How Jesus Became Christian

by Wilson, Barrie

• ISBN13: 9780312362782
• ISBN10: 0312362781
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-04
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

"Jesus was thoroughly Jewish. Mary, his mother, was Jewish and Judaism was the religion he practiced throughout his life. Jesus' teachings focused on the important Jewish issues of the day...But, what happened? How did Jesus the Jew become a Gentile Christ?" So begins Barrie Wilson inHow Jesus Became Christianwhere Wilson confronts one of the simplest questions of religious history and yet one that anyone rarely thinks about: How did a young, well-respected rabbi become the head of a cult that bears his name, espouses a philosophy that he wouldn't wholly understand and possesses a clear streak of anti-Semitism that has sparked hatred against the generations of Jews who followed him? Colorfully recreating the Hellenistic world into which Jesus was born a theologically cacophonous world filled with a panoply of Greek philosophies, oriental religions such as Mithraism and the Egyptian cults of Isis and Osiris -- Wilson brings the answer to life by looking at the rivalry between the "Jesus movement" led by James, informed by the teachings of Matthew and adhering to Torah worship, and the "Christ movement," headed by Paul which shunned Torah. Wilson suggests that Paul's movement was not rooted in the teachings and sayings of the historical Jesus, a man Paul actually never met, but solely in Paul's mystical vision of Christ,. Wilson's persuasively then goes on to show how Paul established the new religion through anti-Semitic propaganda which ultimately crushed the Jesus Movement. Sure to be controversial, this is an exciting, well-written popular religious history that cuts to the heart of the differences between Christianity and Judaism. How Jesus Became Christianlooks at how one of the world's great religions prospered and grew at the cost of another and focuses on one of the fundamental questions that goes to the heart of way millions worship daily: Who was Jesus Christ --a Jew or a Christian?

Author Biography

BARRIE WILSON is Professor of Humanities & Religious Studies at York University in Toronto. A specialist in early Christian origins, this is his first book intended for a general audience. Building on contemporary critical scholarship, it addresses some of the major puzzles he has identified in teaching biblical studies over a twenty-year period. An award-winning educator, his previous academic books focused on textual interpretation.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Prologue: A Personal Note	p. xi
The Cover-Up	p. 1
Cultures in Conflict	p. 7
Being Jewish in a Cosmopolitan World	p. 31
The Secrets of History	p. 48
The Challenge of Jesus	p. 63
The Promises of Jesus	p. 85
Jesus's Earliest Followers: The Jesus Movement	p. 95
What Happened to Jesus?	p. 103
The Trouble with Paul	p. 109
The Big Switch: Christ for Jesus	p. 131
The Jesus Movement Fades Away	p. 150
Paul the Radical	p. 168
Demonizing Jewish Leadership and the Jewish People	p. 182
Confiscating Judaism's Heritage	p. 195
Attacking the Jewish Concept of God	p. 211
Anti-Semitism	p. 230
The Cover-Up Revealed	p. 237
Epilogue: The Way Forward	p. 254
Timelines	p. 267
Terminology	p. 275
Notes	p. 285
Bibliography	p. 300
Index	p. 307
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Prologue
How Jesus Became Christian is intended for general readers who are curious about the origins of Christianity, who are interested in the big picture, and who are perplexed by some of the same mysteries that have intrigued me over the years. 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?
I first became aware of the Jewishness of Jesus in high school. A visiting speaker, a rabbi by the name of Dr. Joshua Stern of Temple Emanu-el in Montreal, introduced himself to a mixed Protestant-Jewish audience as, “My name is Jesus [Joshua]. Jesus was Jewish.” That was a new and interesting thought—both that Jesus’s name was really Yeshua (Joshua in English) and that he was Jewish. I hadn’t realized that before, and it is one of the few things I remember from my entire high school education. I don’t think anyone intentionally hid that truth from me: Jesus’s Jewishness just wasn’t spoken of. Then or now.
This insight stuck with me as I worked through my academic studies in the Philosophy of Religion as well as Biblical Studies. I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, after an M.A. from Columbia University and a B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from Bishop’s University in Quebec. Along the way I studied at Union Theological and General Theological Seminaries—both in New York City—and completed a degree in Religious Studies at Trinity College, Toronto. I was privileged to study with two of the world’s leading Anglican theologians of the time—Eugene R. Fairweather and W. Norman Pittenger—as well as with a prominent Anglican New Testament scholar, Frank W. Beare.
My dual education in both Philosophy and Biblical Studies has helped to shape my perspective on texts. As a philosopher and historian of religion, I seek evidence and support for positions. Consequently, I approach the study of the Bible with a critical eye. What is the claim being made? What is its social and political context? What motivates the author of the individual biblical texts? Do the claims make sense? What’s not being said?
This book builds upon contemporary scholarship. Along the way, I have put into the notes (at the end of the book) references to scholars who have helped me in my quest to understand the New Testament and early Christian origins. I am highly indebted to many of these thinkers, but I have taken a somewhat independent stance with the formulation of what I call the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis. This contention represents a more forthright claim than one will find in the current literature.
Most of my publications hitherto have been for scholars, and I’ve published articles on biblical writers, ancient Greek authors, as well as theorists of textual interpretation.1 It has been in teaching Biblical Studies over twenty years, however, that I gradually came to realize that a lot of things do not add up when we examine New Testament and early Christian writings from a critical, evidence-based perspective. These interpretive puzzles prompted me to probe further and to go beyond the superficial story line embedded in the New Testament documents.
An Invitation to Explore
This book is the result of some two decades of reflection. I invite you to share in this investigation and to see afresh the origins of Christianity as we know it. Along the way, several varieties of early Christianity will be explored. We will gain a new appreciation of how Jesus himself was originally perceived by his family and, after his death, by his earliest followers, the Jesus Movement in Jerusalem, under James. We will discover who Paul really was and why his message was so radical . . . and disruptive. His impact upon “what eventually became Christianity” can hardly be underplayed. We will also see, decade by decade, how the new religion departed from Judaism and repackaged Jesus in an interesting and extremely successful way. We will come to understand why it emerged with anti-Semitic attitudes well entrenched.
I encourage readers to think through the origins of Christianity and to ponder the new perspective presented in this work. The intended reader is one who asks questions, likes challenges, and seeks to learn. I have met many such people teaching a generation of students at York University, a multicultural secular university in Toronto. With over fifty thousand students and seven thousand faculty and staff, York is Canada’s third largest university. Students come from many different backgrounds—all varieties of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, and those with no current religious affiliation. They have been open to historical and philosophical questioning and relish the search for answers. Their questions and findings have enriched my own thinking with their perspectives. I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to teach within a secular institution, giving me the liberty to probe uncomfortable questions with students who have enjoyed the freedom not to be defensive about faith positions and to discern anew what could have happened “back there then.”
Over the years, I have traveled many times to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey, to see firsthand the places to which the Bible refers. In 1994, we enjoyed a wonderful family adventure in Israel on the occasion of our son, Michael’s, bar mitzvah at Masada. Along with his brothers, Jamie and David, we toured Israel from the Negev in the south to the Galilee in the north and back down into Egypt, visiting many historic and archeological sites along the way. Israel, however, is not just a museum of antiquities: it is also the land of the living Bible, and we explored contemporary Israeli sights and sounds as well.
In 2001, I took twenty-nine students from York University on a course trip to this region, aided by my colleague, Patrick Gray. We walked, hiked, talked, sang, and roamed the historic haunts of Jerusalem, the lush Galilee, and the arid Dead Sea area where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. We took the cable car up to the top of Masada to see Herod the Great’s magnificent palaces. As we later hiked down the steep incline of Masada, I recall the group singing “Amazing Grace.” I wondered at the time what its original Zealot inhabitants would have made of these sentiments.
Most of us climbed up what is alleged to be Mount Sinai over a four-hour period in the late afternoon, to see the sunset from the summit and to gain a sense of the splendor that Moses himself might have experienced. Whether it was on this mountain—or one close by—it was an overwhelming experience. We descended in the dark with a brilliant canopy of stars overhead—the brightest sky I have ever seen. With our increasingly dim flashlights showing us the way, we bumped into camels trekking silently up the pathway. We all wondered, how can such huge animals move so quietly in the dark? We came back, late for the dinner that our gracious Egyptian hosts had arranged, and we were quickly brought back down to earth.
They were a remarkable group and it was a unique experience. They were all searching for something about their heritage that would resonate with them today. The experience we underwent was very similar to the sense of wonder and history that Bruce Feiler writes about in Walking the Bible. He wrote that book in conversations with a prominent Israeli archeologist, Avner Goren. I was later privileged to trek through many of the temples and tombs of Egypt with Avner as my insightful guide. Feiler writes movingly of his experience, much of it tracing the probable path the ancient Israelites under Moses would have taken through the Sinai, Jordan, and Israel. Members of our group had much the same experience he did tracing their roots.
Feiler’s book was published in 2001, around the same time as our trip through Israel and the Sinai. I was amazed to read that he and Avner had read passages from Egeria’s Travels while visiting Mount Sinai. This account was written by a fourth-century nun or wealthy patroness who had traveled throughout the Middle East, visiting biblical sites. We, too, had read her descriptions of Mount Sinai and its surroundings.2 We could stand where she had stood and see what she had witnessed in the 380s. It was remarkable how many of her observations were accurate after a span of over sixteen hundred years. Not much has changed in the harsh rugged Sinai.
Many of my students have been on a journey, taking elective courses in Biblical and Religious Studies as part of their own exploration and using their own faith perspective as a launching pad for making sense of their personal stance. We all customize religion, based on our own experiences and sense of what is of ultimate importance in life. In my own case, my journey has taken me from Episcopalianism into Judaism. I find that a religion focusing primarily on behavior rather than on belief fits better with my sense of what religion should be. Oddly enough, I also find that approach closer to the religion of Jesus than the one that developed about him. In particular, I like the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, in which people are called to work creatively with God in repairing the world. Within early Christianity, my sentiments are with the Ebionites, not with Paul, and I regret that Christianity did not develop along the lines of their beliefs and practices. But that’s only my journey. Others have different routes to follow as they make out their own destiny.
This book is written for readers who are curious, who possess an open mind, and who like to savor different possibilities about the way history may have unfolded. In particular, it is not written for those who are plagued by an absolutist spirituality, who claim that they and they alone possess the one and only one correct interpretation of their particular brand of religion. Such a stance represents the enemy of dialogue and discourse and it’s a pathology that unfortunately runs throughout many contemporary religious faiths. This book is also not written for scholars who have probed minute portions of the development of early Christianities in great detail. They are rightfully concerned with micro issues. My focus, however, is macro—the bigger picture of early Christianity—and I have built upon contemporary research in my own investigations. The Jesus Cover-Up Thesis, which I will explore in this book, is mine and mine alone. I’m aware that it pushes the boundaries of contemporary scholarship but in a direction, I think, that best fits the evidence.
A Timelines section is included at the back of this book, providing dates of major movements and writings. A Terminology section is also provided, but technical terms, the sort that scholars are fond of, have been kept to a minimum. 
Copyright © 2008 by Barrie Wilson, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

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Excerpted from How Jesus Became Christian by Barrie Wilson
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