Christianity is not the religion of Jesus.
It is not the religion that he followed. It is not the religion that he preached. It was not the religion that he would have had his followers pursue during his life or after his death.
What do we know of Jesus and the religion that he promoted? The gospels are our best historical source, but their historical accuracy is dubious at best. It remains that we can glean likely historical accounts from the Text with the use of three criteria, which I learned from the works of the New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman:
- The criterion of independent attestation: A given section of the gospels is more likely to be historically accurate if it is mentioned in more than one independent source (if it appears both in Mark’s Gospel and in John’s, for example. Note that the gospels themselves are not all independent; Luke and Matthew were likely based, in part, on Mark)
- The criterion of dissimilarity: A given section is more likely to be historically accurate if it opposes the vested interests of the author (reports of the crucifixion itself being an example of this; it was not believed prior to Jesus that the messiah would be an executed criminal)
- The criterion of contextual credibility: A given section is more likely to be historically accurate if it does not stand in opposition to what else we know of 1st century Palestinian Judaism.
Dr. Ehrman was himself once a fundamentalist Christian, one who believed in the inerrancy of the Bible. It appears that it was his depth of faith and commitment that drove him to a deep study of the Text, and it was that study that revealed to him the errancy of his faith. I trust in faith, so much so that I trust in the faith of no one who has not delved into it so deeply as to have found its errancy. Only those who have done so have their soul in the game.
Based on what we know of Jesus from the gospels, evaluated in the context of the three criteria listed above, Jesus was a Jewish apocalypticist1. He was a Jew who believed and preached a particular interpretation of the Jewish religion, an interpretation which saw the final judgement (as spoken of in the Old Testament, especially in Daniel 7-12) as coming with in the lifetimes of those who heard his message :
For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.
Matthew 16:27-28, NRSV
There is some debate as to whether, in this passage, Jesus was using the term “Son of Man” to refer to himself. One way or the other, it appears to be specific reference to apocalyptic vision of the Old Testament prophet Daniel:
As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.
Daniel 7:13-14
Whether or not Jesus was intending to portray himself as this Son of Man, it is clear that he was speaking of an apocalypse foretold in Jewish prophecy and soon to come. This shows up as well in Mark 13:24-30 and Luke 12:39-40.
Jesus preached a message of love, repentance, and preparation for this final judgement, which would come within the lifetime of his followers. Within the context of 1st century Judaism, it remains that his message was revolutionary. While the Pharisees promoted slavish devotion to the law, Jesus taught that the ultimate point of the law was love of God and love of one’s fellow human, and that without this love, the law was without value (Matthew 22:34-40, and others).
But it is hard to tell what Jesus would have said to those who followed him had he known that the final judgement would not come in their lifetime. This would have been a fundamental contradiction to his intended message; had he had that foreknowledge, it seems that everything about the message of Jesus would had to have been different. But whether or not he preached that he was the Jewish messiah (and instances in the Text of him having done so do not meet the three criteria), he said nothing of dying so that the sins of the world would be forgiven. Someone else invented this in his wake, taking nothing of what Jesus had said into account.
Christianity is not the religion of Jesus, but rather about Jesus. As to whom the religion truly belongs, it is the religion of — and largely founded by — Paul the Apostle, also known as Saul of Tarsus. The religion of Paul not only differs from, but even conflicts with the religion that Jesus preached.
In the seventh chapter of the New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles, which documents the early history of Christianity in the immediate wake of the death of Jesus, we first meet Saul of Tarsus. Another early apostle, Stephen, was on trial in Jerusalem for blasphemy, and in the course of the trial made a long speech directed against his persecutors. Enraged by his words, his audience dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death. This was witnessed by Paul, who was inspired by the act to further persecute the Christians. But Jesus later appeared to him in a vision and struck him blind. Saul prayed and repented, and his sight was restored, after which he was baptized and began his ministry.
Paul traveled as a missionary, founding Christian communities, to whom he would later write letters addressing various issues and concerns. These letters (along with several forgeries written in his name) were later collected and included in the New Testament as Holy Writ, and in them can be found the roots of the Christian hegemony that appropriates and distorts the Text to its own ends.
Let us take what can be said of Christian belief in general: There is one God, the creator, who has condemned humankind due to their sin, to which all people are subject due to the original sin of Adam and Eve, who had disobeyed God by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But God also redeemed the world by sending his son, who is of the same substance of God, to suffer and die in atonement for all of humankind’s sins. Those who accept this gift of salvation, regardless of their earthly deeds, are accepted by God into heaven after their deaths; those who do not are condemned to Hell for eternity.
Excepting only the theology of Jewish monotheism itself, Jesus taught none of this2. All of it is an interpretation of the crucifixion by Paul the Apostle. Paul had never spoken with or met Jesus himself, and had only seen Jesus in a vision in which Jesus said only two things, neither of which relate to any of the above.
The Christology of Paul is largely established in his letter to the Christian church in Rome. In it we find the doctrine of original sin (Romans 5:12-13), as well as God’s condemnation and the redemption of humankind through the sacrifice of Jesus (Romans 3:21-25). The notion that the gift of salvation must be accepted to have any effect is found elsewhere, in Acts 16:31 (“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household,” NRSV), but these are as well the alleged words of Paul. In Romans 3:28, he confirms that salvation comes through faith alone, rather than coming from how one lives one’s life (and in Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus preaches precisely the opposite of this). And though Paul does not speak specifically of Hell, he does speak of God’s judgement and wrath (Romans 2:5, and elsewhere), which others have correlated with damnation to Hell via other verses in both testaments.
Paul may indeed have had some remarkable, mystical experience, but he never knew Jesus nor ever heard him preach. The gospels had not yet been written at the time of Paul’s conversion; he may have read or heard some of the sources from which those books were compiled, but it remains that everything he knew of Jesus came to him second-hand. Why is it, then, that Paul is seen as authoritative? Sometimes more authoritative, even, than Jesus himself?
Paul wrote extensively to his communities to remind them of what he had taught them, and, as mentioned, his letter to the Romans outlines his entire Christology. Why did Paul write nothing therein about the teachings of Jesus? Throughout Paul’s authentic writings, references to what Jesus himself had taught are scant, with the only clear reference being in 1 Corinthians, in which Paul teaches the Lord’s Supper (11:23-25). In chapter 7, Paul has some advice on marriage which may be seen as reflecting Matthew 19:9-10 and Mark 10:11-12, but the context is quite different and I doubt that there is a connection. Jesus is admonishing against adultery; Paul is advising on marriage and divorce in general in the face of the apocalypse that he, as well, believed was soon to come.
Indeed, Paul fully admits to not knowing the teachings of Jesus, and seemed to consider them irrelevant to his own message:
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamations were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
In light of this, I have been listening more closely to Christians when they quote scripture, and more specifically to what it is that they are quoting, and for what reason. One who tosses out verses from the Old Testament and New, from the gospels and the Pauline epistles, even from writings of Paul which are known to have been forged, without connection nor context, is a charlatan. One who quotes primarily from the Pauline Epistles, mostly from Romans and 1 Corinthians with only incidental references to the other texts, may be a Christian, but is no disciple of Jesus. Given that the apocalypse that Jesus predicted never came, and certainly not within his given timeline, it is not surprising that there do not seem to be any remaining followers of the religion of Jesus.
- While I researched for this story independently, it was largely inspired by Dr. Ehrman’s work, and this aspect in particular is the focus of his book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium
- There is of course the famous verses in chapter 3 of John’s Gospel: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:13-18, NRSV). At least the first part is the word of Jesus according to John, but it is disputed whether the quotation ends at the end of verse 15 (“…that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”). Additionally — and this is true as well of many other apparent correlations between Paul’s teachings and the gospels — this would have been written after Paul’s letter to the Roman church, and thus may have been influenced by Paul rather than the other way around. And this information appears only in a single gospel, thus failing to meet the criterion of independent attestation.