Roderick L. Evans
Roderick Levi Evans is an author, bible teacher, Christian apologist. Evans is the founder of Abundant Truth International Ministries. Evans has written numerous books, articles and poetry, his writings focus on orthodox Christianity, evangelical doctrines as well as charismatic/Pentecostal studies. He is best known for his teachings and books on apostolic and prophetic ministries, doctrinal studies, as well as leadership. Evans is a psalmist, singer-songwriter, acoustic guitarist, poet, he resides in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Roderick L. Evans was born in Florida, he was raised in Delray Beach, Florida being the middle child, having one older brother and a younger sister. He describes his early life as challenging. Evans attended Atlantic Community High School and during his junior year of school he became a born again Christian in 1992, he attended the Church of God by Faith located in Florida. After his conversion, he felt a personal call to ministry and started preaching in 1996. Roderick L. Evans ministry style is described as upright.
He is known for saying, "Well, while I'm there..." After a move to North Carolina in 1999, he began Kingdom Builders International Ministries in 1999, formally establishing it in 2001. However, in the fall of 2013, he ended Kingdom Builders International and began Abundant Truth International Ministries: a prophetic ministry with an emphasis on Christian apologetics. Aside from his ministry, he is article writer, he writes articles for Hubpages. Roderick L. Evans is songwriter, he was inspired to learn. Since he has written numerous songs for the Christian community, performing by the name of R. L. Evans with the moniker "Mikhtam Maestro." The focus of his published works is to inspire those in the Christian faith. During a time of illness, he began to write poetry to keep himself motivated. From this, he began to learn different styles and read and perform poetry. To distinguish this from his ministry, he developed the pen and performing name, "The Refined Poet", his motto for his poetry is “Write to inspire.
Write to express. Write to live.” He describes himself as a poet in this way, "I create poetry under the pseudonym of The Refined Poet due to the style of my writings. I do not write from a place of frustration, or inner turmoil. My poetry comes from biblical, thoughtful introspection and consideration of various topics while respecting the many forms of the poetic genre." 2005 If They Be Prophets: An Examination of the Prophetic Office and Gift 2005 When God Says No: Understanding the Fatherhood of God 2006 No Other Foundation: Exploring the Apostolic and Prophetic Anointings 2006 Out of Egypt Into Canaan: Forgetting the Failures of the Past 2009 The Call to Serve: An Examination of the Deacon and Servant's Ministry in the Church 2010 Precepts for Kingdom Living: Protocols and Perspectives in the Kingdom of God 2014 Overcoming Your Failures, Possessing Your Divine Destiny 2008 Do You Know What Time It Is? 2008 First Class Discipleship 2010 A Force Called Favor 2014 The Blueprint for a Perfect Church 2008 What's In a Name?
2008 Stay in the Ark 2010 A Force Called Favor 2010 A Grieving Glory Abundant Truth International Ministries D. E. C. K. With Roderick... Abundant Truth Publishing Mikhtam Musings The Poetry Place L. O. G. O. S. Apologetics
Acts of the Apostles
Acts of the Apostles referred to as Acts, or formally the Book of Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament. Acts and the Gospel of Luke make up a two-part work, Luke–Acts, by the same anonymous author dated to around 80–90 AD; the first part, the Gospel of Luke, tells how God fulfilled his plan for the world's salvation through the life and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah. Acts continues the story of Christianity in the 1st century, beginning with Jesus's ascension to Heaven; the early chapters, set in Jerusalem, describe the Day of Pentecost and the growth of the church in Jerusalem. The Jews are receptive to the Christian message, but soon they turn against the followers of Jesus. Rejected by the Jews, under the guidance of the Apostle Peter the message is taken to the Gentiles; the chapters tell of Paul's conversion, his mission in Asia Minor and the Aegean, his imprisonment in Rome, where, as the book ends, he awaits trial. Luke–Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church.
Luke–Acts can be seen as a defense of the Jesus movement addressed to the Jews: the bulk of the speeches and sermons in Acts are addressed to Jewish audiences, with the Romans serving as external arbiters on disputes concerning Jewish customs and law. On the one hand, Luke portrays the Christians as a sect of the Jews, therefore entitled to legal protection as a recognised religion; the title "Acts of the Apostles" was first used by Irenaeus in the late 2nd century. It is not known whether this was one invented by Irenaeus; the Gospel of Luke and Acts make up a two-volume work. Together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament, the largest contribution attributed to a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus and the early church. The author is not named in either volume. According to Church tradition dating from the 2nd century, he was the "Luke" named as a companion of the apostle Paul in three of the letters attributed to Paul himself.
The author "does not share Paul's own view of himself as an apostle. He was educated, a man of means urban, someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself. While no proposed date for the composition of Acts is universally accepted, the most common scholarly position is to date Luke–Acts to 80-90 AD, on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul; the earliest possible date for the composition of Acts is set by the events with which it ends, Paul's imprisonment in Rome c. 63 AD, but such an early dating is a minority position. The last possible date would be set by its first definite citation by another author, but there is no unanimity on this. A minority of scholars in the latter camp, conclude that Acts dates to the 2nd century, believing that it shows awareness of the letters of Paul, the works of Josephus, or the writings of Marcion. There are two major textual variants of the Western text-type and the Alexandrian.
The oldest complete Alexandrian manuscripts date from the 4th century and the oldest Western ones from the 6th, with fragments and citations going back to the 3rd. Western texts of Acts are 6.2–8.4% longer than Alexandrian texts, the additions tending to enhance the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the role of the Holy Spirit, in ways that are stylistically different from the rest of Acts. The majority of scholars prefer the Alexandrian text-type over the Western as the more authentic, but this same argument would favour the Western over the Alexandrian for the Gospel of Luke, as in that case the Western version is the shorter; the title "Acts of the Apostles" would seem to identify it with the genre telling of the deeds and achievements of great men, but it was not the title given by the author. The anonymous author aligned Luke–Acts to the "narratives" (διήγησ
Martyr
A martyr is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, refusing to renounce, or refusing to advocate a belief or cause as demanded by an external party. This refusal to comply with the presented demands results in the punishment or execution of the martyr by the oppressor. Applied only to those who suffered for their religious beliefs, the term has come to be used in connection with people killed for a political cause. Most martyrs are considered holy or are respected by their followers, becoming symbols of exceptional leadership and heroism in the face of difficult circumstances. Martyrs play significant roles in religions. Martyrs have had notable effects in secular life, including such figures as Socrates, among other political and cultural examples. In its original meaning, the word martyr, meaning witness, was used in the secular sphere as well as in the New Testament of the Bible; the process of bearing witness was not intended to lead to the death of the witness, although it is known from ancient writers and from the New Testament that witnesses died for their testimonies.
During the early Christian centuries, the term acquired the extended meaning of believers who are called to witness for their religious belief, on account of this witness, endures suffering or death. The term, in this sense, entered the English language as a loanword; the death of a martyr or the value attributed. The early Christians who first began to use the term martyr in its new sense saw Jesus as the first and greatest martyr, on account of his crucifixion; the early Christians appear to have seen Jesus as the archetypal martyr. The word martyr is used in English to describe a wide variety of people. However, the following table presents a general outline of common features present in stereotypical martyrdoms. In the Bahá'í Faith, martyrs are those who sacrifice their lives serving humanity in the name of God. However, Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, discouraged the literal meaning of sacrificing one's life. Instead, he explained. Martyrdom was extensively promoted by the Kuomintang party in modern China.
Revolutionaries who died fighting against the Qing dynasty in the Xinhai Revolution and throughout the Republic of China period, furthering the cause of the revolution, were recognized as martyrs. In Christianity, a martyr, in accordance with the meaning of the original Greek martys in the New Testament, is one who brings a testimony written or verbal. In particular, the testimony is that of the Christian Gospel, or more the Word of God. A Christian witness is a biblical witness. However, over time many Christian testimonies were rejected, the witnesses put to death, the word martyr developed its present sense. Where death ensues, the witnesses follow the example of Jesus in offering up their lives for truth; the concept of Jesus as a martyr has received greater attention. Analyses of the Gospel passion narratives have led many scholars to conclude that they are martyrdom accounts in terms of genre and style. Several scholars have concluded that Paul the Apostle understood Jesus' death as a martyrdom.
In light of such conclusions, some have argued that the Christians of the first few centuries would have interpreted the crucifixion of Jesus as a martyrdom. In the context of church history, from the time of the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire, it developed that a martyr was one, killed for maintaining a religious belief, knowing that this will certainly result in imminent death; this definition of martyr is not restricted to the Christian faith. Though Christianity recognizes certain Old Testament Jewish figures, like Abel and the Maccabees, as holy, the New Testament mentions the imprisonment and beheading of John the Baptist, Jesus's possible cousin and his prophet and forerunner, the first Christian witness, after the establishment of the Christian faith, to be killed for his testimony was Saint Stephen, those who suffer martyrdom are said to have been "crowned." From the time of Constantine, Christianity was decriminalized, under Theodosius I, became the state religion, which diminished persecution.
As some wondered how they could most follow Christ there was a development of desert spirituality, desert monks, self-mortification, following Christ by separation from the world. This was a kind of white martyrdom, dying to oneself every day, as opposed to a red martyrdom, the giving of one's life in a violent death. In Christianity, death in sectarian persecution can be viewed as martyrdom. For example, there were martyrs recognised on both sides of the schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England after 1534, with two hundred and eighty Christians martyred for their faith by public burning between 1553 and 1558 by the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I in England leading to the reversion to the Church of England under Queen Elizabeth I in 1559 and three hundred Roman Catholics martyred by the Church authorities in England over the following hundred and fifty years in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. More modern day accounts of martyrdom for Christ exist, depicted in books such as Jesus Freaks though the numbers are disputed.
There are claims that the numbers of Christians killed for their faith annually are exaggerated. Despite the promotion of ahimsa within Sanatana Dharma
Armenia
Armenia the Republic of Armenia, is a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located in Western Asia on the Armenian Highlands, it is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan to the east, Iran and Azerbaijan's exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Armenia is a multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. Urartu was established in 860 BC and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia; the Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great in the 1st century BC and became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. The official date of state adoption of Christianity is 301; the ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century. Under the Bagratuni dynasty, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was restored in the 9th century. Declining due to the wars against the Byzantines, the kingdom fell in 1045 and Armenia was soon after invaded by the Seljuk Turks.
An Armenian principality and a kingdom Cilician Armenia was located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the 11th and 14th centuries. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the traditional Armenian homeland composed of Eastern Armenia and Western Armenia came under the rule of the Ottoman and Iranian empires ruled by either of the two over the centuries. By the 19th century, Eastern Armenia had been conquered by the Russian Empire, while most of the western parts of the traditional Armenian homeland remained under Ottoman rule. During World War I, Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian Genocide. In 1918, following the Russian Revolution, all non-Russian countries declared their independence after the Russian Empire ceased to exist, leading to the establishment of the First Republic of Armenia. By 1920, the state was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, in 1922 became a founding member of the Soviet Union.
In 1936, the Transcaucasian state was dissolved, transforming its constituent states, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, into full Union republics. The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Armenia recognises the Armenian Apostolic Church, the world's oldest national church, as the country's primary religious establishment; the unique Armenian alphabet was invented by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD. Armenia is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Council of Europe and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Armenia supports the de facto independent Artsakh, proclaimed in 1991; the original native Armenian name for the country was Հայք, however it is rarely used. The contemporary name Հայաստան became popular in the Middle Ages by addition of the Persian suffix -stan.. However the origins of the name Hayastan trace back to much earlier dates and were first attested in circa 5th century in the works of Agathangelos, Faustus of Byzantium, Ghazar Parpetsi and Sebeos.
The name has traditionally been derived from Hayk, the legendary patriarch of the Armenians and a great-great-grandson of Noah, according to the 5th-century AD author Moses of Chorene, defeated the Babylonian king Bel in 2492 BC and established his nation in the Ararat region. The further origin of the name is uncertain, it is further postulated that the name Hay comes from one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states—the Ḫayaša-Azzi. The exonym Armenia is attested in the Old Persian Behistun Inscription as Armina; the Ancient Greek terms Ἀρμενία and Ἀρμένιοι are first mentioned by Hecataeus of Miletus. Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BC, he relates that the people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. According to the histories of both Moses of Chorene and Michael Chamchian, Armenia derives from the name of Aram, a lineal descendant of Hayk.
The Table of Nations lists Aram as the son of Shem, to whom the Book of Jubilees attests, "And for Aram there came forth the fourth portion, all the land of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates to the north of the Chaldees to the border of the mountains of Asshur and the land of'Arara." Jubilees 8:21 apportions the Mountains of Ararat to Shem, which Jubilees 9:5 expounds to be apportioned to Aram. The historian Flavius Josephus states in his Antiquities of the Jews, "Aram had the Aramites, which the Greeks called Syrians. Of the four sons of Aram, Uz founded Trachonitis and Damascus: this country lies between Palestine and Celesyria. Ul founded Armenia. Armenia lies in the highlands surrounding the mountains of Ararat. There is evidence of an early civilisation in Armenia in the Bronze Age and earlier, dating to about 4000 BC. Archaeological surveys in 2010 and 2011 at the Areni-1 cave complex have resulted in the discovery of the world's earliest known leather shoe and wine-producing facility.
According to the story of Hayk, the legendary founder of Armenia, around 2107 BC Hayk fought against Belus, the Babylonian God of War, at Çavuştepe along the Engil river to establish the first Armenian state. This event coinc
Bible
The Bible is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures. Varying parts of the Bible are considered to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans by Christians, Jews and Rastafarians. What is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups; the Hebrew Bible overlaps with the Christian Old Testament. The Christian New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. Among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about what should be included in the canon about the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect. Attitudes towards the Bible differ among Christian groups. Roman Catholics, high church Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox Christians stress the harmony and importance of the Bible and sacred tradition, while Protestant churches, including Evangelical Anglicans, focus on the idea of sola scriptura, or scripture alone.
This concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only infallible source of Christian teaching. The Bible has been a massive influence on literature and history in the Western World, where the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed using movable type. According to the March 2007 edition of Time, the Bible "has done more to shape literature, history and culture than any book written, its influence on world history is unparalleled, shows no signs of abating." With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, it is considered to be the most influential and best-selling book of all time. As of the 2000s, it sells 100 million copies annually; the English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the same word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin and from Koinē Greek: τὰ βιβλία, translit. Ta biblia "the books". Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra "holy book", while biblia in Greek and Late Latin is neuter plural, it came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun in medieval Latin, so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe.
Latin biblia sacra "holy books" translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια tà biblía tà ágia, "the holy books". The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of "paper" or "scroll" and came to be used as the ordinary word for "book", it is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, "Egyptian papyrus" so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece. The Greek ta biblia was "an expression. Christian use of the term can be traced to c. 223 CE. The biblical scholar F. F. Bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. By the 2nd century BCE, Jewish groups began calling the books of the Bible the "scriptures" and they referred to them as "holy", or in Hebrew כִּתְבֵי הַקֹּדֶשׁ, Christians now call the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible "The Holy Bible" or "the Holy Scriptures"; the Bible was divided into chapters in the 13th century by Stephen Langton and it was divided into verses in the 16th century by French printer Robert Estienne and is now cited by book and verse.
The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in earlier oral traditions. The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, it is known as the Codex Vaticanus; the oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin Bible is the Codex Amiatinus. Professor John K. Riches, Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University of Glasgow, says that "the biblical texts themselves are the result of a creative dialogue between ancient traditions and different communities through the ages", "the biblical texts were produced over a period in which the living conditions of the writers – political, cultural and ecological – varied enormously". Timothy H. Lim, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh, says that the Old Testament is "a collection of authoritative texts of divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing."
He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it written by God and passed to mankind. Parallel to the solidification of the Hebrew canon, only the Torah first and the Tanakh began to be translated into Greek and expanded, now referred to as the Septuagint or the Greek Old Testament. In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from oral traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that: Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, but the results have not been too encouraging; the period of transmission is short: less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Mark's Gospel. This means that there was little time for oral trad
Devil in Christianity
In mainstream Christianity, the devil is a fallen angel who rebelled against God. Satan was sent to Earth; the devil is identified as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, whose persuasions led to the two corresponding Christian doctrines: the Original Sin and its cure, the Redemption of Jesus Christ. He is identified as the accuser of Job, the tempter of the Gospels and the dragon in the Book of Revelation. In Christianity, the title Satan, "the adversary", is a title of various entities, both divine and human, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible. "Satan" became the name of the personification of evil. Christian tradition and theology changed "Satan" from an accuser appointed by God to test men's faith to God's godlike fallen opponent: "the devil", "Shaitan" in Arabic. Traditionally, Christians have understood the devil to be the author of lies and promoter of evil. However, the devil can go no further than the word of Christ the Logos allows, resulting in the problem of evil. Liberal Christianity views the devil metaphorically.
This is true of some Conservative Christian groups too, such as the Christadelphians and the Church of the Blessed Hope. Much of the popular lore of the devil is not biblical. In the view of many Christians, the devil's first appearance in the Old Testament is as the serpent in the Garden of Eden; the serpent tempts Adam and Eve into eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which God had forbidden them to eat, thus causing their expulsion from the Garden and indirectly causing sin to enter the world. In God's rebuke to the serpent, he tells it "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. Christian scriptures are interpreted to identify the serpent with the devil; the deuterocanonical Book of Wisdom says, "But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world and they who are in his possession experience it." Satan is implicitly identified, in the New Testament, with the serpent in Eden, in Revelation 12:9: "This great dragon — the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world — was thrown down to the earth with all his angels."
Christian teaching about the Satan, to whom God proposes his servant Job is that he appears in the heavenly court to challenge Job, with God's permission. This is one of two Old Testament passages, along with Zechariah 3, where Hebrew ha-Satan becomes Greek ho diabolos in the Greek Septuagint used by the early Christian church.{{end|Originally, only the epithet of "the satan" was used to denote the character in the Hebrew deity's court that became known as "the devil". The article was lost and this title became a proper name: Satan. There is no unambiguous reference to the devil in the Prophets, or the Writings. Christian teaching about the involvement of Satan in David's census varies, just as the pre-exilic account of 2 Samuel and the account of 1 Chronicles present differing perspectives: 2 Samuel 24:1 And the anger of the LORD was again kindled against Israel, stirred up David against them, saying: Go, number Israel and Judah. 1 Chronicles 21:1 However, Satan rose up against Israel, moved David to number Israel.
Zechariah's vision of deceased Joshua the High Priest depicts a dispute in the heavenly throne room between Satan and the Angel of the Lord. Goulder views the vision as related to opposition from Sanballat the Horonite. Since the time of Origen and Jerome, some Christian concepts of the devil have included the Morning Star in Isaiah 14:12, translated Lucifer in the Latin Vulgate, transferred directly from Latin into the King James Version as a name "Lucifer" When the Bible was translated into Latin, the name Lucifer appeared as a translation of "Morning Star", or the planet Venus, in Isaiah 14:12. Isaiah 14:1-23 is a passage concerned with the plight of Babylon, its king is referred, in sarcastic and hyperbolic language to as "morning star, son of the dawn"; this is because the Babylonian king was considered to be of godly status and of symbolic divine parentage. While this information is available to scholars today via translated Babylonian cuneiform text taken from clay tablets, it was not as available at the time of the Latin translation of the Bible.
At some point the reference to "Lucifer" was interpreted as a reference to the moment Satan was thrown from Heaven. And despite the clarity of the chapter as a whole, the 12th verse continues to be put forth as proof that Lucifer was the name of Satan before the fall, thus Lucifer has remained so, owing to popular tradition. The Hebrew Bible word for the morning star, translated to "Lucifer" in English, is הילל, meaning "morning star". For unknown reasons, Christian demonologists appeared to designate "Satan", "Lucifer", "Beelzebub" as different entities, each with a different rank in the demonic hierarchy. One hypothesis is that this might have been an attempt to establish a demonic trinity with the same person, akin to the Christian Trinity of Father and the Holy Spirit, but most demonologists do not carry this v
Historical Jesus
The term historical Jesus refers to attempts to reconstruct the life and teachings of Jesus by critical historical methods, in contrast to Christological definitions and other Christian accounts of Jesus. It considers the historical and cultural context in which Jesus lived. All scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed. Reconstructions of the historical Jesus are based on the Pauline epistles and the Gospels, while several non-Biblical sources bear witness to the historical existence of Jesus. Since the 18th century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and developing new and different research criteria. Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. Historical Jesus scholars contend that he was a Galilean Jew living in a time of messianic and apocalyptic expectations.
Some scholars credit the apocalyptic declarations of the gospels to him, while others portray his "Kingdom of God" as a moral one, not apocalyptic in nature. The portraits of Jesus that have been constructed in these processes have differed from each other, from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts; these portraits include that of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, charismatic healer, Cynic philosopher, Jewish messiah and prophet of social change, but there is little scholarly agreement on a single portrait, or the methods needed to construct it. There are, overlapping attributes among the various portraits, scholars who differ on some attributes may agree on others. Most scholars of antiquity agree. Historian Michael Grant asserts that if conventional standards of historical textual criticism are applied to the New Testament, "we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned." There is no indication that writers in antiquity who opposed Christianity questioned the existence of Jesus.
There is no physical or archeological evidence for Jesus, all the sources we have are documentary. The sources for the historical Jesus are Christian writings, such as the gospels and the purported letters of the apostles. All extant sources that mention Jesus were written after his death; the New Testament represents sources that have become canonical for Christianity, there are many apocryphal texts that are examples of the wide variety of writings in the first centuries AD that are related to Jesus. The authenticity and reliability of these sources has been questioned by many scholars, few events mentioned in the gospels are universally accepted; the Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources of historical information about Jesus and of the religious movement he founded. These religious gospels–the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke–recount the life, ministry and resurrection of a Jew named Jesus who spoke Aramaic and wore tzitzit. There are different hypotheses regarding the origin of the texts because the gospels of the New Testament were written in Greek for Greek-speaking communities, were translated into Syriac and Coptic.
The fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, differs from the Synoptic Gospels. Historians study the historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles when studying the reliability of the gospels, as the Book of Acts was written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke; the seven Pauline epistles considered by scholarly consensus to be genuine are dated to between AD 50 and 60 and are the earliest surviving Christian texts that may include information about Jesus. Although Paul the Apostle provides little biographical information about Jesus and states that he never knew Jesus he does make it clear that he considers Jesus to have been a real person and a Jew. Moreover, he claims to have met with the brother of Jesus. In addition to biblical sources, there are a number of mentions of Jesus in non-Christian sources that have been used in the historical analyses of the existence of Jesus. Biblical scholar Frederick Fyvie Bruce says the earliest mention of Jesus outside the New Testament occurs around 55 CE from a historian named Thallos.
Thallos' history, like the vast majority of ancient literature, has been lost but not before it was quoted by Sextus Julius Africanus, a Christian writer, in his History of the World. This book was lost, but not before one of its citations of Thallos was taken up by the Byzantine historian Georgius Syncellus in his Chronicle. There is no means by which certainty can be established concerning this or any of the other lost references, partial references, questionable references that mention some aspect of Jesus' life or death, but in evaluating evidence, it is appropriate to note they exist. There are two passages in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, one from the Roman historian Tacitus, that are considered good evidence. Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus Christ in Books 18 and 20; the general scholarly view is that while the longer passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, is most not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it consisted of an authentic nucleus, subject to Christian interpolation.
Of the other mentio
