Jesus of Nazareth
- James Collazo
- Jun 20, 2020
- 10 min read
Updated: 18 hours ago
Introduction
Jesus of Nazareth (Hebrew: Yeshua ha-Notzri / Greek: Iēsous ho Nazōraios) entered history around 5 BC in the Roman client kingdom of Judea. His mother, Mary, a young virgin of Israel, received the angel Gabriel's proclamation of the Messiah's conception—a divine interruption of history. Joseph, his adoptive father, was a tektōn (G5045), a Galilean builder who worked with both wood and stone. Mary was likely in her mid-teens, consistent with common Jewish marriage patterns of the period, and gave birth to Jesus while Judea lived under Roman rule, where foreign soldiers and heavy taxes shaped daily life. Yet the child she carried fulfilled Israel's ancient promises, showing how God's plan broke into ordinary history.
The church, from an early period, commemorated Jesus' birth on December 25. Early Christian writers, such as Hippolytus of Rome and Julius Africanus, grounded this date in Jewish–Christian chronological reasoning rather than pagan festivals, although historians continue to debate whether it preserves an exact historical memory. Hippolytus stated the December 25 date boldly when he wrote:
The first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25, a Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Rubellius were consuls (Hippolytus, Dan. 4.23.3).
The gospels identify four brothers of Jesus—James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude (Matt. 13:55–56; Mark 6:3)—along with unnamed sisters. Before the resurrection, they expressed skepticism regarding Jesus' messianic claims (John 7:3–5). Their encounter with the risen Christ among the apostles (Acts 1:14) transformed their doubt, shattering their disbelief and igniting their faith. James assumed leadership of the Jerusalem church with notable authority (Acts 15:13–21; 21:17–18), composing a letter reflecting the moral instruction and teaching of Jesus himself (James 1:1). Jude similarly affirms his witness in his epistle, identifying himself as "the brother of James" (Jude 1:1). The apostle Paul corroborates James' preeminent role, referring to him as "the Lord's brother" (Gal. 1:19).
In Matthew and Luke, Jesus' genealogy traces both his paternal and maternal lines back to David, Israel's revered king (Matt. 1; Luke 3). As David's promised heir, Jesus embodied the fulfillment of God's covenant, making him the true King of Israel. This claim threatened Herod, Rome's appointed ruler, who sought to preserve his throne by ordering the massacre of the boys in Bethlehem two years old and younger (Matt. 2:16–18). Matthew intentionally juxtaposes two kingdoms. Caesar Augustus proclaimed the "Roman Peace" (Latin: Pax Romana), established through military conquest and imperial power, while Herod ruled through fear and bloodshed. In striking contrast, Jesus inaugurated God's kingdom through humility, peace, and self-sacrifice, entering the world not as a conquering emperor but as a helpless infant who would ultimately transform history.
Jesus the Jew
The ethnonym "Jew" signifies religion, lineage, and land—Judaism, the tribe of Judah, and the province of Judea. Every Jewish individual carries a spiritual and ancestral heritage rooted in the eastern Mediterranean. Jesus descended from Judah (Matt. 1:2–3), the tribe long foretold in Scripture to produce the Messiah (Matt. 2:6; Heb. 7:14; 8:8; Rev. 5:5). From the very outset of his gospel, Matthew affirms this lineage with clarity and authority, proclaiming the fulfillment of God's ancient promises: "Thus, there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah" (Matt. 1:17). Jesus' heritage is remarkable, tracing back to the very origins of Israel and to God's covenant with Abraham. Matthew emphasizes the number fourteen not arbitrarily, but because, in Hebrew, it corresponds to the numerical value of David's name: 4 + 6 + 4 (ד ו ד) = 14—linking the Messiah explicitly to the line of Israel's greatest king.
Luke is the only evangelist among the four—Matthew, Mark, and John—who records an episode from Jesus' childhood. This account describes an incident in which Jesus was twelve and remained at the temple for three days without his parents' knowledge. During this time, he engaged Israel's teachers, posing questions and offering insightful answers (Luke 2:41–51). By the age of twelve or thirteen, Jewish boys were approaching the age at which they became personally responsible for observing the commandments—a development later formalized in the "son of the commandment" tradition (Hebrew: bar mitzvah, H1274 / H4687). Unlike his peers, Jesus did more than recite the texts—he interpreted them with understanding, demonstrating wisdom beyond his years.
Before commencing his public ministry, Jesus endured three temptations in the desert over a period of forty days (Luke 4:1–13), each reflecting the failures of ancient Israel. First, he relied solely on God's provision, in contrast to the Israelites, who grumbled over manna instead of trusting in God's blessing (Exod. 16:3). Second, he rejected the allure of fame, power, and wealth, refusing to instigate a revolt against Rome—a temptation to which Israel had succumbed in longing for the perceived security they had known in Egypt. Third, the devil urged him to cast himself from the temple pinnacle, misappropriating Psalm 91:11. This temptation was not an enticement to suicide but an invitation to test God, as Israel had done in the wilderness by demanding water from Moses in disbelief (Exod. 17:1–3; Deut. 6:16). Jesus' faithful obedience, however, elicited angelic ministry. In Luke's account, Jesus emerges as the faithful Israel, embodying what ancient Israel failed to achieve.
Jesus, King of the Jews
In the same way, Jesus revealed his humanity within the context of Judaism while also manifesting his divinity. When Moses asked for God's name at the outset of Israel's exodus, God replied, "I AM WHO I AM" (Exod. 3:14). The Tetragrammaton (a Greek term meaning "Four Letters"), יהוה, represents God's name in Hebrew. Scholars transliterate it in English as YHWH (H3068). In John's gospel, Jesus uses the Greek phrase Ego Eimi (G1473 / G1510), which directly echoes the Septuagint's Greek rendering of Exodus 3:14. Understanding this background is crucial for interpreting the seven "I Am" statements of Jesus.
Each "I Am" statement reveals God's character, embodied in Christ, and connects Israel's history to Jesus' mission. Jesus declares himself the bread of life, recalling how the Father provided manna—the bread of angels—to sustain the Israelites in the wilderness (Ps. 78:25). He offers light to the world, just as God upheld Israel during the desecration of the temple under the Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Greek-speaking Seleucid king who sought to Hellenize the Jewish people and suppress their worship (1 Macc. 4:36–50 NRSVA). The later Jewish memory of this deliverance includes the tradition of the temple lamps miraculously burning for eight days, preserved in rabbinic literature (b. Shabb. 21b). The festival of Hanukkah (H2597, "Dedication," cf. John 10:22) commemorates the Maccabean revolt that restored the Second Temple and halted idolatrous sacrifices.
In this light, Jesus as the good shepherd contrasts sharply with Judea's religious leaders, who, like the Hellenistic collaborators under Antiochus, exploited their people for wealth and status. "The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it" (John 10:12). Beyond shepherd, Jesus is the gate, securing God's people and offering salvation through his sacrificial life (John 10:7–18). In embodying God's care, provision, and protection, Jesus fulfills Israel's story and opens the way for his followers, inspiring the earliest Christians to call their movement "the Way" (e.g., Acts 9:2), drawn from his declaration, "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6).
Jesus' most decisive "I Am" statement was, "Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I Am!" (John 8:58). Unlike the other seven, this declaration struck the Judean religious leaders as overtly blasphemous. Whereas the other "I Am" statements implied divinity, here Jesus explicitly claimed preexistence and invoked God's name directly—a radical, unprecedented claim. Even today, many Jews avoid spelling the divine name, using forms such as "L–rd" or "G–d." For those anticipating the Messiah, Jesus' use of the divine name was unimaginable. Notably, the Hebrew form of "Jesus," Yeshua (H3442, "God saves"), contains an abbreviated form of Yahweh. The religious leaders responded with violence, picking up stones to execute him for what they perceived as blasphemy (John 8:59). Jesus intended this unambiguous claim to divinity to set in motion the events that would culminate in his crucifixion.
Jesus' earthly ministry centered on inaugurating God's kingdom. This reality affirms his kingship, which is why Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judea, ironically had the inscription JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS placed above his head on the cross (Matt. 27:37; Mark 15:26; Luke 23:38; John 19:19). Yet the kingdom of heaven does not belong to this world; it proceeds from God's sovereign will. Just as the church (Greek: ekklēsia, G1577, "called out") designates a people united in Christ, the kingdom comprises all who acknowledge God's authority. On Pentecost, the apostle Peter proclaimed to his Jewish audience that Jesus had ascended and had been given divine authority (Acts 2:14–36). David foresaw this reality when he wrote, "The LORD says to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet'" (Ps. 110:1; Acts 2:34–35).
Trilemma: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord
Consider this insight from C. S. Lewis regarding the identity of Jesus:
I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, spit at him, and kill him as a demon, or fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was and is God (2015, pp. 55–56).
Commentators often call this statement the "Lewis trilemma," which gives a three-part challenge about who Jesus is: he must be a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. Some modern writers argue for a fourth option—that the gospel traditions gradually underwent legendary development—but Lewis maintained that the portrait presented in the New Testament leaves little room for that conclusion. Many people in his day respected him as a teacher or rabbi, including Judean religious leaders (cf. Matt. 12:38; John 3:2). But the New Testament shows that he is more than a moral teacher. Hillel, a leading first-century rabbi, was honored for his wisdom and is still studied by Jews today. However, Jesus claims divine authority that goes beyond that of any human teacher.
We confront the question Jesus poses to every believer: "Who do you say I am?" (Matt. 16:15). Peter answered with clarity and conviction: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16). This confession is not mere sentiment—it forms the theological and ecclesial foundation upon which Christ establishes his church, a foundation impervious to the gates of Hades. Jesus gives his followers the keys of the kingdom: what they bind on earth binds in heaven, and what they loose on earth looses in heaven. The rock is both Peter's confession and the collective witness of the apostles, who serve as the foundation of the early church (Matt. 16:18–19; Eph. 2:20). Jesus cannot be dismissed as a liar or a lunatic; he is the Lord.
Bibliography
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