Jesus and Founding of Christianity

Jesus and the Founding of Christianity
I. How do we find out who Jesus was?
Our sources of information are the four canonical Gospels, along with other Christian writings.
The textbook asks about Jesus’ personality and teachings, and spends little time on the issue posed in the debate, whether Jesus was actually raised from the dead. (Is this a way to skirt around a controversial topic?).
II. A Historical Jesus that Craig and Parsons can agree on
A. A skeptic like Keith Parsons has to deny all elements of the Gospel accounts that would require that Jesus be more than a Jewish carpenter who taught and had a following in Palestine in the first century.
B. So, presumably all the miracles attributed to Jesus, not just the resurrection, did not occur as reported. The raising of Lazarus, the feeding of the five thousand, the casting out of demons, the healing of lepers (unless all of this can be explained psycho-somatically), the walking on water, did not occur as reported.

III. But what about the non-miraculous elements?
I’m not terribly sure about that, either. Parsons points out a number of things Jesus said that make outrageous implications about him. Jesus claimed to have the right to forgive sins on his own authority. He claimed that he was Lord of the Sabbath, and could excuse people from their Sabbath responsibilities. He put his own words in the place of those of Moses. And he claimed that he would come to judge the world at the end of time.
The problem here is that Jesus, by his actions, implies, in essence that he is God. It is something that a sane person would not do, at least a sane person living in a Jewish monotheistic culture.
IV. Liar, Lunatic, or Lord
Christian apologist C. S. Lewis wrote this:
“A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse… But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
B. This is, of course, highly debatable argument. The claim I want to make is that Jesus’ actions found in the Gospels are, almost across the board, hard to make sense of if Christianity isn’t true. That means either the sources are pretty thoroughly unreliable, in which case we know almost nothing about Jesus, or Christianity is the case. 
V. Jesus teaching
Jesus accepted that authority of the Law and the Prophets.
However, unlike the scribes and Pharisees, he taught with authority. That is, he did not rely on the long chain of rabbinical interpretations, rather he presented his own views straightforwardly, sometimes even replacing the law of Moses with his own words.
VI. The emphasis on Love
Jesus taught universal love and compassion, not only for people who are like you, but for the people who are not like you. When asked “Who is my neighbor” Jesus responded by asking his listeners to imagine themselves the victim of a mugging, and then said “OK, if the priest and the Levite pass by on the other side, but the Samaritan helps you, who do you think your neighbor was.
VII. Jesus and legalism
Jesus was suspicious of the legalism that put following rules above human welfare. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” However he never denied the legitimacy of the Jewish Law.
VIII. Was Jesus a social activist?
Did not challenge social institutions such as slavery or the subjection of women.
However, he did not allow someone’s inferior status to affect the way he treated them.
IX. Did Jesus focus on the family?
He opposed easy divorce, which was a privilege assumed by men in his day. (Women were in an economically dependent position, and so would not be initiating divorce proceedings, since few of them would want to be put in a position being unable to support themselves except in the world’s oldest profession.) He said the marriage bond was given by God. But he also said it was certainly OK to be unmarried, and to the best of our knowledge (the Da Vinci code notwithstanding) did not himself marry. He also thought that family relations sometimes had to be sacrificed for the Kingdom of God. So the evidence for Jesus as a family advocate is mixed.
X. The Two Great Commandments
Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind.
Love your neighbor as yourself.