The year was 30 A.D. the Jewish Leader of a new sect of Judaism that would first be called the Nazarenes (not to be confused with the Ebionites) had just left the earth. The Nazarenes were unified in their belief in Jesus as their Savior and Lord as fulfilled in the Jewish scriptures as promised in the Torah, the writings and the Prophets that make up the Hebrew Bible. According to Jerome and Epiphanius noteworthy figures in church history, the Nazarenes were the original Jewish converts of Christianity.
By the year 70 A.D. Rome conquered Jerusalem, the majority of the original 12 disciples and Paul were dead and the once unified group of believers began to spread out and denominate into various groups as they interpreted what was written in the Hebrew Bible and regarding the Gospels and letters of Paul.
What was a united group of believers that according to the Bible added nearly 3,000 believers in one day began to spread throughout the world, some closer to obeying the literal words in the Bible, and others adding new commentaries and interpretations based on the events of the beginning of the new millennium.
From the very beginning of the journey that leads to today there have been some unfortunate bloody and ugly moments regarding whether what each side believed was correct, but today it has led to the common understanding that there are some shared values between the Jews and what the Nazarenes later were called, Christians. The common ground is called Judeo-Christian values based on Jewish scriptures, with a Jewish messiah and 12 Jewish disciples. While some Christians practice closer to the Nazarene way of living as proselytes or foreigners grafted into Israel, others do not have as much of a practicing common ground with Jews.
From One to 41,000, is the Kingdom Divided?
Though the Jews do not accept the deity of Jesus, the Hebrew Bible is the front of the Christian Bible, so in a sense the two are almost inseparable in the foundation of their beliefs. Both groups believe in a Messiah, one group doesn’t believe he came in A.D. 30, the other side does.
While what started out as one group of people unified in belief and interpretation of the Bible, which for the most part aligned with foundational Jewish values has now ballooned to approximately 41,000 Christian denominations according to Pew research.
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