Assignment 4-Sarah Clark-How Jesus Became Christian

Late in the spring of my freshmen year, I read the book How Jesus Became Christian by Barrie Wilson. Although my family had never gone to church all that much, we still, for the most part, considered ourselves Christian. However, this book made me question the basics of Christianity. The book offers up the “cover-up hypothesis,” a claim that Christianity differs from what Jesus actually taught. Wilson claims that Paul’s theology covered up Jesus’s real teachings, and how this theology deviated from the early Jesus Movement in origin and practice. Wilson focuses on the Book of Acts, where a new model of Christianity is introduced as Paul proposes a non-Torah-observant movement. This new religion becomes attached to the one that originally came from Jesus: and a Jewish religion focusing on the Kingdom of God changes to a Gentile one focusing on a savior God-human. The outcome of reading this book is not yet set in stone, as I am still questioning my beliefs. However, I am reluctant to follow a religion where the majority of the followers have misconceived notions about the actual origins of the religion. People believe to be following Jesus’s teachings, when really they are following Paul’s.