Jesus of Nazareth. History according to Assassin's Creed
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You thought the creators of Assassin's Creed would omit religious figures? Bah! Not at all. These are also firmly embedded in the universe created in Ubisoft – from Adam and Eve, through Buddha, to Jesus Christ himself. The prophet, who according to his followers is the son of God and the Promised Messiah, also appeared in Assassin's Creed, where his miracles were explained by the fact that... he possessed the artifacts of the First Civilization, of course. With one of the Apples of Eden, Jesus was able to turn water into wine, while his possession of the Shroud of Eden gave him the ability to cure all diseases and, in one case, to resurrect Lazarus of Bethany, who had died shortly before. These actions, of course, brought him many believers, convinced that he was the Savior vaticinated in the Old Testament.
They also brought him into the attention of the Order of the Ancients, predecessors to Templars. They succeeded in persuading Judas to betray the prophet and lead to his crucifixion on the hill of Golgotha. The Ancients naturally attempted to recover the artifacts Jesus possessed, but these were stolen by his disciples, who then brought him back to life with the help of the Shroud of Eden. Of course, this version of history deeply shakes the theological foundations of the Christian faith, and it is hardly surprising that Ubisoft, afraid of controversies, did not devote much time to it.
Christ was not the only biblical figure to appear in the Assassin's Creed universe. The series draws heavily from the Book of Genesis, making the first humans – Adam and Eve – hybrids of man and the advanced First Civilization. They stole one of the Apples and began a rebellion of their kind against the creators, whose intent was that homo sapiens be merely servants to higher beings. The war between humans and the First Civilization was interrupted by a powerful cataclysm, which Adam and Eve managed to survive. From their relationship, two brothers were born: Kain and Abel. The brothers turned against each other, and Kain murdered his brother for the want of the Apple of Eden, thus becoming the original Templar.
However, Jesus is a figure uniquely suited to the world of Assassin's Creed even just as a character that would define one of the games' time period. Because according to history, there actually lived a carpenter or stonemason named Jesus in Nazareth. This fact is confirmed not only by Christian sources, the credibility and impartiality of which is understandably dubious, but also by various Roman documents from the 1st century AD. In addition, Christ also appears in virtually every great modern religion: in Judaism he is considered an apostate and mostly knocked, in Islam he's considered a prophet whose teachings are inspired by God himself; in Hinduism he is considered a great guru, and some Buddhists claim that he may have been one of the incarnations of the Buddha.
