God to Moses. The three prominent religious parties were Pharisees, Essenes, and Sadducees. Together these parties represented only a small fraction of the population. Most Jews looked forward to a time that God would deliver them from their pagan rulers, possibly through war against the Romans.Sanders, E.P. "[http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jesus-Christ Jesus Christ]." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Retrieved September 16, 2015.

Sources 

Historians face a formidable challenge when they analyze the canonical Gospels.
The Gospels are not biographies in the modern sense, and the authors explain Jesus' theological significance and recount his public ministry while omitting many details of his life.
The reports of supernatural events associated with Jesus' death and resurrection make the challenge even more difficult.
Historians regard the gospels as compromised sources of information because the writers were trying to glorify Jesus.
Even so, the sources for Jesus' life are better than sources historians have for the life of Alexander the Great.
Scholars use a number of criteria, such as the criterion of independent attestation, the criterion of coherence, and the criterion of discontinuity to judge the historicity of events. The historicity of an event also depends on the reliability of the source; indeed, the gospels are not independent nor consistent records of Jesus's life. Mark, which is most likely the earliest written gospel, has been considered for many decades the most historically accurate.  John, the latest written gospel, differs considerably from the Synoptic Gospels, and thus is generally considered less reliable, although more and more scholars now also recognize that it may contain a core of older material as historically valuable as the Synoptic tradition or even more so. 

The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas might be an independent witness to many of the Jesus' parables and aphorisms. For example, Thomas confirms that Jesus blessed the poor and that this saying circulated independently before being combined with similar sayings in the Q document. Other select non-canonical Christian texts may also have historical value.

Non-Christian sources used to establish the historical existence of Jesus include the works of first-century historians Josephus and Tacitus.  Josephus scholar Louis H. Feldman has stated that "few have doubted the genuineness" of Josephus' reference to Jesus in book 20 of the Antiquities of the Jews, and it is disputed only by a small number of scholars.  Tacitus referred to Christ and his execution by Pilate in book 15 of his work Annals. Scholars generally consider Tacitus's reference to the execution of Jesus to be both authentic and of historical value as an independent Roman source. 

Non-Christian sources are valuable in two ways. First, they show that even neutral or hostile parties never evince any doubt that Jesus actually existed. Second, they present a rough picture of Jesus that is compatible with that found in the Christian sources: that Jesus was a teacher, had a reputation as a miracle worker, had a brother James, and died a violent death.

Archeology helps scholars better understand Jesus' social world. Recent archeological work, for example, indicates that Capernaum, a city important in Jesus' ministry, was poor and small, without even a forum or an agora.  This archaeological discovery resonates well with the scholarly view that Jesus advocated reciprocal sharing among the destitute in that area of Galilee.

Chronology 

Most scholars agree that Jesus was a Galilean Jew, born around the beginning of the first century, who died between 30 and 33 AD in Judea. The general scholarly consensus is that Jesus was a contemporary of John the Baptist and was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who held office from 26 to 36 AD.

The gospels offer several clues concerning the year of Jesus' birth. Matthew 2:1 associates the birth of Jesus with the reign of Herod the Great, who died around 4 BC, and Luke 1:5 mentions that Herod was on the throne shortly before the birth of Jesus, although this gospel also associates the birth with the Census of Quirinius which took place ten years later. Luke 3:23 states that Jesus was "about thirty years old" at the start of his ministry, which according to Acts 10:37–38 was preceded by John's ministry, itself recorded in Luke 3:1–2 to have begun in the 15th year of Tiberius' reign (28 or 29 AD).  By collating the gospel accounts with historical data and using various other methods, most scholars arrive at a date of birth between 6 and 4 BC for Jesus, but some propose estimates that lie in a wider range.

The years of Jesus' ministry have been estimated using several different approaches. One of these applies the reference in Luke 3:1–2, Acts 10:37–38 and the dates of Tiberius' reign, which are well known, to give a date of around 28–29 AD for the start of Jesus' ministry. Another approach uses the statement about the temple in John 2:13–20, which asserts that the temple in Jerusalem was in its 46th year of construction at the start of Jesus' ministry, together with Josephus' statement that the temple's reconstruction was started by Herod in the 18th year of his reign, to estimate a date around 27–29 AD. A further method uses the date of the death of John the Baptist and the marriage of Herod Antipas to Herodias, based on the writings of Josephus, and correlates it with Matthew 14:4 and Mark 6:18.   Given that most scholars date the marriage of Herod and Herodias as AD 28–35, this yields a date about 28–29 AD.

A number of approaches have been used to estimate the year of the crucifixion of Jesus. Most scholars agree that he died between 30 and 33 AD. The gospels state that the event occurred during the prefecture of Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea from 26 to 36 AD.  The date for the conversion of Paul (estimated to be 33–36 AD) acts as an upper bound for the date of Crucifixion. The dates for Paul's conversion and ministry can be determined by analyzing Paul's epistles and the Book of Acts.  Astronomers since Isaac Newton have tried to estimate the precise date of the Crucifixion by analyzing lunar motion and calculating historic dates of Passover, a festival based on the lunisolar Hebrew calendar. The most widely accepted dates derived from this method are April 7, 30 AD, and April 3, 33 AD (both Julian). 

Historicity of events 

Historians have reached a limited consensus on the basics of Jesus' life.

Family

Jesus was Jewish and born to Mary and Joseph. He grew up in Nazareth in Galilee.  
Leading scholars such as Bart Ehrman, E. P. Sanders, and Géza Vermes generally consider Joseph to be Jesus' father.  
Jesus also had brothers and sisters. 
The natural assumption is these offspring resulted from Joseph and Mary having sex, contrary to Catholic tradition.
It is unusual that in Mark 6:3, Jesus' neighbors refer to Jesus as Mary's son, because sons were identified by their fathers. 
This reference has led some scholars to suggest that Jesus was illegitimate and that Joseph is a fictional character. 
Mary's identity as a historical figure, however, is certain. 
Joseph may well have died by the time Jesus' career began, but several of the earliest sources report that Mary outlived Jesus.

It is common for extraordinary charismatic leaders, such as Jesus, to come into conflict with their ordinary families.
In Mark, Jesus' family comes to get him, fearing that he is mad (Mark 3:20–34), and this account is likely historical because early Christians wouldn't have invented it.Funk, Robert W. and the Jesus Seminar. The acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1998. "Mark," p. 51-161
John also reports that Jesus' brothers did not believe him (John 7:5).
After Jesus' death, many members of his family joined the Christian movement and enjoyed positions of respect within it.
His brother James served as a leader in the Jerusalem. 
James may have had a change of heart after having a vision of the resurrected Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:7).

Stories of Jesus' birth, along with other key events, have so many mythic elements that some scholars have suggested that Jesus himself was a myth.
Historians say that the doctrine of Jesus' virgin birth arose from theological development rather than from historical events. 
Michael Coogan says that Paul considered Jesus to have been conceived by Joseph. 
Other scholars take it as significant that the virgin birth is attested by two separate gospels, Matthew and Luke,       (see the criterion of multiple attestation).

The two different genealogies in Matthew and Luke each show Jesus as a direct descendant of King David, one of Jesus' main predecessors in salvation history. According to E. P. Sanders, both genealogies are based not on historical information but on the authors' desire to show that Jesus was the universal Jewish savior. Jesus' family may have considered themselves to be descended from the House of David, but it is impossible to say. In any event, once the doctrine of Jesus' virgin birth became established, that tradition superseded the earlier tradition that he was descended from David through Joseph.

Luke reports that Jesus was related to John the Baptist, but scholars general consider this connection to be invented.Funk, Robert W. and the Jesus Seminar. The acts of Jesus: the search for the authentic deeds of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco. 1998. "Birth & Infancy Stories" p. 497-526.

Baptism and John the Baptist

Most modern scholars consider Jesus' baptism to be a definite historical fact, along with his crucifixion. James D.G. Dunn states that they "command almost universal assent" and "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical facts" that they are often the starting points for the study of the historical Jesus. Scholars adduce the criterion of embarrassment, saying that early Christians would not have invented a baptism that might imply that Jesus committed sins and wanted to repent. 

John's ministry was one of many renewal movements that sought to strengthen Judaism against the pressure of Hellenistic influence. His movement was unusual in that it opposed the Jewish leadership rather than the Roman occupiers. He was the first of many 1st-century prophets who raised hopes for divine intervention. Jesus was inspired by John and took over from him many elements of his teaching. Jesus' teaching, however, emphasized grace and forgiveness over judgment.

Ministry in Galilee

Most scholars hold that Jesus lived in Galilee and Judea and did not preach or study elsewhere.
They agree that Jesus debated with Jewish authorities on the subject of God, performed some healings, taught in parables and gathered followers. According to E. P. Sanders, Jesus may well have debated other Jews about how to interpret the Law and the Sabbath, as recorded in the Synoptics. Sanders, however, concludes that it is not plausible that these disagreements would have led Jewish authorities to want Jesus killed, as the Synoptics report.

Jesus' parables about the Kingdom of God used striking and original imagery, such as likening it to a tiny mustard seed or to leaven. In Jesus' teaching, the coming kingdom was everyone's proper focus, not anything in this life. He taught about the Jewish Law, seeking its true meaning, sometimes in opposition to other traditions. He put love at the center of the Law, and following that Law was an apocalyptic necessity. His ethical teachings called for forgiveness, not judging others, loving enemies, and caring for the poor. Typical of Jesus were paradoxical or surprising turns of phrase, such as advising one, when struck on the cheek, to offer the other cheek to be struck as well (Luke 6:29).  Jesus' Jewish critics considered his ministry to be scandalous because he feasted with sinners, fraternized with women, and allowed his followers to pluck grain on the Sabbath.

Jesus was an exorcist, as demonstrated by Graham H. Twelftree. The stories of Jesus exorcising demons occur only in the earliest traditions and were not added by later writers. While Jesus' miracles fit within the social context of antiquity, he defined them differently. First, he attributed them to the faith of those healed. Second, he connected them to end times prophecy. Jesus' healings were long considered literally true and sometimes dismissed as fraudulent, but today an understanding of psychosomatic therapy leads more people to believe that faith healing could be possible. 

Historians say Jesus called disciples as part of his ministry. Jesus chose twelve disciples (the "Twelve"), evidently as an apocalyptic message. All three Synoptics mention the Twelve, although the names on Luke's list vary from those in Mark and Matthew, suggesting that Christians weren't sure who all the disciples were. E. P. Sanders says that 12 may have been a symbolic number, and that the number of actual disciples might have varied. The twelve disciples represented the twelve original tribes of Israel, which would be restored once God's rule was instituted. The disciples were reportedly meant to be the rulers of the tribes in the coming Kingdom (Matthew 19:28, Luke 22:30). According to Bart Ehrman, Jesus' promise that the Twelve would rule is historical because the Twelve included Judas, and no Christians would have invented a line from Jesus promising rulership to the disciple who betrayed him.
In Mark, the disciples play hardly any role other than a negative one. While other sometimes respond to Jesus with complete faith, his disciples are puzzled and doubtful. They serve as a foil to Jesus and to other characters. The failings of the disciples are probably exaggerated in Mark, and the disciples make a better showing in Matthew and Luke.

According to Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, Jesus' Transfiguration is considered mythical. Some critics say that the scene actually represents a vision of Jesus after his death retrospectively incorporated into the narrative of Jesus' life.  According to Theissen and Merz, epiphanies such as the Transfiguration are based on experiences that Christians had after Jesus's death rather than during his life. The divine voice declaring Jesus to be God's son seems to have originally been associated with Jesus' resurrection (see Romans 1:3 and Acts 13:33). Even if the story is based an a genuine vision, it has been sufficiently reworked in light of early Christian beliefs, making it effectively Mark's invention. 

Role

Jesus taught that an apocalyptic figure, the "Son of Man," would soon come on clouds of glory to gather the elect, or chosen ones (Mark 13:24-27, Matthew 24:29-31, Luke 21:25-28). He referred to himself as a "son of man" in the colloquial sense of "a person," but historians don't know whether he also meant himself when he referred to the heavenly "Son of Man." Paul and other early Christians interpreted the "Son of Man" as the risen Jesus.

The title Christ, or Messiah, indicates that Jesus' followers believed him to be the anointed heir of King David, whom some Jews expected to save Israel. The Gospels refer to him not only as a Messiah but in the absolute form as "the Messiah" or, equivalently, "the Christ." In early Judaism, this absolute form of the title is not found, but only phrases such as "his Messiah". The tradition is ambiguous enough to leave room for debate as to whether Jesus defined his eschatological role as that of the Messiah. The Jewish messianic tradition included many different forms, some of them focused on a Messiah figure and others not. Based on the Christian tradition, Gerd Theissen advances the hypothesis that Jesus saw himself in messianic terms but did not claim the title "Messiah." Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus did consider himself to be the Messiah, albeit in the sense that he would be the king of the new political order that God would usher in,  not in the sense that most people today think of the term. 

Crucifixion in Jerusalem

Around AD 30, Jesus and his followers traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem to observe Passover..
While in Jerusalem, Jesus caused a disturbance in the Temple, which was the center of Jewish religious and civil authority.
He evidently had a last meal with his disciples, and then he was arrested and tried by the Jewish authorities..
Jesus was executed on the orders of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect..

Most scholars consider Jesus' crucifixion to be factual because early Christians would not have invented the painful death of their leader. It is more likely that the Sadducean high-priestly leaders of the Temple had Jesus executed for political reasons than for his teaching. They may have regarded him as a threat to stability, especially after he caused a disturbance at the Temple. Other factors, such as Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, may have contributed to this decision. Pilate most likely saw Jesus' reference to the Kingdom of God as a threat to Roman authority and worked with the Temple elites to have Jesus executed.

Post-crucifixion

After Jesus' death, his followers said he rose from the dead, although exact details of their experiences are unclear. Some of those who claimed to have witnessed Jesus' resurrection later died for their belief, which indicates that their beliefs were likely genuine. According to E. P. Sanders, the Gospel reports contradict each other, which, according to him, suggests competition among those claiming to have seen him first rather than deliberate fraud. On the other hand, L. Michael White suggests that inconsistencies in the Gospels reflect differences in the agendas of their unknown authors. The followers of Jesus formed a community to wait for his return and the founding of his kingdom.

Portraits of Jesus 

Modern research on the historical Jesus has not led to a unified picture of the historical figure, partly because of the variety of academic traditions represented by the scholars. Given the scarcity of historical sources, it is generally difficult for any scholar to construct a portrait of Jesus that can be considered historically valid beyond the basic elements of his life. The portraits of Jesus constructed in these quests often differ from each other, and from the image portrayed in the gospels.

Contemporary scholarship, representing the "third quest," places Jesus firmly in the Jewish tradition. Leading scholars in the "third quest" include E. P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, Gerd Theissen, Christoph Burchard, and John Dominic Crossan. Jesus is seen as the founder of, in the words of E. P. Sanders, a '"renewal movement within Judaism." This scholarship suggests a continuity between Jesus' life as a wandering charismatic and the same lifestyle carried forward by followers after his death. The main criterion used to discern historical details in the "third quest" is the criterion of plausibility, relative to Jesus' Jewish context and to his influence on Christianity. The main disagreement in contemporary research is whether Jesus was apocalyptic. Most scholars conclude that he was an apocalyptic preacher, like John the Baptist and the apostle Paul. In contrast, certain prominent North American scholars, such as Burton Mack and John Dominic Crossan, advocate for a non-eschatological Jesus, one who is more of a Cynic sage than an apocalyptic preacher. In addition to portraying Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, a charismatic healer or a cynic philosopher, some scholars portray him as the true Messiah or an egalitarian prophet of social change. However, the attributes described in the portraits sometimes overlap, and scholars who differ on some attributes sometimes agree on others. 

Since the 18th century, scholars have occasionally put forth that Jesus was a political national messiah, but the evidence for this portrait is negligible. Likewise, the proposal that Jesus was a Zealot does not fit with the earliest strata of the Synoptic tradition.

Language, ethnicity, and appearance 

Jesus grew up in Galilee and much of his ministry took place there. The languages spoken in Galilee and Judea during the first century AD include Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, with Aramaic being predominant. There is substantial consensus that Jesus gave most of his teachings in Aramaic.

Modern scholars agree that Jesus was a Jew of first-century Palestine.  Ioudaios in New Testament Greek is a term which in the contemporary context may refer to religion (Second Temple Judaism), ethnicity (of Judea), or both.    In a review of the state of modern scholarship, Amy-Jill Levine writes that the entire question of ethnicity is "fraught with difficulty," and that "beyond recognizing that 'Jesus was Jewish', rarely does the scholarship address what being 'Jewish' means".

The New Testament gives no description of the physical appearance of Jesus before his death—it is generally indifferent to racial appearances and does not refer to the features of the people it mentions.  Jesus probably looked like a typical Jew of his time and according to some scholars was likely to have had a sinewy appearance due to his ascetic and itinerant lifestyle. 

Christ myth theory 

The Christ myth theory is the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth never existed; or if he did, that he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels.  
Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) taught that the first Gospel was a work of literature that produced history rather than described it. 
According to Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906) a social movement produced Jesus when it encountered Jewish messianic expectations. 
Arthur Drews (1865–1935) saw Jesus as the concrete form of a myth that predated Christianity. 
Despite arguments put forward by authors who have questioned the existence of a historical Jesus, there remains a strong consensus in historical-critical biblical scholarship that a historical Jesus did live in that area and in that time period.James D. G. Dunn "Paul's understanding of the death of Jesus" in Sacrifice and Redemption edited by S. W. Sykes (December 3, 2007) Cambridge University Press ISBN 052104460X pages 35-36   Robert E. Van Voorst Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence Eerdmans Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-8028-4368-9 page 16  

Perspectives 

Apart from his own disciples and followers, the Jews of Jesus' day generally rejected him as the Messiah, as do the great majority of Jews today. Christian theologians, ecumenical councils, reformers and others have written extensively about Jesus over the centuries. Christian sects and schisms have often been defined or characterized by their descriptions of Jesus. Meanwhile, Manichaeans, Gnostics, Muslims, Baha'is, and others have found prominent places for Jesus in their religions.    Jesus has also had detractors, both past and present.

Christian 

Jesus is the central figure of Christianity. Although Christian views of Jesus vary, it is possible to summarize the key beliefs shared among major denominations, as stated in their catechetical or confessional texts.    Christian views of Jesus are derived from various sources, including the canonical gospels and New Testament letters such as the Pauline epistles and the Johannine writings. These documents outline the key beliefs held by Christians about Jesus, including his divinity, humanity, and earthly life, and that he is the Christ and the Son of God.  Despite their many shared beliefs, not all Christian denominations agree on all doctrines, and both major and minor differences on teachings and beliefs have persisted throughout Christianity for centuries.

The New Testament states that the resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith (1 Corinthians 15:12–20).  Christians believe that through his sacrificial death and resurrection, humans can be reconciled with God and are thereby offered salvation and the promise of eternal life. Recalling the words of John the Baptist on the day after Jesus' baptism, these doctrines sometimes refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God, who was crucified to fulfill his role as the servant of God.   Jesus is thus seen as the new and last Adam, whose obedience contrasts with Adam's disobedience.  Christians view Jesus as a role model, whose God-focused life believers are encouraged to imitate.

Most Christians believe that Jesus was both human and the Son of God. While there has been theological debate over his nature, Some early Christians viewed Jesus as subordinate to the Father, and others considered him an aspect of the Father rather than a separate person. The Church resolved the issues in ancient councils, which established the Holy Trinity, with Jesus both fully human and fully God. Trinitarian Christians generally believe that Jesus is the Logos, God's incarnation and God the Son, both fully divine and fully human. However, the doctrine of the Trinity is not universally accepted among Christians.   With the Protestant Reformation, Christians such as Michael Servetus and the Socinians started questioning the ancient creeds that had established Jesus' two natures. Nontrinitarian Christian groups include The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,  Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Christians revere not only Jesus himself, but also his name. Devotions to the Holy Name of Jesus go back to the earliest days of Christianity.  These devotions and feasts exist in both Eastern and Western Christianity.

In the 20th century, Protestant groups became sharply divided in terms of how much they support historical and critical inquiry into the person of Jesus. Protestant denominations allow some such investigation but differ in how far the investigation may go. The Roman Catholic Church drew definite limits, and Catholic scholars have engaged in considerable critical study within those limits.
Some liberal theologians have come to doubt miracles such as the virgin birth. 

Jewish 

Judaism rejects the idea of Jesus being God, or a mediator to God, or part of a Trinity.  It holds that Jesus is not the Messiah, arguing that he neither fulfilled the Messianic prophecies in the Tanakh nor embodied the personal qualifications of the Messiah.  According to Jewish tradition, there were no prophets after Malachi,  who delivered his prophesies in the fifth century BC.  Although currently disputed, David Flusser  offers the Pharisee, Joshua b. Perahyah, as a possible rabbi of Jesus, but likens his social outlook to that of the Essenes and his prophetic stance to that of John the Baptist. 

Judaic criticism of Jesus is long-standing. The Talmud, written and compiled from the third to the fifth century AD,  includes stories that since medieval times have been considered to be defamatory accounts of Jesus.  In one such story, Yeshu ha-nozri ("Jesus the Christian"), a lewd apostate, is executed by the Jewish high court for spreading idolatry and practicing magic.  The majority of contemporary historians consider that this material provides no information on the historical Jesus. The Mishneh Torah, a late 12th-century work of Jewish law written by Moses Maimonides, states that Jesus is a "stumbling block" who makes "the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than the Lord". 

Islamic 

A major figure in Islam, Jesus (commonly transliterated as ʾĪsā) is considered to be a messenger of God (Allah) and the Messiah (al-Masih) who was sent to guide the Children of Israel (Bani Isra'il) with a new scripture, the Gospel (referred to in Islam as Injil).  Muslims regard the gospels of the New Testament as inauthentic, and believe that Jesus' original message was lost or altered and that Muhammad came later to restore it.  Belief in Jesus (and all other messengers of God) is a requirement for being a Muslim.  The Quran mentions Jesus by name 25 times—more often than Muhammad  —and emphasizes that Jesus was a mortal human who, like all other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God's message. While the Qur'an acknowledges the Virgin birth of Jesus, He is considered to be neither the incarnation nor the son of God. Islamic texts emphasize a strict notion of monotheism (tawhid) and forbid the association of partners with God, which would be idolatry.   Like all prophets in Islam, Jesus is considered a Muslim. 

The Quran describes the annunciation to Mary (Maryam) by an angel that she is to give birth to Jesus while remaining a virgin. It calls the virgin birth a miracle that occurred by the will of God. The Quran (21:91 and 66:12) states that God breathed his spirit into Mary while she was chaste. Jesus is called the "Spirit of God" because he was born through the action of the Spirit, but that belief does not imply his pre-existence. 

To aid in his ministry to the Jewish people, Jesus was given the ability to perform miracles, by permission of God rather than by his own power. Through his ministry, Jesus is seen as a precursor to Muhammad.  According to the Quran, Jesus was not crucified but was merely made to appear that way to unbelievers by Allah,  who physically raised Jesus into the heavens.  To Muslims, it is the ascension rather than the crucifixion that constitutes a major event in the life of Jesus. Most Muslims believe that Jesus will return to earth at the end of time and defeat the Antichrist (ad-Dajjal) by killing him in Lud. 

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has several distinct teachings about Jesus. Ahmadis believe that he was a mortal man who survived his crucifixion and died a natural death at the age of 120 in Kashmir, India.

Bahá'í 

Bahá'í teachings consider Jesus to be a manifestation of God, a Bahá'í concept for prophets —intermediaries between God and humanity, serving as messengers and reflecting God's qualities and attributes.  The Bahá'í concept emphasizes the simultaneous qualities of humanity and divinity; thus, it is similar to the Christian concept of incarnation. Bahá'í thought accepts Jesus as the Son of God. In Bahá'í thought, Jesus was a perfect incarnation of God's attributes, but Bahá'í teachings reject the idea that "ineffable essence" of the Divinity was contained within a single human body because of their beliefs regarding "omnipresence and transcendence of the essence of God".

Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, wrote that since each manifestation of God has the same divine attributes, they can be seen as the spiritual "return" of all previous manifestations of God, and the appearance of each new manifestation of God inaugurates a religion that supersedes the former ones, a concept known as progressive revelation. Bahá'ís believe that God's plan unfolds gradually through this process as mankind matures, and that some of the manifestations arrive in specific fulfillment of the missions of previous ones. Thus, Bahá'ís believe that Bahá'u'lláh is the promised return of Christ.  Bahá'í teachings confirm many, but not all, aspects of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels. Bahá'ís believe in the virgin birth and in the Crucifixion, but see the Resurrection and the miracles of Jesus as symbolic. 

Other 

In Christian Gnosticism (now a largely extinct religious movement),  Jesus was sent from the divine realm and provided the secret knowledge (gnosis) necessary for salvation. Most Gnostics believed that Jesus was a human who became possessed by the spirit of "the Christ" at his baptism. This spirit left Jesus' body during the crucifixion, but was rejoined to him when he was raised from the dead. Some Gnostics, however, were docetics, believed that Jesus did not have a physical body, but only appeared to possess one.  Manichaeism, a Gnostic sect, accepted Jesus as a prophet, in addition to revering Gautama Buddha and Zoroaster.  

Some Hindus consider Jesus to be an avatar or a sadhu and point out similarities between Krishna and Jesus' teachings.   Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian guru, taught that Jesus was the reincarnation of Elisha and a student of John the Baptist, the reincarnation of Elijah.  Some Buddhists, including Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, regard Jesus as a bodhisattva who dedicated his life to the welfare of people.  Disciples of the Cao Đài religion worship Jesus Christ as a major religious teacher. He is revealed during communication with Divine Beings as the spirit of their Supreme Being (God the Father) together with other major religious teachers and founders like the Gautama Buddha, Laozi, and Confucius. The New Age movement entertains a wide variety of views on Jesus. Theosophists, from whom many New Age teachings originated,  refer to Jesus as the Master Jesus and believe that Christ, after various incarnations, occupied the body of Jesus.  Scientologists recognize Jesus (along with other religious figures such as Zoroaster, Muhammad, and Buddha) as part of their "religious heritage".   Atheists reject Jesus' divinity, but not all hold a negative estimation of him; Richard Dawkins, for instance, refers to Jesus as "a great moral teacher",  while stating in his book The God Delusion that Jesus is praiseworthy because he did not derive his ethics from biblical scripture. 

Jesus had detractors, both past and present, as well. Early critics of Jesus and Christianity included Celsus in the second century and Porphyry in the third.   In the 19th century, Nietzsche was highly critical of Jesus, whose teachings he considered to be "anti-nature" in their treatment of topics such as sexuality.  Other notable modern critics of Jesus include Sita Ram Goel, Christopher Hitchens, Bertrand Russell, and Dayananda Saraswati. In the 20th century, Russell wrote in Why I Am Not a Christian that Jesus was "not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise".  Russell called Jesus’ vindictive nature a defect in his moral character in that Jesus in the Gospels believed in the everlasting punishment of hell, which Russell felt that no one who is "really profoundly humane can believe in".  Russell also notes a repeated "vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching" which he felt "detract[s] from superlative excellence".

Depictions 

Some of the earliest depictions of Jesus at the Dura-Europos church are firmly dated to before 256.  Thereafter, despite the lack of biblical references or historical records, a wide range of depictions of Jesus appeared during the last two millennia, often influenced by cultural settings, political circumstances and theological contexts. As in other Early Christian art, the earliest depictions date to the late second or early third century, and surviving images are found especially in the Catacombs of Rome. 

The depiction of Christ in pictorial form was highly controversial in the early church.Philip Schaff commenting on Irenaeus, wrote, 'This censure of images as a Gnostic peculiarity, and as a heathenish corruption, should be noted'. Footnote 300 on Contr. Her. .I.XXV.6. ANFSynod of Elvira, 'Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration', AD 306, Canon 36 From the 5th century onward, flat painted icons became popular in the Eastern Church. The Byzantine Iconoclasm acted as a barrier to developments in the East, but by the ninth century, art was permitted again. The Transfiguration was a major theme in Eastern Christian art, and every Eastern Orthodox monk who had trained in icon painting had to prove his craft by painting an icon depicting it.  Icons receive the external marks of veneration, such as kisses and prostration, and they are thought to be powerful channels of divine grace.

Before the Protestant Reformation, the crucifix was common in Western Christianity. It is a model of the cross with Jesus crucified on it. The crucifix became the central ornament of the altar in the 13th century, a use that has been nearly universal in Roman Catholic churches until recent times.

Jesus appears as an infant in a manger (feed trough) in Christmas creches, which depict the Nativity scene. He is typically joined by Mary, Joseph, animals, shepherds, angels, and the Magi. Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226) is credited with popularizing the creche, although he probably did not initiate it. The creche reached its height of popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries in southern Europe. 

The Renaissance brought forth a number of artists who focused on depictions of Jesus; Fra Angelico and others followed Giotto in the systematic development of uncluttered images.

The Protestant Reformation brought renewed resistance to imagery, but total prohibition was atypical, and Protestant objections to images have tended to reduce since the 16th century. Although large images are generally avoided, few Protestants now object to book illustrations depicting Jesus.   The use of depictions of Jesus is advocated by the leaders of denominations such as Anglicans and Catholics   and is a key element of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. 

Associated relics 

The total destruction that ensued with the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 made the survival of items from first century Judea very rare and almost no direct records survive about the history of Judaism from the last part of the first century through the second century.Helmut Koester Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. 1: History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age. Berlin: de Gruyter Press, 1995 p 382 Margaret M. Mitchell writes that although Eusebius reports (Ecclesiastical History III 5.3) that the early Christians left Jerusalem for Pella just before Jerusalem was subjected to the final lock down, we must accept that no first hand Christian items from the early Jerusalem Church have reached us.  However, throughout the history of Christianity a number of relics attributed to Jesus have been claimed, although doubt has been cast on them. The 16th-century Catholic theologian Erasmus wrote sarcastically about the proliferation of relics and the number of buildings that could have been constructed from the wood claimed to be from the cross used in the Crucifixion. Similarly, while experts debate whether Jesus was crucified with three nails or with four, at least thirty holy nails continue to be venerated as relics across Europe. 

Some relics, such as purported remnants of the Crown of Thorns, receive only a modest number of pilgrims, while the Shroud of Turin (which is associated with an approved Catholic devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus), have received millions,  including popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.   There is no scholarly consensus in favor for the authenticity of any relic attributed to Jesus.
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