The Life of Jesus: The Stages of Jesus' Life

We have all told in catechism, Sunday school or during worship about the glorious passage of Jesus on earth . But what is it really? What were the major stages of Jesus' life on earth? And what are the key events that mark his passage from his adolescence to his crucifixion?

We have been interested in the life of Jesus and have conducted several documentary researches in order to bring you enough information. Here is what we can tell you in a few words:

From the birth of Jesus until his death, enough cities marked his passage as well as memorial events that Christian communities from different horizons and of different natures commemorate in a lasting way with the aim of immortalizing his coming among men.

Was the coming of Jesus predestined and what is the main reason for His coming? Did everything happen as planned?

In this article you will discover:

• The reasons for the coming of Christ;

• The different cities that Jesus visited;

• The different events that the Lord has instituted;

• The reason for their commemoration.

Before you continue reading, we would like to share with you all our articles in the name of Jesus Christ available on our site. Here is a list of all our articles:

• The story of the birth of Jesus Christ
• Several prayers to Jesus
• Study on the resurrection of Jesus Christ
• The Meaning of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
• The difference between God the Father and Jesus

Now let us explore the story of the Lord Jesus.

The Birth of Jesus and Epiphany

Matthew and Luke both place Jesus' birth in Bethlehem , Judea, "in the days of King Herod." While Matthew devotes a brief allusion to it. Luke expands on the narrative by motivating Joseph and Mary's journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem by a census called by Augustus while he was reigning over Quirinius. The mention of this "first census" by Quirinius presents a difficult problem to resolve: the only census (the "second"?) called by Quirinius that is known to us from other historical sources took place in 6 AD, when Herod the Great was already dead.

The exact date of Jesus' birth is not known. The traditional date of Christmas on December 25 is late, and even later the date of 1 BC, since it dates back to the monk Dionysius the Small (6th century). According to the majority of contemporary scholars, the birth must be placed in the last years of King Herod, around 7-6 BC.

After the birth of Jesus , the Gospel of Matthew alone recounts the so-called "Epiphany" (from the Greek epipháneia, "manifestation"). Some Magi (traditionally called "Magi" and believed to be three in number) came from the East to Jerusalem, having seen "his star" (traditionally called "comet star"), intending to bring the new king announced by the star the gold, frankincense and myrrh. Following the star, they found Jesus in Bethlehem and paid him homage.

King Herod learned of this and, fearing the usurpation of the throne, ordered the massacre of all children under two years old in Bethlehem (this was the so-called massacre of the innocents). But Joseph, warned in a dream by an angel, fled to Egypt with Jesus and Mary. After Herod's death, the Holy Family returned to the land of Israel and settled in Nazareth .

The uncertainty surrounding the birth of Jesus.

The day of his birth is not really known, and it is never mentioned in the Gospels. It is known that the Church adapted the ancient pagan festivals of rural culture to the time cycles, and welcomed the celebrations of the Roman gods, giving them a sacred motivation. It thus attributes to the winter solstice (December 20-25) the birth of Jesus , the Son of God , who brought "light" into the world. This date, close to the ancestral celebrations of winter, fell towards the last days of the year already in the time of the Persians in honor of the god Mithras.

The Romans celebrated festivals dedicated to the sun, or those of Saturnalia in honor of Sarturno, god of fertility and wine, whose designated day was December 25 to celebrate the birth of the unconquered sun, which was established in the fourth century by the emperor Constantine, son of a Christian mother, when he was victorious, by the miracle of the cross in the sky ("with this sign you will win"), in the battle against the Magencio.

December 25 is therefore a conventional date, established by the Church at the beginning of the 4th century to coincide with the pagan festivals of Mithras or the Sun. From the year 315, when Constantine declared Christianity official, the first Christian symbols began to appear on coins.

It was probably at this time that the transition and institutions of the feast of Christmas, on December 25, took place. The message of the cross in Constantine's famous vision, by which he legalized Christianity, signified the predominance of Christ over the Sun: Christ is the true and powerful God. The new sun.

Matthew and Luke's version of the birth of Jesus Christ.

So we see that the only two times in the entire New Testament where it appears that Jesus was born in Bethlehem are in the infancy accounts of Matthew and Luke. Nowhere else is Bethlehem mentioned as the birthplace of Jesus. Even St. Paul, in his diatribes with the readers of his letters trying to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah, does not use the Bethlehem as origin argument, and he would have done very well to say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

Ultimately, are Matthew and Luke's statements about Jesus' birth in Bethlehem historical or not? It is very likely that they are not, and that they are less a matter of history than of the religion that portrays Jesus as the Messiah.

Even these two evangelists, whose history also contradicts itself as we will see later, when they speak of his public life, call him " Jesus of Nazareth ", and the meaning of the origin in these villages is already known: in the Bible, when a city is mentioned after the name of a person, it means that it is his birthplace.

For Matthew, Jesus was born in Bethlehem because his parents lived there. According to Luke, Jesus was born in Bethlehem because his family was passing through that city to register for the census of the Emperor Tiberius. They also disagree about the length of time Jesus lived in Bethlehem . According to Matthew, almost two years (Matthew 2:16), until his family fled to Egypt. On the other hand, for Luke, his family moved to Nazareth when Jesus was a month and a half old (Luke 2:39).

While the evidence in the Gospels for Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus is very weak, the evidence against it is overwhelming. So much so that most scholars today maintain that Jesus' birthplace was not Bethlehem, but Nazareth. And that Matthew and Luke place his birth in Bethlehem because of Nazareth's bad reputation, and to fit in with the prophetic tradition as recorded in the Holy Scriptures.

Details of the birthplace of Christ.

For over 1900 years, Bethlehem has remained the place where Jesus was born. However, research in the last century has shown that because of the frequency with which he is referred to throughout the New Testament as " the Nazarene " (the one from Nazareth), Bethlehem has been discarded and the idea of ​​Nazareth prevails instead. The mention of Bethlehem, as we have seen, obeys an invention of the first two evangelists to clothe Jesus with one of the characteristics of importance and solvency of a Messiah, announced by Micah and whose accomplishment the Jews eagerly awaited in order to be freed from the invading peoples, from the Babylonians to the Romans.

His prophecy became famous, and by the time of Jesus, a large sector of Judaism expected the future Messiah to be born in the city of Bethlehem. And when that was not the case, they were disappointed. They are still waiting for this Messianic one to come.

This is one of the reasons why the apostles had so much trouble proclaiming the new religion. When the apostles went out to proclaim the teachings they had received, they had difficulties in many Jewish circles, because they said that Jesus was from Nazareth . And this is why some Christian communities decided to present the birth of Jesus as having taken place in Bethlehem.

To make a long story short, Jesus was born in Nazareth , and it was only later, in order to clothe him as the Messiah, according to Jewish prophetic tradition, that the story of his birth in Bethlehem was composed.

The Life of Christ Before Ministry

The Gospel of Luke omits the account of the Epiphany and the subsequent flight into Egypt. After briefly mentioning the circumcision of Jesus, it reports two episodes:

• the presentation of Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem , during which the newborn was venerated as Messiah by Simeon and the prophetess Anna;

• the finding of Jesus in the temple, an episode in which the twelve-year-old Jesus spent time in the temple in Jerusalem with the doctors of the law, unbeknownst to his parents, who found him after three days.

The Gospels do not explicitly recount the life of Jesus before his public ministry, nor do other non-Christian historical sources. Some information can, however, be deduced from a few sporadic allusions contained in the Gospel accounts.

The profession of Jesus.

As for the profession , in Nazareth, Jesus was known as "the carpenter's son" Joseph is "carpenter" himself. The original Greek term is tekton or tecnico, largely polysemic, and can designate carpenters, joiners, woodworkers as well as masons or stonemasons. This craft activity probably guaranteed him a relative wealth and economic autonomy, which did not make him belong to the poor strata of his society. We do not know the size of his craft business, that is, whether it was a small rural workshop dedicated to plows and harnesses, or rather a medium or large construction company with apprentices, both male and female, active in construction work - perhaps even in neighboring towns such as Zippori, which was rebuilt and enlarged in those years by Herod Antipa.

As for the family, the total silence about Joseph during Jesus ' ministry reasonably suggests that he was already dead. His mother Mary, on the other hand, appears on numerous occasions during Jesus ' public preaching, in addition to episodes from his childhood. In the New Testament, there are then several references (James, Joseph, Simon and Judas) as his brothers, who are however never called children of Joseph or Mary. Given the sporadic allusions and the polysemy of the term in Semitic languages ​​(the texts of the New Testament are written in a Greek characterized by a recurrent Semitism), it is not possible to trace with certainty the real kinship of these with Jesus, and various interpretations have been proposed:

The Catholic tradition, as well as the early Protestant reformers, notably Luther and Calvin, interpret them as cousins; the Orthodox tradition interprets them as half-brothers, children of Joseph's previous marriage. Most contemporary Protestant churches interpret them as brothers in the literal sense, denying the dogma of Mary's virginity supported by Catholics and Orthodox.

The Marital Life of Jesus.

As for a possible marriage of Jesus, the canonical gospels and other works of the New Testament make no mention of a wife for Jesus or his children, and on the basis of this silence, Christian tradition has therefore identified him as a celibate. In support of his celibacy, Jesus' words about "the eunuch for the kingdom" are usually cited.

Some scholars have pointed out, however, that Jesus' choice of celibacy would be incompatible with the Jewish environment of the time, where marriage and fertility were exalted. By Jesus' time, however, the Essenes, concentrated at Qumran but spread throughout Israelite society, practiced ascetic celibacy.

In chapters 32 and 55 of the apocryphal Gnostic Gospel of Philip, dating from the second half of the second century at the earliest, the love between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is mentioned. Both are described as the incarnation of divine aeons (Soter and Sofia), while from their union the angels are said to have derived.

The meaning of the steps is interpreted both as a later elaboration due to Gnostic theology, given also the genesis of the angels, and as a real historical testimony, so much so that some scholars hypothesize in all respects that there was a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene , an idea that has inspired several recent publications and novels.

Cultural and religious training.

As for culture, Jesus, like all Jews in the Land of Israel at the time, was fluent in Aramaic, a Semitic language that is found in some of the original sayings recorded in the Gospels. According to the Gospels, it does not appear that he studied in any rabbinical school, although it is not excluded that he possessed the basic culture that could be taught in a Torah reading school in a synagogue.

He was certainly literate (and able to write) in Hebrew, a language no longer widely spoken but used for worship and prayer, and his preaching reveals a deep knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is not known whether he knew Latin, the language of the Roman occupiers, or Greek, in its popular version (koine) spoken in the Middle East.

In modern times some scholars have argued that Jesus was an Essene , but all his preaching and acts against formalism and the rules of formal purity are in total contrast to what is known of the Essenes.

The Life of the Lord: The Beginning of the Ministry

Capernaum, remains of the synagogue, probably built on the site of the previous synagogue, where Jesus preached . According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus began his public preaching ministry when he was "about thirty years old." The historical dating of the beginning of his activity (as well as its duration) is not precisely known to us. Luke places the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist, a relative of Jesus, in the fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius.

The beginning of Jesus' ministry is presented as immediately following that of the Baptist. One can hypothesize the same date on the basis of another Gospel allusion: the temple in Jerusalem , the construction of which was begun by Herod, is called "built in 46 years." According to the Gospels, Jesus began his public ministry following the baptism received by John in an unspecified place near the Jordan River.

After his baptism, Jesus withdrew to the Judean desert , where he remained forty days fasting and finally suffering the temptations of the devil, which he managed to resist. After the arrest and beheading of the Baptist by Herod Antipa, Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum , near the Lake of Gennesaret.

Before beginning his public preaching, Jesus called to follow him some of the twelve apostles who would be close to him in the following years. The Gospel of John indicates as one of the first events in Jesus' public life the episode of the so-called purification of the temple in Jerusalem, during which he drove the merchants and money changers from the precincts of the sacred place.

The main Palestinian localities reached by the ministry of Jesus

The length of Jesus' ministry cannot be known with certainty. In the synoptic gospels, no temporal indication is given to mark the passage of time. The gospel of John rather mentions three Passovers, the last of which is the Passover of his death. This leads us to hypothesize that Jesus' ministry lasted three years (or rather, two whole years and a few months).

The places mentioned in the Gospels during Jesus' itinerant ministry are mainly concentrated in the region of Lake Gennesaret in Galilee (northern Palestine). Jesus also travels to Jerusalem and neighboring places in Judea (southern Palestine), mainly on the occasion of the Passover festivals - which every devout Jew tries to spend in the holy city.

The regions of Samaria, inhabited by schismatic Jews (Samaritans), were only briefly affected by his activity. Jesus also made some journeys to regions not inhabited by Jews: to Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia , in northern Palestine, and to the territories of the Decapolis , in eastern Palestine.

The uncertainties surrounding the cities visited by Jesus.

It is not possible to reconstruct with certainty the sequence and the different stages of the journeys made by Jesus to these places: the evangelists, in their final assembly, often merged the stories (pericopes) without a precise chronological order, and moreover the descriptions of the journeys are generally generic.

From the discourses of Jesus , and in particular from the so-called "Kingdom" parables, the Kingdom appears above all as a theological, spiritual, moral reality, characterized by a way of life centered on the double commandment of love for God and for one's neighbor. It is a new condition of the person, which is established in the life of men to the extent that they recognize the kingship-signoria paternity (basileia) of God.

The morality of the Kingdom preached by Jesus , and centered on the love of God and charity, is proposed in continuity with the teachings of the Jewish tradition of the Old Testament. However, on certain points for example, the refrain "it has been said... but I say to you" of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' preaching is in contradiction with these precepts, and with the way he judged external and formal in which the Pharisaic authorities applied them and taught how to apply them. Jesus proposes a new "greater" justice, which does not want to abolish the previous teachings but to bring them to their conclusion.

The history of the Kingdom, an irreconcilable dualism

Some loci present him as already present, present (current or immanent eschatology). This has led some modern scholars to consider Jesus as a moral reformer who tried, unsuccessfully, to reform and improve the society of the time, but without properly political and revolutionary pretensions.

Other loci, and especially the eschatological discourse, present it as not yet present, but future or consequential eschatology. The future Kingdom is traditionally but not by Jesus called "paradise", and its establishment will be preceded by the "Day of Judgment" (an expression used explicitly in the gospels and implicitly in the eschatological discourse. This eschatology of the future has led some modern scholars to see in Jesus an enthusiastic apocalyptic prophet who announced a future and a better world.

The Christian tradition has recomposed this dichotomy by identifying in the already the activity of Jesus continued in the Church, and in the "not yet" the mystery of his death and resurrection - which will be fully actualized with his second coming and the transfiguration of the world.

Jesus at the heart of the Parables

Jesus' way of preaching , which focused on proclaiming the Kingdom and living the life that goes with it, was different from the rabbinical teachings of the time. Jesus made extensive use of parables, that is, allegorical examples taken from everyday life and activities and situations, which were intended to illustrate theological or moral concepts that could not be directly experienced. Although with the necessary differences, in this method of teaching Jesus can be compared to Plato and his myths. These are the main parables of Jesus :

• Parable of the Wedding Feast
• Parable of the Good Shepherd
• Parable of the Good Samaritan
• Parable of the Ten Virgins
• Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican
• Parable of the prodigal son, or as we prefer to call him nowadays, "the merciful father"...
• Parable of the workers in the vineyard
• Lazarus and the rich epulone
• Parable of the Lost Coin
• Parable of the Lost Sheep
• Parable of the Sower
• Parable of the Mustard Seed
• Parable of the Merciless Servant
• Parable of the Talents
• Parable of the Murderous Vineyard Growers
• Parable of Discord

The miracles of Jesus

According to the Gospels, the preaching was accompanied by miracles. They can be classified into three categories:

• The miracles of healing fever, leprosy, bleeding, edema, deafness, blindness, paralysis, exorcisms, resurrections . They are the most recurrent;

• Miracles in nature , which show Jesus ' direct domination over creation (miraculous fishing, multiplication of loaves, transformation of water into wine at Cana, cursing of the fig tree, sleeping storm, walking on water);

• Epiphanies (manifestations): the transfiguration on the mountain and the appearances to the disciples after the resurrection.

Most contemporary secular scholars deny the historical value of the evangelical miracles, reducing them to frauds, hallucinations, naturally explicable events or legends elaborated later.

The disciples of Jesus

Jesus' preaching was addressed primarily to Jews. This preference is not, however, exclusive: there are mentions of some missionary journeys to cities and regions inhabited mainly by pagans, as well as to individual non-Jews (the Samaritan woman, the centurion, the Phoenician woman) and, both before and after the resurrection, Jesus explicitly sent his disciples "to all nations" .

In his ministry, Jesus valued and addressed marginal or despised social categories in Jewish society at the time, in some cases provoking the indignation of the Pharisaic religious authorities: children, women, Samaritans, "sinner" prostitutes, publicans, that is to say the collaborating Jews charged by the Roman occupier with collecting taxes.

From the Gospels, it seems that Jesus' preaching and work had limited success in Jewish society at the time, but mainly among the lower classes . However, wealthy and high-ranking people, such as the members of the Sanhedrin Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Joanna "wife of Cusa, Herod's administrator", are also reported among the first disciples.

The Last Days of Jesus' Life

According to the Gospel account, after some years of preaching, Jesus entered Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover . Upon his arrival in the city, he was greeted by a festive crowd who acclaimed him as the Messiah. An event that Christian tradition remembers on Palm Sunday. The Synoptics place the "cleansing of the temple" after the entry into Jerusalem, which John places on the occasion of the first Passover.

As Jesus' death approaches , both Synoptics tell the story of a supper, traditionally called the " Last Supper ." However, some discrepancies are noted:

• For the synoptics, it corresponds to the Jewish Passover dinner, and took place on the eve of the day of Jesus' death , therefore on Thursday evening. In it, Jesus institutes the sacrament of the Eucharist;

• For John, it is a generic supper and cannot be that of Easter, since the Jewish rite would have taken place on the evening of the day corresponding to the death of Jesus (14 Nisan, Easter Eve, Friday). There is no mention of the Eucharist, while the story of the washing of the feet, absent from the synoptics, is reported there.

A possible harmonization is that the Last Supper was actually an Easter dinner and was held, according to the Essene calendar, on Tuesday evening. In such a case, the Gospels, which show the following events (arrest, trial, crucifixion and death) concentrated between Thursday evening and Friday afternoon, would not reflect the true historical trend - which would see them spread over several days, from Tuesday evening to Friday afternoon.

The trial and death of Jesus.

The account of the events leading up to Jesus' death is reported in parallel by the four Gospels, although with some differences and additions of their own. After the Last Supper, held in the city, Jesus went to the farm called Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem - where he stopped to pray. It was there that a group of temple guards, Jewish soldiers under the orders of the Sadducee authorities, led by the traitorous apostle Judas Iscariot , proceeded to arrest him. Afterwards, Jesus was taken by Annas, Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin. It was established that he was condemned to death for blasphemy, having assimilated himself to God.

Early in the morning, a new meeting with the Sanhedrin took place, then Jesus was led by the Roman prefect Pilate to ask for his execution; he questioned him but declared him not guilty. Pilate then sent him to Herod Antipas, king of Galilee who, after mocking him, but without condemning him, sent him back to Pilate. The latter, in an attempt to save him, proposed to the people to release him. It was in fact customary for the Roman authorities to release one prisoner per year, for Easter, but the crowd preferred the rebel killer Barabbas, while he invoked crucifixion for Jesus .

For fear of an uproar, Pilate washed his hands, declaring himself innocent of the unjust condemnation, and acceded to the request of the crowd, formally condemning Jesus to death for the crime of wounded majesty, having declared himself " King of the Jews ." Then Jesus was scourged. He was then mocked by the Roman soldiers, who crowned him with thorns and led him, with two other condemned men including the "good thief," to the place of condemnation, a small hill just outside the walls, called Golgotha-Calvary. On the way back, Jesus was helped to carry the cross by a certain Simon of Cyrene.

Uncertainties surrounding the death of Christ.

When he reached the goal, Jesus was crucified at the third hour (nine o'clock in the morning); Christ died at the ninth hour (three o'clock in the afternoon). According to the Gospels, his death was accompanied by extraordinary events.

Darkness fell over the whole earth, there was an earthquake and the resurrection of "many saints". Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus and, after wrapping it in a sindone cloth, he placed it in his personal tomb, which was near Golgotha. It is impossible to establish with certainty the date of Jesus' death . The four Gospels agree in placing it on Friday , but while for the three synoptics this day coincided with the Jewish Passover, for John it was the eve of Easter.

The synoptic chronology leads us to hypothesize a date of Friday, April 27, 31 AD, while the Johannine date of Friday, April 7, 30 AD or Friday, April 3, 33 AD. The Johannine date of April 7, 30 AD is compatible with the probable date of the beginning of the public ministry in 28[50] and with the Johannine allusion to the three Easters.

The Resurrection of Jesus

The Gospels, immediately after the description of the passion and death of Jesus , report certain facts that occurred after the deposition of Jesus' body: the discovery of the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus to the disciples (Mary Magdalene, Mary of James, Salome), interpreted by Christians as signs of his resurrection . The discovery took place at dawn on the day after the Sabbath, that is, on Sunday, although the Greek original may indicate the beginning of the night between Saturday and Sunday. Later, there is also evidence of the appearances of Jesus to the apostles and other disciples.

The Gospels say that, forty days after the Resurrection , Jesus ascended to heaven. In other Christian sacred texts, such as the Revelation of John, there is mention of the return of Jesus, which the Christian churches await, called the "second coming" or "parusía" - a return that must coincide with the day of Judgment and the beginning of "a new heaven and a new earth".

The Christian tradition that followed considered the event of the Resurrection as historical, acknowledging it with professions of faith and worship. Modern scholars who deny this interpretation believe that it is a mystification of the apostles, or a belief born of hallucinations,[55] or the re-proposition in the Jewish world of a myth widespread in Hellenistic, Babylonian and Phoenician religiosity, concerning a divinity who dies and resurrects.

The Secret Life of Jesus

"From the apocrypha come elements dear to the tradition of Christianity, such as the presence of the ox and the donkey next to the cradle of Jesus , the number (three) and the names (Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar) of the Magi, the story of Veronica, and we could go on. The reality is that it is necessary to re-evaluate the apocrypha as at least partially reliable sources, within which, alongside the inventions worthy of the best novelist in the appendix, there are traditions that deserve the greatest attention, if only for their antiquity, since some date back to the generation immediately following the apostles."

In the pages of this book, Vito Mancuso takes readers on a journey through a story known to all but capable of hiding unexpected seeds of mystery: that of the life of Jesus of Nazareth as told by the so-called apocryphal gospels. These texts, banned by the Church and often considered heretical works, are in fact exceptional documents that date back to the period immediately after the death of Christ, and that were disseminated for centuries among the various Christian communities that, at that time, were taking root in Europe and the Middle East.

The stories contained in these Gospels are able to illuminate aspects and elements of the history of Jesus , of his teaching and his preaching that the canonical Gospels do not explore in depth, and demonstrate how central the figure of Christ , his concrete earthly existence, was for the first Christians. Rereading them today in this volume, which brings together twelve apocryphal texts, dividing them according to the main moments of Jesus' life (childhood, public life, passion, resurrection) means knowing new aspects of the history of one of the most revolutionary figures of all time, discovering also that, often, the echo of these stories has in fact always remained present among the Christian faithful, beyond any prohibition imposed by the ecclesiastical hierarchies.

The Story of the Posthumous Nazarene

After the death of Jesus, a flowering of stories about the life and teachings of the Messiah spread throughout the Middle East: the plurality of voices reflected the composite world of the early Christian sects, and the stories corresponded to the doctrine of the Gnostic currents, or more simply to popular curiosity about the figure of the Nazarene . In the following centuries, the Church put order into this conglomerate of texts, choosing those of John, Luke, Mark, Matthew as the reference gospels.

Considered as bearers of mysterious or esoteric traditions, and therefore in contrast with orthodoxy, the so-called apocryphal gospels (i.e. "to be hidden") have been set aside and have been and continue to be little considered by the Church and official theology. However, they contain many data and information that the Christian tradition has made its own over the centuries: from the presence of the ox and the donkey next to the cradle of Jesus to the story of Veronica, passing through real articles of faith such as the presentation in the temple and the Assumption into heaven of Mary.

In this book, Vito Mancuso selects and presents the most important apocrypha that trace the life of Jesus : childhood (evoked in pages of great poetry), the affectionate closeness to his parents even in illness and death, public life, passion and resurrection. Thus, very ancient sources appear in various cases dating back to the very first Christian generations: and in pages of great beauty that have inspired the faith and devotion of entire generations, the reader will discover a more human Jesus, close to our experience of daily life.

Jesus Christ: A Complete Enigma

We have now gone through the whole arcane surrounding this prophet that some will call the Messiah . Even if it is true that uncertainties relating to his resurrection are important, we are right to think that given the stories of these sources, it is impossible to obtain certainties. Although His life will remain mysterious. In view of the miracles that the Lord performed during his journey in teaching.

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