Jesús vs. Pablo: Who Really Founded Christianity?
Islam is the only religion that places Jesus in the position he deserves.
Jesus (peace be upon him) was a prophet of Islam, and he always urged people to believe in the One God (Allah).
In Judaism, the personality of Jesus is dismissed and dishonored, as they refer to him as the illegitimate son of Mary.
On the other extreme, Christians say that Jesus is the son of God, and they worship him as a deity.
Jesus cannot be God, and he never proclaimed himself to be so.
The truth is that Jesus preached the same message as the prophets of the Old Testament. There is a passage in the Bible that truly underscores his central message.
Jesus said this:
«17 Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.» (Matthew 5:17-19).
Indeed. And thus the question is: ‘Where is ‘Christ’ in ‘Christianity’? If Christianity is the religion of Jesus Christ, where are the laws of the Old Testament and the strict monotheism of the Orthodox Judaism of Rabbi Jesus? Why does Christianity teach that Jesus is the son of God when Jesus himself called himself “son of man” eighty-eight times, and not once “son of God”?
Why does Christianity approve of the confession to priests and prayers to saints, Mary, and Jesus when Jesus taught his followers:
“You, therefore, pray like this: Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy Name…” (Matthew 6:9)?
Jesus prayed to God during the night:
“and he continued praying to God all night” (Luke 6:12)
If Jesus had been God, he would have taught that he should be worshipped; instead, he commanded to worship only God, who is in Heaven.
Jesus of Nazareth is completely situated within Judaism, but his words came into contradiction with the Judaism of his time. In fact, Jesus revitalized prophecy, that is, speaking in the name of God and bearing witness to it through the performance of “signs”. In this sense, he is the last of the prophets recognized by Judaism.
“Jesus answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’” (Matthew 15:24).
Jesus, being Jewish, lived according to the Law of the Old Testament (Mosaic). Among his recorded teachings is: “But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17).
The message of Jesus was rejected by the majority of the Israelites.
Notably, Jesus never identified himself as a Christian and never declared that he had established Christianity on Earth. In fact, while the word Christian appears 3 times in the Bible (Acts 11:26; Acts 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16), not a single verse uses the label Christian in a context that carries the authority of Jesus or God.
More significantly, there is no record of the word Christian ever coming from the lips of Jesus. We read in Acts 11:26 that "and the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch" — meaning that the term Christian was first applied to the disciples by non-believers around 43 C.E.)
It was not a polite term. Contrary to popular belief, the term Christian seems to have been conceived in contempt. Christian was what the unbelievers called the followers of Christ, a distasteful name for believers who identified themselves as Jews, followers of the latest in the line of Jewish prophets.
"Although Jesus was responsible for the main ethical and moral commandments,
Paul was the chief designer of Christian theology, its chief proselytizer, and the author of a huge portion of the New Testament."
What Paul proclaimed as 'Christianity' was pure heresy; it could not be based on the beliefs of Judaism, the Essene faith, or the teachings of Rabbi Jesus.
Paul never did anything according to what Jesus did,
Nothing that Paul claimed was claimed by Jesus,
In his desire to win souls among the pagans, Paul simply repackaged a number of pagan beliefs from which the scheme of salvation of modern Christianity emerged. No prophet – including Jesus himself – taught these concepts; Paul was their sole author.
In short, Paul set aside the teachings of Jesus in his desire for success.
For Jesus, the Law of the Old Testament was not abrogated by him; however, Paul preached the mysteries of faith, the rejection of the Law that the earlier prophets preached and strove to practice. It is a disrespect to the thousands of years of revelation carried through a long chain of prophets; and contrary to the teachings of Rabbi Jesus, Paul did not focus on the life and teachings of Jesus, but preached his death.
In none of the four gospels does Jesus explicitly state that he died to save humanity from sin. When a man asks him what he could do to obtain eternal life, Jesus told him to live according to the Commandments.
(Mat. 19:16,17); in other words, to obey the Law of God.
The truth is that the concept of Jesus' death for the sins of humanity is present in Paul's letters (such as in Romans 5:8-11 and 6:8-9), and it does not exist anywhere else. It does not exist anywhere else; Jesus never spoke of this, nor did the disciples.
The four main points where Pauline theology clashes with Jesus, the crucial elements of this deviation from the truth that threaten a person's salvation, according to their order of importance, are:
1) The Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, claimed by Paul in his theology, contradicts the oneness of God taught by Jesus;
"The doctrine of the Trinity as such was not revealed in either the Old or the New Testaments...". So, where did it come from? Perhaps it is easier to answer where it did not come from: it did not come from Jesus or his companions, as by the time of the "Jews of Jesus," nothing was known about a Trinitarian God. Such a concept would have been radical and shocking, even a blasphemous innovation."
Nowhere in the Bible did Jesus teach the Trinity. In fact, he taught tawhid (divine unity).
2) - Original Sin
- In the sayings of Jesus recorded in the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), there is no mention of the idea that humanity inherits the sin of Adam and Eve, nor that every human being is born burdened with original guilt.
- The teachings of Christ focused on repentance for individual sins, forgiveness, and the relationship between humans and God, such as: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (Matthew 4:17),
- or His saying to the sinner: "Go and sin no more" (John 8:11).
The doctrine of original sin is found exclusively in the fifth chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans (5:12–21).
3) Salvation by faith, as proposed by Paul, goes against the law of the Old Testament, as taught by Jesus;
Faith in the one God is the foundation of salvation.
In the Gospel of John (17:3), Jesus addresses the Father, saying: "This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Here, Jesus links eternal life (salvation) with the knowledge of the true God.
True faith is not content with words but becomes action: worshiping only God and following His commandments. Even Jesus warned against professing faith without fruits, saying: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father" (Matthew 7:21).
- Paul and salvation by faith.
- In his letters (especially Romans and Galatians), Paul explains that justification (salvation) comes through faith in Jesus Christ, not by the works of the law (Romans 3:28).
4) - The belief that Jesus was a universal prophet, according to Paul, goes against the faith in an ethnic prophet, according to the teachings of Jesus. Interestingly, these four points not only constitute the greatest doctrinal differences between Christianity and Judaism but also with Islam.
Regarding the first of these points, Jesus taught the Oneness of God, as stated in Mark 12:29:
"Jesus answered, 'The first of all the commandments is: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one."' Jesus continued, according to reports, with 'And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength,' ending with a new emphasis on the initial command, 'This is the first commandment' (Mark 12:30). Jesus emphasized the importance of this theme – the oneness of God.
So, in one corner, we have the prophets, including Jesus, teaching salvation through adherence to God's law as transmitted by revelation, that is: salvation through faith and works. In the other corner, we have the challenger, Paul, promising effortless salvation following a life unrestricted by commandments.
And is this, according to Paul, consistent with the teaching of Jesus? Or is it reshaping the gospel of Jesus? Where, in the gospel, can all this be found, which is said to have been understood by Paul?
What can we imagine Jesus will say upon his return when he finds a group of his 'followers' preferring Paul's theology to his own?
Perhaps he will quote Jeremiah 23:32, 'Behold, says the Lord, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams and tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies and by their recklessness, and I did not send them nor command them; and they did not profit this people at all,' says the Lord.
No matter when Jesus returns, we can undoubtedly assume that, whatever he says, it will take many people by surprise.
Muslims live much more in harmony with Jesus than today's Christians. Respecting and loving Jesus is obligatory in Islam, and God highlights the importance of believing in Jesus in numerous passages of the Quran.
Muslims believe that the divinely revealed books before the Quran were lost in antiquity or changed and distorted, but they also recognize that the true followers of Moses and Jesus were Muslims who worshipped One God with true submission.
Islam is not just another religion; it is the same message preached by Moses, Jesus, and Abraham. Islam literally means 'submission to God' and teaches us to have a direct relationship with God.
