The Encyclopedia of World Religions

240 S Jewish festivals

the metaphor of begetting—fathering a child—to the idea of creation; it declared that God the Son was “begotten not made, of one Being with the Father.” Roughly 125 years later, at the Council of Chalcedon, the Christian church settled upon a common set of formulas to express who Jesus was. These formulas emphasized that “the one and only Son [of God], our Lord Jesus Christ” was actually, fully, and perfectly divine and human at the same time, two “natures” perfectly united in one “person.” Later Christians developed many different images of Jesus, for example, Jesus as the ruler of the universe, Jesus as a sacrifice and ransom, and Jesus as the model of how to live a perfect life. Throughout all of these variations, the teachings of Chalcedon have continued to define Christian orthodoxy. In the last 200 years, however, some thinkers have seen a great gulf between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of FAITH .” Christians influenced by this manner of thinking have often preferred to talk about Jesus not as God but as a great moral teacher and example. Further reading: Marcus Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1994); John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994); Howard Clark Kee, What Can We Know about Jesus? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). Jewish festivals R ITUALS that are celebrated once a year in J UDAISM . The most important Jew ish festivals are the Days of Awe and the PILGRIM AGE festivals. The Days of Awe, more commonly called High Holy Days, are Rosh ha-Shanah (“Head of the Year,” New Year’s) and Yom Kippur (D AY OF A TONEMENT ). The pilgrimage festivals are Pesach (P ASSOVER ), Shavuot (Weeks or Pentecost), and Sukkot (Huts or Booths). The pilgrimage festivals are often simply called “the festivals.” However, they are also called pilgrimage festivals because in

At the same time, Jesus is said to have pro claimed that the kingdom of God was at hand. He connected this with the return of a figure known as the Son of Man. He urged his followers to watch for the coming of the kingdom, for it would come as a thief in the night. He is also said to have given his followers signs that would indicate the coming of the day of the Lord, beginning with the destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21). Finally, several sayings found in the gospel of John pertain directly to Jesus’ own identity. In these passages Jesus connects himself very closely with God, whom he calls “Father,” for example, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). He also characterizes his relationship with his follow ers in metaphors: “I am the bread of life”; “I am the light of the world”; “I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 6.35; 8.12; 15.5). One of the best loved of these passages reads: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10.11). Some scholars ques tion whether the words about the coming day of the Lord and the teachings in John actually come from Jesus. SIGNIFICANCE The earliest Christians became convinced that Jesus was God’s anointed one—the Messiah or the Christ—prophesied in the texts of the Hebrew Bible. They also identified him with the preexistent principle—the Logos or Word—through which God had created the world (e.g., John 1.1–14; Colos sians 1.16–17). Within the first few centuries of Christianity, thinkers developed the idea that God is a TRINITY , one God in three persons. They did so partly on the basis of baptism “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” On this view Jesus was God incarnate, that is, God who has become a human being ( see INCARNATION ). The Christian church began to establish an authoritative teaching about who Jesus was at the Council of Nicaea (325 C . E .). The council condemned the ideas of a teacher named Arius, who taught that the Son of God was the first being whom God created. The council preferred