To first-century Jews the miracle of the loaves and fishes signalled that Jesus was like Moses. The reason is that in Jewish minds, Moses was a role model for the Messiah. The Jews were praying for a saviour to come and free them from foreign oppression. They believed he would be someone like Moses who had freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. Maybe Jesus was the leader they were waiting for? The crowd certainly thought so - after the miracle, the crowd try to crown Jesus king of the Jews there and then. Walking on water Devotional enthusiasm greeted the discovery by Pedro González de Mendoza in 1492 of what was acclaimed as the actual tablet, said to have been brought to Rome by Saint Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine. [18] [19] Western Christianity [ edit ] I think Jesus thought of himself very much as a healer - he saw healing as a key to his work and presumably this arose because he just found out he was able to do it. A lot of Jews in this period would have prayed for people for healing and Jesus must have done this and found that actually he was rather good at it and he had a real reputation for healing and that might have led him to Old Testament scriptures like Isaiah 35, that talks about healing in end days - maybe he thought that that was a sign that the end of days was on its way.

The Gospels contain records of over 35 miracles and of these the majority were healings of the lame, the deaf and the blind, exorcism of those possessed by demons. France, R. T. (2007). The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub. ISBN 978-0-8028-2501-8. OCLC 122701585.

Twenty or 30 years ago, there were not enough Jews in the field,” Brettler says. “But it’s become more natural over the past few decades that part of what you do while studying rabbinics, in addition to studying Hebrew and Aramaic rabbinic texts, is to study the New Testament.” In this section Mark Goodacre, Senior Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Birmingham, gives a brief biography of Jesus. Introduction They tend to go straight to the person's arrival on the public scene, often 20 or 30 years into their lives, and then look at the two or three big key things that they did or the big two or three key ideas. They'll also spend quite a lot of time concentrating on the actual death because the ancients believe that you couldn't sum up a person's life until you saw how they died. In their death, very often, they would die as they lived and then they would conclude with the events after the death - very often on dreams or visions about the person and what happened to their ideas afterwards. Senior, Donald (1985). The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. Vol.1. M. Glazier. ISBN 0-89453-460-2.

Breuer, Yochanan (2006). "Aramaic in Late Antiquity". In Katz, Steven T. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Judaism Vol. IV: The Late Roman-Rabinic Period. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521772488. But what the disciples didn't know was that they were about to receive help in a way they could never have imagined. Jesus stood up and rebuked the wind and sea. The disciples must have wondered who on earth Jesus was: this man who appeared able to control the elements. But just as with other miracles, what amazed them wasn't what Jesus did, it was what it revealed about his identity. They would have known the ancient Jewish prophecies which said very clearly, there was only one person who had the power to control the stormy seas - God. Palestine in Jesus’ day was part of the Roman Empire, which controlled its various territories in a number of ways. In the East (eastern Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt), territories were governed either by kings who were “friends and allies” of Rome (often called “client” kings or, more disparagingly, “puppet” kings) or by governors supported by a Roman army. When Jesus was born, all of Jewish Palestine—as well as some of the neighbouring Gentile areas—was ruled by Rome’s able “friend and ally” Herod the Great. For Rome, Palestine was important not in itself but because it lay between Syria and Egypt, two of Rome’s most valuable possessions. Rome had legions in both countries but not in Palestine. Roman imperial policy required that Palestine be loyal and peaceful so that it did not undermine Rome’s larger interests. That end was achieved for a long time by permitting Herod to remain king of Judaea (37–4 bce) and allowing him a free hand in governing his kingdom, as long as the requirements of stability and loyalty were met. Since many modern Christian readers are unfamiliar with ancient Judaism’s ritual impurity system, they often fail to recognize that Jesus repeatedly removes the sources of ritual impurity from people he encounters. These sources of impurity seem to be connected with death or the loss of life. Brushes with death After Jerusalem’s Second Temple (shown here in a model) was destroyed, some Jesus followers’ concerns with impurity receded when no one could visit the Temple. ( Ariely/Wikimedia Commons), CC BY

In Kosher Jesus (2012), Shmuley Boteach argues that the authentic Jesus was a Torah-observant Jew and an active opponent of Rome. Like Montefiore, who saw Jesus as a proto-Liberal Jew, Boteach’s Jesus is a mirror of the author’s own version of Judaism: ­traditional and committed to the Torah. He portrays Jesus as “a Torah-observant teacher who instructed his followers to keep every letter of the Law, whose teachings quoted extensively from the Bible and rabbinical writings, who fought Roman paganism and persecution of the Jewish people, and was killed by Pontius Pilate for his rebellion against Rome, the Jews having had nothing whatsoever to do with his murder”. The initialism INRI ( Latin: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum) represents the Latin inscription (in John 19:19), which in English translates to "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews", and John 19:20 states that this was written in three languages— Hebrew, [a] Latin, and Greek—during the crucifixion of Jesus. De Bles, A. (1925). How to Distinguish the Saints in Art by Their Costumes, Symbols, and Attributes. New York: Art Culture Publications. ISBN 978-0-8103-4125-8. In Eastern Christianity, both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic particular churches sui iuris use the Greek letters ΙΝΒΙ, based on the Greek version of the inscription Ἰησοῦς ὁ Ναζωραῖος ὁ βασιλεύς τῶν Ἰουδαίων. Some representations change the title to "ΙΝΒΚ," ὁ βασιλεύς τοῦ κόσμου ( ho Basileùs toû kósmou, "The King of the World"), or to ὁ βασιλεύς τῆς Δόξης ( ho Basileùs tês Dóxēs, "The King of Glory"), [17] [20] not implying that this was really what was written but reflecting the tradition that icons depict the spiritual reality rather than the physical reality. There are a few references to Jesus in 1st-century Roman and Jewish sources. Documents indicate that within a few years of Jesus’ death, Romans were aware that someone named Chrestus (a slight misspelling of Christus) had been responsible for disturbances in the Jewish community in Rome ( Suetonius, The Life of the Deified Claudius 25.4). Twenty years later, according to Tacitus, Christians in Rome were prominent enough to be persecuted by Nero, and it was known that they were devoted to Christus, whom Pilate had executed ( Annals 15.44). This knowledge of Jesus, however, was dependent on familiarity with early Christianity and does not provide independent evidence about Jesus. Josephus wrote a paragraph about Jesus ( The Antiquities of the Jews 18.63ff.)—as he did about Theudas, the Egyptian, and other charismatic leaders ( History of the Jewish War 2.258–263; The Antiquities of the Jews 20.97–99, 167–172)—but it has been heavily revised by Christian scribes, and Josephus’s original remarks cannot be discerned.

Scholars have unanimously chosen the Synoptic Gospels’ version of Jesus’ teaching. The verdict on the miracles is the same, though less firmly held: in all probability Jesus was known as an exorcist, which resulted in the charge that he cast out demons by the prince of demons (Mark 3:22–27). The choice between the narrative outline of the Synoptics and that of John is less clear. Besides presenting a longer ministry than do the other Gospels, John also describes several trips to Jerusalem. Only one is mentioned in the Synoptics. Both outlines are plausible, but a ministry of more than two years leaves more questions unanswered than does one of a few months. It is generally accepted that Jesus and his disciples were itinerant, that they traveled around Galilee and its immediate environs and that Jesus taught and healed in various towns and villages as well as in the countryside and on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. But where did they spend their winters? Who supported them? None of the Gospels explains how they lived (though Luke 8:1–3 alludes to some female supporters), but the omission is even more glaring in John, where the longer ministry presumes the need for winter quarters, though none are mentioned. That and other considerations are not decisive, but the brief career of the Synoptic Gospels is slightly to be preferred. In isopsephy, the Greek term ( βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων) receives a value of 3343 whose digits seem to correspond to a suggested date for the crucifixion of Jesus, (33, April, 3rd day). Judaism, as the Jewish religion came to be known in the 1st century ce, was based on ancient Israelite religion, shorn of many of its Canaanite characteristics but with the addition of important features from Babylonia and Persia. The Jews differed from other people in the ancient world because they believed that there was only one God. Like other people, they worshipped their God with animal sacrifices offered at a temple, but, unlike others, they had only one temple, which was in Jerusalem. The sanctuary of the Jewish temple had two rooms, as did many of the other temples in the ancient world, but the second room of the Jewish temple was empty. There was no idol representing the God of Israel. The Jews also believed that they had been specially chosen by the one God of the universe to serve him and obey his laws. Although set apart from other people, they believed God called on them to be a “light to the Gentiles” and lead them to accept the God of Israel as the only God. In Western Christianity, most crucifixes and many depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus include a plaque or parchment placed above his head, called a titulus, or title, bearing only the Latin letters INRI, occasionally carved directly into the cross and usually just above the head of Jesus. Wegner, Paul D. (2004). The Journey From Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible. Baker Academic. ISBN 9780801027994.While by now almost everyone, Christian and non-Christian, is happy enough to refer to Jesus, the human, as a Jew, I want to go a step beyond that,” writes Boyarin. “I wish us to see that Christ too – the divine Messiah – is a Jew. Christology, or the early ideas about Christ, is also a Jewish discourse and not – until much later – an anti-Jewish discourse at all … Thus the basic underlying thoughts from which both the Trinity and the Incarnation grew are there in the very world into which Jesus was born and in which he was first written about in the gospels of Mark and John.” Mihálycsa, Erika (2017). " 'Weighing the point': A Few Points on the Writing of Finitude in Ulysses". Reading Joycean Temporalities. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-34251-4. One of the most dangerous New Testament passages occurs in the Gospel of Matthew’s Passion narrative, which depicts Jews at Jesus’s trial demanding his crucifixion and declaring, “ May his blood be on us and our children.” Many Christians through the ages have understood these verses to pronounce an eternal blood curse upon Jews as “ the Christ killers.” This imagery and wrongful accusation has been used to fuel dangerous myths that have served to bolster violence against Jews.

Even when he continues with his message of all encompassing love - "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you ... for if ye love them which love you, what rewards have ye?' - there is still moral and philosophic challenge in it, an appeal to men's wits as much as to their humanity, as though the goodness he would have us practise is a glowering sort of goodness, before which, as before "the Father which is in heaven [who] sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust", we quake in fear and only partial understanding. The continued reliance on the use of the term king by the Judeans to press charges against Jesus is a key element of the final decision to crucify him. [3] In John 19:12 Pilate seeks to release Jesus, but the Jews object, saying: "If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend: every one that maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar", bringing the power of Caesar to the forefront of the discussion. [3] In John 19:12, the Jews then cry out: "Crucify him! ... We have no king but Caesar." What does it mean that Jesus is the shepherd, what does it mean that Jesus is the light, what does it mean that Jesus is the bread of life? And you have to kind of puzzle over them. I don't think Jesus was interested in giving a great deal of information about himself. I mean, Jesus said that whoever saw him, saw the Father. But I don't think he was very interested in padding that out; his mission was more to redeem people, to love people into goodness, to save people from the distress and errors of their ways and he doesn't make a big issue about himself. I think he would also have seen himself as a prophet. There are real signs that he sees himself in continuity with Old Testament prophets and just as Old Testament prophets were persecuted and suffered, Jesus thought that was likely to be his end too. He saw himself as following a line of prophets that had suffered for what they believed and sometimes even suffered from the hands of their own people as well as from others.Boxall, Ian (2007). SCM studyguide to the books of the New Testament. London: SCM Press. ISBN 978-0-334-04047-7. OCLC 171110263. Modern Jewish scholarship of the New Testament is concerned with how Christ’s teachings are nurtured by Judaism and stem from it. According to one expert in the field, this can serve to further understanding between the two religions