The Life of Christ - Literature review Example

The Life of Christ Christ was born in a little plain in a deserted chapel known as “the angel to the shepherds” which is one mile from Bethlehem and this was built over the traditional site of the field described as attractive as any paradise to Christian ears (Farrar 1). There were shepherds keeping watch over their flock at night and the Lord stood upon them and gave them the great joy that a savoir will be born in the city of David. The link of lords nativity was described as that one of humble character and his birth place was the poor and under great struggle. In the verse of evangelist we are not told that the angelic songs were heard by any other group except the shepherd that was grazing that night. The saviors’ ancestress, Ruth was in the same field where the same shepherds were guarding their flock from wild animals, she was sick at heart among the foreign corn (Farrar 1). David, the youngest son of a large family had followed the sheep and suddenly hears of the great news about the Christ Jesus being born amongst the irrelevance of a world lifeless of its liberation there was angel’s assembly of heavenly host praising God and saying Glory to God and there be peace on earth among men of good will. It might have been expected that Christian goodness could protect the rude grotto of shepherds in the minds of the church but instead the chapel of the herald angel is a “mere rude tomb” (Farrar 2). The poverty of chapel matches well with the humble toil of those whose happy vision is intended to remember. In the temple, only four of our lords beginning are narrated by gospel, the circumcision, and the presentation in the temple, the visit of magicians and the flight into the Egypt. Fist two occurs in St. Mathew and no single particular can be pointed out in which the two narratives are necessary contradictory. Its only since in the dawn of Christian children are surrounded with romance. The exact order of the eighth day after the birth of (Luke i.59; 21) the purification was thirty-three days after the circumcision (Lev xii 4) The narrative of the visit of magician recorded in the second chapter of St. Mathew is of the deepest interest in the history of Christianity. The facts of the gospel are brought together with Jewish believes. This furnishes us with the new confirmation of our faith. After the wise had offered their gifts they would naturally have returned to Herod but being warned they returned to their own land another way. We don’t find further traces of their existence but their visit led to very memorable events (Farrar 5). Physical geographical of Palestine is perhaps more distinctly marked than that of any other country in the world the country character from north to south may be represented by four parallel bands, the Sea-board, the Hill country, the Jordan valley, and the Trans-Jordanian range. The country hill, which thus occupies the space between the low maritime plain and the deep Jordan valley, falls into two great masses, the continuity of the low mountain-range being broken by the plain of Jezreel (Farrar 6). Even as there is one hemisphere of the lunar surface on which, in its entirety, no human eye has ever gazed, while at the same time the moons freedoms enable us the estimation of its general character and appearance. This is therefore is one large portion of our the Lords life of which there is no full record; yet such suggestions are, as it were, given to us of its outer edge, and from this, we are able to understand the nature of the whole. Again, when the moon is in arched, a few bright points are visible through the telescope upon its illuminated part; those bright points are mountain peaks, so lofty that they catch the sunlight. One such point of glory and majesty is revealed to us in the otherwise unknown region of Christs youthful years, and it is sufficient to provide us with a real vision into that entire portion of His life. In modern language we should call it a story of the Saviors confirmation (Farrar 7). The age of twelve years was a serious age for a Jewish boy. It was the age at which, according to Jewish legend, Moses had left the house of Pharaohs daughter; and Samuel had heard the Voice which summoned him to the prophetic office; and Solomon had given the judgment which first revealed his possession of wisdom; and Josiah had first dreamed of his great reform. The first twelve years of His human life have only this single story, of the next eighteen years of His life we possess no record whatsoever save. That word occurs in (Mark vi. 3) we may be thankful that the word remains, for it is full of meaning, and has exercised a very polite and blessed influence over the fortunes of mankind. It has tended to calm and bless the estate of poverty; to enable the duty of labor; to elevate the entire conception of manhood, as of a Condition which in itself alone, and apart from every adventitious circumstance, has its own grandeur and dignity in the sight of God. It shows, for instance, that not only during the three years of His ministry, but throughout the whole life, our Lord was poor (Farrar 8). In the cities the carpenters would be Greeks, and skilled workmen; the carpenter of a provincial village and, if tradition be true, Joseph was not very skillful only had held a very humble position and secured a very moderate competence. In all ages, there has been an exaggerated desire for wealth; an exaggerated admiration for those who possess it; an exaggerated belief of its influence in producing or increasing the happiness of life; and from these errors flood of cares and jealousies and meanness have overcome the life of man. Therefore Jesus chose voluntarily, and almost always remediable, but that commonest lot of honest poverty, which, though necessitates self-denial, can provide with ease for all the necessaries of a simple life (Farrar 11). The dynasty that had taken the throne of David might indulge in the gold vices of a corrupt Hellenism, and displays the gorgeous gluttonies of a decaying civilization; but He who came to be the Friend and the Savior, no less than the King of All, sanctioned the purer, better, simpler traditions and customs of His nation, and chose the condition in which the vast majority of mankind have ever, and must ever live. Again, there has ever been, in the unenlightened mind, a love of idleness; a tendency to regard it as a stamp of nobility. AT the moment when Christ died, nothing could have seemed more “abjectly weak, more pitifully hopeless, more absolutely doomed to scorn, and extinction, and despair”, than the Church which He had started (Farrar 165). It numbered but a handful of weak followers, of which the boldest had denied his Lord with blasphemy; and the most devoted had forsaken Him and fled. They were poor, they were ignorant, and they were hopeless. They could not claim a single synagogue or a single sword. If they spoke their own language, it betrayed them by its mongrel language; if they spoke present Greek, it was loathed as a depressed patois. So feeble were they and insignificant, that it would have looked like foolish partiality to prophesy for them the limited existence of a Galilean sect. How was it that these dull and ignorant men, with their cross of wood, triumphed over the deadly fascinations of sensual mythologies, conquered kings and their armies, and overcame the world? What was it that thus caused strength to be made perfect out of abject weakness? (Farrar 165) There is one, and one only possible answer—the resurrection from the dead. All this vast revolution was due to the power of Christs resurrection. "If we measure what seemed to be the hopeless ignominy of the catastrophe by which His work was ended, and the Divine prerogatives which are claimed for Him, not in spite of, but in consequence of that suffering and shame, we shall feel the utter hopelessness of reconciling the fact, and that triumphant deduction from it, without some intervening fact as certain as Christs passion, and glorious enough to transfigure its sorrow" (Farrar) The sun was now on the edge of the horizon, and the Sabbath day was near. And "that Sabbath day was a high day," a Sabbath of peculiar splendor and solemnity, because it was at once a Sabbath and a Passover (John xix. 31). The Jews had taken every precaution to prevent the ceremonial pollution of a day so sacred, and were anxious that immediately after the death of the victims had been secured, their bodies should be taken from the cross. About the sepulture they did not trouble themselves, leaving it to the chance good offices of friends and relatives to huddle the male factors into their nameless graves. The dead body of Jesus was left hanging till the last, because a person who could not easily be slighted had gone to obtain leave from Pilate to dispose of it as he wished. This was Joseph of Arimathæa, a rich man, of high character and blameless life, and a distinguished member of the Sanhedrin. Although timidity of disposition, or weakness of faith, had hitherto prevented him from openly declaring his belief in Jesus, yet he had abstained from sharing in the vote of the Sanhedrin, or countenancing their crime. And now sorrow and indignation inspired him with courage. Since it was too late to declare his sympathy for Jesus as a living Prophet, he would at least give a sign of his devotion to Him as the martyred victim of a wicked conspiracy (Farrar 203). INTERPRETATION According to Farrar’s argument about Christian life, he out that if we truly want to follow Christ, it is imperative to learn of Him and this is the definitive book on Christ. Originally published in 1886, and declared by far the most able and worthy work of its kind ever written in English Farrars extensive study of the four gospels, his knowledge of Greek and familiarity of the holy land enable him to trace Christs life from His birth in Bethlehem to His resurrection and ascension. Farrar writings are both vivid and reverent. His style appeals to the scholar and yet is understood by the common man or a woman the preface is written by Frederic W. Farrar, himself, explaining his innermost promptings and desires that led him to this wonderful and fulfilling undertaking. It is easy to see Farrar is a believer in Christ and wishes to share his inspired insight with others. In his writings, he has the strong sense of ideas immediately after the events just recorded. St. John narrates another incident which took place two months subsequently, at the winter Feast of Dedication. In accordance with the main purpose of his Gospel, which was to narrate that work of the Christ in Judea, and especially in Jerusalem, which the Synopsis has omitted, he says nothing of an intermediate and final visit to Galilee, or of those last journeys to Jerusalem, respecting parts of which the other Evangelists supply us with so many details. Despite the fact that Jesus must have returned to Galilee is clear, not only from the other Evangelists, but also from the nature of the case and from certain incidental facts in the narrative of St. John himself. It is well known that the whole of one great section in St. Luke—from ix. 51 to xviii. 15—forms an episode in the Gospel narrative of which many incidents are narrated by this Evangelist alone, and in which the few identifications of time and place all point to one slow and solemn progress from Galilee to Jerusalem (ix. 51; xiii. 22; xvii. 11; p.3). Now after the Feast of Dedication our Lord retired into Peræa, until He was summoned thence by the death of Lazarus (John x. 40, 42; xi. 1-46); after the resurrection of Lazarus, He fled to Ephraim (xi. 54);and He did not leave his retirement at Ephraim until he went to Bethany, six days before His final Passover(xii. 1). This great journey, therefore, from Galilee to Jerusalem, so rich in occasions which called forth some of His most memorable utterances, must have been either a journey to the Feast of Tabernacles or to the Feast of Dedication. That it could not have been the former may be regarded as settled, not only on other grounds, but decisively because that was a rapid and a secret journey, this an eminently public and leisurely one. Almost every inquirer seems to differ to a greater or less degree as to the exact sequence and chronology of the events which follow. Without entering into minute and tedious disquisitions where absolute certainty is impossible, I will narrate this period of our Lords life in the order which, after repeated study of the Gospels, appears to me to be the most probable, and in the separate details of which I have found myself again and again confirmed by the conclusions of other independent inquirers. I will only premise my conviction, that the episode of St. Luke up to xviii. 30, mainly refers to a single journey, although unity of subject, or other causes, may have led the sacred writer to weave into his narrative some events or utterances which belong to an earlier or later epoch. 2. That the order of the facts narrated even by St. Luke alone is not, and does not in any way claim to be, strictly chronological; so that the place of any event in the narrative by no means necessarily indicates its true position in the order of time. This journey is identical with that which is partially recorded in Matt. xviii from Ephraim to Bethany and then to Jerusalem. Conclusion These interpretations are justified and I believe that they will commend themselves as at least probable to any who really study the data of the problem we naturally look to see if there are any incidents which can only be referred to this last residence of Jesus in Galilee after the Feast of Tabernacles. The sojourn must have been a very brief, and seems to have had no other object than that of preparing for the Mission of the Seventy, and inaugurating the final proclamation of Christs kingdom throughout all that part of the Holy Land which had as yet been least familiar with His word and works. His instructions to the Seventy involved His last farewell to Galilee, and the delivery of those instructions synchronized, in all probability, with His actual departure. However, there are two other incidents recorded in the 13th chapter, which probably belongs to the same brief sojourn namely, the news of a Galileans massacre, and the warning which He received of Herods designs against His life. The home of Jesus during these few last days would naturally be at Capernaum, His own city; and while He was there organizing a solemn departure to which there would be no return, there were some who came and announced to Him a recent instance of those numerous disturbances which marked the Procurators hip of Pontius Pilate. Of the particular event to which they alluded nothing further is known; and that a few turbulent zealots should have been cut down at Jerusalem by the Roman garrison was too Common place an event in these troublous times to excite more than a transient notice. There were probably hundreds of such outbreaks of which Josephus has preserved no record. Works Cited Farrar, Frederick. The Life of Christ. Michigan: E. P. Dutton, 1890. Read More