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Recently, one of the most common claims I have encountered in the comments beneath my articles is that Christianity was not really created by Jesus at all.
It was created by Paul.
It is usually offered as a criticism. At other times, it comes from someone who is genuinely curious. The argument usually goes something like this: Jesus preached love, forgiveness, compassion and the Kingdom of God. Paul arrived later and turned that simple message into a religion concerned with sin, salvation, doctrine, belief and rules.
Jesus began a movement, but Paul created Christianity.
I have heard some version of that argument so many times that I have almost come to expect it whenever I write about Paul. And, if I am honest, I understand why the idea is attractive.
There really are differences between Jesus and Paul.
Jesus teaches largely through stories, conversations and parables. Paul writes letters full of arguments, theology and advice to emerging churches. Jesus constantly talks about the Kingdom of God, while Paul often talks about grace, faith, the cross and what it means to be “in Christ.”
Even their circumstances were completely different. Jesus spent almost his entire ministry within the Jewish world of first-century Palestine. Paul travelled through cities across the Roman Empire, helping communities made up increasingly of both Jewish and Gentile believers work out how they were supposed to live together.
So perhaps the question should not be dismissed too quickly.
Did Paul change Christianity?
Or, to put it more provocatively, did he invent the version of Christianity that eventually survived?
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There is one detail in Paul’s letters that makes that argument much more difficult than it first appears.
Paul repeatedly insists that the central message he preached did not begin with him.
One of the clearest examples comes in his first letter to the Corinthians.
Paul is reminding the church of the message at the heart of their faith: that Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to his followers. But before describing any of this, Paul uses a fascinating phrase.
He says he is passing on something that he himself had received.
That language matters.
Paul does not present himself as someone announcing a theological breakthrough he has recently developed. He does not say, Here is my new interpretation of Jesus. Instead, he describes himself almost like a link in a chain.
Something was handed to him; now he is handing it to somebody else.
Many scholars believe the tradition Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15 is considerably older than the letter itself and may go back to the earliest years of the Christian movement. Whatever precise date we give it, Paul clearly regarded these beliefs as existing before he began preaching them.
That is important if Paul is supposed to have invented Christianity.
He seems remarkably reluctant to take the credit.
