Christianity as it is practiced by the vast majority of Christians today is not based on the teachings of Jesus, but rather on the teachings of Paul. If you we

Christianity as it is practiced by the vast majority of Christians today is not based on the teachings of Jesus, but rather on the teachings of Paul. If you were to take only the teachings of Jesus (minus those that were clearly invented by later scribes), it is not very far from the views expressed in the Talmud. In some cases Jesus was on the liberal end of Jewish thought, in others on the conservative end, and in the few cases where he deviated from the mainstream he did not stray all that much. When Jesus complained about the Pharisees (i.e. Rabbis), his complaint was not that they taught the wrong doctrine but that they were hypocrites who did not properly keep the law they taught. On the other hand, mainstream Christian ideas about human nature, about sin, about the messiah, and about God's will (not to mention the nature of God), are for the most part based on Paul's writings and all represent departures from Jewish thought on those topics. It was primarily Paul who pushed for Christians to abandon kosher laws and circumcision, two major hurdles he faced in convincing non-Jews to join the new religion. More than anyone else described in the New Testament, Paul was responsible for Christianity becoming a distinct religion rather than just another Jewish sect.