Jesus and the Gospels: Historical Context and Sources

Vocabulary flashcards key concepts, historical figures, and Jewish context from the lecture transcript.

Incarnation

The Christian doctrine of Christ identifying with all humanity by sharing in the common human nature and plight of all people.

John Allegro

A 1960s Dead Sea Scrolls scholar who proposed the unconventional theory that Jesus was actually a hallucinogenic mushroom.

Quest of the Historical Jesus

A two-century-long field of scholarly research seeking to reconstruct the historical Jesus by excavating material behind the Gospels.

Gnostic Gospels

Non-canonical texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945–1946 that depict the risen Christ presenting esoteric revelation discourses within a Gnostic myth of redemption.

Gospel of Thomas

A text discovered at Nag Hammadi consisting of a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, many of which resemble those found in the four canonical Gospels.

Form Criticism

A 20th-century scholarly methodology that treated the Gospels as anonymous folk literature developed and modified by early Christian communities rather than grounded in eyewitness testimony.

Papias

An early 2nd-century bishop of Hierapolis whose surviving fragments report that Mark acted as Peter's interpreter and based his Gospel on Peter's accounts.

Synoptic Gospels

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, grouped together due to their relative similarity in literary structure and narrative relative to John.

Herod Antipas

The Roman puppet ruler over Galilee during Jesus' adult life, referred to by Jesus as 'that fox'.

Shema

The daily prayer recited by devout Jews based on Deuteronomy 6:4-5, affirming the uniqueness of YHWH and the requirement of total devotion.

Torah

The law of Moses comprising the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, containing 613 commandments designed to regulate Jewish life as God's holy people.

Pharisees

A prominent Jewish party influential among common people, known for precise law interpretation, binding oral traditions, and a national programme of daily ritual purity.

Essenes

A separatist Jewish group living in exclusive communities, such as the monastic group associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, adhering to an extremely rigorous interpretation of Torah.

Sadducees

A small party of wealthy aristocratic Jewish families in Judaea who strictly held only to the written five books of Moses and rejected belief in life after death.

Judas the Galilean

The leader who in AD 6 initiated a revolutionary Jewish movement opposing Roman tax assessment on the religious grounds that paying tribute violated allegiance to God.

Hegesippus

A 2nd-century writer who recorded that two grandsons of Jesus' brother Judas were peasant farmers sharing an undivided family farm in Nazareth.

Messiah

A term derived from the Hebrew for 'anointed one' (Greek Christos), which in 1st-century Jewish expectations primarily denoted a royal military deliverer descended from David.

John the Baptist

A Jewish prophet who heralded God's impending judgement on Israel and performed river immersions in the wilderness as a sign of national repentance.