Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ was the central figure of Christianity. He was variously called other names by different groups: 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; (PROSE: Byzantium!) Muslims in the 19th century called him Isa; (PROSE: Head of State) and in the City of the Saved, he went by Yeshua bar–Abbas. (PROSE: A Hundred Words from a Civil War) Scaroth was implied to be Jesus Christ in one of his splintered lives.

Jesus was also known to the Time Lords; the Celestial Intervention Agency's files situated events from Earth's history in relation to "the birth of Christ", including events which occurred hundreds of millions of years earlier. (PROSE: CIA File Extracts)

Biography
Gemellus stated that Jesus lived during the time of the Caesars Augustus and Tiberius in the regions of Judaea and Syria. (PROSE: Byzantium!)

He was believed to have born to Mary and Joseph. When Caesar Augustus decreed that governors conduct the Census of Quirinius, pregnant Mary and her husband Joseph journeyed to Bethlehem. Upon reaching the town, they found that all the rooms at the inn had been taken, and Mary was forced to give birth to Jesus in a stable. These events, when recounted in the Gospel of Saint Luke, formed the basis of the Christian celebration of Christmas. (PROSE: The Time Travellers' Almanac) The Doctor claimed in their eighth and tenth incarnations to have been present at Jesus' birth at the first Christmas in Bethlehem. (AUDIO: Relative Dimensions, TV: Voyage of the Damned)

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!)

A story known among the Muslims was that the Hazrat Isa turned water into wine. (PROSE: Head of State)

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". (PROSE: Byzantium!) According to the Book of Luke, there were rumours in Judea that Jesus was either John the Baptist, Elias, or another prophet returned from the dead. (PROSE: The Sword of Forever)

The Jewish religious leaders eventually became jealous of his abilities, and the Pharisees influenced the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate so that Jesus was executed for heresy by being nailed to a stauros on Easter (PROSE: Byzantium!) in the year 33. A Roman soldier named Longinus drove a lance into Jesus' side while Jesus was hanging at the cross. (PROSE: The Spear of Destiny)

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 believed that he had been brought back to life by the Jewish God. (PROSE: Byzantium!) The Tenth Doctor said he remembered what really happened at the first Easter. (TV: Planet of the Dead)

In the City of the Saved, Yeshua bar-Abbas never claimed to anyone that he was Jesus Christ. He lived by a freshwater sea in Chainworth Park, mending boats and wooden furniture for the fishermen while telling them stories. Children particularly enjoyed his company, and he was a popular guest at weddings. When Lord Mayor Lucius Cassius Ignotus began hunting divinities during the Civil War, commandos from the Roman Catholic Church protected Yeshua, calling him "Lord". (PROSE: A Hundred Words from a Civil War)

Whitewashing
Although he came from the Middle East, (PROSE: Byzantium!) some Christians in later centuries viewed Jesus as white. (PROSE: Halflife, TV: Thin Ice) The Twelfth Doctor said this was due to whitewashing. (TV: Thin Ice) Father Roberto explained to the Eighth Doctor that this myth, that the Holy Family were white, had caused great damage to the self-esteems of brown and black people who had to pray to 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)

Remains
The Knights Templar, believing that Jesus was a resurrected John the Baptist, eventually acquired the saint's mummified head and finger; during the thirteenth century, they hid the Holy Finger in the booby-trapped Castle of Arginy, but accidentally left the Head of Christ behind in the Templar Mausoleum in Paris. In 2595, Bernice Summerfield, who had also come to believe that John was Christ, recovered both relics. She found that the skull showed signs of being penetrated by hundreds of sharp objects, either thorns of neural samplers. Her husband Marillion stole the head and brought it to the Emperor Gebmoses III, who used its DNA to create thousands of Christ clones, the Army of God, which he intended to use to eradicate and replace humanity. (PROSE: The Sword of Forever)

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.