Introduction: Jesus and the Jewish Tradition

Modern scholarship increasingly recognizes that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died as a Jew, devoted to the Torah and the faith of Israel. Far from intending to start a new religion, Jesus can be seen as a Pharisee in the broad sense – a Torah-faithful teacher working within Judaism to call his people to repentance and renewal. His movement arose not in opposition to the Jewish law, but as a renewal movement within Judaism, seeking to deepen covenantal faithfulness. Jesus preached a return to the ethical and spiritual core of the Torah, aligning with the Pharisaic commitment to scripture, while reforming popular practice and challenging hypocrisy. Like the Pharisees, he believed in resurrection, honored Mosaic law, and frequented synagogues and the Temple. Yet he also critiqued the religious establishment and offered a fresh prophetic vision of Israel’s restoration.

This article argues, drawing on the research of James D. Tabor and others, that Jesus was a Torah-observant Jewish reformer – essentially a Pharisaic messiah figure – rather than the founder of a new gentile religion. We will reconstruct the teachings of Jesus and his mentor, John the Baptist, as presented by Tabor (especially in The Jesus Dynasty and Paul and Jesus), highlighting their message of repentance, the coming Kingdom of God, ritual purity, apocalyptic expectation, and strict Torah observance. We will see that Jesus’ earliest followers, under the leadership of his brother James and the family of Jesus (the so-called “Jesus dynasty”), continued as a Torah-faithful sect within Judaism. They viewed Jesus not as God incarnate but as the Davidic messiah – an anointed prophet-king charged with restoring Israel’s righteousness under God’s Law. This original Jewish Christianity clashed with the later teachings of Paul, whose Hellenistic interpretation of Jesus as a divine savior who superseded the Law diverged sharply from the stance of Jesus’ family and the Jerusalem church.

We will trace how this early Ebionite or Nazarene faith – characterized by belief in Jesus as a human messiah, reverence for the One God, observance of circumcision and kosher diet, and rejection of Pauline doctrines – survived the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and persisted for centuries. Finally, we explore how these ideas were ultimately preserved and reasserted in seventh-century Arabia with the rise of Islam. Islam, we suggest, can be seen as the culmination and restoration of the original Jewish-Christian message: Jesus is upheld as messiah and prophet (but not God), the Torah’s moral and ritual commandments are confirmed (transposed into Sharia), and Muhammad emerges as a final warner in the line of Jewish prophecy, reviving the faith of Abraham. This perspective, anticipated by Tabor and others, opens new avenues of understanding between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, showing how the figure of Jesus can unite these traditions rather than divide them.

“Repent, the Kingdom is at Hand”: The Message of John the Baptist and Jesus

Any account of Jesus’ teaching must begin with John the Baptist, the prophet who prepared the way. James Tabor emphasizes the “crucial relationship” between John and Jesus: Jesus was likely a follower or disciple of John before beginning his own mission. John was not only Jesus’ relative (possibly a cousin through their mothers) but also, in Tabor’s words, “Jesus’ teacher”. As a priestly descendant of Aaron, John embodied Israel’s prophetic-priestly heritage, while Jesus, as a descendant of David, embodied the royal messianic line. Together they formed a complementary partnership anticipated by the Dead Sea Scrolls, which expected “the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel” – a priestly and a kingly leader working in tandem.

John the Baptist’s message, like the Essene sect of Qumran, was intensely apocalyptic and prophetic. He appeared in the wilderness of Judea preaching, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” (Matt. 3:2). Both John and Jesus began their public proclamation with urgent exhortations of imminent judgment: “The time is at hand, and the kingdom of God has drawn near”. This reflects the common apocalyptic outlook of the era – the belief that God was about to decisively intervene in history to punish evil and redeem Israel. The Dead Sea Scrolls similarly speak of living in “the end of days” and calculating a fixed period until God’s final victory. John warned that “the axe is laid to the root of the trees” (Luke 3:9), calling Israel to repent in preparation for God’s wrath and salvation.

Repentance and ritual cleansing were at the heart of John’s ministry. He conducted a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), drawing multitudes to the Jordan River to be immersed as a sign of purification. This practice of water immersion as a spiritual cleansing rite has clear precedent in the Jewish tradition (mikveh baths) and was central to the Qumran community as well. The Scrolls describe lustrations in “purifying water” that, coupled with sincere repentance, “shall make [one] clean”. In both Qumran and John’s movement, outward washing was linked to inner purification: “They shall not enter the water…unless they turn from their wickedness”. John’s baptism, therefore, was a prophetic sign of repentance, restoring Jews to ritual purity and covenant fidelity. Jesus wholeheartedly embraced this practice – indeed, he himself received baptism from John, thereby identifying with John’s call and the need for collective repentance (Mark 1:9-15). The Gospel of John notes that Jesus and his disciples continued a ministry of baptism during Jesus’ early mission (John 3:22-23), indicating Jesus carried forward John’s purification movement.

John the Baptist also announced the coming of a “mightier one” after him who would complete the work he began (Mark 1:7-8). Tabor and others interpret this as John’s anticipation of the messiah – a Spirit-anointed leader who would bring the Kingdom. Initially, many of John’s followers naturally saw Jesus as this successor once John was executed by Herod. In fact, “when John was killed, several of his followers – including Jesus’ four brothers – joined with Jesus”, who “continued John’s mission, preaching the same apocalyptic message”. Jesus thus took up John’s mantle as leader of a movement dedicated to teshuvah (repentance) and preparation for God’s reign. The continuity of their message is striking: both preached the urgent nearness of the Kingdom, both demanded ethical renewal, both challenged the Jewish people to lives of greater holiness. Jesus’ earliest gospel proclamation in Mark – “Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15) – could well be a direct inheritance from John’s program.

Like John, Jesus situated his work in fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3: “Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness”. The Gospels portray John as “the voice crying in the wilderness” and Jesus as the one who leads a community into the wilderness spiritually. The Dead Sea community had applied the same scripture to themselves, literally living in the Judean desert to “prepare there the way” for the Lord. John adopted a similar desert locus and Jesus, though he operated among towns and villages, often withdrew to wilderness places and symbolically reenacted Israel’s desert sojourn (e.g. feeding multitudes in deserted places). This emphasis on the wilderness reflects a restorationist ideal: just as Israel first met God in the wilderness of Sinai, so a righteous remnant would regroup in the wilderness to renew the covenant for the messianic age.

In summary, John the Baptist’s movement – and by extension Jesus’ early movement – was a Jewish renewal effort characterized by prophetic urgency, a call to repentance, water rites of purification, and anticipation of God’s imminent Kingdom. It was no break from Judaism but rather a call back to authentic Judaism. As Tabor notes, the “Jesus movement” can be described as a “radical, messianic, apocalyptic, baptizing, new covenant, wilderness-way movement”, which is “precisely” how the community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls can be described. These common traits underscore that Jesus’ message emerged from the context of Jewish apocalyptic piety, not from outside it. Jesus, like John, was inviting Israel to renew its covenant with God – to become, in essence, the faithful Qumran-like community that would be ready for the Messiah and the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God and Apocalyptic Hope

Central to Jesus’ teaching was the proclamation of the Kingdom of God – a concept rooted deeply in Jewish apocalyptic hopes. In first-century Pharisaic thought, the “kingdom of God” referred to God’s kingly rule asserted over Israel and the world, expected to manifest in the age to come. Jesus’ usage of the term is very much in line with this Jewish apocalyptic expectation: he envisioned an imminent divine intervention that would overthrow injustice and usher in an era of righteousness. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” he taught his disciples to pray (Matt. 6:10), echoing standard Jewish prayers for God’s reign.

What distinguished Jesus was the urgency and specificity of his Kingdom message. He, like John, believed the time was very near. Tabor notes that both John and Jesus spoke as if “the time is at hand”, warning their contemporaries that the window for repentance was closing. Jesus told his followers that some of them would “not taste death” before seeing the Kingdom come in power (Mark 9:1) – a saying reflecting the intense apocalyptic timetable he envisaged. This imminence was not unique to Jesus – the Essenes too thought they were the final generation – but Jesus tied it to his own messianic mission. Through healings and exorcisms, he gave “signs” that the Kingdom was already breaking in (cf. Matt. 12:28). Like many Pharisaic and Essene thinkers, Jesus expected a resurrection of the dead in the Kingdom (Mark 12:18-27, aligning with Pharisaic doctrine of resurrection, against Sadducean denial). He foresaw a great banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the restored world (Matt. 8:11), a hope shared by Jewish tradition (the messianic banquet). In fact, one scroll from Qumran speaks of a coming time when “the Messiah of Israel shall come and…they shall gather at the common table to eat…and drink new wine”. Jesus directly alluded to this imagery: at the Last Supper he told the Twelve that they would “eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom”, and “sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:29-30). Thus, Jesus’ eschatology was thoroughly Jewish – a messianic age on earth with Israel’s tribes restored, a king from David’s line ruling (himself), and a purified people living by God’s law.

Importantly, Jesus’ concept of the Kingdom was not only future but carried implications for the present. He gathered a community of disciples as a preview of the Kingdom – a restored Israel in microcosm. Appointing Twelve apostles was a deliberate sign, paralleling the twelve tribes. Just as the Qumran sect was ruled by a council of twelve men (as the scrolls indicate), Jesus formed a new twelve to symbolically govern the reconstituted Israel. He also had an inner circle of three (Peter, James, John) mirroring the Qumran community’s practice of an inner triumvirate of leaders. These structural choices show Jesus was organizing a renewal movement within Judaism – effectively a sect or “church” (in the original sense of qahal, an assembly) – anticipating the roles and orders of the coming Kingdom. Shortly before his death, according to Tabor, Jesus “set up a provisional government” for Israel, appointing the Twelve as regional overseers of the tribes, with his brother James at the head. This remarkable claim aligns with the Gospel portrait of the apostles and suggests that Jesus fully intended to govern a renewed Israel under God’s law, once God acted to install him as Messiah. In other words, Jesus saw himself as inaugurating the Kingdom in embryo through his circle of disciples, even as he awaited its full apocalyptic unveiling by God.

Crucially, none of this implies any break with Judaism. The Kingdom Jesus preached was the fulfillment of Israel’s scriptures, “the restoration of all things which God spoke by the prophets” (Acts 3:21). He insisted that his mission was to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 15:24). Even his ethical teachings about the Kingdom – forgiveness, peacemaking, care for the poor – resonated with Jewish Torah values (for example, the Beatitudes echo Psalms and Isaiah). As Gerd Theissen observed, Jesus’ movement started as a renewal movement within Judaism, aiming to recall the nation to its covenant ideals in view of an impending divine judgment. Only when that renewal was rejected by many and the message later redirected to gentiles (chiefly by Paul) did it evolve into a separate “Christian” religion. In Jesus’ own lifetime, there was no Christianity yet distinct from Judaism. There was only a charismatic Jewish teacher and his band of disciples, preaching Israel’s God and God’s Kingdom – a profoundly Jewish hope.

Torah, Purity, and the Ethics of Jesus

Despite later Christian portrayals that sometimes contrast Jesus with the Jewish Law, the historical evidence shows that Jesus was thoroughly Torah-observant and upheld Mosaic law in his teaching. In fact, Jesus famously declared, “Think not that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17). According to the Gospel of Matthew, he continued: “Until heaven and earth pass away, not a jot or tittle will pass from the Law”, and “Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments…shall be called least in the kingdom” (Matt. 5:18-19). This is a programmatic statement of Jesus’ attitude: the Torah remained the bedrock of his vision. He sought not to annul it, but to bring out its fullest intent. In this sense, Jesus can rightly be seen as a Torah-faithful reformer – calling Israel back to the true spirit of the Law against what he perceived as legalism or corruption.

Jesus’ disputes with Pharisees, which are often misconstrued as rejection of the Law, actually occur within a shared framework of Torah devotion. Much like one Pharisaic school debating another, Jesus engaged other Jewish teachers on how best to interpret the commandments. For example, different Pharisaic schools debated the grounds for divorce – the school of Shammai taking a stricter view, the school of Hillel a looser one. Jesus sided with a strict interpretation, closer even than Shammai to the Qumran Essenes: no divorce at all except perhaps on the gravest grounds. Citing Genesis, Jesus argued that God made marriage indissoluble – thereby intensifying the Torah’s ethical demand beyond what most Pharisees taught (Mark 10:2-12). In the Sermon on the Mount, he similarly radicalized the Torah’s commandments: not only avoiding murder, but anger and insult; not only avoiding adultery, but lustful thoughts (Matt. 5:21-30). These teachings do not abolish the Law but drive it deeper into the heart – a very Pharisaic kind of move (since Pharisees often emphasized the intent of the heart as well as the letter of the law). Jesus’ critique of certain Pharisees was that they hypocritically failed to live up to the Torah they professed – not that they were wrong to keep it. In Matthew 23, he tells the crowds to “do and observe whatever [the Pharisee teachers] tell you” from Moses’ seat (affirming their authority), but “not to do as they do” in their hypocrisy (Matt. 23:2-3). This indicates Jesus respected the office of Torah scholar (which the Pharisees filled) even as he called for greater sincerity and humility in obedience. His famous saying – “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27) – was not a rejection of keeping Sabbath, but a reminder of the Law’s purpose (human well-being). Many Pharisaic rabbis would have agreed; indeed, saving life was a Pharisaic priority that overrode strict Sabbath rules. Jesus defended healing on the Sabbath by appealing to precisely such Pharisaic reasoning: “Which of you, if your son or ox falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not pull him out?”. In one instance, Jesus “agree[d] with the Pharisees” that alleviating suffering honors the Law’s intent. Thus, his Sabbath healings were in line with a merciful interpretation of Torah, not an abrogation of it.

Where Jesus did differ from the strictest Jewish sects (like the Qumran Essenes) was in matters of ritual purity and inclusivity. The Dead Sea community imposed extremely stringent rules to remain in a state of ritual cleanness and separateness; they called the Pharisees “seekers of smooth things” for their comparatively lenient interpretations of purity laws. Jesus, in contrast, was willing to interact with those considered “unclean” – he touched lepers, allowed a bleeding woman to touch him, ate with tax collectors and sinners. To the Essenes, such behavior would have been intolerably “smooth” (too lax). Here, Jesus’ practice resembles the more moderate Pharisaic approach (which allowed, for instance, interaction with ordinary people not versed in purity laws). Yet even as he mixed with the impure, Jesus would then purify them – cleansing lepers, forgiving sinners – effectively extending the realm of purity rather than contracting it. He instructed those he healed to perform the Mosaic sacrifices or inspections required (e.g. telling a cleansed leper, “go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded”, Matt. 8:4). This shows Jesus did not disdain the Temple rites; he affirmed them as appropriate. His Temple protest – overturning money-changers’ tables – was motivated by zeal for the Temple’s sanctity (“You have made it a den of thieves”). It was a call to restore ritual purity to Israel’s central institution, not to destroy the institution. The Gospel of John even portrays Jesus fashioning a whip to drive out animals (John 2:15), symbolically cleansing the Temple so that it could be a “house of prayer for all nations” once more. In sum, Jesus honored the purity code of the Torah but prioritized its ethical core (justice, mercy, faith – see Matt. 23:23). He quoted Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” more than once, highlighting the prophetic view that lovingkindness is the goal of the Law. Notably, the Qumran writings also spoke of offering the “works of the Torah” and prayer in place of sacrifices, suggesting that a spiritualized understanding of Torah observance was in the air. Jesus embodied this by emphasizing moral purity over ritual scrupulosity when the two seemed to conflict.

Dietary laws present a complex case. The Gospel of Mark includes a comment that Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19), but many scholars see this as a later gentile-oriented gloss rather than the historical Jesus’ intent. Matthew’s Gospel, which is closer to a Jewish-Christian viewpoint, omits that line and retains Jesus’ point that uncleanliness is primarily about evil intentions and words, not literal food (Matt. 15:17-20). It is likely that Jesus himself kept kosher and expected his followers (all Jews at the time) to do so, but he wanted them to understand that purity before God was not achieved merely by dietary correctness or hand-washing rituals, but by a pure heart. This stance again is similar to the thrust of many Pharisaic teachings which valued inner piety, though some Pharisees no doubt took issue with Jesus’ level of contact with the “impure.” Overall, nothing in Jesus’ recorded words suggests he ever told Jews to abandon circumcision, Sabbath, dietary laws, or other fundamentals of Torah. On the contrary, he criticized those who nullified God’s commands in favor of human traditions (Mark 7:8-13). He upheld tithing (Matt. 23:23) and attending the festivals (John 7:10). He wore tzitzit (tassels) on his garment as the Law required (a woman famously touched them to be healed, Mark 5:25-34). In every respect, Jesus lived as a practicing Jew. Tabor aptly notes that the “works of the Torah” were central to both Jesus’ and the Qumran community’s concept of righteousness – they differed not on whether to keep Torah, but on how and with what emphasis. Jesus’ Torah observance was thus prophetic and principled, aiming to “fulfill” the law by bringing out its ultimate goals: love of God and neighbor, purity of heart, humility, and faith.

Jesus as the Davidic Messiah and Prophet of Israel

Throughout his ministry, Jesus was identified by his followers – and by himself in subtle ways – as the messiah, the anointed king from David’s line whom Jews had long awaited. However, it is crucial to understand what “messiah” meant in this first-century Jewish context. It did not mean a divine being or an object of worship, but rather a human leader chosen by God, akin to the great kings and prophets of old. Jesus’ earliest Jewish followers saw him in exactly this way: as Mashiach ben David, the son of David who would restore the kingdom to Israel (cf. Acts 1:6). They called him “Rabbi”, “Prophet”, even “Lord” in the sense of master – all honorific titles within Judaism – but they did not equate him with the Almighty.

James Tabor stresses that Jesus understood himself as Israel’s rightful king in the line of David. The Gospels take care to trace Jesus’ genealogy to David (Matt. 1:1-16, Luke 3:31) and report that he was acclaimed “Son of David” by crowds (Mark 11:10). According to Tabor, Jesus was “the firstborn son of a royal family”, someone who “really was proclaimed ‘King of the Jews’”. Indeed, Jesus’ public entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, amid shouts of kingship, deliberately fulfilled Zechariah’s messianic prophecy (Zech. 9:9). The Roman charge against him at crucifixion – “King of the Jews” – further indicates that his messianic claim was taken seriously (and seen as a political threat). But Jesus’ kingship was to be of a unique kind: he preached nonviolence, enemy-love, and suffering servanthood, blending the royal Messiah image with that of Isaiah’s “Man of Sorrows.” This confused even his closest followers. Nevertheless, after his death, they remained convinced that Jesus was (and would soon reveal himself as) the promised King who would sit on David’s throne when God’s time came.

It is highly instructive to note that nowhere in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) does Jesus explicitly claim to be God or demand worship due only to God. Instead, his self-references – “Son of Man,” “Son of God,” “Messiah,” “Servant” – all derive from Hebrew scripture and Jewish tradition about God’s chosen agents. “Son of God,” for instance, was a title for Israel’s king (2 Samuel 7:14, Psalm 2:7) and did not imply ontological divinity. In Jewish understanding, to call Jesus “Son of God” meant he was God’s anointed messianic king, not that he was Yahweh incarnate. Early Jewish Christians, including the apostles, would have fiercely maintained the creed of their ancestors: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Deut. 6:4). They saw Jesus as the servant of that One God – exalted as Messiah and Lord by God’s power, but still subordinate to God. Even in the Gospel of John, where Jesus speaks of divine sonship, he says, “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). The notion that Jesus is to be worshipped as God was a later development that arose as the Christian message moved into the Greek world. As Bart Ehrman notes, one group of early Christians, the Ebionites, firmly rejected any idea of Jesus’ pre-existence or divinity, insisting he was “a fully and completely human being” who was adopted as God’s son – but only in the sense of being chosen and beloved. This adoptionist, non-divine view likely reflects the original Jerusalem community’s belief. They revered Jesus as Messiah, believed God vindicated him by raising him from death, and regarded him as the coming judge and king under God. But they did not pray to Jesus as God. They prayed with Jesus’ words to Jesus’ God.

Jesus’ own teachings reinforce this understanding. He regularly directed glory to the Father and emphasized doing the Father’s will. When a man addressed him as “Good Teacher,” Jesus replied, “No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18), re-directing honor to God. He taught the greatest commandment is the Shema – Israel’s confession of one God – and loving that God wholeheartedly (Mark 12:29-30). In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught his disciples to address God as “Our Father,” not to pray to Jesus himself. All these facts align with the view that Jesus saw himself as God’s anointed son (messiah) and servant, not equal to God. The later Trinitarian dogma would have been foreign to those first disciples. As Tabor puts it, the original “Jesus dynasty” understood Jesus in Davidic messianic terms, not as a divine being descended from heaven. This is further evidenced by groups like the Ebionites who “were faithful to the original teachings of the historical Jesus” and therefore viewed Jesus as fully human. The Ebionites revered Jesus as Messiah while “rejecting proto-orthodox theories of atonement” that made him into a dying-and-rising godman. They upheld the oneness of God and saw Jesus as the exemplar of obedience to God’s law, a mortal man elevated for his righteousness. This is likely very close to what James and the family of Jesus believed.

The first community of believers in Jerusalem, led by James, still worshipped regularly in the Temple (Acts 3:1) and continued to identify as observant Jews. They did not create new rituals to replace circumcision or the Sabbath; they kept those along with their belief that Jesus was Messiah. The Book of Acts depicts thousands of Jews in Jerusalem becoming believers, and it explicitly notes: “they are all zealous for the Law” (Acts 21:20). James, as head of this church, was so renowned for his personal holiness and Torah observance that later Jewish-Christian tradition surnamed him “James the Just” (Ya’akov ha-Tzaddik). Early accounts say James was a Nazirite, refraining from wine and meat, and spent so much time in prayer that his knees hardened like a camel’s. While some of these details are legendary, they underscore that James was remembered as an exemplar of Jewish piety. According to Hegesippus (2nd century), James was respected by many in Jerusalem for his righteousness and even allowed into the Temple’s inner courts for prayer like a priest. This suggests that Jesus’ immediate followers saw no contradiction between accepting Jesus as Messiah and maintaining strict Torah observance. For them, Jesus enhanced their Judaism – he did not abolish it. In their view, Jesus had clarified the law’s true meaning and embodied its fulfillment. They continued to circumcise their children, keep the food laws, observe Jewish holy days, and likely read from a Hebrew or Aramaic version of the Gospel (Hebrew Matthew or the Gospel of the Hebrews) that emphasized Jesus’ sayings without the later Hellenistic interpretations. They identified themselves not as “Christians” (a term first used at Antioch for the Gentile believers) but probably as “The Way” or “Nazarenes” – meaning followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

James and the Torah-Observant Jerusalem Church

After Jesus’ crucifixion, his core movement was not led by Peter or any of the Twelve alone, but by James, Jesus’ eldest brother. This crucial fact has often been downplayed in later Christian tradition, but as Tabor documents, “James became the uncontested leader of the early Christian movement”. Before his death, Jesus had deliberately prepared for continuity: he established a sort of dynasty drawn from his own family. Tabor argues that Jesus “left his brother James as the head of this fledgling government” of twelve tribal leaders. All the Gospels hint at Jesus’ siblings being involved among his disciples (Acts 1:14 explicitly mentions Jesus’ brothers praying with the apostles after Easter). Paul, visiting Jerusalem a few years later, describes James as one of the “pillars” of the community, even calling him “the Lord’s brother” to emphasize his status (Galatians 1:19). The Book of Acts portrays James as the chief authority who delivers the final decision at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:13-21) and as the one to whom Paul reports when he returns to Jerusalem (Acts 21:18). In all these glimpses, James is at the helm in Jerusalem – which was the center of the Jesus movement in its first decades.

This Jerusalem church under James can rightly be seen as the direct continuation of Jesus’ own ministry. It was comprised of Jesus’ family (his brothers James, Jude, Simon, and possibly their cousins), the inner circle of the Twelve, and other faithful disciples (including Mary, Jesus’ mother). It served as a kind of “priestly-Davidic leadership body” for the nascent community: priestly, in that it provided spiritual guidance and remained rooted in Temple piety; Davidic, in that its leadership descended from the House of David (Jesus and James). In essence, the early believers formed a messianic sect of Judaism, with headquarters at Jerusalem. They likely referred to themselves as the “Assembly of Jerusalem” or similar. Later Jewish legend even refers to them as the “Nazarenes.” They held worship in the Temple and private homes, sharing meals and prayer. They saw themselves not as inventing a new religion, but as the faithful remnant of Israel in the last days, those “who were with us from the beginning” (Acts 1:21-22) and who held to the teachings of Jesus.

What were those teachings as upheld by James and the Jerusalem ekklesia? The New Testament letter of James (which is traditionally ascribed to James the Just) gives a window into that ethos. It emphasizes “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17), a direct counter to any notion that faith in Jesus replaced the doing of the Law. It upholds Torah ethics like caring for orphans and widows (James 1:27), not showing partiality (2:1-9), and controlling one’s tongue (3:1-12). It quotes the Shema (“God is one” – James 2:19) and calls the Law the “law of liberty” (1:25). All of this reflects a community vigorously keeping the Torah, interpreting it through the lens of Jesus’ teachings. They believed Jesus had intensified the moral demands of the law (e.g. against anger, lust, etc.), so if anything, they were more scrupulous about righteousness than before – hence their continuing nickname “the poor” (Ebionim), implying humble piety. Tabor points out that “Jesus told his followers to ‘sell what they had’,” and the early Jerusalem community practiced a form of communal sharing of wealth. The Book of Acts confirms that in Jerusalem the believers pooled resources so that none lacked (Acts 2:44-45), an arrangement quite similar to the communal economics of the Essenes. Voluntary poverty and support for the needy became hallmarks of this group (Paul was asked by James to “remember the poor” – Gal. 2:10 – likely referring to the Ebionite community in Jerusalem).

Another key feature was their ongoing participation in Temple worship and sacrifices. Contrary to later Christian theology that saw Jesus’ death as ending all sacrifice, the Jerusalem followers did not immediately abandon the Temple cult. In Acts 21:20-26, James oversees Paul’s purification vow in the Temple, and we’re told “many thousands of Jews have believed, and all are zealous for the Law”. James himself, according to Hegesippus, prayed in the Temple often. This suggests they continued to offer sacrifices (at least until the Temple’s destruction), seeing them as compatible with faith in Jesus. They likely viewed the Eucharistic “breaking of bread” in their homes not as a replacement for Passover or sacrifices, but as a fellowship meal recalling Jesus, alongside the formal Jewish observances. In sum, the Jerusalem church under James looked like a devout Jewish sect: keeping Sabbaths, attending Temple, revering the Torah, revering Jesus as Messiah, living simply and communally, and awaiting his return in glory.

This stance put them at odds with the more novel interpretations of one particular figure who emerged in the decade after Jesus – Paul of Tarsus. Paul, a diaspora Jew and Pharisee, initially persecuted the Jesus movement but then claimed a dramatic vision of the risen Christ. Upon integrating into the movement, he developed a version of the Jesus message that was distinctly more Hellenistic and universalist than what James and the Jerusalem leadership preached. Tabor succinctly states that the picture of Jesus and his successors that he reconstructs “departs in a completely different direction from…the Christianity of Paul”. The early Christians in Jerusalem saw Jesus as Messiah within Judaism, whereas Paul began to preach Jesus as virtually a divine figure whose death and resurrection had saving significance for all humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, apart from the Law. This was the seed of a theological conflict that would shape the future of Christianity.

Paul’s Gospel vs. the Jerusalem Gospel

As the Jesus movement expanded beyond Palestine, tensions arose between the Torah-faithful Christianity of James and the new interpretation of Christianity advocated by Paul. Paul’s letters – the earliest Christian writings we have – reveal some of these conflicts, even if obliquely. In Galatians, Paul recounts how he confronted Peter in Antioch for withdrawing from eating with Gentiles when delegates from James arrived (Gal. 2:11-14). This incident highlights the core issue: the Jerusalem leadership expected even Gentile converts to observe certain Jewish practices (like dietary regulations) for full fellowship, whereas Paul championed a more radical inclusion of Gentiles without requiring Torah observance beyond a minimal standard. The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) resulted in a compromise of sorts – Gentile believers should at least abstain from idolatry, sexual immorality, blood, and strangled meat – but even those requirements (the so-called Noahide laws) show the Jerusalem church’s mindset: they assumed the validity of Mosaic commandments and only exempted Gentiles from the full yoke as a concession. Paul, by contrast, in his own writings tends to downplay even those basics when they impeded his mission; he boasted to the Corinthians that he became “all things to all people” to win them (1 Cor. 9:20-21), explicitly saying he is “not under the Law” (though hedging that he is “under Christ’s law”).

Paul’s theology marked a decisive shift. He taught that “a person is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (Rom. 3:28), meaning that observing the commandments (kosher, Sabbath, etc.) was not necessary for salvation – only faith in Christ’s atoning death was. He even called the Law a paidagōgos (“guardian”) that was intended only to lead people to Christ, after which “we are no longer under that guardian” (Gal. 3:24-25). Such language was alarming to the Torah-centric believers. The Ebionites later preserved a telling anecdote: they accused Paul of being a false apostle who “rejected the Law”. Epiphanius reports that some Ebionites claimed Paul was originally a Gentile convert who apostasized from Judaism – a slanderous story perhaps, but indicative of their view that Paul betrayed the Torah. In their eyes, and likely in James’ eyes, Paul’s teaching of Christ as the end of the Law was a grave distortion.

Furthermore, Paul’s Christology began to elevate Jesus in a way the Jerusalem group had not. Paul called Jesus “Lord” in a transcendent sense and spoke of him as pre-existent (e.g., saying Christ was the spiritual Rock that accompanied Israel, 1 Cor. 10:4). Philippians 2:6-11, which Paul quotes, describes Christ as having existed in divine form and then incarnated – a concept edging towards viewing Jesus as a divine being. As one scholar notes, already by the 60s CE “Jesus is being worshipped as God” in some Pauline churches, as seen in hymns that apply to Jesus Old Testament passages about every knee bowing to Yahweh. This high Christology was alien to the Jewish Christians who kept the Shema unaltered. The Ebionites (and probably the original apostles) held to a “low” Christology or adoptionism: Jesus was a man chosen by God, perhaps filled with God’s Spirit, but not literally God. Church historian Irenaeus and others categorized the Ebionites as “heresy” precisely for denying Christ’s divinity and atoning death. Yet from the perspective of historical origins, the Ebionites were likely preserving an older tradition about Jesus. They honored him as Messiah and teacher, but “did not accept an exalted view of Jesus”, which made them seem “outsiders” to later gentile Christians.

On practical matters, Paul’s divergence was stark. James and the Jerusalem church continued to circumcise (Acts 21:21 indicates they were upset by rumors Paul told Jews not to circumcise their children). Paul, for his part, advised against circumcising gentile converts and even said, “If you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you” (Gal. 5:2). The two gospels – one of Torah observance with Jesus as Messiah, and one of faith in Christ apart from Torah – coexisted uneasily for a time. The Book of Acts tries to paper over the conflict, but Paul’s own letters and the testimony of early sects show there was a real split. Eventually, as the gentile churches grew and the Jewish church in Jerusalem waned (especially after 70 CE), Paul’s version of Christianity became dominant.

It must be emphasized: during Paul’s own life, he was a controversial figure. The “super-apostles” he rails against in 2 Corinthians 11 may well have been emissaries from Jerusalem or other Jewish-Christian teachers insisting on Law observance. Paul complains of Galatian Christians being drawn to a “different gospel” (Gal. 1:6) – almost certainly the gospel of the Judaizing faction which said Christ’s followers must obey the Law of Moses. He anathematizes such teachers, showing how high tensions ran. By the late first century, the Gospel of Matthew – reflecting a more Jewish-Christian perspective – includes Jesus warning about “false prophets” who come working wonders but are “lawless” (Matt. 7:22-23), which some scholars interpret as a swipe at Paul’s antinomian leanings. In the end, what we see is the parting of ways: Pauline Christianity evolved into the catholic (universal) church with a primarily Gentile membership and a theology of grace not law; whereas the original Jewish Christianity gradually became a marginal sect, viewed as heretical by the Gentile majority.

The Ebionites and Nazarenes: Jewish Christianity After 70 CE

When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish Christians were not spared the turmoil. According to early sources, the Jerusalem church fled to a town called Pella in the Decapolis region just before the war. This flight to the Transjordan, likely in response to Jesus’ warning to “flee to the mountains” when Jerusalem was surrounded (Luke 21:20-21), physically separated the Jewish believers from the temple and mainstream Judaism. In Pella and the surrounding areas, they maintained their community. This community, and others like it in Syria and beyond, came to be known by various names: Ebionites (from ebyonim, Hebrew for “the poor”) and Nazarenes (from Jesus’ designation as Nazarene). These groups preserved the legacy of the original apostles and Jesus’ family for some time.

The Ebionites in particular are remembered as the archetypal Jewish Christians. Church Father Irenaeus (c. 180 CE) is the first to mention them by name, criticizing those “who insist on the necessity of following the Law” and who reject Paul. The Ebionites, by all accounts, practiced circumcision, observed the dietary laws (they ate only kosher foods, and some accounts say many Ebionites were vegetarian as an ascetic choice), and kept the Jewish calendar of feasts. They revered Jerusalem as the holy city and prayed toward it. They used a Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew or Aramaic (sometimes called the Gospel of the Hebrews or Gospel of the Ebionites) and likely also revered the Didache (a Jewish-Christian manual) and the Epistle of James. Their theology was Unitarian – absolute one-God monotheism – and in Christology they were adoptionist: as Ehrman summarizes, they believed Jesus “was not by nature a divine being but was a fully human being” who was adopted as Son of God because of his righteousness. In their view, Jesus was born naturally of Joseph and Mary (some Ebionites later did accept the virgin birth, but many did not), was anointed by God’s Spirit at baptism, and became the Messiah. They rejected the idea of Jesus’ pre-existence or equality with God. Moreover, Ebionites repudiated the doctrine of a substitutionary atoning death: some sources indicate they held that Jesus’ death on the cross was a martyrdom and example, not a blood sacrifice to abrogate sin. In line with that, they “rejected proto-orthodox theories of atonement” and did not believe that faith in Jesus’ death could nullify the Torah. To them, the Law remained God’s eternal covenant – and Jesus came to reinforce it and properly interpret it, not replace it.

The Nazarenes were a closely related sect, often not distinguished clearly from Ebionites in the patristic writings. Some scholars use “Nazarenes” to refer to Jewish Christians who, unlike the Ebionites, accepted the virgin birth and had a somewhat higher view of Jesus, but still kept the Law and did not view Jesus as God Almighty. The Nazarene Christians, for instance, might have believed in the resurrection of Jesus (as likely did the Ebionites) and revered him as Lord, but continued to be indistinguishable from Jews in practice. They attended synagogues, perhaps, but also had their own gatherings.

One striking aspect is that the Ebionites saw themselves as the true inheritors of the apostles like James and Peter. Indeed, later Ebionites in their literature (e.g., the Clementine Homilies, a Jewish-Christian novel) cast Peter (the representative of Jewish Christianity) as the hero and arch-apostle, while casting Paul in a suspicious light (sometimes thinly veiling him as “Simon Magus” who distorts the faith). This reflects a memory that the church of Jerusalem (led by Peter, James, John) had a different doctrine from that of Paul. Origen (3rd century) wrote that the Ebionites “use only the Gospel of the Hebrews and reject the Apostle Paul, calling him an apostate from the Law”. Eusebius likewise noted that the Ebionites accused Paul of being a false believer who abandoned the Torah. In Ebionite eyes, they were the faithful remnant, holding to the old paths, while Pauline Christianity was a liberal deviation.

By the second century, the gulf between “Church” and “Synagogue” had widened. The mainstream Gentile church, now defined by belief in the Trinity and freedom from the Law, saw the Ebionites as heretics – “Judaizers” stuck in the past. Meanwhile, Jewish rabbis, after the Bar-Kochba revolt (135 CE), increasingly viewed the Nazarenes/Ebionites as minim (sectarians) for their belief in Jesus. The Ebionites thus found themselves in a narrow space – too Jewish for the Gentile church, too Jesus-oriented for the synagogue. Surviving on the margins, they likely congregated in small communities in Syria, the Decapolis, and maybe Egypt or Mesopotamia. They preserved documents like the Gospel of the Ebionites (fragments of which are quoted by Epiphanius) and perhaps some form of the Clementine Recognitions/Homilies (which contain debates between Peter and Paul). Epiphanius (4th century) gives a somewhat garbled but extensive description of their practices: he says they observed the Sabbath and the Jewish feasts, they baptized daily (a practice of ritual immersion, possibly influenced by the Essenes), they refused to eat meat (this might have been a subset; Epiphanius attributes vegetarianism to them), and they celebrated a form of Eucharist with unleavened bread and water only, rather than wine – likely because they interpreted the Last Supper in a Passover context without endorsing Gentile innovations. He also mentions they denied parts of the law that they thought were corrupted – possibly meaning they didn’t accept later Jewish traditions or certain interpolations (some speculate they had their own version of the Pentateuch). However, caution is needed: our information is second-hand and often hostile. Still, what emerges is a portrait of a Christian movement that was in nearly all respects Jewish: ethnically (many were ethnic Jews, though possibly some sympathetic Gentiles joined and effectively Judaized), religiously (they upheld synagogue practices), and culturally (using Semitic languages, etc.).

Historically, it appears that Jewish Christianity persisted for several centuries. There are hints that in the East of the Roman Empire and beyond, communities of Jewish Christians could be found. For instance, Pseudo-Clementine writings (3rd century) seem to reflect a Jewish-Christian milieu perhaps in Syria or Transjordan. In the fourth century, Epiphanius knew of Nazarenes in the region of Coele-Syria who continued to live as Jews. Even in the early 7th century, on the eve of Islam’s birth, there were reports of sects who might be identifiably Jewish Christian. The Chronicle of Seert (a Nestorian chronicle) mentions “Nazoreans” in seventh-century Persia distinguished from other Christians. More intriguingly, later Islamic historians and some Jewish records preserve echoes that communities of Jews who accepted Jesus as a prophet existed in Arabia. For example, the 12th-century Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Shahrastani wrote of Jews in Medina and the Hejaz who “accepted Jesus as a prophetic figure and followed traditional Judaism, rejecting mainstream Christian views”. This is a pretty good description of Ebionites by another name. And the medieval Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela (12th c.) claimed to have encountered in Arabia Jews who believed in Jesus in some form. Modern scholars have speculated that some Ebionite groups survived into Late Antiquity, possibly under different names. One such hint comes from the polemic of the Muslim scholar ‘Abd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad (~1000 CE), who wrote about a sect of “Christians” who were actually more Jewish in practice, suggesting he knew of an enclave of Jewish Christians at that late date. These could be remnants of the ancient Nazarenes. Scholarly consensus is not firm on this, but some propose that interactions between Ebionite communities and early Muslims influenced the Islamic perspective on Jesus. In any case, the ideas of Jewish Christianity did not vanish – they would re-emerge in a new form.

From the Ebionites to Islam: The Lost Legacy Restored

In the early seventh century, a new religious movement arose in Arabia under the Prophet Muhammad (570–632 CE). Islam would become, in many respects, the heir to the biblical monotheistic tradition – reverencing figures like Abraham, Moses, and Jesus while charting a distinct path. A fascinating thesis emerges when one examines Islam’s original message in light of the Jewish-Christian sects we have described: Islam appears to revive core elements of the Ebionite/Nazarene outlook, almost as if the Jewish-Christian gospel was being repackaged for the “Ishmaelite” descendants of Abraham. This is not to suggest a direct, linear transmission (which is difficult to historically prove), but the theological parallels are striking and have been noted by scholars for centuries. As historian Hans-Joachim Schoeps observed, “Jewish Christianity indeed disappeared within the Christian Church, but was preserved in Islam”, such that “the Ebionite combination of Moses and Jesus found its fulfillment in Muhammad.”. In other words, what died out as a small heresy within Christendom was reborn on a global scale through Islam, carrying some of its basic ideas into the future.

Consider the key tenets of Islam in relation to Jewish Christianity:

• Absolute Monotheism: The Quran emphatically declares God’s oneness (“He is Allah, One” – Qur’an 112:1). It rejects the Trinity and any concept of God sharing his divinity. This resonates with the Ebionites’ strict monotheism and their rejection of Jesus’ divinity. Islam charges that mainstream Christianity “distorted the pure monotheism of the God of Abraham through the doctrines of the Trinity”. An Ebionite could not agree more. To both Ebionites and Muslims, Jesus is a revered prophet-messiah, but not God incarnate.
• Jesus as Messiah and Prophet, but Not Divine: The Quran calls Jesus (Isa) the Messiah, born of the Virgin Mary, a great prophet who performed miracles – but always as a human servant of God. It pointedly denies that Jesus is the Son of God in a literal metaphysical sense (Qur’an 4:171). This is precisely the Ebionite view: Jesus, a righteous man, the Messiah, chosen by God, but not begotten of God from eternity. Islam even affirms the Virgin Birth (which some Ebionites did, as noted), yet insists on Jesus’ humanity, aligning with the “minor sect of Ebionites who embraced rather than denied the virgin birth”. In Islamic theology, Jesus was not crucified to atone for sin (Qur’an 4:157 – Islam rejects the idea of inherited sin and vicarious sacrifice). The Ebionites similarly “rejected proto-orthodox theories of atonement”, believing instead that righteousness before God comes through repentance and obeying the divine commandments – a very similar outlook to Islam’s.
• Continuity of the Torah (Sharia): Islam presents itself as a return to the religion of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. The Qur’an contains many laws reminiscent of the Torah (dietary rules, circumcision – by Islamic tradition, not Qur’anic text, but universally practiced in Islam – ritual purity codes, almsgiving, fasting, etc.). Essentially, Islam’s Sharia functions as a Torah for mankind. The Prophet Muhammad did not see his message as abolishing the Mosaic Law, but as restoring its pure monotheistic intent, cleansed of what he viewed as distortions. The Qur’an says to the Jews and Christians: “We [God] sent down the Torah… and We sent Jesus…confirming the Torah that had come before him” and then speaks of the Qur’an itself as confirming prior scripture and guarding it (Qur’an 5:46-48). This confirmation, not abrogation, of the Torah is exactly what a Jewish Christian would expect from any true messianic movement. The Ebionites kept the Torah and believed following Jesus was consistent with it; likewise, Islam envisions following Muhammad as consistent with the eternal values of Torah (even as certain particulars might differ, just as Moses’ law differed in some ways from Abraham’s practice). In a sense, Islam says to Jews: Yes, keep the idea of dietary laws, but perhaps not the exact rabbinic version; yes, circumcise, yes, uphold one God, and by the way, Jesus was a true messenger – and now he is followed by the final messenger. This is akin to what an Ebionite might have said to a fellow Jew in the first centuries: Yes, we are Jews, we keep the law; we just also accept that Jesus is Messiah and interpret the law in light of his teaching.
• Rejection of Pauline Christianity: Islam implicitly sides with Jewish Christianity in its verdict on later Christianity. It accuses Christians of excesses – worshipping Jesus, forsaking the law, and dividing God’s oneness. The Qur’an (in Sura 5:116) imagines God asking Jesus, “Did you say to people, ‘Take me and my mother as gods beside Allah?’” – a clear repudiation of the worship of Jesus (and Mary, as in some extreme veneration). This is a caricature of orthodox Christianity, but from an Ebionite or Islamic perspective, the deification of Jesus is exactly the error of the gentile Church. To Muslims, the true religion of Jesus was basically submission to God (islam in Arabic) and adherence to God’s commandments – not the complex Trinitarian salvation scheme developed by Paul and later theologians. Paul is not mentioned by name in the Qur’an, but Islamic lore and some scholars suspect that Muhammad encountered forms of Christianity in Arabia that were “not the state religion of Byzantium but a schismatic Christianity characterized by Ebionite and Monophysite views”. This means the version of Christianity with which early Muslims were acquainted may have been one where Christ was seen more as a prophet and where the Law still mattered (Ebionite-like), and/or one where Christ was highly exalted but still subordinate (Monophysite or Nestorian views). These would have influenced Islam’s understanding of what Christians believed and what the correct belief ought to be.
• Scripture and Covenant in Arabic: Just as Jewish Christians believed the New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah 31 was inaugurated by Jesus (as implied in Luke 22:20 – “this cup is the new covenant in my blood”), the Muslims believe that with Muhammad came the final form of the covenant – not a new religion, but the oldest one (the faith of Abraham) now expressed for all humanity. It’s noteworthy that the Qur’an refers to Christians as “Nasara”, literally Nazarenes. This term is very close to Nazarenes, the name used for Jewish Christians. It could be that Arabs called all Christians “Nazarenes” simply based on a local understanding (perhaps via Syriac where Christians were called Nasraye). But it is tantalizing to think that the label used in the Qur’an for Christians is the same term that the very first Jewish followers of Jesus likely used for themselves (Acts 24:5 mentions Christians being called “Nazarenes”). If nothing else, this reflects an orientation: Islam saw itself addressing forms of Christianity that were less theologically developed than the Greco-Roman church – possibly remnants of older Jewish-Christian or heterodox teachings.

We should also highlight one of Schoeps’s conclusions: “Thus we have a paradox of world-historical proportions…Jewish Christianity indeed disappeared within the Christian Church, but was preserved in Islam and thereby extended…to our own day”. Islam, in effect, became a vessel for many Jewish Christian ideas that otherwise would have been lost. For example, the Ebionites’ veneration of Jerusalem and the Mosaic faith finds an echo in Islam’s early qibla (direction of prayer) initially towards Jerusalem, before it was changed to Mecca. Also, the combination of Moses and Jesus in Ebionite theology – meaning the holding together of the Law of Moses with the messianic teachings of Jesus – finds a grand fulfillment in Islam where both Moses and Jesus (along with all Hebrew prophets) are honored and their laws and ethics are reflected in the religion, culminating in Muhammad. It is as if Islam is saying: Moses and Jesus were true, but their followers split – now the final Prophet has come to restore the unity of God’s message. The Ebionites similarly might have said: We are the ones who have Moses and Jesus together, unlike the rest who choose one and reject the other. The Quranic portrayal of Jesus – a noble prophet who confirms the Torah, whose disciples were called “Muslims” (i.e. submitters to God) (Qur’an 3:52), who was lifted by God and will return but is not God Himself – this portrayal is far closer to Jewish-Christian doctrine than to Nicene Christianity.

To be sure, Islam is a distinct religion with its own genius, and one should not oversimplify it as “just Ebionitism.” There were other influences too (Arab monotheism, possibly some contact with sects like the Nestorians or Monophysites who emphasized Christ’s humanity in different ways). And as Irfan Shahîd and others caution, there is no concrete proof that a group explicitly identifiable as “Ebionites” were present in Mecca or Medina by Muhammad’s time. But given that Ebionites are attested into the 4th–5th centuries in the Near East and possibly lingered longer, it is not far-fetched that their spiritual descendants – or at least their ideas – trickled into Arabia. Even the concept of a prophet like Moses arising among brethren (Deut.18:15-18) – which early Jewish Christians may have applied to Jesus or successors – was applied by some Muslim thinkers to Muhammad, framing him as the anticipated final messenger in a series that included Jesus.

The result, from the perspective of our thesis, is that Islam can be seen as the culmination of the Jewish-Christian message on a grand scale. It affirms everything that the original Jesus movement held dear: pure monotheism (the Shema); the importance of living by divine law (mitzvot/Sharia); the prophetic tradition of calling society to repentance and righteousness; the special (but not divine) status of Jesus as Messiah; the reverence for Jerusalem and the prophets of Israel (all of whom are named in the Quran). It rejects what James and the Ebionites would have rejected: the elevation of Jesus to Godhood, the abandonment of the Torah’s code, the introduction of new doctrines like the Trinity or original sin. In Islamic thought, Jesus’ true followers were those humble Nazarenes who “were Muslims” (submitters to God) and upheld the true teachings – a thinly veiled nod to communities akin to Ebionites – whereas Paul’s innovation is not recognized as legitimate. While classical Islamic historians did not know the term “Ebionite,” they clearly recognized that early on not all who followed Jesus were Trinitarians; the Qur’an’s audience likely included monotheistic Christians who resembled Jewish Christians in practice and belief.

Conclusion: Covenant Continuity from Jesus to Muhammad

In the end, the figure of Jesus stands not as a divider of religions but as a bridge across them when viewed in his authentic context. Jesus was a Jewish reformer – a Pharisee in orientation who loved the Torah – calling his people to renew their covenant with God. He launched a movement to restore authentic Judaism, not to annul it. His earliest followers, led by James and the “Jesus dynasty” of his family, remained devout Jews who saw no dichotomy between following Jesus and following Torah. They preached repentance, practiced ritual purity, awaited the Kingdom, and acclaimed Jesus as the human messiah who would reign under God. This Jewish-Christian sect was overshadowed in history by the rise of Gentile Christianity through Paul’s missions. Pauline Christianity transformed Jesus into a Hellenistic savior figure and relaxed the requirements of the Law for a broader audience – developments that made the new religion palatable across the empire but at the cost of severing it from its Jewish roots. The original Ebionite Christians dwindled and were marginalized as “heretics” clinging to the old ways.

And yet, the irony of history – or perhaps the plan of Providence – is that those original ideas did not vanish. They were transmitted across cultures and centuries, finding fresh expression in Islam. In Islam’s strict monotheism, its respect for Jesus as messiah but refusal to deify him, its emphasis on law, prayer, charity, and purity, we can hear echoes of James and the Nazarenes. As one scholar noted, “according to Islamic doctrine, the Ebionite combination of Moses and Jesus found its fulfillment in Muhammad.” In Islam, the covenantal continuity is explicit: Muhammad is seen not as a break with the past, but as the restorer of Abraham’s faith. The Qur’an self-consciously affirms the Torah and Gospel (in their original, uncorrupted form) and positions itself as returning people to the pure religion of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Thus Islam presents itself as a renewal movement from within the Abrahamic tradition, much like Jesus’ movement was a renewal within Judaism. It’s a case of history repeating on a larger canvas: what Jesus attempted for Israel, Muhammad would later attempt for a broader Semitic milieu – a call to abandon idols and sins and return to the one true God with right practice.

The thesis that Jesus was a Pharisee and Torah-faithful reformer who intended no new religion, but whose message was later completed in Islam, is admittedly provocative. Yet it is rooted in the findings of historians and the patterns of doctrinal development we have traced. James Tabor’s research gives credibility to the idea that the “Christianity” of the earliest Jerusalem church could unite Jews, Christians, and Muslims in understanding. That original Jesus faith – a fervent, messianic form of Judaism – is one that modern Jews can recognize, that devout Christians can see in the Gospels (albeit often obscured by later theology), and that Muslims can venerate as akin to their own ethos. It shifts the narrative from one of schism and supersession to one of continuity and convergence.

In this view, Jesus and Muhammad are not competitors but allies across time: each calling their people to tawhid (recognition of the one God) and teshuvah/tauba (repentance), each resisting the formalism or polytheism of their environment, each establishing a community guided by divine law – in short, each reviving the primordial covenant in their context. The Ebionites of old would applaud Islam’s insistence on circumcision, dietary laws, daily prayers, and almsgiving, just as they would applaud its refusal to worship Jesus. They might well see it as vindication: the theology for which they were scorned eventually spread to millions under a different banner.

None of this diminishes the unique contributions of Jesus or of Muhammad; rather, it illuminates them. Jesus emerges clearly as a figure firmly within the Pharisaic tradition – debating halakha, preaching the kingdom, embracing the outcasts while keeping God’s law – truly a Torah-true prophet. And Muhammad can be appreciated as taking up a similar mantle in a different context, addressing the descendants of Ishmael with a message that intentionally echoes Jewish-Christian monotheism. In the final analysis, the thread of covenantal faith and obedience links the Maccabean martyrs to John the Baptist, John to Jesus, Jesus to James and the Ebionites, and the Ebionites ultimately to the nascent Muslim community. It is a family saga of faith: often forgotten, sometimes suppressed, but never extinguished.

By understanding Jesus in his authentic context – as a loyal Jew and reforming Pharisee – Christians and Muslims today can find common ground. Jesus for Muslims is a revered prophet; seeing him as such does not betray the Jesus of history but arguably honors him. For Christians, recognizing Jesus’ Jewishness and the Jewish-Christian roots of their faith can foster respect for Judaism and Islam as sharing in the same heritage. The Torah-faithful Jesus and the Torah-affirming Muhammad stand together against the backdrop of human waywardness, both calling God’s people back to the straight path. History has tragically seen their followers at odds, but the vision we have traced suggests a potential reunion – a return to the One God of Abraham, the ethical Law, and the prophetic spirit that unites the best of Judaism, the original Jesus movement, and Islam. It is a vision perhaps utopian, yet grounded in historical truth: the first believers in Jesus would find themselves far more at home in a mosque or a Torah study session than in many later Christian cathedrals. Their faith was, and is, living on – just sometimes under a different name. In the end, Jesus the Pharisee and Jesus the Messiah can be a bridge – linking the covenants of old with the Islam of later, and reminding all of us that God’s message, though diverse in form, calls us consistently to righteousness, mercy, and the worship of the One Almighty.

Sources:

• James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty and Paul and Jesus. Tabor’s analysis of Jesus’ royal family, John the Baptist’s role, and the succession by James heavily informs this article. Tabor’s work highlights the Jewish apocalyptic context of Jesus’ movement and its divergence from Pauline Christianity.
• Bart D. Ehrman’s discussions on early Christian diversity and Christology, especially regarding the Ebionites’ beliefs and the development of high vs. low Christologies, provide scholarly support for the non-divine view of Jesus in early Jewish Christianity.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls (Community Rule, Damascus Document, etc.) and comparative studies, which illuminate the shared themes between the Essenes and Jesus’ movement – apocalyptic expectation, covenant renewal, water purification, communal living, messianic hope – as noted by Tabor’s blog analysis.
• Patristic testimonies about the Ebionites and Nazarenes, as summarized in Eusebius, Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Origen, confirming that these groups adhered to the Law and rejected Paul. Modern summaries (e.g. in Wikipedia and scholarly sources) were used to compile their practices and survival.
• Historical analysis by Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Jewish Christianity, and others on the connection between Jewish Christianity and Islam, as well as Islamic and Jewish historical records noting the existence of law-observant Judeo-Christian groups into Late Antiquity. These support the idea that Islam inherited theological DNA from Jewish Christianity.