Safe Hebrew Jesus-Christ Yehoshuah “Yahvé”. Jew of Palestine, founder of the Christian religion. The initiator of the religious movement whose naîtrale Christianity is the main character of the four Gospels, which allot the title of Christ to him - Messiah devoted by the oiling of God - and indicate it as that which “will save its people of its sins”. The theological debates relating to its double nature, divine and human, are not that one of the aspects of a fulgurating adventure which inflected the direction of the human destiny.    

Jesus not having bequeathed any writing to the posterity, testimonies relating to its life and its teaching come primarily from the evangelic accounts. However the biographical indications in purely historical matter are rather thin there. They let suppose that Jesus was born in a family from Nazareth, little before the death of Herode the Large one, king of the Jews recognized by the Roman power; towards the thirty years age, it started as a Galileo and in Judaea a preaching which lasted three years at most and is finished by its death sentence and its crucifixion, around year 30, under Pontius Pilate, governor Roman of Palestine.

In addition to the Gospels, which remain the independent source of information on the historical character of Jesus, and of the Jewish sources, often polemical and late, which undoubtedly was the subject of a Christian second reading, there exist pagan texts: in its Annals, Tacite speaks about the Christians shown by Néron to have lit the fire of Rome, into 64, and the writer Pline the Young person, sent on mission in Bithynie (in the North-West of current Turkey) by the Trajan emperor, is perplexed with regard to the Christians “who sing anthems with Christ as with a god” and which refuse to take part in the worship of the emperor imposed by Rome.  

At the time when Jesus appears, Palestine is under Roman occupation: the power of the Roman governor is superimposed then on that of the local kings. After the death of Hérode the Large one, Rome divides its territory between his/her three sons; Jesus has especially business with Hérode Antipas, which reigns on Galileo and Pérée until 39. The Jews preserve a power in the religious field by the means of the large priest and the court of the sanhédrin. The three authorities - Rome, local kings, the large priest - take each tax: in Palestine of the beginning of our era the economic situation is difficult and the tended political climate.

The Judaism of the time of Jesus is represented by several movements, of which most known are those of the pharisees (defenders of the religious law) and of the sadducéens (related to the Temple). Others are directed towards nationalist resistance (Zealoies) or the religious protest (esséniens). Outside Palestine, the meeting between the Greek culture and the Jewish communities disseminated in the Empire give place so that one calls the Hellenistic Judaism. This historical context is with the background of the Gospels, which show Jesus battling against various tendencies of the Judaism, but also with a certain design of the political power and religious size.

The Gospels of Matthieu and Luc locate the birth of Jesus under Hérode the Large one, died in year 750 of the foundation of Rome. It is in IVe century of our era that, according to the Tradition, the monk Denys the Small one establishes, by its calculations, year 1 of the Christian era. However it was mistaken and made correspond year 1 to year 754 of the foundation of Rome.

The Gospels introduce Jesus like an itinerant preacher, who teaches, drive out demons and cure patients. In the Synoptic ones (Matthieu, Marc and Luc), the teaching and the actions of Jesus concern for much the arrival of the “Reign of God” (called in general in a more ambiguous way the “Kingdom of God”), who must establish relations of justice and peace between the men, and the human beings and God. Jesus announces that its advent will involve a new manner of living. The Gospel of Luc goes back preaching to Jean-Baptiste of year 15 of the reign of the Tibère emperor, that is to say between 27 and 28 of our era. Jesus began his public life at the same time. Luc says to us that it was then approximately thirty years old (Luc, 3.23). The synoptic Gospels do not give indications over the duration of this ministry, but that of Jean mentions three festivals of Passover. The ministry of Jesus would thus have lasted between two and three years, undoubtedly during years 27 to 30.  

The standpoint of Jesus on the two great institutions of hello - religious laws and the Temple - defended by the Jewish authorities of its time is at the origin of a conflict which led to its handing-over with the Roman authorities and its death sentence. From the Jewish point of view, the reason for this sentence is the blasphemy; from the Roman point of view, the disorder of the law and order. Jesus died under Pontius Pilate, governor of Judaea from 26 to 36. The Roman power having only the right to put at death, Jesus undergoes the torment, Roman, of the crucifixion. The synoptic ones locate this death the day of Passover, and Jean reports that it occurred the day before, which is more plausible. Jewish Passover takes place the 15 of the month of nisan (March-April). Marc and Jean state moreover that Jesus was carried out the day before a Sabbath, therefore Friday. In 27.30 and 33, the 15 nisan fell Saturday. Years 27 and 33 leave too little, or much too, of time for the public ministry of Jesus. Thus, Jesus probably died on on April 7th (14 nisan) of year 30. New Testament affirms that this death has a direction for humanity and that God recognized as a Jesus his Son by resurrecting it.  

The Gospels insist on the historical incarnation of Jesus, to whom they give the titles of Christ, Seigneur, or Son of God. These names are those which the first Christian generations use and which they try to understand.

The disturbed periods that Israel during the centuries preceding knew our era - end of the royalty, foreign ground exiles and religious persecution under certain Greek sovereigns - supported the development of Messianic topics: waiting of an intervention of God either directly, or via a Messiah, a man selected and sent by God. In Ier century of our era, the Jewish people - occupied by a foreign power, confronted with a culture foreign and divided internally - are particularly sensitive to this expression of hope: in varied forms, the messianism translates the various hopes of political or religious restoration.  

The question arises then quite naturally of knowing if Jesus, the Jewish itinerant preacher, surrounded Jewish disciples, is the awaited Messiah, because in the Judaism this last does not seem a figure marked by the suffering: the Jewish faith hoped for a glorious intervention of God in favor of his people.  

However, the Gospels show a Jesus who fights effectively against the forces of the Evil, teaches with authority, but which announces to its disciples the need for his death: it can be recognized by God like his Messiah only in the passage on the cross. The resurrection of Jesus - who constitutes this act of recognition - is that of a man condemned, ridiculed and put at died by a ashamed torment.  

The Greek term Christos, employed in New Testament for the “Messiah”, is not in charge of the same direction as in the Jewish world. It takes the value of a proper name when it designates Jesus like object of the faith. This is why one gives the name of christology to any believing interpretation of the figure of Jesus, and one calls christologic the titles (Christ, Fils of David, Son of man, Seigneur) which are allotted to him to mean its particular mission and its dignity.  

In the Hellenistic communities, made up as a majority of Christians of pagan origin, Christ was very quickly used like a proper name, either all alone, or associated with that of Jesus in the expressions “Jesus Christ” or “Jesus Christ” or, more frequently, “Jesus-Christ”.

After the Epistles of Paul, the Gospels repeat the importance of the terrestrial life of Jesus. They try to discover in it the indices making it possible to understand how Jesus is the privileged witness of God. The name “Jesus”, employed generally all alone in the Gospels, recalls that Christ was a being of flesh and blood. The name “Christ” expresses, him, a relation believing with Jesus. The use was established to join together the two names.

The reflection on the person and the work of Jesus-Christ gives place in New Testament to christologies which differ by their stressings and the degree from their development.  

The proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus is the starting point of these studies. Consequently an interpretation of its death is essential, then a reflection on its human identity and its life, that the first Christian generations approach while being pressed on the texts of the Old Testament. These interrogations, which aim in fact to specify the contents of the relation between Jesus-Christ and God, rebound in the course of time without never becoming exhausted. They give rise to a continual work of interpretation, started by New Testament, interpretation reformulated unceasingly in new categories of thought.  

Christian preaching missionary, whose the letters testify to Paul, is centered on the bond between the cross and the resurrection of Jesus-Christ. She seeks to elucidate the direction of the death of the Christ, who sacrifices herself for all the men and repurchases their sins. Whereas for the Christian missionaries the faith as a Jesus-Christ ensures by it only safety, Paul, for its part, does not refer to the historical life of Jesus.  

For the Gospels, the sovereignty of Christ is not only that of the resurrected Lord, but also that of the Lord such as it lived on the Earth. It is accordingly that they try to elucidate the true identity of Jesus.  

The Gospel of Marc affirms that it is only in front of the cross that the divine filiation of Jesus appears. The question of knowing from when Jesus can be known as Son of God will pose thereafter. In the Gospels of Matthieu and Luc, the accounts of the birth of Jesus - conceived by a virgin under the action of the Holy Spirit - advance indeed the idea that he was Son of God as of his arrival with the existence. The Gospel of Jean is further recognizing the preexistence of any eternity of the Son of God, who incarnated itself as a Jesus. The christologic anthems of the late Pauline letters also proclaim this preexistence. The first Christian communities do not give to Jesus the name of God. But, as of the end of Ier century, name God is also employed in christology. At the beginning of the Gospel of Jean, where Jesus is introduced like the preexistent Word, it is known as that “the Word was God”. This designation of Christ as God raised a debate within the old Church, whose the dogmas concerning two natures of Christ and the Trinity were to emerge (God at the same time Père, Fils and Holy Spirit)

In the world gréco-Roman, Christian preaching concentrated on the question of knowing which type of relation links God and Jesus-Christ. The various answers given to this question can be divided into two large currents: that of the school of Antioche, which stresses the humanity of Jesus, and, to the extreme, leads to the negation of its divinity; and that of the school of Alexandria, which underlines the divinity of Jesus and can lead to the negation of its humanity. When Christianity is recognized like a religion authorized in the Empire (“peace of the Church”, 313 after J. - C.), the conflicts between the two schools become business of State: the emperors then convene councils christologic, charged to formulate dogmas acceptable for all.

The council of Nicée (325) affirms that “the nature of the Son is identical and consubstantial with that of the Father”. That of Chalcédoine (451) establishes a distinction between the human nature and the divine nature of Christ, while insisting on the unit of both. But the difficulties remain, because the concepts of nature, substance and anybody are not defined same manner by all. The two other councils which still deal with problem christologic (Constantinople II, into 553, and III, into 681) do not manage to prevent that incomprehension settles on this subject between the Occident (Latin Church) and the East (Greek Church).

During long centuries Western theology will meditate, in particular starting from XIIe century, the direction of the formula of Chalcédoine: “Christ is a person in two natures.” At the time of the Protestant Reform, XVIe century, Luther, reintroduced the question of the redemption: how the man can be saved? For him, Jesus-Christ is the face of God turned towards the human being, in the weakness of an incarnation which goes until death. It makes it possible only to know God and to be saved by him.  

The XVIII ^E century devotes the anthropological point of view and the rational approach preached by the Lights, which blames the base of the traditional christologies. The rise of sciences raises the problem of the nature of the truth contained in the biblical texts. This critical examination leads to the XIX ^E century and the beginning of the XX ^E century with the taking into account of the historical dimension of the facts and the texts having caused the Christian faith. The problem christologic is then reconsidered from the point of view of the relationship between the history and the truth, the history and the faith. Whereas a certain kind of research becomes exhausted to find the veracious facts of the life of Jesus or the words really pronounced by him, the Protestant theologist Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) affirms that we have only access to the Christ of the faith, by whom God addresses to the man.  

The disciples of Bultmann defend the possibility of reaching the Jesus of the history through the Christ of the faith. As well catholic theology as the Protestant woman consider today that the christology is not an obstacle but one of the access paths to Jesus de Nazareth. Thanks to the open dialog with the social sciences, the problem of the man, his possible relation with Jesus-Christ and God, is from now on integral part of the christologic reflection.  

According to the confessions, the times and the cultures, the Christians tend to insist sometimes on the divinity of Jesus-Christ, sometimes on her humanity. For some, the name of Jesus-Christ means before all “Jesus is Christ”, that which, as of the origins, has the authority and the sovereignty of God himself; all that Jesus taught and achieved on the Earth takes by there value of absolute. For others, Jesus-Christ initially means “Christ, it is Jesus”, the man of Nazareth, the Galilean one; in him God incarnates his divinity and shares the fate of the men. The other monotheistic times - Judaism and Islam - confer to Jesus only one human statute: for them, it is a chief rabbi (or teaching), a large prophet. In addition, since the secularization of the Western companies, the character of Jesus was considered and sometimes recovered apart from any faith as a God. He is regarded in turn as a moralist, a revolutionist, one of the precursors of pacifism.

To express the unit of the person of Jesus-Christ while maintaining and her humanity and her divinity is thus the characteristic of the Christian faith. It is by the figure of Jesus-Christ that she affirms the possibility of the meeting between God and the man.