Word: jesus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...person who shares Jesus' belief in himself may feel what I cannot--that one must accept his final instruction to the disciples at the end of Matthew: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go then and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and see, I am with you all the days...
...Then Jesus came forward and silently indicated that I should follow him into the lake. Waist deep in the water, I felt him pour handfuls down the long fresh scar on my back--the relic of unsuccessful surgery a month before. Jesus suddenly told me, "Your sins are forgiven." Appalled by my dire physical outlook, I thought ungratefully, "That's the last thing I need"; so I asked him, "Am I also cured?" He said, "That too." Then, as though I'd forced his hand, he turned and climbed ashore with me well behind...
...have repeated that solace in ensuing years of even worse trouble? In any case, to the surprise of my doctors, I've survived without apparent return of the cancer, and my life is more rewarding and productive than before that washing in Galilee. My lifelong sense that Jesus of Nazareth stood in a unique and redeeming relation to the Creator of this universe at least has intensified, though I have felt no right to claim intimacy with him. As for so many others, he has never seemed less than mysterious, and my experience of his overwhelming but oddly businesslike healing...
There was initial hope that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 would throw light on the roots of Christianity. There was speculation that perhaps John the Baptist and even Jesus himself were members of the sect or closely related to it. The scrolls have already contributed to a fuller understanding of the textual history of Jewish scripture and the realities of 1st century Judaism--especially its variety of apocalyptic hopes and the absence of anything that might be called orthodoxy. However, they have shed no direct light on Jesus. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts, discovered by Egyptian farmers...
...only substantial biographical sources are the New Testament Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, brief documents written in colloquial Greek late in the generation of those who knew Jesus first- or secondhand. By the end of the 2nd century, these four had become the basic canonical texts of the mainline Christianity of Rome and the Middle East...