So if you’ve heard of Jesus, you probably know about one of his famous teachings called the Golden Rule, due to others what you would want them to do to you. And this, actually, is a restatement of something else that Jesus said that the meaning of life is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s really beautiful, but what does he mean exactly by the word love? It’s an unclear word in English because you can love your mom and you can love pizza And if the word love means the same thing in both of those cases, your mom’s gonna feel real bad So what did Jesus mean in his language? Well, first of all This love your neighbor phrase is a quotation from the Hebrew scriptures where the word for love is Nahavah However the language Jesus spoke and taught in from day to day it was a cousin language of Hebrew that is era Maic, in which the word for love is Arachma. But then, as Jesus’ followers spread his teachings around the world, they translated them into Greek, using the word agape. But here’s what’s fascinating. The earliest followers of Jesus, who wrote the books of the New Testament in Greek, they didn’t learn the meaning of agape by looking it up in ancient dictionaries. Rather, they looked to the teachings of Jesus and the story of his life to redefine their very concept of love. So one time, Jesus was asked about the most important command in the Jewish scriptures. And he first quoted from the ancient prayer in the Torah called the Shema. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. So love for God is the most important thing. But then Jesus quickly followed up by saying another command from the Torah was also the most important. To love your neighbor as yourself. So which is the most important? Loving God or loving your neighbor? Jesus’ answer is yes. To ask the question means you don’t get his point. For Jesus there are two sides of the same coin. Your love for God will be ex- expressed by your love for people, and vice versa, they’re inseparable. And so this makes it clear that for Jesus, agape love is not primarily a feeling for someone else that happens to you, like our phrase, I fell in love. For Jesus, love is action. It’s a choice that you make to seek the well-being of people other than yourself. Jesus also went on to teach that genuine love for God and others means seeking people’s well-being without expecting anything in return, especially from people who are in difficult situations, who can’t repay. even if they wanted to. According to Jesus, this kind of generous love reflects the very heartbeat of God. And he took this even further. Jesus said that the ultimate standard of authentic love is how well you treat the person that you can’t stand. Or in his words, you shall love your enemy and do good to them, expecting nothing in return. For Jesus, this kind of enemy-embracing love imitates the very character of God himself. Now we wouldn’t be talking about Jesus still today if he had only said things like love.

Did Jesus exist? I can assure you as a historian that whatever else you might want to say about Jesus, he certainly existed. The historical Jesus may not have been the person that people imagine today, but he was a real person, and we can know some things about him. You don’t have to believe that Jesus was the Son of God in order to accept the facts of history, and that’s what I deal with in my book, The Facts. Skeptics like to say that we don’t have the original text of any of the Gospels. the New Testament, and we don’t have any historical records of Jesus from his day. That’s absolutely right, but it’s also true of virtually everyone who lived at his time, including such powerful and important figures as Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, and Josephus, the Jewish historian. Some of those who claim that Jesus was a myth argue that he was invented along the lines of the gods of pagan mythology, who also died and were resurrected. In my book, I show… why that also cannot be correct. The evidence for the historical Jesus, as for Pilate and Josephus, is overwhelming when looked at through the impartial lens of the historic. At the same time, the historical record indicates that Jesus was not who most people believe he was. Like other Jewish preachers of his day, Jesus proclaimed that the world was controlled by forces of evil. But God was soon going to intervene in history and overthrow the forces of evil and destroy everything. and everyone who was opposed to him. God would then set up a utopian kingdom here on earth. And Jesus said this was going to happen within his own generation. It obviously never happened. As a result, the followers of Jesus changed his story and altered his message. This is what led to the birth of Christianity. Did Jesus exist is a historical detective story. I invite you to look at the hard, cold facts of the case. and judge for yourself.