How Jesus Became Christian

Like many of us, Barrie Wilson wants to know "How did the Jewish Jesus of history become the Gentile Christ of faith? How did early Christianity become a separate religion from Judaism? What really accounts for Christian anti-Semitism?" He seeks answers partly by comparing different accounts within the scriptures -- Paul's own accounts compared with Luke's version of the same events in Acts, or Jesus' teaching about the Jewish law compared to Paul's. The results are fascinating, and come close to demolishing any justification for a wall between Christianity and Jesus' own Jewish faith. Where Jesus pushed the spirit of the Torah beyond external deeds to deal with the inner conflicts behind deeds, later Christians presented Christ as invalidating the Old Testament law. Where Jesus urged "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 5:19), Paul, with his independent revelation, argued that the entire law of Moses was needless. Since Abraham had faith before the law appeared, everything which happened since (until Jesus) was irrelevant. Now, Paul claimed, anyone who continued to observe the Jewish law was "under a curse", and "No one will be justified by the works of the law" (Gal. 2:16). At least, as Wilson points out, Paul did not try to cite Jesus himself as the source of this teaching. The book holds much more, but let me quote one among several conclusions: "What we have today in Christianity is largely Paulinity, a religion about the Gentile Christ that covers over the message of the Jewish Jesus of history. Second, it involved a hostile differentiation, with scathing attacks by the Proto-Orthodox on anything Jewish. Third, the cover up resulted in the entrenchment of anti-Semitism, directed against Judaism and the Jewish people" (p. 255) In looking over Wilson's research, there's just one factor I'd like to add in explaining the hostile division of Gentile Christianity from Jesus' Jewish faith. That is the factor of war. Where Jewish nationalists rose in revolt against Roman colonial rule (twice, in the 70s and 130s AD), Gentile converts sought to prove their loyalty to Rome by distancing themselves from the rebels. While Rome crucified the Jewish nation, many Gentile Christians tried to deny they ever knew the accused. --author of Correcting Jesus

Like many of us, Barrie Wilson wants to know "How did the Jewish Jesus of history become the Gentile Christ of faith? How did early Christianity become a separate religion from Judaism? What really accounts for Christian anti-Semitism?" He seeks answers partly by comparing different accounts within the scriptures -- Paul's own accounts compared with Luke's version of the same events in Acts, or Jesus' teaching about the Jewish law compared to Paul's. The results are fascinating, and come close to demolishing any justification for a wall between Christianity and Jesus' own Jewish faith. Where Jesus pushed the spirit of the Torah beyond external deeds to deal with the inner conflicts behind deeds, later Christians presented Christ as invalidating the Old Testament law. Where Jesus urged "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 5:19), Paul, with his independent revelation, argued that the entire law of Moses was needless. Since Abraham had faith before the law appeared, everything which happened since (until Jesus) was irrelevant. Now, Paul claimed, anyone who continued to observe the Jewish law was "under a curse", and "No one will be justified by the works of the law" (Gal. 2:16). At least, as Wilson points out, Paul did not try to cite Jesus himself as the source of this teaching. The book holds much more, but let me quote one among several conclusions: "What we have today in Christianity is largely Paulinity, a religion about the Gentile Christ that covers over the message of the Jewish Jesus of history. Second, it involved a hostile differentiation, with scathing attacks by the Proto-Orthodox on anything Jewish. Third, the cover up resulted in the entrenchment of anti-Semitism, directed against Judaism and the Jewish people" (p. 255) In looking over Wilson's research, there's just one factor I'd like to add in explaining the hostile division of Gentile Christianity from Jesus' Jewish faith. That is the factor of war. Where Jewish nationalists rose in revolt against Roman colonial rule (twice, in the 70s and 130s AD), Gentile converts sought to prove their loyalty to Rome by distancing themselves from the rebels. While Rome crucified the Jewish nation, many Gentile Christians tried to deny they ever knew the accused.

I was baptized in my early forties, and thought I understood the New Testament. After all, I believed I was a critical thinker... but now I can see how I completely missed the obvious. The revelation started several years ago, when I started hearing sermons from well-intentioned pastors vilifying "the Pharisees". From reading works by Brad Young and others, it was apparent that your average preacher didn't know a Pharisee from a Sadducee (they pronounced the word sad-juicy) from a Zealot. Worse still, these "shepherds" were using the word "Sadducee" as a code-word for "those God-hating Jews". The second charged word I kept hearing, usually extracted from one of Paul's writings, was "The Law" usually associated with slavery, bondage, or worse. After reading Heschel and others, I could not understand how the Hebrew Bible could be such a harsh task-master. One look at a photo of Rebbe Schneerson's eyes and you know this man did not suffer from the weight of the Torah. Then I was hit over the head three times: Flusser's "Sage from Galilee" Bart Ehrman's "James, the Brother of Jesus" and now "How Jesus Became Christian". There are others, but I loaned them to friends. Barrie Wilson's book is not the most exhaustive, but it is the best balanced. It starts with the birth of two distinct movements in Rome in the early twenties AD. One based on those who actually knew and followed Jesus, and the other based on wild speculation by Paul of Tarsus after being thrown from a horse. Unfortunately, the competition was fixed early-on. Paul had the advantage of being a Roman toady, whereas James et. al. was seen as a political liability to the stability of Rome (Pax Romana). Second, probably NOT by mutual agreement, Paul could travel wherever he wanted and cull "God-Fearers" from the Synagogues all over the Mediterranean while James' gang had to be constantly dodging the Roman occupation force. Third, Paul offered a religion with no strict rules: faith was sufficient. Also, with Paul's declaration that most of the Hebrew Bible was useless, it would be easy to be up-to-speed in a short time. James, on the other hand, insisted that non-Jewish followers have to follow God's code given to the survivors of the Great Flood... the Noahic Code. Your priest will never tell you this, but FOLLOWING THE NOAHIC CODE WAS SUFFICIENT TO ACHIEVE EVERLASTING LIFE. For the Jew, it was business as usual: circumcision, no food offered to idols: no work on the Sabbath. So why did Paul's religion win out when Jesus is the Son of God? Free Will. In short, this is not a book for those with the "The Bible said it, I believe it, and that settles it" mindset. However, for those of us who just want to know what really happened two thousand years ago, I heartily recommend this book as a fresh perspective. By the way, is there a proper way to dispose of Paul's and Luke's writings that I removed from my Bible? Just kidding.

Barrie Wilson is a professor of religious studies and has written mostly for scholars in the past but this book is his first that is written for a general audience. I don't mean to repeat what the first reviewer said but this is the best book I've read on Christianity in a long time; not only in terms of his primary focus concerning what Jesus taught versus what Paul taught, but what the 1st century C. E. was like in terms of politics, culture, and religion and how the various Jewish groups of that period dealt with Hellenization and the Romans. Additionally, he guides us through events in the preceding centuries that led up to and precipitated the kind of world that Jesus and Paul were born into. This book will no doubt cause a lot of controversy among Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians as it asks the hard questions that they so often gloss over concerning Christian origins. I had not heard of Barrie Wilson before I stumbled across this book at my local bookstore and, I suspect, neither have most readers of this review; however, if this book gets the kind of attention that it deserves I think Wilson will have established himself as one of the premiere scholars in the field of religion that has the ability to write for both the academic and the lay person.

This is probably the best book that I have read this year. Professor Wilson offers a fresh take on one of the most fundamental questions throughout history... "How did a Torah-observant practicing Jew become the a gentile son of G-d and ultimately the leader of Christianity?" Every page is well thought out and finally there is a book which frames up all of the arguments in a historical context. Do not be shy of this book as Professor Wilson makes the reader feel comfortable with arguments punching through an easy to understand context.