Jesus Virtues

• Mercy

• Forgiveness

• Compassion

• Patience

• Hope

• Love

• Grace

• Kindness

• Everett Ferguson in his work The Backgrounds of Early Christianity sees the setting within which
Jesus and early Christianity grew up as being “a series of concentric circles. The Roman world
provided the outer circle – the governmental, legal and economic context. The Greek world
provided the cultural, educational and philosophical context. The Jewish world was the matrix of
early Christianity, providing the immediate religious context.”

• Thus, as we do this course we will be focusing upon the world within which Jesus grew up, His
Sitz im Lebem, with a view towards understanding the context that impacted upon His life; and
more so, the people whose lives He impacted upon.

The Historical Jesus:

• The “Quest of the Historical Jesus:” during the nineteenth century there was a concerted effort
to “find” Jesus outside of the Bible.

• Extra-biblical sources concerning Jesus:

– Pagan sources:

• Tacitus (55- 117): made a link between the “name and origin of Christians with
Christus who in the reign of Tiberius” was executed according to the sentence of
Pontius Pilate.

• Pliny: in 112 wrote a correspondence to Trajan, the Emperor, seeking advice on how to deal with
Christians. He stated that Christians “sing a song to Christ as to a God.”

• Suetonius: in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars: Vita Claudius talks about the Jews being expelled
from Rome because of disturbances that came about concerning Chrestos.
 • Lucian (c. 125-190) wrote a satire on Christians describing Christ as one “who was crucified in
Palestine” for starting “this new cult.” He also poked fun at them for “worshiping that crucified
sophist.”

Jewish sources:

• Josephus (c. 37-100): spoke about James “the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ.”

• There is also another mention in his writings of Christ but its authenticity is highly debatable.

Christian extra-biblical sources:

• There is a plethora of apocryphal gospels, epistles, apocalypses, etc., which are based on the
historicity of Jesus.

• There are also numerous inscriptions of early Christian symbols such as the dove and the fish;
these are to be found in the catacombs.

The Fullness of Time:

• Gal 4:4 talks about the “fullness of time.” This phrase is used to mean when the time was
absolutely ripe. There was a certain sense of expectancy with regard to the coming of the
Messiah.

The Romans:

• Political Contributions of the Romans

• The development of a “sense of the unity of humanity under a universal law.”

• The pax Romana or Roman peace; was introduced by Caesar Augustus whose reign was from 27
BC to 14 AD.

Roman roads: there were roads spanning the empire. These all had Rome as the end point; hence the
saying “all roads lead to Rome.”

• The Roman army

• Roman conquests led many peoples to lose belief in their gods since they were unable to deliver
them from defeat at the hands of the Romans.

The Greeks:

• Greek became the universal tongue in the ancient world. This kind of Greek was Koine Greek; it
was the language of the common people.

• Greeks also made the world ready, in a religious sense, to accept Christianity: its materialistic
philosophy destroyed the “old polytheistic worship” described in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.