The historicity of Jesus
The Palestine, a land placed between the Lebanon and the Red Sea; where the east meets the west.. Umbilicus of the world. Land of Canaan Land or Israel's Country, how is called in the Ancient Testament. A fertile halfmoon's stripe which during 4.000 years has been gone through by army far and wide.
Here has begun the Salvation Histoy 4.000 years ago. And in this Land lives Jesus of Nazareth for about thirty years.
Now the historicity of Jesus is accepted from all the studiouses: believers and unbelievers. We have very historical attestations about Him.
In the Annali (XV, 44), writing about the persecution of the christians by Nerone, Tacito also refers to the crucifixion of Christ, ordered by Ponzio Pilato.
Tacito's testimony is confirmed by Plinio the young (112 after Christ), which in a letter directed to Traian emperor (Ep. X, 96) refers that the christians of Bitinia sing hymns to Christ "quasi Deo"(almost God, n.d.a.), during their religious functions.
The hebrew historian Joseph Flavio, transfered to Rome after the conquest of Jerusalem, in his writing "Judaic Antiquity XX,9,1", calls the apostle James the younger: "brother of Jesus, who is called Christ".
Don't considering another, not sure, Joseph Flavio's testimony, called "testimonium Flavianum", there are other citations of Svetonio. Besides there are some hebrew direct sources: the Mišnah and the Talmud. In these writings, there are ancient hebrew traditions, written since second till fourth century, Jesus is often mentioned. Since they are due to a antichristian polemic, even if to the same Jesus is recognized the capacity ability "to charm the people", He is accused to be a wizard.
But the sources and the fundamental papers to discover the event and image of Jesus, are the texts of the christian canon
: a collecting of documents, in greek language, written since the middle of the first century: They are the Gospels, the epistles of Saint Paul and the Catholic epistles.Thiese documents have been written by disciples of Jesus and by Christians for other Christians. Therefore they are the most ancient and big documents on the figure, activity and message of Jesus, the Christ.
They are the most ancient and ample documentation related to the Person and to the mission of Jesus.
There is no person that doesn't have some notion or information about Jesus. The current culture, or the personal contacts with a Christian community, or the reading of the Gospel and other books of the New Testament, they allow know indeed this unique person some human history".
Without Jesus of Nazareth there would not be the Christianity and the human History would be without well and Christian love. They have given an ethical component to human history.
The two bellows of the Christian world, the western world and the Eastern one, would not have breathed, perhaps, the regenerative air of a message that the disciples of Jesus say inspired by God directly. Jesus's message has touched the life of people's million of persons deeply changing the same course of the History in the brotherly love and in the good.
Jesus has influenced, art, culture, politic, social life, poetry, the deep feelings of every man, especially the man lives the great questions of his life as his pain and his death. Jesus answers this great human questions. He gives peace. He gives love and rest.
Jesus has been fought since his birth to his death, and after the death too.
even his name arouses today different reactions and different feelings. But nobody has ever spoken as Him. Nobody more than Him has been able to sow well, love and hope in the heart of the man.
Today, after two thousand of years, His Word and his message they preserve unchanged native charm
His relationships with the humanity, with the poor men, the rich ones, the weak, the powerful persons, with whom suffers and who is in the joy, they are become "the emblem of the moral perfection."
"Nobody has said what He has said: to be the "Son of God"; nobody has had a history equal to himself. His person and his message have has left a deep furrow in he same great religions of the world.
Particularly his words doesn't have equal. In Jesus the word has reached the maximum one of its intensity and expressive ability: All it takes is thinking about the sermon on the mountain or to the parables of the Kingdom. Perhaps also for this the disciples have greeted him as the Lògos, the Word divine become meat to be communicated to the men.
This Word touches, it marks and it consults the man of every time. On 22 October of 1978, from the same place in which it is the grave of the apostle Peter, that was the "first" of the disciples of Jesus, Pope John Paul II has launched the appeal to the world: "Open your doors to Christ, Don't be afraid!".
TO THE DISCOVERY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH
