Jesus (c. 6 to 4 BC – AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and by various other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish Jesus (c. 6 to 4 BC – AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and by various other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader in the Roman province of Judaea. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most branches of Christianity consider Jesus the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah or Christ. A Jesus grew up in Galilee and much of his ministry took place there. The languages spoken in Galilee and Judea during the 1st century AD included Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, with Aramaic being predominant. There is substantial… In contrast, Jesus in Islam is considered the messiah and a prophet of God, who was sent to the Israelites and will return to Earth before the Day of Judgement. Muslims believe that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary but was neither God nor the son of God. Most Muslims do not believe that he was killed or crucified, but that God raised him into Heaven while he was still alive. Jesus is also revered in the Baháʼí and Druze faiths, as well as in Rastafari. == Name == A Jewish person in Jesus's time usually had only one name, sometimes followed by a patronymic phrase of the form "son of [father's name]", or by the person's home town. In these accounts, he forbids those who recognize him as the messiah—including people he heals and demons he is said to exorcise—to speak about it (see Messianic Secret). By contrast, the Gospel of John portrays Jesus's ministry as taking place primarily in and around Jerusalem rather than in Galilee, and his divine nature is more openly proclaimed and recognized. Scholars commonly divide the ministry of Jesus into several stages. The Galilean ministry begins when Jesus returns to Galilee from the Judaean Desert after resisting the temptations of Satan. Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve apostles, secretly strikes a bargain with the Jewish elders, agreeing to betray Jesus to them for 30 silver coins. The Gospel of John recounts two other feasts in which Jesus taught in Jerusalem before the Passion Week. In Bethany, a village near Jerusalem, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. This potent sign increases the tension with authorities, who conspire to kill him. Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus's feet, foreshadowing his entombment. Jesus then makes his messianic entry into John, the latest written gospel, differs considerably from the Synoptic Gospels, and has been considered less reliable, although John's gospel is seen as having more reliability than previously thought or sometimes even more reliable than the synoptics since the third quest. Some scholars (such as the Jesus Seminar) believe that the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas might be an independent witness to many of Jesus's parables and aphorisms. For example, Thomas confirms that Jesus blessed the poor and that this saying circulated independently before being combined with similar sayings in the Q source. Scholars adduce the criterion of embarrassment, saying that early Christians would not have invented a baptism that might imply that Jesus committed sins and wanted to repent. According to Theissen and Merz, Jesus was inspired by John the Baptist and took over from him many elements of his teaching. ==== Ministry in Galilee ==== Most scholars hold that Jesus lived in Galilee and Judea and did not preach or study elsewhere. They agree that Jesus debated with Jewish authorities on the subject of God, performed some healings, taught in parables and gathered followers. Since the 18th century, scholars have occasionally put forth that Jesus was a political national messiah, but the evidence for this portrait is negligible. Likewise, the proposal that Jesus was a Zealot does not fit with the earliest strata of the Synoptic tradition. === Language, ethnicity, and appearance === Jesus grew up in Galilee and much of his ministry took place there. The languages spoken in Galilee and Judea during the 1st century AD included Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, with Aramaic being predominant. There is substantial consensus that Jesus gave most of his teachings in Aramaic in the Galilean dialect. Other than Aramaic and Hebrew, it is likely that he was also able to speak Greek. Modern scholars agree that Jesus was a Jew of 1st-century Judea. Ioudaios in New Testament Greek is a term which in the contemporary context may refer to religion (Second Temple Judaism), ethnicity (of Judea), or both. In a review of the state of modern scholarship, Amy-Jill Levine writes that the entire question of ethnicity is "fraught with difficulty", and that "beyond recognizing that 'Jesus was Jewish', rarely does the scholarship address what being 'Jewish' means". Stories of Jesus's birth, along with other key events, have so many mythic elements that some scholars have suggested that Jesus himself was a myth. Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) taught that the first Gospel was a work of literature that produced history rather than described it. According to Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906), a social movement produced Jesus when it encountered Jewish messianic expectations. Arthur Drews (1865–1935) saw Jesus as the concrete form of a myth that predated Christianity. In one such story, Yeshu HaNozri ('Jesus the Nazarene'), a lewd apostate, is executed by the Jewish high court for spreading idolatry and practising magic. According to some, the form Yeshu is an acronym which in Hebrew reads "may his name and memory be blotted out". The majority of contemporary scholars consider that this material provides no information on the historical Jesus. The Mishneh Torah, a late 12th-century work of Jewish law written by Moses Maimonides, states that Jesus is a "stumbling block" who makes "the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than the Lord".