The person who made Christianity a gentile religion was Paul, the first Christian writer, who believed that Jesus had also been the messiah, the anointed one (in Greek, christos). Paul was a diaspora Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia; a former Pharisee, he wrote in koine Greek. Bridging both worlds, he was convinced that he had a mission to the goyim, the foreign nations: Jesus had been a messiah for the gentiles as well as the Jews. Paul had the universal—“immeasurable”—vision of the Axial Age. God felt “concern for everybody.” He was convinced that Jesus’ death and resurrection had created a new
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