What does it mean that Jesus is the shepherd, what does it mean that Jesus is the light, what does it mean that Jesus is the bread of life? And you have to kind of puzzle over them. I don't think Jesus was interested in giving a great deal of information about himself. I mean, Jesus said that whoever saw him, saw the Father. But I don't think he was very interested in padding that out; his mission was more to redeem people, to love people into goodness, to save people from the distress and errors of their ways and he doesn't make a big issue about himself. Christ has always been known as the King because, as Paul tells us, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”

The belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead became the foundation of the early Christian Church. What the early Christians made of the resurrection can be gleaned from the letters of St Paul, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. It is a complex picture: did the early Christians believe that Jesus had undergone a spiritual or physical resurrection? The earliest sources are the letters of St Paul. His belief in the resurrection of Jesus is based on a vision of the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Like the letters of St Paul, the Gospel writers also report appearances of Jesus to the disciples. But the evangelists also report the story of the empty tomb - the discovery of the disappearance of the corpse of Jesus from his tomb on the third day after his crucifixion. The clear implication from this account is that the early Christians took Jesus to have been physically raised from the dead. If at that time any one should say to you, 'See, here is the Christ!' or 'Here!' give no credence to it. Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, ( B)the disciples came to Him privately, saying, ( C)“Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” Apart from being an inspirational leader and teacher, the Gospels describe many miraculous feats performed by Jesus. They can sound unbelievable today, but what would they have meant to first-century Jews? The raising of the widow's son The Gospels contain records of over 35 miracles and of these the majority were healings of the lame, the deaf and the blind, exorcism of those possessed by demons.The miracle of the walking on water is best understood in the context of the previous miracle. The feeding of the 5000 would have reminded the disciples of Moses and the Exodus. The miracle of the walking on water would have reminded them of the climax to the Exodus - Joshua and the conquest of the land of Canaan. After wandering for 40 years in the wilderness Moses led the Israelites to the eastern shores of the river Jordan to prepare for the conquest. But Moses died on Mt Nebo before he could begin the invasion. His mission was accomplished by his right man Joshua. Let’s take a look at some highlights and a few of the reasons why we need to do this, especially in an age when men don’t want to have kings or other rulers over them.

At that time, if anyone says to you, 'Look! Here's the Messiah!' or 'There he is!', don't believe it, No earthly country no matter how big or small can escape that. When they do, as several have done and as they continue to get as far away from God and the kingship of Jesus as they can, they get mired in deeper and deeper trouble and sin. He saw the antidote — the annual feast of the Kingship of Christ would “hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result.” Flavius Josephus Historian Flavius Josephus wrote one of the earliest non-biblical accounts of Jesus.Strong's 3588: The, the definite article. Including the feminine he, and the neuter to in all their inflections; the definite article; the. Jesus and the disciples were on one of their many trips on the Sea of Galilee, when the Gospels say they were hit by an unexpected and violent storm. The disciples were struggling for their lives. But by comparison Jesus' reaction is bewildering. He's said to have been asleep. And when awoken, his response couldn't have been less reassuring. "Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?" As Pius XI put it, “for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society. ‘Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved.’ He is the author of happiness and true prosperity for every man and for every nation. “For a nation is happy when its citizens are happy.” At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. Strong's 5100: Any one, some one, a certain one or thing. An enclitic indefinite pronoun; some or any person or object.

It's difficult to know how much of what's written in the Gospels is an insight into how Jesus saw himself and how much is comment of other people as to how they saw Jesus. In John's gospel for example, there are many 'I am' sayings: 'I am the light of the world', 'I am the good shepherd', 'I am the bread', 'I am the vine'. These phrases, if they came from the lips of Jesus, don't tell us a great deal about his spiritual biography, but tell us more about his purpose and they kind of hang with you and you have to think them through. When Herod died shortly after Jesus’ birth, his kingdom was divided into five parts. Most of the Gentile areas were separated from the Jewish areas, which were split between two of Herod’s sons, Herod Archelaus, who received Judaea and Idumaea (as well as Samaria, which was non-Jewish), and Herod Antipas, who received Galilee and Peraea. (In the New Testament, Antipas is somewhat confusingly called Herod, as in Luke 23:6–12; apparently the sons of Herod took his name, just as the successors of Julius Caesar were commonly called Caesar.) Both sons were given lesser titles than king: Archelaus was ethnarch, and Antipas was tetrarch. The non-Jewish areas (except Samaria) were assigned to a third son, Philip, to Herod’s sister Salome, or to the province of Syria. The emperor Augustus deposed the unsatisfactory Archelaus in 6 ce, however, and transformed Judaea, Idumaea, and Samaria from a client kingdom into an “imperial province.” Accordingly, he sent a prefect to govern this province. That minor Roman aristocrat (later called a procurator) was supported by a small Roman army of approximately 3,000 men. The soldiers, however, came not from Italy but from nearby Gentile cities, especially Caesarea and Sebaste; presumably, the officers were from Italy. During Jesus’ public career, the Roman prefect was Pontius Pilate (ruled 26–36 ce). Palestine in Jesus’ day was part of the Roman Empire, which controlled its various territories in a number of ways. In the East (eastern Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt), territories were governed either by kings who were “friends and allies” of Rome (often called “client” kings or, more disparagingly, “puppet” kings) or by governors supported by a Roman army. When Jesus was born, all of Jewish Palestine—as well as some of the neighbouring Gentile areas—was ruled by Rome’s able “friend and ally” Herod the Great. For Rome, Palestine was important not in itself but because it lay between Syria and Egypt, two of Rome’s most valuable possessions. Rome had legions in both countries but not in Palestine. Roman imperial policy required that Palestine be loyal and peaceful so that it did not undermine Rome’s larger interests. That end was achieved for a long time by permitting Herod to remain king of Judaea (37–4 bce) and allowing him a free hand in governing his kingdom, as long as the requirements of stability and loyalty were met.In other words, our celebrations, such as this solemn yet joyful one, speak loudly too every single man, woman, and child, learned or simple. The Church’s “feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature. Man is composed of body and soul, and he needs these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate him to drink more deeply of the fountain of God’s teaching, that he may make it a part of himself, and use it with profit for his spiritual life.” The long-haired, bearded image of Jesus that emerged beginning in the fourth century was influenced heavily by representations of Greek and Roman gods, particularly the all-powerful Greek god Zeus. At that point, Jesus started to appear in a long robe, seated on a throne (such as in the fifth-century mosaic on the altar of the Santa Pudenziana church in Rome), sometimes with a halo surrounding his head. He cites several passages and prophecies from the Old Testament to New, from Isaiah testifying that “He shall sit upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom; to establish it and strengthen it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth and forever,” to the Annunciation when Archangel Gabriel tells Mary that Jesus “shall reign in the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” Another rare early portrait of Jesus was discovered in 2018 on the walls of a ruined church in southern Israel. Painted in the sixth century A.D., it is the earliest known image of Christ found in Israel, and portrays him with shorter, curly hair, a depiction that was common to the eastern region of the Byzantine empire―especially in Egypt and the Syria-Palestine region―but disappeared from later Byzantine art. Pius reminded it would be a most grave error “to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. Nevertheless, during his life on earth he refrained from the exercise of such authority…”

Reverend Dr Richard Burridge, Dean of King's College London and Lecturer in New Testament Studies Christology While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights.”While Cargill agrees that these more recent images of Jesus—including darker, perhaps curlier hair, darker skin and dark eyes—probably come closer to the truth, he stresses that we can never really know exactly what Jesus looked like. Pius XI quotes himself from an earlier writing: “With God and Jesus Christ excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.” The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who according to Ehrman “is far and away our best source of information about first-century Palestine,” twice mentions Jesus in Jewish Antiquities, his massive 20-volume history of the Jewish people that was written around 93 A.D. Strong's 3361: Not, lest. A primary particle of qualified negation; not, lest; also (whereas ou expects an affirmative one) whether. Galilee and Judaea, the principal Jewish areas of Palestine, were surrounded by Gentile territories (i.e., Caesarea, Dora, and Ptolemais on the Mediterranean coast; Caesarea Philippi north of Galilee; and Hippus and Gadara east of Galilee). There also were two inland Gentile cities on the west side of the Jordan River near Galilee (Scythopolis and Sebaste). The proximity of Gentile and Jewish areas meant that there was some interchange between them, including trade, which explains why Antipas had telōnēs—often translated as “tax collectors” but more accurately rendered as “customs officers”—in the villages on his side of the Sea of Galilee. There also was some exchange of populations: some Jews lived in Gentile cities, such as Scythopolis, and some Gentiles lived in at least one of the Jewish cities, Tiberias. Jewish merchants and traders could probably speak some Greek, but the primary language of Palestinian Jews was Aramaic (a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew). On the other hand, the Jews resisted paganism and excluded temples for the worship of the gods of Greece and Rome from their cities, along with the Greek educational institutions the ephebeia and gymnasion, gladiatorial contests, and other buildings or institutions typical of Gentile areas. Because Jewish-Gentile relations in the land that the Jews considered their own were often uneasy, Jewish areas were usually governed separately from Gentile areas. The reign of Herod the Great was the exception to that rule, but even he treated the Jewish and the Gentile parts of his kingdom differently, fostering Greco-Roman culture in Gentile sectors but introducing only very minor aspects of it in Jewish areas.