Customer Reviews

How Jesus Became Christian

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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.

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

As another reviewer wrote, most of this is not new material, but Wilson does a pretty good job summarizing it - particularly for the layman. What is also not new, but is controversial, is that he also pins Christian antisemitism very directly on Paul's theology - particularly the "Christifying" aspect (and the proto-orthodox writings of others). John Gager wrote more extensively about the origins of antisemitism in the early centuries of Christianity in 1983. Wilson's book is provocative, particularly in how much it positions Paul's theology as essentially a new religion.

I see three basic scholarly schools of thought in the new Paul research: 1) Paul is misunderstood by most Christian theologians as advocating supersessionism of Judaism, he actually meant those ideas to apply only to Gentile converts (Gager, based much on Lloyd Gaston); 2) Paul is fully supersessionist and dimisses the torah completely (Wilson, Macoby, et al); 3) Somewhere kind of in-between: N.T. Wright. I'm really intrigued by Wright, but don't fully understand his position (or maybe I'm just not convinced). He certainly seems to be "softening" the typical evangelical/conservative "justification by faith" position, but he still views Paul within the realm of torah is meaningful only as transformed by belief in Jesus.

Wilson's book lays out the issues and dilemma one faces when trying to really come to terms with Paul in history. I offer the previous three as a quick summary of the debate positions (I may not be fully accurate in them). I'm finding myself somewhere in between #1 and #2 - I have more reading to do by Dunn, Gager, Gaston, and Sanders.

Here's a few specifics on Wilson's book:

1) His analysis of Galatians is quite good, particularly on its exegesis in relation to Genesis (regarding the theological points) and Acts (regarding the historical inconsistencies). I was surprised, though, that he relied soley (essentially) on Galatians, but didn't touch Romans. I know as a layman's book, he can't touch it all, but Romans - being Paul's latest and most developed thesis - needs to be addressed. This does not diminish his legitimate criticisms of Paul's argument in Galatians (as some will try to claim), but it leaves the argument incomplete.

2) The Acts factor. Wilson is clear that Acts plays a pivotal role in transforming Paul's theology into a Gentile converting, empire winning formula. I certainly think that aspects of his Acts/Paul comparisons demand some serious explanation (there are some definite dissconnects in what Acts reports and what Paul himself claims), and I further agree that Acts paints Paul as the "hero" of Christianity, I'm just not sure that Acts can support the full weight of Wilson's thesis. I can imagine that Acts reflects the zeitgeist, but I think it may be too difficult to argue causality.

3) The main punch of his book - based on all of this - is that it explains the incessant Christian antisemitism throughout history. Basically, Christianity so usurped, dismissed, and deligetimized Judaism - at the expense of historical truthfulness to Jesus' original message - that the proto-orthodox leaders needed to completely disenfranchise Judaism.

Definitely a provocative book. His theses can certainly be challenged, but they should also certainly be looked at. As an non-trinitarian, I certainly think that the High-Christology of the first four centuries needs some serious challenging in its pagan, hellenistic roots and its complete deligitimizing of Jesus' Jewishness. In that, I agree with Wilson.

Virtually all Christians assume that Christianity was the religion of Jesus, the man they believed to be the divine Messiah from Nazareth. Barrie Wilson delved deep into history and the Bible to pose a question that every Christian should have asked himself - How Jesus became Christian? The historical Jesus, if he existed, was born of Jewish parents, brought up in the religion of the Jews, and preached his own brand of Judaism. Wilson traced with detailed analysis, the change from the Jesus Movement to the Christ Movement of Paul. He expounded with clarity, how "the Christ Movement swept Jesus up out of his Jewish context and landed him in the midst of a new, strange Gentile environment. That changed everything, since the Christ figure was not the Jewish Messiah. The whirlwind caused by Paul has had a profound effect on how we understand the Jesus of history, his teachings and his mission. Everything is now seen through the eyes of Paul and his new landscape." This may be criticized as another revisionist account, but it is a very plausible account. It added a clear and plausible account to the one that Christians held. It would need an equally learned scholar to refute the Wilson account, but for now, Wilson's book is unmatched.

This is a well-written book, despite Wilson's repetition of his thesis many times over. He's probably going to win over many readers with his style and polish even where his arguments aren't necessarily water-tight.

It's also definitely thought-provoking. Regardless of whether you buy his overall argument, the book will make very clear the division between early law-following believers and Pauline Christians. I've read several of Bart Ehrman's books and he says much the same kind of thing, but it hadn't been as clear until I read Wilson's book. Paul's letter to the Galatians had never quite seemed to make all that much sense to me before this book, with Paul's attack on followers of the law.

The book reads like a Jewish take on Jesus and how Paul corrupted his message. And in fact, Wilson is a convert to Judaism. Reading the book with this in mind should make the reader more cautious about the arguments presented. If you do accept Wilson's argument, you'll be hard pressed not to also convert to Judaism, or perhaps simply reject the entire Jesus/Christian enterprise as a human invention.

In the end, while I found the book enlightening, I couldn't accept Wilson's central thesis. I'm no fundamentalist and question a lot about early Christianity and church history. But I found Wilson's thesis a little too neat. He selects quotes and writings that support his idea, and either ignores those that do not or dismisses them as later accretions. The truth is always messier.

I find it difficult to believe that Paul thought up Christianity entirely from his own imagination, not drawing on anything from earlier Jesus/Christ believers. Paul in fact does say in his Galatians letter that he did confer with Peter and James. Paul's letter doesn't exactly match with the account in Acts, but it's clear he did have discussions with the leaders in Jerusalem and had some kind of understanding at some point. Those "Jesus movement" leaders didn't entirely reject him. I do think Paul and James/Peter/et al. had ongoing disagreements about what Jesus intended for his movement. As other reviewers have pointed out, Jesus said and did a lot that upended Jewish traditions. I don't agree with what eventually became orthodoxy either, but I think there is more continuity and sharing among these early Jesus/Christian believers than Wilson would have us believe.

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.

Christianity confronts a paradox of cosmic proportions. It teaches that the Hebrew Yehoshua abandoned the discipline of "the law" in favour of an all encompassing "love". In the dogmatic and liturgical process of a developing faith, it grafted itself onto the narrative of a people who were the objective bad guys in the story. It were as though the emerging christian ethic could only parsitically grow at the expense of its declared victim, the people of Yehoshua, the Hebrew nation itself.

That the gospels are an inconsistent series of increasingly anti semitic writings is well known to scholars who look beyond christian self serving and self manufacturing authority.

A Jew murdered by Romans is in the process, converted into a man god murdered by his own people. That a man could be God or emanate from God would have affronted the living Jesus as an unpardonable blasphemy. Remember that every Hebrew considered himself the son of God in a non literal sense.

In the end what you have historically experienced is an amazing bit of marketing- probably the most succesfcul in history!

But Judaism survives in part because of christianity's need for a fall guy. To define itself as the logical successor of an abandoned faith, the christian world always had to opress the Jew who's abject condition inflicted in and by a christian world, would be proof of his downfall.

Some day the christian church must heal itself. It must acknowledge that Jesus lived and died a Jew and that christianity was in its sources a faith that owed little to its claimed Jewish roots.Until that day comes Jews are entitled to point out the christian paradox.

"How Jesus Became Christian" is Dr. Barrie Wilson's attempt to explain and prove his Jesus Cover-Up theory that revolves around an early, Jewish Jesus movement and a later, Greek Paul movement. Early in the book, he paints a picture of the first century world by explaining things like hellinization, Jewish expectations, and a background of Jewish history. Having established this foundation, Wilson describes his proposed picture of Jesus' identity and movement. This picture involves Jesus, a highly Jewish figure, advocating strict adherence to the Torah along with an expectation that God would act to bring about the kingdom of God which would displace the Roman domination of the promised land. However, Wilson observes: A problem soon arises in the work and life of Paul. This man, who rarely quotes Christ in his own work, thoroughly deviated from the Jesus movement to create a Greek-like Christ movement born from his Paul's own personal revelation. This movement, fueled by the slanted story in Acts that combined the two movements, led to Paul's anti-Torah attitudes in Galatians, later fueled further anti-Jewish ideas from other historical figures like Justin Martyr and Marcion, and, ultimately, has lead to much anti-semitism in the Christian church. Indeed, this is an intriguing thesis and theory, however, despite a few positive points, Wilson fails to convincingly prove his thesis as his arguments are consistently inaccurate, incomplete, and without historical or scholarly support.

Positively, Wilson, in the tradition of many other proven scholars, makes some excellent observations about the first century world. He correctly notes some "big picture" items of 1st century Judaism that revolve around eschatology and the varying forms of resistance to Roman control as illustrated by the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes (31-48, 57). Wilson spends three chapters making other observations like these that portray a very readable account of first century life in the Levant, and this readable, "big picture" style serves as an excellent resource for anyone looking for an introduction to first century political and religious life. Wilson basically presents a wide variety of issues, shows how they are intertwined, and uses creative means like mock newspaper headlines or mock interviews to illustrates these points. This creativity and readability leads to easy understanding and informative reading for any inquisitive searcher.

However, after this creative introduction, positive elements quickly disappear. Wilson suggests that Luke's message in Acts is largely a cover-up that combines Paul's Christ movement with the Jesus movement in order to make historical conditions that will impress the Romans (146). Wilson presents this argument with little historical or textual evidence, merely deciding that Luke recreates Paul as overly Jewish and suggests that Paul thought very little of Jesus through his lack of Jesus quotations in his epistles (146). However, in this conclusion, Wilson ignores two important things. First, he ignores the known historical accuracy of Luke the physician/historian. Secondly, he never seems to engage recent scholarship that combines Paul's writings with the Jewish nature of his sermons and actions in the book of Acts. However, history shows that Luke is excellent historian, not a man bent to providing inaccuracies to prove a certain point. Meanwhile, scholars such as N.T. Wright and E.P Sander have made plenty of conclusion and arguments that allow Paul's writings to fit closely with the Acts account. If Wilson wishes to offer a convincing argument, then he must first prove that Luke is a sloppy historian and then must engage recent scholarship that has fully engaged the issues of Paul, Acts, Jesus, and the kingdom of God. However, Wilson does not do this and repeatedly picks certain Pauline passages out of the text in order to show alleged "differences" between Paul and Acts, and he does so without any regard for the overall argument and perspective of Paul. Thus, his argument is very incomplete and, as a result, possibly inaccurate.

In addition, Wilson struggles with things such as the book of James. He notes that the book may be written by James, the head of the Jesus movement, or a close follower of the movement and ties the faith-works passage in James 2 to strict Torah observance (152-156). Indeed, James is a very Jewish book, however, if James is from the "Jesus movement" as Wilson suggests, then one must wonder why James calls Jesus the "Christ" and "Lord" in James 1:1. Yet, Wilson never really addresses this issues, but continues forward suggesting that James' perspectives very much differs Paul's idea. It seems as though reconciliation is never really an option to Wilson because he has already decided that the two views are incompatible. Again, this shows the incompleteness of Wilson's work. In his mind, Paul is anti-Torah, thus a Jewish-centered book must oppose Paul's writings.
This leads to one of the largest objections to Wilson's work. He does not consider and evaluate Paul's work as a whole and ignores other passages of the New Testament, thus failing to show how they fit or do not fit into his thesis. He suggests that Paul's anti-Torah mentality leads to a rather loose system of ethics that Paul simply describes as "walk by the Spirit" in Galatians 5 (176). Yes, Galatians is rather broad ethically in that regard, although the list Paul presents of work of the flesh seems very specific. However, Wilson essentially ignores other ethics centered passages like Ephesians 4-6, Philippians 4, and 1-2 Timothy where Paul specifically articulates what walking by the Spirit looks like for the believer. Paul is actually quite strict in his ethical code and, in a very Jesus-oriented fashion, much of his "walk in the Spirit" teaching sounds much like Jesus' command to "love thy neighbor" and to "love God." In addition, while Wilson uses random passages in Galatians to argue for Paul's anti-Torah attitude, he never seems to engage other Pauline passages like 1 Corinthians 7:17-24 and Romans 9-11 that portray different portraits of Paul and help explain Paul's overall thought process and attitude regarding the Jews and Jewish practices.

Likewise, concerning Wilson's incomplete conclusions, one must wonder how Wilson accounts for the very "Christian" sounding statements found in books such as 1-2 Peter, Jude, and especially Hebrews. Even if one takes a liberal perspective and argues that Peter did not author 1-2 Peter, one must examine the texts and wonder why Hebrews is able to convincingly connect Jewish practice and Scripture to the person and work of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. However, Wilson leaves these issues largely unaddressed. Instead, he conveniently focuses exclusively upon Galatians, Acts, and Matthew (and the split personality he assigns Matthew is even more puzzling) and conveniently forget these other New Testament perspectives.

Out of this Pauline tradition of an anti-Torah attitude, Wilson then traces the anti-semitic roots of his version of modern Christianity. He curiously treats Marcion's teaching as if it is mainstream, while most Christian scholars strongly disagree with his conclusions. However, Wilson's carelessness on Jesus, Acts, and Paul simply show that the very foundation to his argument is deeply flawed and incredibly incomplete.

In "How Jesus Became Christian," a cover-up does indeed happen. However, it is not the Paul induced cover-up that Wilson suggests destroyed the historical perspective of Jesus. Instead, it is a cover up that ignores the historical reality of the New Testament, the work of the Jesus, and the writings of Paul. In Wilson's book, he does not convincingly argue that a cover up happened in any regard, however, he does illustrate his desire to reduce Jesus to one who merely taught and followed the Torah. Any other power ascribed to Jesus, especially in regard to his role as Savior and Lord, is a later development that is part of the cover up. In reducing Jesus, he does not prove his cover up, but does illustrate his desire to cover up the fact that perhaps mankind does have a need for a Savior. However, that need that Jesus died for and Paul preached about, cannot be covered by Wilson's poor scholarship. Thankfully, Wilson's cover-up is merely fiction.

I am almost finished my library copy of this fine book (I intend to buy a copy soon). Wilson has written a very readable assessment of the roots of Christianity, which, as he reminds us, should be correctly called "Paulism". The author clearly shows how the family of Jesus was completely isolated and out-hustled by the Paul movement. His insights into why the message of a de-Judaized Messiah caught on with the Gentile (pagan) world and not amongst Jews is very enlightening.

He also allows for the occassional speculation when the historical record is blank, as it is on so many instances. What he does not speculate about is the roots of anti-Semitism and it rests with the early proto-Orthodox leadership that came after Paul. What is clear though is that their theological footing was all set in place by Paul's actions and letters. Early Christianity was already well on it's way to rampant anti-Jewish, Christ-killer mentality and from there it is a short skip to the crusades, pogroms and expulsions that litter European history. The underlying motif that runs throughout the book is that the historical Jesus (Yeshua) would have been totally appalled and opposed to what became a new religion, not the least because that faith turned so vicious towards Jews.

This is not the first book in print that discusses the difference between the historical charismatic Yeshua and the Christos of Paul. One should not be surprised that this book has come along now in light of the recent finds of a potential Jesus Family tomb and what the implications of possibly finding Jesus's ossuary as well as the potential of a wife and child. Having seen the Millenium come and go and having no Jesus Christ descending in a white cloud and seeing world-wide Church attendance and participation in faith reaching new lows, many academics are taking a closer look at the roots of this religion and asking questions that previous generations would have trembled to think. Questions such as "what are the implications to the desires, wishes and teachings of Jesus when seen against the resultant anti-Jewish Paulinity?" Given this background, this is a very fine book to read.

I give it 3 out of 5 stars because the author would have produced a 5 star had he tightened up the text a bit more, removing the repetition of points that were made far too many times. He has good material, it just should have been edited with a view towards weight watchers.