Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ was the central figure of Christianity. He was variously called other names by different groups, and so the First Doctor and his companions used whichever name seemed contextually appropriate when they once visited the 1st century. People including the anti-Roman, anti-Christian zealot, Matthew Basellas, referred to him as Jesus of Nazareth. The Roman, Gemellus, claimed he was originally known as Joshua-bar-Joseph.

Biography
Gemellus averred that Jesus lived during the time of the Caesars Augustus and Tiberius in the regions of Judaea and Syria. Furthermore, Gemellus maintained that he was a carpenter's son, a child prodigy, and "extremely handsome, charismatic and persuasive". He was able to amass great audiences when he spoke, and his lectures often attacked Judaism as inadequate to inform the rigours of daily life. (PROSE: Byzantium!)

Those who came to follow Jesus as a deity believed he was the Messiah, "Christos" meaning "saviour" in Greek. Others thought of him as a "maverick rabbi", or a "false prophet".

Eventually, betrayed by Jewish religious leaders who had become jealous of his abilities, he was nailed to a stauros, or cross, on Easter. In the 21st year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the Pharisees, leaders of the Jewish community, influenced the Roman procurator of the area, Pontius Pilate, to have Jesus executed for heresy.

Gemellus also knew of a story, of which he was no great believer, that Jesus' body, after death, had somehow vanished after its entombment. Christians, he said, believed that he had come back to life, resurrected by the Jewish God. (PROSE: Byzantium!)

Whitewashing
In later centuries, Jesus was viewed by Christians as white, (TV: Thin Ice) though he came from the Middle East, (PROSE: Byzantium!) as a result of whitewashing. (TV: Thin Ice) As Father Roberto explained to the Eighth Doctor, "You've no idea how much damage the myth that the Holy Family were white has done to us, to our self-esteem, Doctor. For centuries, brown people - black, I believe they called themselves then - lived in the shadow of a white God. No matter how much they prayed, how penitent or good they were, being white was something they could never be. That kind of patronage does damage." (PROSE: Halflife)

Behind the scenes
Jesus was played by Kenneth Colley in the 1979 film Monty Python's Life of Brian, and by John Hurt in the 1981 film History of the World Part I.