It may come as a surprise to many, but Christianity, if we define it as a religious movement intentionally separate and distinct from Judaism, is not apostolic. Let me state my thesis a bit more fully and then provide the evidence.

First, to remind readers of the obvious, all of the apostles were Jews. Historically, this is not in dispute. Secondly, there is no evidence that any of the apostles abandoned or rejected their Judaism to found or join something called Christianity as distinct and contrary to Judaism. This includes Paul. Christianity, as defined above, is a second-century phenomenon.

We cannot be certain when the term “Christian” was coined; Acts 11:26 says it was first used in Antioch but is unspecific as to when. The first evidence of the use of the term Christianity occurs in the writings of Ignatius, second-century bishop of Antioch. Until then, and in some places later, the term Christian did not refer to a member of Christianity. The apostles were not Christians nor members of Christianity.

Let’s examine some of the evidence usually brought forward to refute the above.

A frequent canard, which I deal with in various articles on this site, is that Paul abandoned his Judaism to found or join Christianity. I don’t have the space here to refute all of the old-school commentator’s views of Paul the Christian. You can read my thorough treatment of the subject in my book Meet Paul Again for the First Time: Jewish Apostle of Pagan Redemption. But suffice to say there is no credible evidence that Paul did not remain a faithful, Torah-observant Jew throughout his life. He did not convert pagans to Christianity. He never used the words Christian or Christianity in his letters. Of course, he did not want his gentiles to become Jews since, in his view, Christ died for pagan redemption (Rom. 5:6). But Paul referred to his baptized gentiles as a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15), not as Christians. In fact, it was this liminal state, neither pagan nor Jew, that ultimately led to the religious movement that gave baptized gentiles an identity of their own separate and distinct from (and, unfortunately, hostile to) Judaism.

Anyone reading the gospels can see clearly that Jesus’s primary followers, sometimes called the apostles, a group generally limited to the Twelve, were all Jews. The Acts of the Apostles adds Barnabas and Paul to the list of apostles, but they were Jews as well. Paul refers to Junia as an apostle (Rom. 16:7) but she is, along with her husband (?), fellow countrymen of Paul’s, that is, they were Jews. Nowhere do we read of any of these apostles rejecting Judaism for Christianity. “Christianity” is nowhere found in the New Testament.

Acts 11:26 reads that “…it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians.’” What are disciples? The word disciple (Greek: mathētes) means “student.” The word is not used synonymously with apostle (apostolos; “messenger”) by the author of Luke/Acts. Note that this same author also refers to disciples of John the Baptist (Luke 5:33; 11:1), disciples of the Pharisees (Luke 5:33), as well as disciples of Jesus (Luke 5:33 and passim). So according to the author of Luke/Acts, apostles are disciples, but disciples are not necessarily apostles (Luke 6:13). The author of Luke/Acts refers to disciples much more frequently in the gospel but then opts to speak only of the apostles in Acts (it is after all, the Acts of the Apostles). Therefore, one cannot automatically assume that any Jewish disciples in Antioch, who became known as Christians, were apostles. And even if they were, they were not members of anything called or understood as Christianity.

Historically savvy readers might ask at this point how Nero could have targeted Roman Christians for persecution in 64 CE if Christian had not yet been a widespread term for the followers of Jesus. Unfortunately, the situation is not as clear as is often supposed. Of the three Roman historians who document the fire in the city, only Tacitus, writing nearly fifty years after the event, reports that Nero blamed Christians. Neither Suetonius nor Cassius Dio mention this. The oldest surviving manuscript containing Tacitus’s report comes from the 11th century and it refers to “Chrestians” rather than Christians as the targets of Nero’s persecution. Tacitus may have meant Christians, but it remains highly questionable whether Roman authorities could differentiate Jewish followers of Jesus from those who were not, or whether they could identify gentiles who were, or whether they had even heard the word.

But, you might ask, didn’t Claudius, a decade or so earlier, expel Jews from Rome “since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus” (Seutonius, Divus Claudius 25; see Acts 18:2)? Perhaps, but again this event is highly contestable as Suetonius has described it. Scholars uncertain about distinguishing Christians in 64, are far more suspect regarding the ability to do so between 41 and 54. Regardless, Suetonius, writing in 121, does not refer to them as Christians. As to the reliability of Suetonius, I’ll conclude by quoting Wikipedia (not normally my go-to source): “The [Lives of the Caesars] heavily relies on hearsay and rumor, and at times the author subjectively expresses his opinion and knowledge.”

Frequent readers of the New Testament may be wondering how Christianity could not be apostolic when a number of Jesus’s apostles (besides Paul) wrote material that now appears in the New Testament, specifically Matthew, John, and Peter? Isn’t the New Testament a product of Christianity? Let’s break this down.

It may come as a surprise to some that the gospels were not composed by eyewitnesses to Jesus’s activities. The gospels are not firsthand accounts; they were not signed nor did the original manuscripts identify the authors. Modern biblical theory identifies Mark as the earliest of the four gospels followed by Matthew and Luke, both of whom copied from Mark, and John. The author that later tradition connected with the Gospel of Mark (Acts 12:12, 25; 15:39; Col. 4:10; 2 Tim 4:11; Philm 24; 1 Pet. 5:13) was never called an apostle. There was an apostle Matthew (Matt. 9:9, 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13), but it is incredible that an eyewitness to Jesus should base his gospel on that of the non-eyewitness Mark. And no serious scholar of whom I am aware thinks the fourth gospel was written by John the son of Zebedee, a Galilean, Aramaic-speaking fisherman (Matt. 4:21; 10:2; 26:37; Mark 1:19, 3:17, 10:25; John 21:2). This gospel is too theologically developed for an illiterate fisherman and likely reflects multiple stages of editorial activity spanning decades. Most date the gospel to the late first century. If the son of Zebedee had anything do with its origin, his part has long since been overshadowed and remains indefensible.

The four gospels originally circulated anonymously. It was not until the mid-to-late second century that they became associated with named authors. The first to do name all four gospels was Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, France, around 180. Until then, references to Jesus’s sayings and deeds were attributed to material said to come from the “memoirs of the apostles” (e.g., Justin Martyr ca. 165); unfortunately, these apostles are not identified. It was simply assumed that the stories of Jesus must have originated with those who knew him. Jesus’s words were considered authoritative, not the writings that contained them.

Some well-read readers of this blog may have heard that Papias, overseer of the Christ group in Hierapolis in Asia Minor, mentioned that Mark served as the amanuensis of Peter, and that Matthew wrote a gospel. Papias lived in the first and second centuries. Wouldn’t he know better than we do who wrote the gospels? Unfortunately, Papias’s statements do not say what hopeful readers would like them to say. Here is the quote of Papias, one that appears only in Eusebius’s fourth-century history of the church (3:39):

And the presbyter (i.e., Elder John) used to say this: that Mark was Peter’s translator, and he wrote down accurately, though not in order, what he remembered [hearing] about what the Lord has said and done…but he did not compose an ordered account of the Lord’s sayings, with the result that Mark did not err in writing the particulars he remembered…Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew language, and each translated them as well as he could.” (trans. Jeremy M. Schott, Eusebius of Caesarea: The History of the Church: A New Translation)

So what does Papias actually say? According to a church elder named John, Mark (not further identified) wrote down what the apostle Peter told him about Jesus. Remember, the gospel we know as Mark circulated anonymously for maybe a century before becoming identified as “According to Mark.” Our Gospel of Mark does not read like the personal reminiscence of the apostle Peter. Also, Papias (or the elder, or Eusebius) seems defensive about the gospel’s disorganization, offering reassurance that Mark did nothing wrong in the haphazard way in which he wrote it. Who is challenging this gospel’s authority and prompting Papias’s defense if it was known that Peter was behind it? And, if our Gospel of Mark contains Peter’s reminiscences, why didn’t Peter supply Mark with the story of how he saw the empty tomb or how the risen Jesus appeared to him (Matt. 28:16-20; Luke 24:34, 36-51; Acts 1:3-9; John 20:3-9, 19-23, 26-29; 21)? Surely, this event, important enough to be recorded by Paul who knew Peter (1 Cor. 15:5), would have been a front-and-center theme of Peter’s preaching. Most scholars concede that the author of this gospel did not base his story on eyewitness testimony. Rather, he has drawn together stories about Jesus that were in general circulation and crafted a limited biography.

What Papias has to say about Matthew is easily dismissed. If the apostle Matthew wrote anything in Hebrew (or Aramaic), as Papias claims, it has been lost. Our Gospel of Matthew was composed in Greek and contains most of the Greek Gospel of Mark. And our Gospel of Matthew is not simply a collection of Jesus’s sayings as Papias describes. It is more of a narrative biography along the lines of Mark.

The link between the son of Zebedee and the three letters now bearing the name John is even weaker than his link to the fourth gospel. The first Letter of John is actually anonymous and betrays no personal knowledge of Jesus. The second and third letters were written by someone identifying themselves only as “the elder” (Papias’s elder John?) and, although they seem to share the worldview of the fourth gospel, betray no personal knowledge of Jesus. They are usually dated to the early second century.

But wait! Doesn’t 1 Peter 4:16 mention Christians? And wasn’t Peter an apostle? Again, it is incredible that this well-written Greek letter written to gentile believers (1:14, 18; 2:10; 4:3-4) is the product of an illiterate (Acts 4:13) Galilean fisherman. Gentiles were not, according to Paul, Peter’s ministerial targets (Gal. 2:7). The quotations of scripture found in the letter are from the Greek (the Septuagint) rather than the Hebrew that Peter would have been familiar with. The author pseudonymously uses the Greek name (Petros) rather than the Aramaic Kepha (how the Greek-speaking Paul knows him; 1 Cor. 1:12, 3:22, 9:5, 15:5; Gal. 1:18, 2:9, 11, 14) or even Shimon for which he would have been known in his homeland. There is no known connection between Peter the apostle and the Christ groups in Asia Minor, the geographical location of the letter’s recipients (1:1). The letter has many similarities to the New Testament Letter to the Romans and Letter to the Ephesians, both attributed to Paul. And again, the author betrays no personal knowledge of Jesus. Most scholars date the letter to the late first or early second centuries.

To summarize, the New Testament did indeed come together during the Christian period and is, without doubt, an organic product of Christianity though it is only “apostolic” due to the inclusion of the letters of Paul. But this does not make Christianity apostolic. As we said, the term “Christianity” first appears in the writings of Ignatius, overseer of the church in Antioch, the very place that the author of Acts says the word Christian was first used. Acts is coming to be appreciated more and more as a document of the second, rather than the late first, century. The timing is likely given the probability that Luke/Acts relied on Josephus for historical background material (e.g., references to the census, the manner of Agrippa’s death, the fall of Jerusalem, Judas the Galilean, Theudas, the “Egyptian,” Gamaliel, etc.). Luke/Acts itself is not named or quoted until late in the second century.

And there you have it. Just to be clear, this article is not intended to urge Christians to question their faith. Ultimate truth is what it is no matter how it is revealed. But the myth that Christianity somehow originated with the primary Jewish followers of Jesus, whom we know as apostles, is without merit. Christianity is a second-century phenomenon based on an exclusivist (read: non-Jewish) interpretation of Jesus and Paul. It is a sad, and for many, tragic tale whose ecumenical scars linger in the animosity or disregard exhibited between Jews and Christians to this very day.