Jesus Christ Jesus Christ was the central figure of Christianity . He was variously called other names by different groups , and so the First Doctor and his companion s used whichever name seemed contextually appropriate when they once visited the 1st century . People including the anti - Roman , anti - Christian zealot , Matthew Basellas , referred to him as Jesus of Nazareth . The Roman , Gemellus , claimed he was originally known as Joshua - bar - Joseph ; in the City of the Saved , he was called Yeshua bar – Abbas . Biography . Gemellus averred that Jesus lived during the time of the Caesar s Augustus and Tiberius in the regions of Judaea and Syria . Furthermore , Gemellus maintained that he was a carpenter ' s son , a child prodigy , and " extremely handsome , charismatic and persuasive " . He was able to amass great audiences when he spoke , and his lectures often attacked Judaism as inadequate to inform the rigours of daily life . Those who came to follow Jesus as a deity believed he was the Messiah , " Christos " meaning " saviour " in Greek . Others thought of him as a " maverick rabbi " , or a " false prophet " . Eventually , betrayed by Jewish religious leaders who had become jealous of his abilities , he was nailed to a " stauros " , or cross , on Easter , ( PROSE : " Byzantium ! " ) 33 . ( PROSE : " The Spear of Destiny " ) In the 21st year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar , the Pharisee s , leaders of the Jewish community , influenced the Roman procurator of the area , Pontius Pilate , to have Jesus executed for heresy . ( PROSE : " Byzantium ! " ) A Roman soldier named Longinus drove a lance into Jesus ' side while Jesus was hanging at the cross . ( PROSE : " The Spear of Destiny " ) Gemellus also knew of a story , of which he was no great believer , that Jesus ' body , after death , had somehow vanished after its entombment . Christians , he said , believed that he had come back to life , resurrected by the Jewish God . ( PROSE : " Byzantium ! " ) In the City of the Saved , many people claimed to be Jesus , but Yeshua bar - Abbas never did . He lived by a freshwater sea in Chainworth Park , mending boats and wooden furniture for the fishermen while telling them stories . Children particularly enjoyed his company , and he was a popular guest at weddings . When Lord Mayor Lucius Cassius Ignotus began hunting divinities during the Civil War , commandos from the Roman Catholic Church protected Yeshua , calling him " Lord " . ( PROSE : " A Hundred Words from a Civil War " ) Legacy . Whitewashing . Although he came from the Middle East , ( PROSE : " Byzantium ! " ) in later centuries , Jesus was viewed by some Christian s as white , as a result of whitewashing . ( TV : " Thin Ice " ) Father Roberto once explained to the Eighth Doctor : " You ' ve no idea how much damage the myth that the Holy Family were white has done to us , to our self - esteem , Doctor . For centuries , brown people — black , I believe they called themselves then — lived in the shadow of a white God . No matter how much they prayed , how penitent or good they were , being white was something they could never be . That kind of patronage does damage . " ( PROSE : " Halflife " ) References . The Tenth Doctor hinted to have been present at Jesus ' s birth ( TV : " Voyage of the Damned " ) and to remember what really happened at the first Easter . ( TV : " Planet of the Dead " ) The Eighth Doctor claimed to have attended the first Christmas in Bethlehem . ( AUDIO : " Relative Dimensions " ) The Twelfth Doctor later claimed the portraits of Jesus being Caucasian was due to whitewashing . ( TV : " Thin Ice " ) Christian s from just after the time of Christ believed they were being systematically suppressed by the same combination of Jewish and Roman interests who had kill ed Jesus . The First Doctor once met a man named Daniel who insisted that the Jewish establishment in Jerusalem was conspiring to discredit Christianity . ( PROSE : " Byzantium ! " ) On 3 March 1215 , Kamelion , disguised as King John , sang a chant about the liberation of Christ ' s tomb in Palestine from the Saracen s in the Crusades . ( TV : " The King ' s Demons " ) In 1968 , the Sentience appeared to Abbot Mervyn Winstanley as Jesus Christ so it could feed on his life energy . ( PROSE : " Nightshade " ) Jack Harkness implicitly compared Jesus ' conception to how a Nostrovite exobiologically implanted its egg s into Gwen Cooper . ( TV : " Something Borrowed " ) Owen Harper compared himself to Jesus , as both came back from the dead , but " without the beard " . ( TV : " A Day in the Death " ) After the Eleventh Doctor helped capture the Atraxi ' s prisoner in 2008 , he called the Atraxi back to Earth . The Atraxi displayed an image of the Corcovado statue , the iconic statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro , when the Doctor asked , " Is this world a threat to the Atraxi ? " ( TV : " The Eleventh Hour " ) Behind the scenes . Jesus was played by Kenneth Colley in the 1979 film " Monty Python ' s Life of Brian " , and by John Hurt in the 1981 film " History of the World Part I " .