A Short History Of Christianity

The majority of Christians have faith in that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Israe
l, the son of Jewish parents, Mary and Joseph, a carpenter, who had travelled fr
om Nazareth to pay their annual taxes. Mary gave birth, so the story goes, on th
e 25th December in a stables and Christian countries mark that as the start of t
heir calendar, in a similar manner that Buddhists and Muslims mark the birth of
their spiritual leaders as the beginning of their calendars.
However, not very much is actually known of Jesus and nothing is known about him
from his own hand. The closest we can get to him are books or gospels written s
ome time after his death by alleged disciples. He was almost certainly not born
in the year one, or dot as it should have been, but four years earlier.
There is little to nothing known of him for the first thirty years of his life a
nd then when he was thirty-two he was baptized by John the Baptist. Being Jewish
himself, John the Baptist was continually on the look out for the Messiah and h
e saw Jesus as that Messiah.
Jesus was different from other ministers of the time in that he worked chiefly a
mong the poor, although it is very doubtful that he came from a deprived family
himself. He was after all from the House of David, the ruling royal family of th
e day and age.
Within a couple of years of ministering to the poor and proclaiming himself the
son of God, he was arrested by the Roman and Jewish ruling class and, as most Ch
ristians believe, crucified. After three days he rose from the dead and after fo
rty days his spirit ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of his father,
God.
Christians perceive their Bible as an extension of Judaism rather than a denial
or a breaking away from it. It is to be expected that the first followers of Jes
us were ostracized by traditional Jewish leaders as a break-away sect and in man
y ways that is what Christianity still is to this day, although it now has more
followers than Judaism.
The Christian Bible is in two parts, the Old Testament, which correlates to the
Jewish Bible or Masorah and the New Testament, which relates to the time after J
esus' birth which is not incorporated in the Masorah.
The most essential part of the New Testament by far is the gospels according to
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Every one of these gospels shows Jesus, his life a
nd his teachings from the personal point of view of the writer, all of them havi
ng been one of Jesus' apostles.
The foundation of Christian belief is: 1] that Jesus is the embodiment of God on
Earth; 2] atonement - ie that Jesus' death atoned for the sins of all mankind i
n eternity, so we can all go to Heaven; 3] that the one God has three aspects: G
od the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.
After that it gets a bit complex.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on numerous subjects but is currentl
y concerned with <a href="http://celebrating-easter.the-real-manner.com/Easter/E
aster.php">Easter</a>.If you want to read more, please go over to our web site c
alled <a href="http://celebrating-easter.the-real-fashion.com">Celebrating Easte
r</a>.