Perhaps the Christian faith didn't begin with the life of Jesus.
"Clearly the evolution of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is tied to common roots. However, it does not follow that Jesus was not the founder of Christianity. Clearly, without Jesus, there would be no Christians. His teachings fundamentally differentiated Christianity from Judaism."
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You wrote, "Clearly the evolution of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is tied to common roots. However, it does not follow that Jesus was not the founder of Christianity. Clearly, without Jesus, there would be no Christians. His teachings fundamentally differentiated Christianity from Judaism."
It is not so clear that Jesus' teachings "fundamentally differentiated Christianity from Judaism". There are several historic points which would stand against that interpretation.
During the first century, Judaism was highly factionalized. Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and Zealots were among the major sects which comprised the faith of Israel, and each had specific nuances in their beliefs. Without going into too much detail, I'll try to thumbnail a few. The Pharisees believed that a life of pious devotion to the law of God would result in the coming of a messiah (a divinely appointed deliverer) who would come to the pious holy keepers of the law and create a new kingdom of God in Israel. The Sadducees, mostly born of the priestly clan, believed that God empowered them to rule Israel in Jerusalem in His name. The Zealots believed that God wanted to deliver Israel from all oppressors (specifically the Romans), and that if they rose up to fight off the enemies of God and Israel, he would send a deliverer/messiah to lead them to victory. The Herodians believed that the house of Herod was the divinely chosen line for rulership in Israel, and that God would ultimately establish one of the Herod family as absolute ruler of His people, with his throne in Jerusalem. Each of these sects (and many more) believed themselves to be the true expression of the continuation of the Hebrew faith; into this mix came Christianity, another Jewish sect who claimed to be the true continuation of Judaism; they believed that God had sent Jesus to teach us and to fulfill the promise of a messiah which dated back to the dawn of time, and that He did so by becoming a sacrifice. The other sects of Judaism did not agree with this, but Christians in Israel were just another part of the Jewish community, participating fully in the religious life of the city and the nation.
Each of the sects sought converts to itself, and most also accepted converts who were not Jewish; this was not unique to the Christian group. What was unique was the eagerness with which Christians sought non-Jewish converts and the ease with which they were admitted--the stigma of circumcision, although practiced by Christian Jews through the first and probably early second century, was not required of non-Jewish ("gentile") converts. By the end of the first century there were more gentile Christians than Jewish. Yet the Jewish Christians still perceived themselves as Jews, followers of the true faith of Abraham; and the gentile Christians perceived themselves as additions to the house of Israel, accepted into the Christian denomination of the Jewish faith.
In 70 AD, Titus entered Israel with his legions and (over a couple years) flattened Jerusalem. In that moment, most of the Jewish sects died--there was no longer any talk about defeating the Romans and ruling God's people from Jerusalem. The Sadducees were gone, their power base destroyed; the Herodians and Zealots lost most of their reason to be. The only major sects to survive that disaster were Christianity and Pharisaism--the two which had no interest in Jerusalem politically.
Around 90 A.D., at about the same time that the disciple John was completing the last books of the New Testament, a counsel meeting was held at Jamnia. Leaders of the Pharisees gathered, and carefully determined which of the collected writings of their traditions were the Word of God, the books of the Bible, what to Christians are the Old Testament. Christian Jews and pharisaic Jews continued to work and worship together in Israel, although they had doctrinal differences.
In the mid second century, war was continuing in Israel; the Romans were unhappy with this rebellious little country, but had trapped the last of its warriors in a place called Masada. Christian and Pharisaic Jews had been fighting side by side in this conflict; a great leader had arisen, known to us as Bar Kochba, roughly translated "Son of the Shining". One of the leading teachers of the Pharisees declared Bar Kochba to be the promised Messiah. It is a matter of great speculation as to whether he believed this honestly, or just thought to add fuel to the fire; however, the Christians (of course) could not accept that position--the Messiah had come, by their view, and no one else could claim that title. Unsure about supporting a man for whom such claims had been made, they pulled out of Masada en masse--leaving the Pharisaic faction to be slaughtered by the Roman army.
The Pharisaic Jews did not forgive the Christian Jews for this, perhaps ever. There was now little to hold them together. The temple at which both groups had made sacrifices had been gone for most of a century, and the city of God which had been the geographical center of both faiths destroyed with it. The Christians had abandoned the Pharisees in their hour of need, and yet could not apologize for having refused to support the claims of what to them (and perhaps, in retrospect, to everyone) had to have been a false messiah. There were hard feelings between them for centuries.
The Pharisees continued to survive, creating their Talmuds and mystical writings, preserving the text of their ancient scriptures (with remarkable accuracy), and becoming modern Judaism. They by and large stopped looking for a messiah to come to deliver them, although some still hold to such a hope. The Christians continued to develop as the other major denomination of Judaism, slowly losing much of the remainder of what had connected it to the other sects.
Thus if you could say that Christianity stems only from the first century, you must say the same about Judaism; yet both faiths would claim to be the continuation of the faith of Abraham, the faith of Noah, the beliefs of Adam himself, better understood today than then, but still the same faith.
You argue that Christianity would not be what it is without Christ, and that is so in a greater way than is true of any other faith; even Buddhism could have been much the same without Buddha, but Christ is more than just a founder of religion: He is an object of faith. Yet the argument fails nonetheless, and for several reasons.
First, we'll pick on Luther. It is incontrovertible that the Lutheran church would not exist without Martin Luther. Yet Luther made no effort to create a separate church. It was his view that the Catholic church of which he was a member had strayed from the ancient faith in several ways, and he wished to open a discussion of it; the Catholic church at the time did not wish to discuss it or to consider any changes. They pushed, he resisted, and a new denomination was born. The Catholics would say that the Lutherans believe what Martin Luther taught, but that they believe what Christ taught. But the Lutherans would say that Lutherans believe what Christ taught, and that Luther only brought them back to the true faith which the Catholics had lost. The main thing the Catholics have to support their claim is the rather weak argument of continuity of the political machine; the Lutheran's argument is based on conformity to the ancient texts, which (if true--not my intent to argue for Lutheranism, and I am not Lutheran) is by far the better claim for authenticity. It is much the same with the Christian faith: Christians claim that Jesus presented us with the true understanding of Judaism, based on a reading of the Hebrew scriptures which emphasizes passages related to faith and relationship with God. Pharisees tend to downplay those passages in favor of piety and holiness through the keeping of complex moral/ethical/ritual codes. (This is an oversimplification, to be sure; the two faiths have more in common than not.) To argue that Christianity is not Judaism because the person upon whose teaching it is based fails when that teacher always maintained that He was presenting a true understanding of Judaism. You may argue as to whether or not He did present a true Judaism; you may argue the merits of His version of that faith; but you may not say that His religion is not the continuation of Judaism when He maintained that it was without evidence that He intended to break away from the ancient faith and start a new one--evidence which is not only absent but refuted at every turn.
Second, the age of a religion is based on the faith which began it, not the documents which completed it. Christianity is a living faith; the understanding of much of it is different today than it was even 50 years ago. The books which comprise the canon of the Jews were written over a period of a millennia, yet we view their faith as dating back to at least Moses, and they would say Abraham. The religion of Abraham lacked much of that which was given to Moses; and it would be centuries before that religion reached the form it had in the time of David, who also became a key figure in the faith itself. Yet the great writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and most of the other prophets, plus the works of Solomon, many of the Psalms, and a large part of the histories of scripture were unknown during the life of David, and for hundreds of years thereafter. So was Judaism born with Abraham? or with Moses? or David? or after the last book of the Old Testament was written? Given that the form of modern Judaism owes so much to the Talmudic writings, it is arguable by your standard that Judaism is younger than Christianity, since those great formative works of Judaism were written so recently--a patently absurd conclusion! No, the faith of Judaism in all its forms--including the sect known as Christianity--dates back at least to Abraham.
And within that faith there are allusions and references to a coming deliverer, a Messiah who would free Israel and the world. Christianity claims that Jesus is that Messiah. If indeed His life is the fulfillment of prophecies and predictions dating back to the dawn of recorded history, how can it be said that the religion which believes in Him as fulfillment of those predictions dates from His life? It must logically be said that that faith dates from the first of those predictions, and that his life as fulfillment of prophecy is the moment at which that faith found its object, but not the beginning of the faith. It is argued that the great men of God in the Hebrew scriptures also believed in Christ, and were in that sense Christians; it's just that they believed in Him prospectively, and we retrospectively, so their faith was with less understanding and knowledge. A religion which believes in a coming Messiah does not become a different religion after that Messiah has come; it only changes in expression and viewpoint. A vacation to Paris remains a vacation to Paris before you take it, while you are there, and after you return home; your knowledge of that vacation changes, but it is still the same thing.
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To Mark J. Young's Bible Study Materials
Read about the Multiverser role playing game--accused by some critics of being "too Christian".
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