Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

CHAPTER 2
Introduction
It began with Jesus — 'it' being Christianity. Whether he began it, or it looked
back to him as its beginning, are matters to be clarified. Either way, and whatever
qualifications might prove to be appropriate or necessary in the light of more detailed
analysis, the assertion can stand: it began with Jesus. An inquiry into
Christianity's beginnings, therefore, must inevitably start with this Jesus, who by
common consent flourished in the land of Israel, otherwise known as Palestine,
round about the year 30 of the common era (CE).
A historical figure of such immense significance as Jesus has always been
and will always be a subject of human curiosity and fascination. In earlier centuries
such interest in historical people and events of religious significance was
usually expressed primarily in pilgrimage, the ancient equivalent of tourism and
sight-seeing. The grand tour of the Holy Land by Queen Helena, mother of Emperor
Constantine in the fourth century to identify the sites of Jesus' ministry,
thenceforward gave focus to Christian interest in the 'where' of the events of that
ministry. The Crusades were motivated by concern to maintain pilgrim access to
the places made holy for Christians by what the Christian Gospels recorded as
having taken place there. And in an age of widespread illiteracy the details of Jesus'
life could be given visual concreteness by artistic reproductions of episodes
from the Gospels, as so finely illustrated in the artwork of Chartres Cathedral.
However, the last five hundred years of European history have witnessed a
(for the most part) increasing interest in the historical figure of Jesus, as we shall
soon see. An important and probably unavoidable consequence has been an increasing
tension between such historical interest and the traditional claims of
Christian doctrine regarding Jesus, classically expressed in the ecumenical
Christian creeds 1 and the artistic representations of Christ the Pantocrator (Al-
1. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, known familiarly as the Nicene creed from its
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