Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Jesus of Nazareth

Augustus reigned as Emperor for forty-five years, until ad 14. It was in his reign that Jesus of Nazareth was born, and under the reign of his successor Tiberius that Jesus was crucified, probably about ad 30. This Jewish teacher, living in a remote province of the Empire far from the centres of Greek learning, and unconcerned with issues which had preoccupied Plato and Aristotle, was to have an effect on the history of philosophy no less decisive than theirs. But the impact of his teaching was delayed and indirect.  Jesus’ own moral doctrine, as reported in the Gospels, was not without pre¬cedent. In the Sermon on the Mount, he taught that we should not render evil for evil; but that had been the teaching of Socrates in the Republic. He urged his hearers to love their neighbours as themselves; but he was quoting from the Hebrew book of Leviticus, written many centuries earlier. He insisted that we must refrain not just from wrongdoing, but from the thoughts and desires which lead to wrongdoing; in this he was in accord with Aristotle’s teaching that virtue concerns passion as well as action, and that the truly virtuous person is not just continent but temperate. He taught his disciples to despise the pleasures and honours of the world; but so, in their different ways, did the Epicureans and the Stoics.