According to the traditional Christian doctrine, Jesus Christ was a God-man who, in his hypostasis, contained all the fullness of the divine and human nature. In one person, Christians saw God, the Son, the Logos, who has no beginning of days, no end of life, and a person with a well-defined ethnicity, age and physical characteristics, who was born and ultimately killed. And the fact that he was born from an immaculate conception fades into the background, and death was followed by resurrection.
Islam also had its own Christ. This is Isa, one of the prophets who preceded Mohammed.
If we speak from the position of secular historical science, then Jesus Christ was a religious figure of the first half of the 1st century BC, who acted in the Jewish environment. The birth of Christianity is also associated with the activities of his disciples. There is no doubt about its historicity, despite the active attempts of pseudo-scientific figures of the beginning of the last century to convince society of the opposite. Jesus Christ was born until about 4 BC. (the starting point from the Nativity of Christ, which was proposed in the 6th century, cannot be deduced from the texts of the Gospel and even contradicts them, because it is located after the date of death of King Herod). Over time, Jesus began to preach in Galilee, and then in other Palestinian lands, for which he was executed by the Roman authorities around 30 AD.
In early non-Christian sources, practically no information about the person of Jesus Christ has been preserved. It is mentioned by Josephus Flavius, a Jewish historian of the 1st century AD. In particular, his works speaks of a certain wise man named Jesus. He led a dignified life and was known for his virtue. Many Jews and people of other nations became his disciples. Pilate sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion, but his disciples did not renounce his teaching, and also told that their teacher was resurrected and appeared to them three days later. The texts of Flavius also say that he was considered the Messiah, which the prophets predicted.
At the same time, Flavius mentions another Jesus, nicknamed Christ, a relative of the stoned Jacob (according to Christian tradition, Jacob was the Brother of the Lord).
In the Talmud of Ancient Babylon, there are references to a certain Yeshu ha-Nozri or Jesus of Nazareth, a man who worked wonders and signs and led Israel astray. For this he was executed on the eve of Easter. At the same time, it should be noted that the Talmub was recorded several centuries later than the compilation of the Gospels.
If we talk about the Christian tradition, then its canon includes 4 gospels, which arose several decades after the crucifixion and resurrection. In addition to these books, other narratives existed in parallel, which, unfortunately, have not survived to this day. The very name of the Gospel implies that these are not just texts that tell about certain events. This is a kind of "message" with a certain religious meaning. At the same time, the religious orientation of the Gospels by no means excludes truthful and accurate recording of facts, which are sometimes very difficult to fit into the schemes of the pious thought of that period. So, for example, we can mention the story about the madness of Christ, which spread between people close to him, as well as about the relationship between Christ and John the Baptist,which were interpreted as the superiority of the Baptist and the unfaithfulness of the disciple-Christ. One can also mention stories about the condemnation of Jesus Christ by the Roman authorities and the religious authorities of his people, as well as about death on the cross, which caused real horror. The narrative in the Gospels is much less stylized compared to most of the lives of saints written in the Middle Ages, the historicity of which is beyond doubt. At the same time, the Gospel is very different from the apocrypha, which appeared in later centuries, and in which spectacular scenes of the creation of miracles by Jesus in childhood, or the picturesque details of the execution of Christ were developed. The narrative in the Gospels is much less stylized compared to most of the lives of saints written in the Middle Ages, the historicity of which is beyond doubt. At the same time, the Gospel is very different from the apocrypha, which appeared in later centuries, and in which spectacular scenes of the creation of miracles by Jesus in childhood, or the picturesque details of the execution of Christ were developed. The narrative in the Gospels is much less stylized compared to most of the lives of saints written in the Middle Ages, the historicity of which is beyond doubt. At the same time, the Gospel is very different from the apocrypha, which appeared in later centuries, and in which spectacular scenes of the creation of miracles by Jesus in childhood, or the picturesque details of the execution of Christ were developed.
The authors of the Gospels focus on the stories of the last period of the life of Jesus Christ, associated with his public speaking. The Gospels of John (Apocalypse) and Mark begin from the moment Christ came to John the Baptist, the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, in addition, they add stories about the birth and childhood of Jesus, and plots related to the time period from 12 to 30 years completely absent.
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Gospel stories begin with the archangel Gabriel predicting the birth of Jesus Christ, who appeared to the Virgin Mary in Nazareth and announced that a son would not be born from a miraculous conception from the Holy Spirit. The same secret was told to Joseph the Betrothed by another angel. Later, Joseph became the adoptive parent of the unborn child. According to the prophecies of the Old Testament, the Messiah should be born in the Jewish city of David, Bethlehem.
The reason that made Mary and Joseph go on a journey was the announcement of a census by the Roman authorities. According to the census rules, each person had to register at the place of the original residence of the clan.
In Bethlehem, Jesus was born, in a stable, since there were no places in the hotel. After Herod learned about the prophecies and ordered the destruction of all the babies who were born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph took the child and fled with him to Egypt, where they were until the time of Herod's death. Then there were the years spent in Nazareth, but little is known about them. The Gospels tell us that Jesus learned the craft of a carpenter and that when he reached his religious Jewish adulthood, the boy disappeared during a family pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He was found in one of the Jerusalem temples, surrounded by teachers, who were very surprised by the boy's answers and his mind.
Then in the Gospel texts follows the story of the first sermon. Before leaving, Jesus went to John the Baptist and received baptism from him, after which he left for 40 days in the wilderness in order to withstand spiritual opposition to the devil and abstain from food. And only after that did Jesus decide to preach. At that time, Christ was about 30 years old - a very symbolic number denoting perfect maturity. At this time, he also had his first students, who had previously been fishermen of Lake Tiberias. Together they walked in Palestine, preached and performed miracles.
It should be noted that the constant motive of the Gospel texts is constant clashes with Jewish church leaders from among the opposing religious movements of the Sadducees and Pharisees. These clashes were provoked by Christ's constant violations of the formal taboos of religious practice: he healed on Saturday, communicated with ritually unclean persons and sinners. Of great interest is the question of his relationship to the third direction in Judaism of that time - essential. The very term "essentialism" is not found in the Gospels. In this regard, some experts have hypothesized that the designation "leper", which was given to Simon of Bethany, does not correspond in meaning with the ritual prohibition of lepers to live next to healthy people in cities or communicate with them. Rather, it is a distortion of the word for "Essen".
The mentor himself in the Jewish context is perceived only as a "rabbi" (teacher). They call Christ that, they call him that. And in the Gospel texts he is shown precisely to the teachers: from the annexes of the Jerusalem temple, in the synagogues, in other words, in the traditional atmosphere of the rabbi's work. From here, his sermons in the deserts are a little knocked out, where his behavior is more like that of a prophet. Other teachers communicate with Christ as their competitor and colleague. At the same time, Jesus Christ is a very special case, because he taught without an appropriate education. As he himself said - as one having authority, and not as Pharisees and scribes.
In his sermons, Jesus Christ emphasized the need for a selfless willingness to give up social advantages and benefits, from security in favor of spiritual life. Christ, by his own life as an itinerant preacher, who had no place to lay his head, set an example of such self-denial. Another motive for preaching was the obligation to love their persecutors and enemies.
On the eve of the Jewish Passover, Jesus Christ approached Jerusalem and solemnly rode into the city on a donkey, which was a symbol of peacefulness and meekness. He received greetings from people who addressed him as a messianic king with ritual shouts. In addition, Christ expelled the traders of sacrificial animals and money changers from the Jerusalem temple.
The elders of the Jewish Sanhedrin decided to put Jesus on trial, because they saw in him a dangerous preacher who was outside the school system, a leader who could embroil them with the Romans, a violator of ritual discipline. After that, the teachers were handed over to the execution of the Roman authorities.
However, before that, Jesus, together with his disciples-apostles, had a secret Passover meal, better known as the Last Supper, during which he predicted that a dean of the apostles would betray him.
He spent the night in the Garden of Gethsemane in prayer, and asked the three most chosen apostles not to sleep with him and to pray. And in the middle of the night, the guards came and took him to the judgment of the Sanhedrin. At the trial, Christ was given a preliminary death sentence and in the morning he was taken to the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate. Christ faced the fate of the powerless: at first he was scourged, after which he was crucified on the cross.
When, a few days later, women from Christ's entourage came to the sarcophagus to wash the body for the last time and anoint it with incense, the crypt was empty, and the angel who was sitting on the edge said that Christ was risen, and the disciples would see him in Galilee.
Some Gospel texts describe the appearance of Jesus Christ to the disciples, which ended with the ascension to heaven, but the resurrection itself is described only in apocryphal texts.
It should be noted that the image of Christ in the culture of Christian nations had a wide range of interpretations, which ultimately formed a complex unity. In his image, asceticism, detached royalty, subtlety of mind, the ideal of joyful poverty merged together. And it is not so important whether Jesus Christ was a real person in the past, or is this a fictional image, it is much more important who he became for millions of people around the world. This is an image of suffering humanity, an ideal of life that is worth striving for, or at least trying to comprehend and understand.