Three Rivers, USA. During the weekend of June 1 to 3, 2018, the Fourth Congress of Claretian Bible Schools of the Province of United States – Canada took place in Three Rivers, California hosted by the students of the EBC of Fresno. The theme was: “From the Historical Jesus to the Christ of the Faith” presentated by Fr. Raul Lugo, a Catholic priest licensed in Sacred Scriptures.
During this meeting, students from the Claretian Bible Schools of Fresno, Atlanta, and Chicago, met. There were 3 intense days during which they were able to approach the Jesus of history through the series of presentations by Father Lugo on Saturday and Sunday.
Father Lugo began his presentations on the Historical Jesus giving them a general outline of where to start and the difficulties to approach from the historical point of view a character who lived more than 2000 years ago.
Father Lugo presented the written historical evidences about the existence of Jesus through the mention of it through some sources such as the Gospels and the mentions of some historians close to the time such as Flavius Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius.
The criteria used for historicity were also discussed, such as: a) the criterion of difficulty; b) the discontinuity criterion; c) the criterion of multiple testimony; d) the coherence criterion and; f) the rejection and execution criteria; without discarding some secondary criteria such as the traces of Aramaic and the Palestinian environment among others.
In conclusion, it is not the same to arrive at the contact or knowledge of Jesus in a totality in the historical aspect. Christians who did not walk alongside the Master have been accustomed to starting from the knowledge about him based more on his divinity than on his human being. However, the search for a historical and human Jesus takes us by the hand to the closest knowledge of a man who with his actions has led us for two millennia to the conviction that a close relationship with God the Father is possible and that his divinity is not separated from the humanity of Jesus.
