Chrystus w świetle badań współczesnej epigrafiki, paleografii i archeologii

Abstract

Speaking about Christ to a now-days-man one must take into consideration that he is rather „technicall minded” and things such as theological premisses and conclusions are all too easily explained away by him or at least belittled as mere relative matters with no factual foundations. His attitude towards all what is offered him by Theology is marked out by reserve, indifference or even prejudices. Bearing this in mind I decided to approach him in such a way that he could consider the Person of Our Lord in a loght of the achievements recently made by epigraphy, paleography and archeology. The reason which induced me to shape my elucidation of the problem in a way different from the traditional one, is also the number of publications and articles dealing with the subject. Most of them pretend to be of a scientific character but as a matter of fact they could, be scarcely regarded as such. Very often they have only a subtle „make-up” in order to appear scholary and eruditely. But their real and primary end is to revive different theories, hypothesis and opinions which have tried to suggest the people that Jesus Christ is no God or that He has never called Himself God; that He did not posses the consciousness of being God – or if He had He was misled and, lastly, that after all He is a mitological person known to us from the Gospels only, which are but a compilation of legends, and so on. To answer all these and other suggestions I have been trying to make use of the discovery of the famous Qumran Scrolls as well as of data recently established by epigraphy and paleography. On acute analysis of the Qumran Scrolls and of the recently published papyruses, together with the results supplied by the archeological excavations in Gerusalem proved, first of all, that the historical value of the New Testament is neither to be derived nor questioned. On the contrary, in the light of them many Gospel accounts are almost experimentally confirmed and checked up. And therefore, Hans Lietzmann, one of the last representatives of the Liberal School, was right to assert that antiquity of a scrap of a papyrus has itself abolished the modernists opinion which maintained that the Fourth Gospel was written much latter than it was commonly believed. Thus the fire of endless discussions, burning for 200 years, about who was the author of it can be considered as quenched out. Moreover the Qumran discoveries make it clear to what an extend St. John the Evangelist, who although had been living in the same cultural environment and using a terminology similar to that ot Essene's group, was nevertheless an original and inspired theologian of the Incarnated Word. Thus in view of what was said above we can justly repeat St. Paul’s words: „I am not ashamed of the Gospel” (Rom 1, 16) – because it shows us Our Lord as a living and historical Person, Jesus Christ of Betleem, Nasareth, and Calvary who not only had been conscious of being both the Messiah and God, but also able to prove this by His doctrine, words and deeds. And therefore to – day the faith in His nature and mission has as unshakable foundations to us as it had in the first century of Christianity to His eye-witnesses whom St. Luke in the prologue to his Gospel espressively calls „ministers of the word” (v. 1).