The Religious Dialog group will meet at 3:30 pm in the Large Meeting Room on Historical Jesus. We will show and discuss the next installment of the PBS Frontier program, “From Jesus to Christ.” Program 3 follows the story of the first attempts to write the life of Jesus – the Gospels. They were products of social and religious reconstruction in the period after the war, ranging from roughly 70 to after 100 C.E. The program looks at how these stories were passed down before they were written and how the writing of each Gospel reflects the experiences and circumstances of early Christians. They do not all tell the same story of Jesus because each one is responding to a different audience and circumstances. During this time, a growing tension appeared between the emergent Christian groups and their Jewish neighbors. The result was a process of debate, identity, and separation that shaped both religious traditions forever. And there were still other external forces, including a second, devastating Jewish war, the Bar Kochbah revolt, which erupted in 132 C.E. Questions for reflection: Why are there so many different images of Jesus in the Gospels? How are the authors of the Gospels interjecting their own beliefs and circumstances into the story of Jesus? What is the value of understanding how stories are influenced by the storyteller?
