ABSTRACT
At the time of its origins, all of what we now call Christianity was JewishChristianity. Jesus was a Jewish prophetic figure who looked for the restoration of Israel under the rule of God.1 All of his followers were Jews, and all of those who first proclaimed his resurrection and vindication as God’s Messiah were Jews. Their belief that Jesus, crucified and risen, was God’s promised Messiah distinguished them from their fellow Jews, but in all other respects they remained loyal Jews, worshipping at the temple according to the established Jewish pattern (Acts 3:1; see Falk 1995) and apparently faithful in their adherence to Torah (the Jewish Law). However, within a relatively short time, the message about Jesus the Messiah had begun to be shared with non-Jews, and there was diversity and disagreement about the extent to which Gentile (and Jewish [cf. Gal. 2:14]) believers in Christ should adhere to the Jewish way of life, with all that that entailed (see Acts 15). Paul, of course, looms large in such early and crucial debates (see e.g. Gal. 2:11-21). The key question for this chapter is: What became of this essentially Jewish Christianity which characterized the whole Christian movement at its point of origin?2
