HRE 2O Chapter 1 Assignment WordPerfect.wpd    Word.doc  Adobe.pdf

The New Testament is composed of twenty-seven books. It developed from roughly twenty years after the death of Jesus (that is, from about 50 C.E.) To about 100 C.E.

2. What is the principal theme that unifies the writings of the New Testament?

The writings all deal in some way with the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus and the impact he had on the community of those who believed in him B what we now know as the church.

3. What are the main concerns of the non-Gospel writings of the New Testament?

The happenings within the early community of faith; the meaning of Jesus= life, death, and Resurrection for the individual believer; various difficulties encountered by the first Christians as they moved out into the world, and so on.

4. Provide a one-sentence description of each of the following: the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline epistles, the Letter to the Hebrews, the catholic epistles, the Book of Revelation.

The Gospels include information about the life, works, message, death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

The Acts of the Apostles is Luke=s account of the early days of the Christian community and the spread of the Good News throughout the Roman Empire after the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

The Pauline epistles were written either by Saint Paul or by others, to support and further educate individual Christians or small communities that had been brought to believe in Jesus through the missionary work of Paul and others.

The Letter to the Hebrews, often attributed to Paul but probably not written by him, is a kind of extended sermon to a group of Christians who are in danger of falling away from their belief in Jesus.

The catholic epistles, attributed to four different personalities (James, Peter, John, and Jude), are called catholic because they are addressed to believing Christians as a general audience rather than to specific individuals or communities.

The Book of Revelation, filled with highly symbolic and mysterious language, was written to encourage late-first-century Christians to remain faithful to Christ during times of severe persecution.

Question: Jesus' followers responded to his death differently than people have responded to the deaths of other great leaders throughout history. Why it was this is so?

Answer: Before Jesus' followers really had time to grieve and talk of 'what might have been,' the proclamation of Jesus' Resurrection rang out. Jesus was still with his followers, but in a different way than before.

Question: Define the following terms: Jesus of History and Christ of Faith.

Answer: The two terms referred to the same person understood and experienced in two different ways. Jesus of History is not simply the historical Jesus but refers to the divine Son of God as he walked the earth in the person of Jesus. Christ of Faith recognizes the Christian conviction that the Jesus of history was raised from the dead by God and that he truly was and is forever Lord and Saviour.

Question: What three main questions will be addressed in this course?

Answer:

1. Who was the Jesus of History, the man who lived nearly 2000 years ago in a place called Palestine?

2. Why was this man, Jesus, the crucified one, so quickly recognized by the early Christians has the Christ of Faith, the anointed one sent by God to free them from all evil?

3. How did the church come to recognize that Jesus was not only the Christ or Messiah awaited by Jews, but was and is the divine Son of God, "one in being with the father," who offers salvation to all humanity?

Question: provide That a one-sentence definition of each of these terms: Christian Scriptures, Old Testament, New Testament, inspired texts.

Answer:

1. Christian Scriptures refers to the Bible, the whole collection of sacred writings that includes the Old Testament and the New Testament.

2. The Old Testament, central to the Jewish faith and also a vital part of the Christian faith, includes 46 books all about the covenant that God made with the people of Israel long before Jesus' birth.

3. New Testament refers to God=s new covenant, through Jesus, with all people, and its 27 books pertain specifically to the Christian faith.

4. Inspired texts are writings whose authors, prompted by the holy spirit, convey God's revealed truth using their own abilities, words, and styles.

Question: What role to the Gospels play in the church=s teachings about Jesus?

Answer: Just about everything the church teaches about Jesus comes through the Gospels. The Gospels, in turn, serve as the scale court test of truth and authenticity for everything the church teaches about Jesus.

Question: Identify each of the following persons and summarize what they, as a group, contribute to a study of Jesus: Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius.

Answer: Josephus was a Jewish historian. Tacitus was a Roman historian. Pliny the Younger was governor of one of the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. Suetonius was a Roman historian and a lawyer. All of these men where non-Christians. As a group, through their writings, they support the historical existence of Jesus, and a show Christianity as worthy of at least one brief mention.