Jesus

The story of Christianity begins with the life of Jesus; without him there would not be any Christian religion. Today there are over two billion Christians living on the earth, all of whom have very specific beliefs about Jesus. Unbelievably, the question that dominated the second through the fourth centuries was this: "Who was Jesus?" The Roman Catholic Church, through many Church Councils, formulated the doctrines that answered the question. The beliefs of many Christians today are based on the conclusions of those Church Councils.

For the past two hundred years many scholars have been engaged in research focused on the historical Jesus. In other words, they are working to understand the life of the man named Jesus who lived in Galilee and Judea in the first century. They want to understand his teaching and the movement that he founded within the Jewish cultural environment of that period. How would his beliefs and teachings compare to the beliefs and teachings about him that were formulated centuries after his execution by the Romans?