“Jesus was not a Christian”

“Jesus was not a Christian”

by Kelvin Chin

Jesus was not a Christian. And he did not refer to himself as “Christ.”

Do you know what “Christ” means? “Christos” is Greek for “anointed one.” It’s the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for “Messiah.”

Who started calling him that? Paul did. Paul of Tarsus, the Greek speaking guy who was persecuting (killing) Jesus’s teachers after Jesus was murdered. Paul, who never met Jesus, who never heard him speak, who knew none of Jesus’s teachings. That guy.

Paul, the guy who made up the myth, the very effective “marketing myth,” that Jesus died on the cross to save all so-called believers from their sins and that they would then avoid punishment and skip to the head of the line to enter the pearly gates of heaven. That guy, Paul.

So, who is the more credible source of Jesus’s teachings? People who sat with Jesus, who walked, ate and studied with him, who were with him the day he died and saw him after his resurrection? Or Paul, who was killing Jesus’s teachers for 3-1/2 years after Jesus was murdered?

If any of this surprises you, then you need to read some of the basic history of that time period that religious scholars have agreed on for many decades. Paul started the religion known as Christianity. That religion has little relevance to the life and teachings of Jesus.

Jesus did not view himself as a savior of humanity. Or as the chosen or anointed one. He saw himself as a teacher, a spiritual teacher. He did not come to start a new religion nor to be a political rabble rouser for the Jews versus the Romans.

See my third book “After the Afterlife” for my memories of what his core teachings were.