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Anchoring Jesus to Time and Place

 


Explorers of Biblical Heritages agree to follow “The BHC Primary Guideline.”

 

My Belief System will be large enough to include all facts,

open enough to be questioned and examined,

and flexible enough to change if errors or new facts are discovered.

 

All readers of this email do not have the same Belief Models about Jesus – what he was, what he did, what he wanted his followers to do, etc. The histories of the over 40,000 Christian denominations and paradenominations that now exist make it very clear Christians disagree about a lot of things, including Jesus.[i] The stories of Jesus recorded in the New Testament agree that Jesus was born and he died. Linking dates and places to those life events anchors his life to cultures of places at those times.

 

BCE

 

● 6 – Born in Judea or Galilee.

 

-- Circumcised and named when 8 days old.

 

● 4 – Death of King Herod

 

CE

 

● 6 – Judea and Galilee under the rule of the Roman Empire.

 

● 6 – Jesus is 12 years old; stays at Temple and has discussions with sages.

 

● 24 – Jesus baptized by John the Baptist, becomes an “Anointed One” (Christ), and

            begins his movement.

 

● 27 – Jesus executed by order from Roman official carried out by Roman soldiers.

 

With this information, we can place the life of Jesus and his teachings in a cultural context that is much greater than just the words in books of the New Testament. Regardless of what people believe about Jesus now, in the stories we have about him, he circulates among crowds of people and communicates with them. Some of those people believed what he taught, and others did not believe him.

 

Today we have a tremendous amount of science-based information from research and archaeology about the Jewish culture and the places in the stories in the New Testament. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi Library contributed greatly to what we now know about the time of Jesus and early Christian groups. When we anchor beliefs about Jesus to the dates and places they first appear, are able remove beliefs that didn’t exist when Jesus lived and taught from our discussions.

 

However, for the purposes of this discussion, our goal is to provide information about what the teachings of Jesus meant to people who heard his words at those times in those places. My next email will be about identifying the language of Jesus.

 

Shalom,

Jim Myers

 

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[i] World Christian Trends AD 30 – AD 2200 By David B. Barrett & Todd M. Johnson, © 2001 by David B. Barrett;  William Carey Library, Pasadena, CA; p. 33.


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