The Jesus of History

It is worth taking some trouble to realize how profoundly Jesus has changed the thinking of mankind about God. "Since Jesus lived," Dr. Fairbairn wrote, "God has been another an...

"For clear-thinking ethical natures," writes a modern scholar, "for natures such as those of Jesus and St. Paul, it is a downright necessity to separate heaven and hell as disti...

When, on his last journey, Jesus came in sight of Jerusalem, Luke tells us that he wept (Luke 19:41). There is an obvious explanation of this in the extreme tension under which...

It was as a teacher that Jesus of Nazareth first began to gather disciples round him. But to understand the work of the Teacher, we must have some general impression of the worl...

By what they said, I perceived that he had been a great warrior, and had fought with and slain him that had the power of death (Hebrews 2:14), but not without great danger to hi...

It is a commonplace with those who take literature seriously that what is to reach the heart must come from the heart; and the maxim may be applied conversely--that what has rea...

If one thing more than another marks modern thought, it is a new insistence on fact. In every sphere of study there is a growing emphasis on verification. Where a generation ago...

Jesus Christ came to men as a great new experience. He took them far outside all they had known of God and of man. He led them, historically, into what was, in truth, a new worl...

It has been remarked as an odd thing by some readers that the Gospels tell us so little of the childhood of Jesus. It must be remembered, however, that they are not really biogr...

Imperial Rome governed the whole of the Mediterranean world,--a larger proportion and a greater variety of the human race than has ever been under one government. So far as numb...

thinkers as some of them were. They pictured the universe as one vast unity. Far beyond all things is God. Of God man can form no conception. Think, they would say, of all the e...

2. The doctrine of the Atonement has often been stated as an attempt to reconcile Jesus and an un-Christian conception of God. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Hims...

1. "Into this world came the Church!" With what aspects of the religion and life of the early Roman Empire, as outlined in the chapter, would the Church find itself in conflict?

1. "There is little suggestion in the Gospels that Art meant anything to him." Would you admit this? Or has the writer too narrow a conception of the nature of Art?

JESUS IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT The impulse to determine who he is, and his relation to God The records of Christian experience The Study of the personality of Jesus Christ (a) The G...

5. Do you think the paragraph on p. 179 beginning: "In the third place . . ." does justice to the apocalyptic passages in the Gospels (Mark 13ff, Matt. 24, etc.), or to the inte...

5. What becomes of ordinary simple people untrained in historical research, who are not experts and merely want help in living and dying? Could not the whole presentation of Chr...

2. "Jesus says there is all the difference in the world between his own Gospel and the teaching of the Baptist." What is John's teaching on sin and righteousness (in the Synopti...

4. "If the friend in the house to your knowledge has the loaves, you will knock until you get them; and has not God the gifts for you that you need? Is he short of the power to...

THE CHOICE OF THE CROSS What the cross meant to him HIS REFERENCES TO THE GOSPEL AND ITS RESULTS The kingdom of heaven The call for followers His announcement of purpose in his...

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE THE ROMAN EMPIRE One rule of many races General peace and free intercourse the world over Fusion of cultures, traditions, religions "The...

THE TEACHER AND THE DISCIPLES THE BACKGROUND Hardness of the human life in those times Uncertainness as to God's plans for the nation--specially as to His purposes for the Messi...

4. "Jesus showed and taught men the beauty of humility, tenderness and charity, but not of manliness and courage." Is there any truth in this charge as regards (a) the portrait...

JESUS' TEACHING UPON SIN The problem of sin John the Baptist on sin Jesus' psychology of sin more serious The outstanding types of sin which, according to Jesus, involve for a m...

THE TEACHING OF JESUS UPON GOD JESUS' OWN GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS The Nearness of God God's knowledge and power God's throne Jesus emphasizes mostly God's interest in the individual--...

JESUS AND MAN Jesus' sympathy with men and their troubles His feelings for the suffering and distressed His feeling for women and children His emphasis on tenderness and forgive...

THE MAN AND HIS MIND Words and looks, as recorded in the gospels Playfulness of speech Movements of feeling Habits of thought: e.g. Quickness. Feeling for fact. Sympathy. Imagin...

THE STUDY OF THE GOSPELS Modern study of religion Historicity of Jesus The gospels as historical sources Canons for the study of a historical figure A caution against antiquaria...