The theology professor began to speak faster in the format of a report, repeated many times, learned by heart:

– According to the Christian Nicene-Tsaregrad Creed, Christ is the Son of God, consubstantial (i.e., of the same nature) with the Father, God incarnate in human flesh. Also, the Nicene-Tsaregrad Creed affirms that Christ died to atone for human sins and then rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and will come a second time to judge the living and the dead. According to the Athanasian Creed, Jesus Christ is the second person (hypostasis) of the Trinity. Other Christian beliefs include the Immaculate Conception of Jesus, the working of miracles, and more. Although the dogma of the Trinity is accepted by most Christian denominations, some groups reject it in whole or in part, deeming it unbiblical. The person of Christ causes a great deal of controversy on both academic and domestic levels. There are debates over the very fact of Jesus' existence, the chronology of his life, his social status and cultural milieu, the ideas he preached and their significance for humanity. Orthodox Judaism does not recognize Jesus as a prophet or Messiah. According to Islam, Jesus is considered to be one of God's important prophets, the bringer of Scripture, and a miracle worker. Jesus is also called the Messiah, but Islam does not teach that he was divine. Islam teaches that Jesus bodily ascended to heaven, without any crucifixion and resurrection, unlike the traditional Christian belief of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let's analyze the origin and meaning of the name. Jesus is the Greek version of the Hebrew name Yeshua, which consists of the roots of the words "Yahweh", the name of God in the Old Testament, and "Shu'ah" – salvation. Before the church reform of Patriarch Nikon, the name of Jesus was written and pronounced with one letter "i" – Isus. Patriarch Nikon changed the spelling and pronunciation – Iisus – in order to bring them closer to the Greek version. The spelling of the name Jesus with one "i" remained unchanged in Ukrainian, Belarusian, Croatian, Ruthenian, Macedonian, Serbian and Bulgarian. Christ is not a first or last name, as many people think. It is in the traditions of religion, exactly in the tradition of the Jewish religion, there was no Christianity at that time, the designation of his mission, the word is Greek, in Hebrew mashiach – messiah, that is savior. The epithet "anointed one" was used in ancient Israel in relation to kings and priests. Putting kings on the throne and priests to serve in Israel through the solemn anointing with oil. Initially priests were called "anointed", and after the establishment of the monarchy in Israel the word "anointed" began to be used in relation to kings. Accordingly, the Jewish prophets heralded the coming of a king from the line of David, an "anointed one" who, being both priest and king, would fulfill all that Israel expected of the true King of Peace.

At this point the theologian finished reciting the information, and went on to his usual manner of presentation.

– The whole Jesus story, in my personal study, is not just some mundane story or a story that happened all of a sudden, all by itself. No. If you look closely, you can clearly see…great things are seen at a distance…the organizational hitches of preordained chords and the skillful conducting of predictions. Simply put, what we see in this event is a preordained desire to play this play according to an edited script. Sorry, I couldn't make it any simpler. I'll try this. Cause and effect are created by announcing a certain prediction or its interpretation in the necessary sense, and then the accomplished event, which also takes place under the guidance, is adjusted to this prediction. And then, many years afterwards, the event that did not happen at all is attributed as real. That is why there are many disputes, complete denial of this history. That is, disputes between those who do not doubt and those who do. After all, they are not on an empty place. For example, the belief that the Messiah must be born of a virgin is based on the text of the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14), according to which he will be born without the seed of a man. In our time, this topic takes on a completely different, unexpected connotation. After all, it is already possible to realize it scientifically. And now I will say that the Messiah had to come for the people of Israel, that is for the Jews. And they did not accept Christ as the Messiah. They are waiting for their Messiah. And now think – can a lady nowadays get pregnant without a man? There were other prophecies, which events were adapted to them or it was announced that they supposedly happened that way. Speaking of predictions. Nostradamus, for example. If you have read, you should have seen the absence of predictions themselves. I mean, he's there writing some kind of interpretation of his vision. A vision in the sense of a dream. It's a kind of fantasy with a zoological and astronomical bent. We observe the same in biblical predictions, for example, the revelations of John the Theologian, from which they draw conclusions about what is supposed to happen. I will express my vision: this ancient technique of fortune-tellers is still used today, not only by gypsies, but also by stock analysts.

The audience laughed. Nomor smiled back and added a little louder:

– And there is no need to talk about weather forecasts. As you know, the hydrometeorological center is wrong once, but every day.

The audience laughed again.

– And after that… let's take Nostradamus' katrens as an example… his verses are called that… can be interpreted in any way and connected with the event that happened. There is, or rather, there was also such a prediction: the Messiah was to be valued at 30 silver coins to be thrown on the floor of the Temple (Zechariah 11:12-13). The belief that the Messiah would rise from the dead is based on Psalm 15, as well as the closing verses of the Book of Isaiah chapter 53, which describe the Messiah's life after his execution. Accordingly, the New Testament describes the life of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of these prophecies. Most likely, if to search well, it is possible to find fairy tales and myths more ancient, where similar in a plot took place, because myths of similar subjects… I will bring them later… a lot. In general, all these interpretations are rather harmful to faith. For example, many Christian denominations claim that Jesus Christ combines two natures – divine and human, being both God and man. There are also many sects that interpret differently. The basic dogmas of religion are approved at meetings called ecumenical councils. By the way, everything is decided by voting there too. For example, the same question of whether to consider someone a saint or not. Whether to consider Jesus as God or not was also decided by this method. So, a couple more excerpts from the Holy Scriptures: according to Christian belief, the appearance of Jesus is the fulfillment of a long-standing prophecy about the Messiah – the Son of God; Jesus was immaculately born of the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary, in the city of Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1), where he came to worship three wise men as the future king of the Jews. After his birth, Jesus was taken by his parents to Egypt (Matthew 2:14). After the death of King Herod, Jesus and his parents returned to Nazareth. A number of alternative explanations for the story of Jesus' birth have been offered at various times. In particular, the prophet Isaiah's prediction that the Messiah should be born of a virgin has been challenged (Jewish interpreters generally argue that Isaiah's prophecy has nothing to do with the future Messiah and speaks of events contemporary to the time of the prophecy; a number of secular Bible scholars agree with this). In the ancient period and later in the anti-Christian polemics the viewpoint of Jesus' birth from an extramarital affair was expressed. Such a hypothesis has a right to be, especially it is not rejected by the Jewish interpretation. Do not forget that at that time, of the Abrahamic religions known to us, there was only the Jewish religion. More specifically, this whole story took place as an event in Jewish civil and religious life. The Romans, who ruled over Judea at that time, had little interest in the internal squabbles of the Jews, much less in religious ones. Naturally, such an assertion is rejected by Christians. The argument about Jesus and his relatives visiting the Temple in Jerusalem, including the description of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple ("sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions") (Luke 2:46), is often cited as an argument for the impossibility of such a thing. But here, too, there is a logical sequence of presentation that personally suggests to me that there is a reason for this view. At least, let's say that slander may have taken place. Still, agree, a girl of 14-15 years old, pregnant, she is married to a grown man, who is either a widower or divorced, and what is even worse – divorced, because she agreed to be with him, and then she declares that she is pregnant by God. Naturally, they began to say: she is a harlot, she got pregnant. Harlots were not allowed into the temple. But, do not forget my version, this whole story is not a life incident between ordinary people, but a struggle of influential and rich clans. And the main thing is that the version you know is one version. A lot of things are rewritten, and everything is very approximate. For example, even the very date of birth, i.e. the beginning of our era, cannot be determined precisely. Because the very date of the birth of Jesus Christ is determined very approximately. The earliest is usually called 12 B.C., this date is taken according to harmonious coordination with the legend about the Bethlehem star, on the fact of passage in this year of Halley's comet. There is another date which too is connected by causal connections with the stated events in descriptions of this history. It is IV B.C. – the year of death of Herod the Great. Incidentally, this is the latest date given as the date of Jesus' birth. Immediately after his birth, Jesus was taken away by Mary and Joseph to Egypt. The reason for the flight was the planned murder of babies in Bethlehem by the Jewish king Herod in order to kill among them the future king of the Jews. Here is another negative impact of prophecy and its interpretation on people's lives. Though you have probably already realized – this is the fact of clan struggle. Why did Herod suddenly believe in the statement of, for example, Mary… and who else would say who needed it, and if it was necessary – here again is the fact of clan struggle… that the King of the Jews was born. Here it is necessary to explain, the Messiah, whom the Jews were waiting for, he is the anointed one, because only real kings and priests were anointed, as if they performed the inauguration ceremony. That's why they wanted to kill Jesus. There were no kings after the occupation of Judea by the Romans, but the priests remained. So they drove the wave and the crowd shouting "crucify him, the blood of our children is on him". In Egypt the parents with Jesus did not stay long: they returned to their homeland after Herod's death, when Jesus was still a baby. (Matthew 2:19-21) The ethnic definition of Jesus' identity is also ambiguous. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and afterward lived in Galilee, and there were many different nationalities there. Many conclude that Christ may not have been an ethnic Jew. The fact that the Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus' parents were from Bethlehem of Judea, only after his birth they moved to Nazareth, does not prove his Jewishness. Rather it gives one more reason to doubt it. Maybe someone will consider the following unlikely, but I still think this version has a variant of the possible: I was once told, and a person with a degree in history …