History of Jesus and Christianity
History of Jesus and Christianity
What we know is that Jesus’s birth was actually before zero AD and most likely 4-6 BC. We know that Herod the Great died around 2-4 BC, and Jesus was already born before that date.
Personally, I believe Jesus was born on the 1st of Abib (also known as Nisan) in 4 BC. The reason I believe this is based on two key verses in the Bible:
Exo 40:2 “Set up the tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the first month.
It took around 9 months to build the Tabernacle after they got the plans on how to build the Tabernacle from God during the Feast of Pentecost (Feast of Weeks kind of the conception of the Tabernacle)
Joh 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and did tabernacle among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of an only begotten of a father, full of grace and truth.
The Holy Spirit of God came over Mary to conceive Jesus (Luk 1:35). I believe this also happened during the period of Pentecost, matching that of the Tabernacle.
Another reason is that all feasts and things that happened to Israel were shadows of things to come.
- 10 Abib: Shabbat HaGadol – Inspecting the Passover Lamb (Exo 12:3)
- 14 Abib: Passover – Jesus sacrificed as the Passover Lamb (1Co 5:7)
- 18 Abib: Jesus presents Himself as First-Fruits to the Father (Joh 20:17)
- Pentecost: Was the time Old Covenant with Israel was made and the day God gave the Holy Spirit to the Disciples, which is key in the New Covenant
- Spring Feasts: First Coming of Christ
- Fall Feasts: Second Coming of Christ
So as we can see that the shadow of things to come are in a logical sequence which indicates Jesus’s birth should take place before the 10th of Abib. The First of Abib is the new beginning (real new year), the day the Tabernacle got initiated, and God dwelt among men again.
Jesus Died on 14 Abib (also known as Nisan) 30 AD which was on Wednesday 5 of April 30 AD (Calendar 30 AD).
The year 30 is most likely the year of Jesus dead, due to several reasons:
- Jesus started His Ministry around 26 AD and His ministry was for just over 3+ years.
- We have several writings from the Talmud (Jerusalem Talmud and Babylonian Talmud) that 40 years before the destruction of the temple at 70 AD, all kind of strange things happened around the Temple, pointing to 30 AD as the year.
Jerusalem Talmud:“Forty years before the destruction of the Temple, the western light went out, the crimson thread remained crimson, and the lot for the Lord always came up in the left hand. They would close the gates of the Temple by night and get up in the morning and find them wide open” (Jacob Neusner, The Yerushalmi, p.156-157). [the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE]
Babylonian Talmud states:
“Our rabbis taught: During the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple the lot [‘For the Lord’] did not come up in the right hand; nor did the crimson-colored strap become white; nor did the western most light shine; and the doors of the Hekel [Temple] would open by themselves” (Soncino version, Yoma 39b).
The day we know from several Bible verses combined, pointing to Wednesday as the only logical possibility:
- 14 Abib : In the afternoon the Passover Lamb gets sacrificed, Jesus as our Passover Lamb died also in the afternoon on that day. Jesus got laid to rest in the grave of Joseph of Arimathea (Luke 15:42-43) just before Sunset, the start of the High Sabbath (Joh 19:31 – “…next day was to be a special Sabbath”).
- 16 Abib : The woman bought the spices after the Sabbath (high Sabbath, Mar 16:1) and prepared the spices before the normal Sabbath (Luk 23:56). Only day this can be is on the Friday where Thursday was a High Sabbath (Joh 19:31) and Saturday the normal Sabbath.
- 17 Abib : Jesus rose from the Death on Saturday after Sunset (end of the Sabbath) and the start of the Day of First Fruit, fulfilling the prophesy he gave of the sign of Jonah, 3 days and 3 nights in the heart of the earth (Mat 12:39-40). Jesus defines a day as having 12 hours of day light in John 11:9, so we are talking about 3 x 24 hours = 72 hours in the heart of the earth (from Wednesday Sunset to Saturday Sunset)
- 18 Abib : Jesus presents Himself as First-Fruits to the Father , we know this from the encounter Jesus had, at the grave, with Mary Magdalene. Jesus told her not to hold Him for He had not yet returned to the Father (Joh 20:17). Later on he told Tomas to touch His wounds (Joh 20:27), this indicates that at the moment with Mary He had not yet presented Himself to the Vader as the First-Fruits, while with Tomas he already did.
Luke wrote his Gospel around 50-53 AD.
The Gospel had to be around already because Paul seems to quote it in 1 Tim. 5:17–18 . The quote: “The laborer is worthy of his wages” refers to Luke 10:7
Luke wrote Acts around 57-60 AD
The sect of the Nazarenes
We read about Paul the following:
Act 24:5 For we have found this man a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.
See also
- 374 AD: Epiphanius Statement against the sect of Nazarenes
- 404 AD: Letter from Jerome to Augustine, regarding the sect of Nazarenes
We can see that the Nazarenes (believers that followed Jesus the way the apostles did) were active up to 404 AD, while we see the term Christians mentioned for the first time in Antioch (Act 11:26).
We also see from quotes made by Ignatius Bishop of Antioch, start 2nd century, that the church in Antioch started to go against the instructions given to us in the Bible by promoting Sunday as the new day as a special day and stop keeping the Sabbath after the Jewish manner.
It is in Antioch were we start to see the split between Jewish Believers and Gentile Christians!
The Romans besieged Jerusalem since 67 AD after an uprising of the Jews. 70 AD they succeeded in breaching the defences and they destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem.
I believe that this is the key event that caused the separation of the Gentile Christianity from that of the Jewish sect known as the sect of the Nazarenes or also know as the sect of the Way.
John wrote his Gospel around 85 AD
He wrote 1-3 John around 85 – 90 AD.
Revelation was written by John around 90 AD.
John was the last Apostle to die of all the Apostles, he died around 100 AD
Ignatius, the third bishop of Antioch, who died in AD 108, wrote:
“If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him… Let us therefore no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness; for “he that does not work, let him not eat.“…let every friend of Christ keep the Lord’s day as a festival, the resurrection-day, the queen and chief of all the days [of the week]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_Ignatius_to_the_Magnesians
He also wrote:
For if we are still practicing Judaism, we admit that we have not received God’s favor…it is wrong to talk about Jesus Christ and live like Jews. For Christianity did not believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity.
I find it very interesting that Antioch is the place where Christians were first called ‘Christians’ ,we find this in Act 11:26.
and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. (Act 11:26)
Antioch is at the heart of the separation of the Gentile Christians from the Jewish Christians also know as the Nazarenes, which remained active until the 5th century.
Constantine was the first Roman emperor (between AD 306 and 337) to convert to Christianity
According to chroniclers such as Eusebius of Caesarea and Lactantius, the battle marked the beginning of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity. Eusebius of Caesarea recounts that Constantine and his soldiers had a vision sent by the Christian God. This was interpreted as a promise of victory if the sign of the Chi-Rho, the first two letters of Christ’s name in Greek, was painted on the soldiers’ shields. The Arch of Constantine, erected in celebration of the victory, certainly attributes Constantine’s success to divine intervention; however, the monument does not display any overtly Christian symbolism.
On March 7, 321, Roman Emperor Constantine issued a civil decree making Sunday a day of rest from labor, stating:
All judges and city people and the craftsmen shall rest upon the venerable day of the sun. Country people, however, may freely attend to the cultivation of the fields, because it frequently happens that no other days are better adapted for planting the grain in the furrows or the vines in trenches. So that the advantage given by heavenly providence may not for the occasion of a short time perish.
The Council of Laodicea of around 365 AD decreed 59 laws, canon #29 is regarding the Sabbath
#29: Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.
But these sectarians…did not call themselves Christians–but “Nazarenes,” … However they are simply complete Jews. They use not only the New Testament but the Old Testament as well, as the Jews do… They have no different ideas, but confess everything exactly as the Law proclaims it and in the Jewish fashion– except for their belief in Messiah, if you please! For they acknowledge both the resurrection of the dead and the divine creation of all things, and declare that God is one, and that his son is Yeshua the Messiah. They are trained to a nicety in Hebrew. For among them the entire Law, the Prophets, and the… Writings… are read in Hebrew, as they surely are by the Jews. They are different from the Jews, and different from Christians, only in the following. They disagree with Jews because they have come to faith in Messiah; but since they are still fettered by the Law–circumcision, the Sabbath, and the rest– they are not in accord with Christians…. they are nothing but Jews…. They have the Good News according to Matthew in its entirety in Hebrew. For it is clear that they still preserve this, in the Hebrew alphabet, as it was originally written.” (Epiphanius; Panarion 29)
“The matter in debate, therefore, or I should rather say your opinion regarding it, is summed up in this: that since the preaching of the gospel of Christ, the believing Jews do well in observing the precepts of the law, i.e. in offering sacrifices as Paul did, in circumcising their children, as Paul did in the case of Timothy, and keeping the Jewish Sabbath, as all the Jews have been accustomed to do. If this be true, we fall into the heresy… [of those who] though believing in Christ, were anathematized by the fathers for this one error, that they mixed up the ceremonies of the law with the gospel of Christ, and professed their faith in that which was new, without letting go what was old. …In our own day there exists a sect among the Jews throughout all the synagogues of the East, which is called the sect of the Minæans, and is even now condemned by the Pharisees. The adherents to this sect are known commonly as Nazarenes; they believe in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary; and they say that He who suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again, is the same as the one in whom we believe. But while they desire to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither the one nor the other. I therefore beseech you, who think that you are called upon to heal my slight wound, which is no more, so to speak, than a prick or scratch from a needle, to devote your skill in the healing art to this grievous wound, which has been opened by a spear driven home with the impetus of a javelin. For there is surely no proportion between the culpability of him who exhibits the various opinions held by the fathers in a commentary on Scripture, and the guilt of him who reintroduces within the Church a most pestilential heresy. If, however, there is for us no alternative but to receive the Jews into the Church, along with the usages prescribed by their law; if, in short, it shall be declared lawful for them to continue in the Churches of Christ what they have been accustomed to practice in the synagogues of Satan, I will tell you my opinion of the matter: they will not become Christians, but they will make us Jews.
(Jerome; Letter 75)
(1) “Minæans” apparently Latinized from Hebrew (MINIM) (singular is MIN) a word which in modern Hebrew means “apostates” but was originally an acronym for a Hebrew phrase meaning “Believers in Yeshua the Nazarene.“
John Wycliffe (c. 1320s – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford. He became an influential dissident within the Roman Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism.
Wycliffe attacked the privileged status of the clergy, which had bolstered their powerful role in England. He then attacked the luxury and pomp of local parishes and their ceremonies.
Wycliffe also advocated translation of the Bible into the vernacular. In 1382 he completed a translation directly from the Vulgate into Middle English – a version now known as Wycliffe’s Bible.
It is probable that he personally translated the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and it is possible he translated the entire New Testament, while his associates translated the Old Testament. Wycliffe’s Bible appears to have been completed by 1384, additional updated versions being done by Wycliffe’s assistant John Purvey and others in 1388 and 1395.
Martin Luther was the first person to translate the Bible into the German language. He could print copies because Johannes Gutenberg had invented a way to print about 50-100 copies at a relatively low price. The Protestant reformation triggered the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
In general, Martin Luther’s posting of The Ninety-Five theses at Wittenberg is seen as the start of the Protestant Reformation. This happened in the year 1517. John Knox brought Luther’s ideas to Scotland and founded the Presbyterian Church. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 recognised Protestants and is generally seen as the end of this process.
The King James Version (KJV), also known as the King James Bible (KJB) or simply the Authorized Version (AV), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, was commissioned in 1603 and completed as well as published in 1611 under the sponsorship of James VI and I.
The books of the King James Version include the 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of the Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. Noted for its “majesty of style”, the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.