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Walter C. Kaiser Jr. (born April 11, 1933) is an American Evangelical Old Testament scholar, writer, public speaker, and educator. Kaiser is the Colman M. Mockler distinguished Professor of Old Testament and former President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts , retired June 30, 2006.
The Nativity or birth of Jesus Christ is found in the biblical gospels of Matthew and Luke.The two accounts agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Roman-controlled Judea, that his mother, Mary, was engaged to a man named Joseph, who was descended from King David and was not his biological father, and that his birth was caused by divine intervention.
In Christianity, Jesus is the Messiah (Christ) foretold in the Old Testament and the Son of God. Christians believe that through his death and resurrection, humans can be reconciled to God and thereby are offered salvation and the promise of eternal life. [5]
Christians regard Jesus as the awaited Messiah (or "Christ") of the Old Testament and refer to him as Jesus Christ, [a] a name that is also used in non-Christian contexts. He is also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth .
The word is in fact used as a title, hence its common reciprocal use Christ Jesus, meaning Jesus the Anointed One or Jesus the Messiah. Followers of Jesus became known as Christians because they believed that Jesus was the Christ, or Messiah, prophesied about in the Old Testament, or Tanakh.
As noted above, the earliest evidence for Christ's birth being marked on 25 December dates from sixty years after Aurelian. In AD 362, the emperor Julian wrote in his Hymn to King Helios that the Agon Solis (sacred contest for Sol) was a festival of the sun, instituted by emperor Aurelian, held at the end of the Saturnalia in late December.
The Ebionites, a Jewish Christian sect, saw Jesus as fully human, rejected the virgin birth, and preferred to translate almah as "young woman". [59] The 2nd century gnostic theologian Marcion likewise rejected the virgin birth, but regarded Jesus as descended fully formed from heaven and having only the appearance of humanity. [60]
In Christian theology, the incarnation is the belief that the pre-existent divine person of Jesus Christ, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, and the Logos (Koine Greek for 'word') was "made flesh," [1] "conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary," [2] also known as the Theotokos (Greek for "God-bearer" or "Mother of God").