Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus or Paul say he is rejecting Judaism and starting a new religion. In fact, the term “Christian” doesn’t appear at all in the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), which chronicle Jesus’ spiritual mission; and only later, three times in the rest of the New Testament . The first utterance of the word “Christian” occurred when Paul was preaching in Antioch more than a decade after the crucifixion.
But the word “Jew” appears 202 times in the New Testament, with 82 of those mentions in the Gospels.
The evidence in the New Testament persuasively suggests that both Jesus and Paul viewed their teachings as Jewish revisionism—not a rejection of Judaism or the proposal for a new religion. If this is true, as it seems to be according to the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles (book 5 of the New Testament), then we must ask: Who launched Christianity? While the question presumes that someone had to fill that role, the answer may be that no one officially founded Christianity.
It just happened.
“It just happened” doesn’t mean it mysteriously materialized out of nowhere. A firm foundation was needed to enable it to “just happen.” While Jesus and Paul established the foundation for the new religion, neither of them officially initiated Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism. On the contrary, both remained dedicated to Judaism throughout their lives, as documented in the New Testament.