Jesus 'Used to Be Jewish'? That's Not What the Gospels Say

by Bernard Starr for The Huffington Post

When I interviewed Christians and Jews for my book "Jesus Uncensored: Restoring the Authentic Jew," I heard over and over "everyone knows Jesus was Jewish." But when I dug a little deeper I discovered that "everyone knows he was Jewish" really means "he used to be Jewish." Then I found that many still believe that Jesus was born Christian and that he launched a new religion.

For example, Jane, educated in Catholic grade schools, agreed that Jesus was Jewish. But when I followed up with, "Did he remain Jewish throughout his life?" she said, "Oh, no. He became a Christian and started Christianity." "When did that happen?" I asked. "When he was baptized by John the Baptist," she answered confidently. "It says so right in the Bible."

Noah, a young Jewish college student, who attends a small New England college, asked his Christian fraternity brothers, "What was Jesus' religion?" They stared at him as if he were an idiot. He pressed for an answer. Unanimously they declared, "Christian, of course."

The fact is, Jesus was born into a family of practicing Jews dedicated to Judaism. As prescribed in the Torah, he was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. Throughout his life he was thoroughly committed to Judaism, the Torah and Jewish practices. He prayed in synagogues and taught Torah to "multitudes" of fellow Jews. And John the Baptist only baptized Jews to purify them for the expected arrival of the Jewish Messiah. All this is stated clearly in the Gospels; Jane's quote is not.

Christians are astonished when I inform them that the word "Jew" appears 202 times in the New Testament and 82 times in the Gospels, while "Christian" does not show up at all in the Gospels and is mentioned only three times in later parts of the New Testament -- the first mention is when Paul is preaching in Antioch years after the crucifixion (Acts 11:26). Why is "Christian" absent from the Gospels, which span Jesus' life and ministry? Because there was no Christianity during Jesus' life.

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