Christianty: Jesus Flashcards
Who was Jesus?🔴
What we’re some of his different names?
The light of the world Christ Messiah Lord Lamb of God The guide The saviour The ruler is creation
Why was Jesus given all these different names in the Bible?🔴
These names tell us how people felt about him.
For example: The Lamb if God shows us that people would sacrifice lamb but God sacrificed his sun.
How does the Bible describe Jesus?🔴
The Bible describes Jesus as a person who held the sick, a person who forgives, someone who can perform and someone who tells good stories/parables.
What was life like in the time that Jesus lived?🔴
Name some of them
Jews were oppressed Aramaic Treated like a King Lived in the 1st century Jesus was a real person in a real place Most ordinary Jews lived in poverty Romans ruling Jews were waiting for the chosen one Some Jews violently oppressed the Romans He was a rabbi He could read write and write He was a carpenter/ builder
Why do people not believe in the Bible?🔴
Science tells us everything we need to know about the world. The Bible cannot be trusted.
I can sort out my own problems by myself. I don’t need the Bible to help me. It’s all common sense anyway.
How can I trust a book that was written thousands of years ago?
I’ve read the Bible and its word do nothing for me. I don’t feel anything when I read it.
The Bible was written by humans and not God. They made it up so they could comfort themselves with lies.
I remember sitting in church listening to someone reading that book telling me what to do. Waste of time!
The creation story doesn’t make any sense. The stories in the bible just cannot be true.
I don’t care if the bible says I will be judged one day. I don’t believe God exists so it means nothing to me.
Reading around Jesus……
Jesus (also called Christ which means king or Messiah) was born in Israel over 2000 years ago. Modern civilization marks his birth by dividing time B.C. (before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini - or the year of our Lord). For his first thirty years, Jesus lived a traditional Jewish life, working as a carpenter. During this time, all of Israel was under Caesar’s Roman dictatorship, including Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, and Nazareth, where he was raised.
In his thirties, Jesus began his public teaching and display of recorded miracles, yet still never travelled more than 200 miles from his birthplace. The Roman governors and rulers of Israel’s provinces and the leaders of the Jewish people (the religious counsels) took note of him. Jesus’ key messages included:
• God loves you and is with you
• Love one another
• The value of each person
What was life like at the time of Jesus?
- Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. He would have grown up with stories of conquest and oppression. These stories recounted the many waves of foreign invasion that sought to control the Jewish people. The Roman occupation of Israel (63 BCE.) was the last in a long line of invasions.
- Hebrew identity was maintained as a result of the deep religious belief of its people. The Jewish people had come to expect a Messiah who, they believed, would enable them to fulfil this divine mission which was to create a Jewish kingdom on earth.
- By the time of Jesus’ birth, the Romans had established a two-tiered system of government consisting of Roman overseers and Jewish leaders who exercised control in the name of Rome. Ordinary Jewish people lived in poverty and had few rights.
- Jesus was a Nazarene. He lived most of his life in the town of Nazareth within the province of Galilee. Nazareth was Jewish settlement. It was also relatively poor and overpopulated; there was a scarcity of natural resources such as water and fertile soil. In such a situation, there tended to be a fair amount of sickness and disease. Nazareth could not be called poor however. Jesus came from a family of craftsmen or carpenters who would have earned a decent living.
- There were many Jewish groups at the time of Jesus who did not like him. The Zealots wanted to rise up in arms against the Romans. Jesus was against this. The Sadducees were another group who wanted to keep their wealth and power by compromising with the Romans. They hated Jesus as he was changing the way that they were ignoring the plight of the Jewish people and focussing instead on their own riches and status ,
- , the Pharisees sought to live a life of spiritual purity by a meticulous following of the Torah (Jewish law). They did not believe in compromise with the Romans (as did the Sadducees) nor in violent activity (as did the Zealots).The believed in Jewish Law. Jesus appeared to challenge some of these laws and so they do not support him .
Explain the baptism of Jesus……
The baptism of Jesus is recorded in the Gospel Bible books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All give slightly different accounts. In this story we see that Jesus approaches John and asks to be baptized.
Jesus is baptized as a symbol of giving his will up to His Father and the beginning of His earthly ministry. When Jesus comes up out of the water, John sees the Spirit of God descend like a dove upon Jesus and they hear God’s voice from heaven say “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.
Explain the death of Jesus……
Jesus’ most controversial act was that he repeatedly claimed to be the messiah, which was a direct violation of the Jewish law. Therefore the religious leaders asked the Roman government to execute him. In each of several official trials, the Romans found that he was not guilty of breaking any Roman law. Even the Jewish leaders recognized that other than Jesus’ claim to be the messiah, still, the religious leaders, persuaded Pilate, a Roman governor of the Southern province of Israel, to authorize an execution.
Jesus was brutally tortured and then hung by his hands, which were nailed to a horizontal wooden beam (cross). However, according to more than 500 witnesses, Jesus returned from the dead three days later, and over the next 40 days journeyed in both the southern and northern provinces of Israel. To many, this was conclusive proof that Jesus’ claims to be the son of God were real. Then Jesus returned to Jerusalem, the city where he was recently executed, and according to witnesses, he left the earth alive by rising up into the sky.
Within 100 years, people throughout the Roman Empire (Asia Minor, Europe) became followers of Jesus. In 325 AD, the following of Jesus, Christianity, became the official religion of the Roman Emperor Constantine.
