The primary faith commitment of Christianity is that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Messiah who came to bring salvation to all who believe. Jewish messianic expectation ran high during the time before, during, and after Jesus' life. Jews eagerly looked for deliverance from Roman occupation of Palestine and Roman dominance in their lives. Many Jews looked for a political messiah to come and throw off Roman rule and restore Israel to self-rule in its homeland.
Jesus, of course, in no way fit this description. He was an itinerant teacher who told stories, was said to perform miracles, was initially followed by a ragtag group of fishermen, prostitutes, and lepers, and was eventually put to death by crucifixion after only three years of ministry. The writers of the canonical Gospels, nevertheless, believed in his messianic status and sought to express this conviction in their respective Gospels. The writers did this differently, reflecting their own particular convictions about Jesus and writing in ways that would resonate with their respective communities' experience and needs. The Gospels comprise the first four books of the Christian Bible's New Testament.
Scholars debate endlessly about which information in the Gospels, both canonical and noncanonical, represents accurately who Jesus was and what he taught. This debate is understandable. For unlike founders of some other religions, Jesus himself did not write, nor did his immediate followers—at least not while he was alive and could legitimize their writings. The writers of the Gospels relied on the memories of those who had seen or heard Jesus, and on the stories about him passed down orally in the early communities of the Jesus movement. So, the Gospels do not give us perfect historical snapshots of Jesus' life and teaching; rather, they give us nuanced portraits that illumine aspects of Jesus' life as well as the writers' beliefs about Jesus.
The following passage from John's Gospel explains Jesus as the Word of God made flesh. Such an understanding of Jesus—as a being who is the full revelation of deity—became the orthodox theology of Christianity, which is what prompts many scholars to date John's Gospel later than the others. Here, Jesus is not merely the son of a Nazareth carpenter, but the Word of God who existed before creation, and caused all things to be, and who put on the flesh of a human body and came to live among people. Indeed, this idea of God taking on flesh is the "scandal of particularity" in Christianity: God appeared fully and finally in a particular person, at a particular place, and at a particular time, and to a particular group of people. Furthermore, the passage identifies Jesus as the "light of the world," indicating a new way or path being illumined by his human life and ministry.
Jesus
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