Jewish Christianity

What if Paul never converted to Christianity, and thus, there was never the dramatic break with Jewish tradition and Jewish law which occurred in early Christianity. For example, Jewish dietary laws and circumcision are retained as part of Christianity, perhaps resulting in a religion which more resembles OTL "Messianic Judaism" than OTL Christianity.

Now, the first, obvious result is that this will make converting people to Christianity a lot more difficult, perhaps preventing it from becoming the dominant religion across the Roman Empire, and eventually the world, that it became in real life. However, on the other side, I wondered if by sticking closer to Judaism, and remaining a part of the Jewish tradition, if we might not see a lot more Jewish people joining this new movement than in OTL, perhaps with it becoming the dominant sect of Judaism following the destruction of the Second Temple (which I imagine occurring sometime under Roman occupation)
 
What if Paul never converted to Christianity, and thus, there was never the dramatic break with Jewish tradition and Jewish law which occurred in early Christianity. For example, Jewish dietary laws and circumcision are retained as part of Christianity, perhaps resulting in a religion which more resembles OTL "Messianic Judaism" than OTL Christianity.

Now, the first, obvious result is that this will make converting people to Christianity a lot more difficult, perhaps preventing it from becoming the dominant religion across the Roman Empire, and eventually the world, that it became in real life. However, on the other side, I wondered if by sticking closer to Judaism, and remaining a part of the Jewish tradition, if we might not see a lot more Jewish people joining this new movement than in OTL, perhaps with it becoming the dominant sect of Judaism following the destruction of the Second Temple (which I imagine occurring sometime under Roman occupation)

IIRC there was a "Jewish Christian" movement. It faced the problem of being in dispute with both established Judaism and Pauline Christianity. I'm not sure why the destruction of the Temple would spur more Jews to accept Christ as the Messiah though- the Jewish Messiah is specifically supposed to reestablish the kingship of David and Jesus would seem to have singularly failed at this.
 
Jesus wasn't the first Jew to be claimed to be the messiah and he wasn't the last. I don't see any compelling reason why he would be any different from the others (some of whom built up very large followings, but ultimately were rejected as false by the Jewish mainstream).

It's worth noting the Bar Kochba revolt, a couple generations after the destruction of the Temple. Bar Kochba received wide acclaim in Judea as the messiah, including by Rabbi Akiva (a very, very big rabbi). Even the appelation "Bar Kochba" is Aramaic for "son of the star", referring to the Prophecy of the Star (with regards to the messiah). After the revolt failed to take control of Judea, people very quickly came to the conclusion that he was not, in fact, the messiah.
 
Are you maybe looking for something involving the Ebionites? I've often wondered what their form of Judaism/Christianity would have become with James as their first 'pope,' and how they would have been remembered in the world.

Whether you think of the Ebionites as major players in your scenario or not, what you're describing I could see being the next stage of Judaism. That is, they'd add a few more chapters to the Testament and continue on as they had for hundreds of year, maybe being open to more Prophets and books popping up down the line. Far more Jews would convert, I imagine, than Christianity OTL, and it would eventually become the dominant form of Judaism, but any sort of gentile conversion on a large scale being very difficult to pull off.
 
The problem with Jewish Christianity is that if it retains all of the rules of Judaism, while accepting Jesus as the messiah, it is not terribly attractive to the pagans out there. The laws of Judaism such as kosher rules, circumcision, and much more were not attractive to non-Jews. One of the attractions of Pauline Christianity was that all you had to do was accept Jesus as the son of God and the means of salvation and eternal life and you were done. Early Christianity co-opted many of the pagan holidays. All of this meant that conversion was easy, and most of the pagans of the day were pretty fluid about which God(s) they worshipped so accepting Christianity as Paul had it was not a great leap. Accepting Judaism with a long list of laws/rules (613 mitzvot), circumcision, a very different religious calendar, etc. was a much bigger deal.

As has been noted there were "messiahs" before and after Jesus, since they usually stayed "Jewish" when they did not fulfill the prophecy they were discarded. What Paul did was restate the prophecy, and create a structure that was sufficiently non-Jewish to go with it.
 
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