SECTION B PART 2

EVIDENCE ABOUT JESUS

The Bible
The Bible has 72 books in total.
Some are short and some are long.
Some books were written at the time of the Roman Empire, others were written
earlier.
Some parts consist of historical material, other parts contain wise sayings and
personal letters.
Divided into two parts: OLD and NEW Testament.
The Old Testament is everything that happened before Jesus was born.
The New Testament is the story about Jesus and his ministry on earth.
Each book in the Bible has a name and is organized into chapters and versus.
Big numbers on the page are chapters and small numbers on the page are versus.
The Old Testament
The Old Testament tells the story before the coming of the Messiah.
There are 45 books in the Old Testament.
Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is when God made the world and created us in
his image.
The Old Testament also has people who spoke o behalf of God. Such people like
these were called prophets.
The most famous prophets were Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel. These men reminded
the Jewish people about the Law of God and warned them against disobeying it.
The Old Testament traces the history of the Jewish people.
The New Testament
The first four books of the New Testament consist of the Evangelists which are the
four Gospel writers.
The four Gospel writers were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The New Testament is the life of Jesus and his ministry on Earth.
It tells the story of Gods new covenant which was for everyone.
The oral stage was when the Apostles of Jesus travelled all over Palestine, telling
everyone the good news of the resurrection. The news were retold from person to
person for many centuries.
As the news of the resurrection spread, it was impossible for the Apostles to preach
in all the areas. They were getting old and some have died. So it became important
for them to start writing everything down.
Historical Documents
Most of what we know about Jesus comes from our reading of the New Testament.
We also get information about Jesus from historical documents written at the end of
the first century and the beginning of the second century.
Two examples are Josephus and Tacitus.
Josephus written 60 years after Jesus death - he was a Jewish scholar wrote a
book about the history of the Jews described Jesus as a wise man and teacher
also wrote a book about the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Tacitus he was a historian he was a Roman and was wary of Christianity wrote
down his beliefs 80 years after the death of Jesus wrote about the death of Jesus
and how he was sentenced by Pontius Pilate.
The Four Gospel Writers
The Gospels are based on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
These men were inspired by God to undertake this work.
Although there are four Gospel writers, there is only one Jesus Christ.

Gospel Writer Wrote for Group His Symbol

Matthew Jewish Christians The angel
Mark Christians living in The lion
Rome
Luke Gentile (non-Jewish) The bull
Christians
John Christians throughout The eagle
the Mediterranean
world
The Synoptic Gospels
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are all quite similar and are known Synoptic
Gospels.
Synoptic means describing events from similar point of view.
Both Matthew and Luke used Marks Gospel as the basis for their own work.
The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are longer than Marks Gospel.
This document is a collection of Jesus sayings that were recorded at a much earlier
stage.
The Gospel of John is different to the other three Gospels, as it uses other sources
to tell the story of Jesus. There are no parables found in Johns Gospel.
The Kingdom of God is only mentioned once, whereas it has great importance in the
other three Gospels.