BSN: Jesus as Teacher

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Related:

Jesus was known as a teacher – Lk 22:11

Jesus affirmed that he was a teacher – Jn 13:13

“Rabbi” and “Rabboni” are Hebrew words for teacher.

For more, see “TEACHER” in the Red-Letter Concordance

Human teachers
(with whom Jesus can be compared and contrasted)

Any list like the one below is, by its very nature, selective and even arbitrary. My objective was to list major individuals who have influenced the way people live in order to give a context for understanding Jesus’ influence.

I included philosophers because so many people refer to them as authoritative sources for profound, life-altering views. I included founders of major religions, but excluded Christian leaders other than Christ Himself. I included leaders from the sciences when their ideas seemed to affect society at large. I included anyone else to whom others referred to as driving a significant portion of human thinking whether past or present. As I said at the top, this list is selective; it could be much longer, even in keeping with my own limited perspective.

  • Buddha (c. 6th-4th century) – Indian teacher
  • Confucius (551–479 BC) – Chinese philosopher
  • Socrates (c. 470-399 BC) – Greek philosopher
  • Plato (423-348 BC) – Greek philosopher
  • Aristotle (384-322 BC) – Greek philosopher
  • Jesus of Nazareth (c 4 BC – c 30 AD) – Jewish carpenter and teacher
  • Muhammad (c. 570-632) – Arab merchant and founder of Islam
  • Galileo (1564-1642) – Italian astronomer
  • Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) – German astronomer
  • John Locke (1632-1704) – English philosopher
  • Isaac Newton (1643-1727) – English physicist and mathematician
  • Adam Smith (c. 1723-1790) – Scottish economist and philosopher
  • Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) – German philosopher
  • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1832) – German philosopher
  • Charles Lyell (1797-1875) – Scottish geologist
  • Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – English naturalist, geologist and biologist
  • Karl Marx (1818-1883) – German philosopher
  • Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) – German philosopher
  • Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) – German philosopher
  • Joseph Smith (1805-1844) – American farmer and founder of Mormonism
  • Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) – Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis
  • Carl Jung (1875-1961) – Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
  • Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) – Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician
  • Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937; 46 yrs) – Italian Marxist philosopher
  • Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) – German philosopher
  • Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) – German-American philosopher
  • Leo Strauss (1899-1973) – German-American political philosopher
  • James Burnham (1905-1987) – American philosopher and political theorist
  • L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) – American author and founder of Scientology
  • Harry Jaffa (1918-2015) – American political philosopher
  • Michel Foucault (1926-1984) – French philosopher
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) – American Baptist minister and political activist
  • Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) – Algerian-born French philosopher
  • Derrick Bell (1930-2011) – American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist
  • Angela Davis (1944-) – American political activist
  • Robin DiAngelo (1956-) – American author
  • Jordan Peterson (1962-) – Canadian psychologist
  • Ibram X. Kendi (1982-) – American author
  • Andrew Tate (1986-) – British-American social media influencer

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