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The books of the New Testament frequently cite Jewish scripture to support the claim of the Early Christians that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah.Scholars have observed that few of these citations are actual predictions in context; the majority of these quotations and references are taken from the prophetic Book of Isaiah, but they range over the entire corpus of Jewish writings.
In his 1875 book The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, American Kersey Graves said that many demigods from different countries shared similar stories, traits or quotes as Jesus and he used Higgins as the main source for his arguments. The validity of the claims in the book have been greatly criticized by Christ myth proponents including ...
For instance, Jesus is called "a wise man" (and Josephus described others like Solomon, Daniel, and John the Baptist in the same fashion), which would not have been a common Christian label for Christ at the time. He referred to Jesus merely as "a worker of amazing deeds" and nothing more, again disagreeing with how Christians viewed Christ.
Tacitus is not the only non-Christian writer of the time who mentioned Jesus and early Christianity. The earliest known references to Christianity are found in Antiquities of the Jews , a 20-volume work written by the Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus around 93–94 AD, during the reign of emperor Domitian .
Various books, memoirs and stories were written about Jesus by the early Christians. The most famous are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All but one of these are believed to have been written within 50–70 years of the death of Jesus, with the Gospel of Mark believed to be the earliest, and the last the Gospel of John.
Although scholars agree on the historicity of the crucifixion, they differ on the reason and context for it, e.g. both E. P. Sanders and Paula Fredriksen support the historicity of the crucifixion, but contend that Jesus did not foretell his own crucifixion, and that his prediction of the crucifixion is a Christian story. [162]
Michael Licona suggests that John has redacted Jesus' authentic statements as recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Where Matthew and Mark have Jesus quote Psalm 22:1, John records that "in order that the Scripture may be fulfilled, Jesus said, 'I am thirsty'." Jesus' final words as recorded in Luke are simplified in John into "It is finished." [12]
Andreas J. Köstenberger stated that in many cases these stories portrayed Jesus "like the questers themselves" rather than a first-century Jewish figure. [26] The underlying theme used by the authors of the various Lives of Jesus during the first quest varied. In some cases it aimed to praise Christianity, in other cases to attack it.