Running head: ASSIGNMENT: JESUS OR MUHAMMAD PAPER 1

Assignment: Jesus or Muhammad Paper

Tiffany Nicole Cooper

University of Phoenix

HUM/130

July 22, 2010

Kristofer Atkinson
ASSIGNMENT: JESUS OR MUHAMMAD PAPER 2
 Assignment: Jesus or Muhammad Paper

To begin with, I decided to talk about the life and teachings of Christianity. I am going to

trace the life of Jesus Christ and I and going to show what an impact the death of Jesus Christ

had on his religion. I am also going to trace the growth and development of Christianity from the

time of its origin to the present. The last thing I will do is discuss how Jesus is worshipped and

respected in the world today.

The life of Jesus is traced directly to the religion of Christianity. It also has to do with the

death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. After that, his life was not really documented much until

after his death, it is hard to talk about the exactness of his birth. His life began on the day we call

“Christmas”. His mother, Mary, was said to have been a virgin, and his conception was of

miraculous conception. She was married to Joseph, a carpenter, from Bethlehem. No stories are

really told of Jesus until he turned 12. Then according to the gospel Luke, Jesus and his

parents traveled to Jerusalem for their yearly trip for the Passover. Somehow he and his parents

got accidentally separated, where he is said to have been found in the Temple talking about the

Torah with a rabbi. His parents found that he had an amazing understanding of the Torah and his

answers astounded them.

His life though-out his young manhood are not documented until he went to “John the

Baptist” to be baptized, around the age 30. After his baptism, he is said to have gone through

a forty-day fasting in the wilderness. The first people to have recognized Jesus as the Messiah

were people in John’s gospel. These people became to be known as his first disciples. First there

was Simon (called Peter), Andrew (Peter’s brother), James, and John (James’s brother).They had

to leave all their possessions and human contacts behind to follow him, and learn his teachings.
As he traveled around, teaching these disciples, he is said to have preformed many miraculous

acts such as turning water into wine, restoring the dead to life, healing the sick, and healing the

sick. Along the way, he is said to have ate with people of all class, and even welcomed women as

his disciples. Some his first disciples even had their wives as disciples of Jesus. He is also said to

have extended the Jewish laws. Along with his teachings, and radical living style, he preached of

the all forgiving God to those who would repent for their sins. His stories were presented as

parables. He believed that his sole purpose in life was to teach the world of good news of the

kingdom of God. He taught people how to rightfully pray.

As Jesus traveled through Galilee, he had many people gathering around him to be

healed. This brought the attention of Herod Antipas, who had already killed John the Baptist, and

he thought Jesus to be a ”suspicious character” that could bring an uprising against the Romans.

Jesus then moved out of Herod’s jurisdiction, and continued on with his teachings.

Because Jesus’ teachings did not go over so well with the people in power, he knew it

would be dangerous to travel to Jerusalem, but he did for the Passover. He entered the town

humbly, and felt that his end was near. He was sold out by one of his disciples, Judas, for the

amount of 30 silver pieces. With his arrest, his questioning leads to the assumption of

blasphemy by Joseph Caiaphas, and then sent to Pontius Pilate, the governor of Roman, for

sentencing. He found Jesus to be somewhat guilty, and preferred to let Jesus off with a flogging,

but the crowds demanded his death on the justification that he was a challenger of the earthly

king, Caesar. Pilate had to hand him over to his military guards for execution.

The impact that his death had on this religion was a great one. This could have been the

end for the whole religion of Christianity. His followers were so terrified that they ran and hid

thinking that death would also be their fate. But when some women who had been his followers
went to prepare his body, they found an empty tomb and were told by “angels” that he had been

resurrected. There were also numerous reports that Jesus had appeared to various disciples. He

had them touch his wounds and eat fish with him in order to prove to them of his resurrection. It

was the resurrection of Christ that turned the defeat into a victory. This made more and more

people put their complete faith into this new religion made official in 380 CE. Christianity then

seemed to organize and define itself.

From Christianity’s origin to the present, there have been many key historical events and

figures that have made it what it is today. For example; in 50-60 CE St. Paul organized the early

Christians. Between 70 and 95 CE the gospels were finally written down. A few hundred years

later, it is documented in 379-395 CE that Christianity became the state religion under the rule of

Emperor Theodosius. In 1054 CE, there was a split between Eastern and Western Orthodox

church. This is the first split off in Christianity, and there are a few more to come. Between

1095- and 1300 CE, there were the crusades. The crusades are a religious war that happened not

only in the 11th century, but also in the 12th and the 13th century as well. The second separation

for the church happened in 1534 when the Church of England separated from the Church of

Rome. Eleven years later (1545-1563), the Council of Trent, reformed the Roman Catholic. In

1703 the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley was born. He died in the year 1791, but

his life had produced another branch of the Christian religion. In 1945 the discovery of the Nag

Hammadi manuscripts were found. “This library found in Egypt, presented Jesus as a great

Gnostic teacher. Gnosticism means the mystical perception of knowledge,” according to Fisher,

2005. In 1948, the World Council of Churches was formed. By this time there were so many

different types of Christianity all around the world and with more popping up in America, this

council helped maintain the religions. They had been closed during the twentieth century by the
Soviet government. All church property was proclaimed to be property of the state and closed. In

the early 1920s, the revolution began, and many priests, nuns, and Christians were killed. In

1988, the Churches were re-opened in the Russian Federation. In 1989, the Soviet President,

Mikhail Gorbachev, proclaimed that the right of the Soviet faithful should be allowed to satisfy

their “spiritual” needs. This was the end of over seven decades of the suppression of religion.

The most recent thing that has happened with this religion was in 2002, when the

Boston’s Roman Catholic Bishop resigned due to the growing scandal of sexual abuse in the

church, by priest.

Today, Jesus is worshipped, and respected in many ways by all different types of people.

The Christian religion may have over 21,000 denominations of it, but they all believe in the

common factor; Jesus Christ, and the words he left behind with his disciples. Jesus Christ is

worshipped today as the bringer of the heavenly father’s (God’s) word. There are not places of

worship for only Jesus Christ, but there are many idols, figures, and pictures that people can have

in their home to help remind them of the day he is said to return to Earth and he will first take the

dead and the believers of God. This is all said in the final book in the bible; the book of

Revelations. Mary is also a greatly worshipped woman because of conceiving a miraculous boy

that she named Jesus, meaning “God saves”. There are however many places of worship for God

in every denomination of Christianity. They all try to live by the moral codes of the Ten

Commandments, and are waiting for the day that the Revelations foresaw as the day they all get

to go to heaven.

In conclusion, there are many things that have molded Christianity into the way it is

today. Starting over 2000 years ago with the miraculous conception, birth, life, death, and

resurrection of a man named Jesus Christ. He was killed, but he had already known he would die
early. He is said to have died for all man’s sins, and as long as a person repents and lives by the

certain ethics, they will be granted with open gates to the Kingdom of God, also known as the

Kingdom of Heaven.