#332 Jesus

**David Senra** (0:00)
Jesus was, in terms of his influence, the most important human being in history. He is also the most written about and discussed. The earliest surviving document dealing with him was circulated in the 50s of the first century AD.
Within a half a century of his death, four biographies written in Greek had been published, and all have come down to us, meaning they survived. Since then, entire books about him have been published in growing quantity and in all languages. Today, there are over 100,000 printed biographies of Jesus in English alone. The religion which commemorates Jesus' teachings, death and resurrection, was well established in half a dozen countries by AD 50 The first Christian place of worship dates from about AD 50, and now nearly one million chapels, churches, basilicas, abbeys and cathedrals include many of the largest, most remarkable and beautiful buildings ever erected.
In many ways, and in cultural and moral respects especially, Jesus' life and the faith it created are the central events in the history of humanity.
So far, we have considered the influence of Jesus as man, but I believe that he was and is God too.
It is futile for us to inquire about the nature of Jesus and God and his pre-existence from the beginning, since that is unknowable, let alone the future, which is still hidden from us.
What we can do, however, is write about Jesus the man.
The problem with writing about the life of Jesus the man is not so much the paucity of sources as their abundance and the difficulty in reaching behind the written text to the full meanings of sayings and episodes.
The sketch that follows reflects many years of reading and historical study. My objects have been clarity and brevity, and my desire is to convey the joy and nourishment that I receive in following Jesus' footsteps and pondering His words.
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Jesus, a biography from a believer, and it was written by Paul Johnson. So I want to immediately jump into some background that Paul gives you and I, which will help understand the society, really the world into which Jesus was born into. He says it was harsh, cruel, violent, and unstable. It was also materialistic and increasingly wealthy. Rome was in the process of transforming itself from a republic into an empire.
Rome now occupied all of Italy and Spain, as well as Greece and Egypt, and what we now call Turkey. Between 50 to 60 million people came under its laws. 50 years before Jesus was born, Julius Caesar had added the whole of Gaul, which would be modern France, to the Roman Empire.
The expanding empire was based upon muscle rather than technology, thanks to about 15 million slaves, who constituted one third of its population, and whose life was summed up by Aristotle in four words, work, punishment, and food.
As you probably already know, I'm a huge fan of Paul Johnson's writing. I've read and made podcasts on a bunch of biographies that he's written, like on Winston Churchill, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Socrates, Mozart, Picasso, Disney. I'll leave all those linked in the show notes in case you want to check out those other episodes. But one of the things I love about his writing is the way he's able to use contrast to drive home a point. And you see that here because he's going to compare who is ruling the area in which Jesus is going to be born into with really the main lessons that Jesus the man taught. And so he talks about the ruler at this time being Herod the Great. For more than 30 years, this astute financier had made himself the richest individual in the entire empire, but he was still subservient to the rulers of Rome. He made himself master of the ancient kingdom, and he was the greatest builder of his age. So he built shipping ports. He rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem. He built a bunch of public baths and aqueducts, and what we would call today shopping centers in more than a dozen cities. But he was also a monster. He had numerous wives and concubines and sired many children. He was suspicious and cruel, and he slaughtered over 40 of his wives. He killed over 40 of his wives, children, and close relatives. And this is the contrast point that I was referencing earlier. The last year of his life was the year of Jesus' birth.
Jesus was most constantly referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, Nazareth being the small Galilean town that he grew up in.
He's estimated to be born somewhere around 4 BC.