Jesus
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Jesus is the commonly used name in English for the person around whom Christianity developed,whose historical name would have been Yeshua ben Yoseaf (rendered in the original in Hebrew characters,thus no spelling in the Latin alphabet can be definitive).He is additionally called Christ,from a Greek term for "Anointed One".
He is generally regarded as a historical figure though this is denied by advocates of the theory of Jesus as myth to at least some degree.
Christianity regards him as what Eastern philosophy would call an avatar,but asserts that he alone has ever been such,an Incarnation of God;he is called the "Only begotten Son" of God.
Islam and Baha'ism accord him a lesser degree of divine guidance and see him as a prophet for his times superseded eventually by their own founders.
Legends about him are considered by some to have been adapted from pre-existing pagan beliefs but this is strenuously denied by defenders of Christian orthodoxy.
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Prophesy and birth
The birth of Jesus is the asserted basis of the most widely used system of dating today,called Anno Domini,the Christian Era,or the Common Era (A.D. or C.E.),years before this being numbered as B.C. or B.C.E. However,the research on which this calendar was introduced is known to have been flawed,and he can not have been born less than four years before his putative date of December 25 (itself said to be a borrowing from another faith) of 1 B.C.
Certain prophecies from the Old Testament are cited in the Christian accounts of the birth of Jesus to support the claim that he was the Messiah of Judaism.Most famously the text of Isaiah 7:14 is invoked,"Behold,a young woman shall conceive,and bear a son,and she shall call his name Immanuel,`God with us'." The Hebrew word meaning "young woman" is mistranslated "virgin" (for which there was a different Hebrew word) and on this is based the thesis that the mother of Jesus was impregnated by God.Isaac Asimov,in his Asimov's Guide to the Bible,posits that Isaiah was in fact speaking of his own wife and son,in the context of his own times,and in any event beyond bald citation of this prophecy in the Book of Matthew,no one is ever said to have called Jesus Immanuel.Various prophecies made for the Jewish Messiah were not fulfilled by Jesus,and Christianity asserts they are reserved for his Second Coming.
While the parents to whom Jesus was born (Joseph and Mary) were married to each other,and Christianity places great importance on children being born and conceived within wedlock,to assert this to have been the case for their deified founder is deeply offensive to Christians.(It is also denied by Jews,as in the Talmud it is asserted that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier named Pandira,and refers to the child as Yashka,an acronym for the Hebrew for "May his name and memory be blotted out".) The Christian view of man as inherently unclean can only be reconciled with a perfect Jesus through his conception having been through divine intervention.
Some accounts show great notice having been paid to his birth in Bethlehem,though these contradict others of his enemies having searched for him in vain.Legends such as the Three Kings of the Orient have grown about the "Nativity".
Youth
He is said to have lived for some time in Nazareth and followed his father's trade of carpentry,but also to have fled Judaea for Egypt as a child to avoid the wrath of King Herod.The Bible stories are virtually silent on his youth but numerous folktales have grown up about miracles not formally attested to by the Christian faith.
He is said to have been a prodigy in knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures.
Active religious ministry
Jesus is said to have begun his religious ministry "when he began to be about thirty years of age",which is often interpreted as meaning when he was thirty or in his thirtieth year,though a simple English reading would only imply some indeterminate time in his late twenties.This continued for the remainder of his life on Earth,asserted to have been until he was thirty-three.
He began in the tradition of the numerous reformers of Judaism recounted in the Old Testament,and the assertions that he was in fact an incarnation of and sole son of the God he is shown as praying to are possibly added after the fact.The stories contradict each other on a variety of points,a matter dealt with by Christianity's great emphasis on "faith" (a believer sufficiently credulous to put illogic out of his mind being ensured exaltation).
The whole of the lands in which he is known to have travelled (though there are certain folk traditions of his going elsewhere) were controlled by the Roman Empire,and eventually,after various episodes of alleged miracles and teachings such as the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord's Prayer,he became the subject of hostile attention from both the Jewish religious authorities and the Roman civil authorities.The theory that the Messiah would rule as priest and king was a threat to both.
Death and after
He was sentenced to die by being nailed to a cross,ever after the symbol of most branches of Christianity.He is said to have risen from the dead on the third day afterward,his death according to Christianity having redeemed those humans willing to believe he was God Incarnate from the consequences of their sins,and his resurrection having proven him to be so.His disciples spread these teachings and wrote texts compiled into the New Testament some centuries afterward.
This story is said by some to have been borrowed from other faiths whose believers the disciples were teaching,and by others to have been contrived by them (the "Passover Plot" theory).The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that he then visited the American landmass and began a new faith that fell into error until restored by their founder Joseph Smith,as recounted in Smith's Book of Mormon.
Belief that Jesus will return and at last fulfill the Messiah prophecies has played a lesser or greater role in various branches of Christianity since.
