Hi, Robert —

He was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the fulfillment of the Jewish religion.

If they had accepted him as the Messiah, he wouldn't need to start a new organization, because the Old one, Judaism, would have been transformed completely.

Mary Ann

Hi, Robert —

To be more specific. The Jewish religion, at the time, required animal sacrifices for sins at the Temple in Jerusalem. Those sacrifices were shadows that pointed to the sacrifice that Jesus would make for all of our sins at Calvary. Once that sacrifice took place, there was no need for Temple sacrifices. From history, we know that within one generation (as Jesus predicted)
the Temple would be destroyed and the sacrifices done away with. This happened in 70 AD.

Since then, Judaism is no longer practiced as it was at the time of Jesus.

Jews today go to a Synagogue. They have no Temple or Temple Sacrifices. The Temple can only go on one spot and sacrifices can only happen there but that spot is now beneath a Muslim Mosque.

That said, Judaism is no longer the Judaism of the Bible. It is still a wonderful faith, based on the Old Testament, and many Jews still await the Messiah, but it's not the same faith as when
Our Lord walked here on earth.

The Sacrifice of the Temple was replaced by the one Sacrifice of Calvary.

That same Sacrifice is made present to Catholics and Orthodox Christians at the Divine Liturgy or Holy Mass so the Sacrifice still exists. It is the one and only true Sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

While it happened in 33AD, you can witness it at the Mass. The Sacrifice is NOT repeated. It is made present. We don't fully understand this Mystery, except to say we know it to be true.

So Catholicism is the fulfillment of Judaism as Mary Ann has stated.

John

To dovetail with what my colleagues said, Jesus and the Apostles did not believe they founded a new religion. (Christ, of course, foresaw what would happen, but he did not intend it.) Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. All his ministry he ministered solely to Jews. He inaugurated the New Covenant which all the Jewish prophets foretold. In fact, Mary and the Apostles (Joseph was dead by this time) and early Christians continued to consider themselves Jews and continued to go to synagogue (though probably not offering sacrifices in the Temple) until, essentially, they were thrown out by the other Jews after the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70.

The destruction of the Temple as my colleague noted destroyed the old form of Judaism. Prior to that, Judaism consisted of believes in Yeshua (Jesus) as Messiah and disbelievers who mingled together. After that point, each went in a direction different from the Temple Judaism. Christian Jews quickly died out (or assimilated) as the ranks of the Gentiles surged and rapidly drowned out most cultural traces of Jewish Christianity.

We believe that we are the authentic spiritual Jews (Galatians 6:16, Romans 11:17). So we would argue, we are the same religion, despite the apparent differences.

Eric