I thought the entire point of Christianity was that the covenant with God has passed from the Jews to the Gentiles?
That's the mainstream position, but not my personal position. I think it makes more sense to "inherit" a covenant than steal it.
The original recipients keep their covenant. The rest of us are just coming along for the ride.
But I don't want to be talking about the wrong covenant here. I don't know how the Jewish covenant might be "inherited" and when I learned of the other covenant, I realised that we had the option of embracing that one.
The covenant with the Jews had to do with a "national revelation." All Jews are descendants of the Hebrews who received that national revelation first hand. The covenant applies to all descendants of these Hebrews by blood and by Law. By Law, I mean those who were not blood descendants, but assimilated into the way of life of those who were blood descendants by adhering to the Torah.
I think of covenants as "collectively binding." The Jewish covenant applies to all Jews collectively. The Noahidic covenant applies to the entire human race collectively. When the covenant is broken by a large proportion of the associated "collective," that covenant is collectively broken and God's obligations to the covenant becomes void.
I don't believe there is any "covenant" for Christians because there is nothing "collectively binding" on Christians. For example, according to "mainstream ideology," if an individual Christian denies that Jesus is their saviour, they go to hell. An individual Christian rejecting Jesus does not make all other Christians go to hell. Even if half or 99 per cent of Christians rejected Jesus, this would not cause the remaining 1 per cent to go to hell.
This is why Christians are not bound by a covenant. We are under no obligation to enforce anything on other, fellow Christians. We may want to, but that is entirely up to us. We are not responsible for the conduct or beliefs of other adherents.
The Noahidic covenant I assume is also collectively binding because if the human race as a whole violates it, God will not prevent our world from being destroyed by, say, nuclear weapons. Our dependence on technology, rape of the planet's resources and slavery to capitalism might be thought of as a form of "idolatry."
There's no suggestion in the Gospels that Jesus was targeting the gentiles - precisely the opposite - and in the epistles the whole issue of allowing gentiles was a thorny issue, to the point where the new Christian movement changed from being a Jewish sect to something distanced from Judaism.
I wouldn't agree that "Christianity" changed, but rather that a new "variant" of "Christianity" emerged. With approval from James the Just, leader of the Nazarenes, Paul created the basis of a "Gentile variant" of Christianity. Paul believed that there was "no longer any difference between Jew and Gentile," but I don't think his Jewish counterparts back in Jerusalem were as enthusiastic about that idea as he was.
Apparently, the Nazarenes were not in any hurry to get rid of the wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles. The Nazarenes were Christians and the new adherents of "Pauline Christianity" were also Christians. Their belief systems were vastly different, the Nazarenes being rooted in Judaism, the "Pauline Christians" being rooted in Hellenism.
The Nazarenes (the Jewish variant) were later declared heretics and wiped out by the "orthodox" Christians (the Gentile variant) in the 4th century. What made them both Christian was that they both thought of Jesus as their spiritual leader and both variants were monotheistic.
Christianity didn't change. A new version of it was simply introduced.
The idea of Christianity being extended to the Gentiles would have been inspired by attitudes already present in Pharisaic Judaism. You may have heard stories of the two most important Pharisees of that time: Hillel and Shammai. There is the story of a Gentile going to each of them, asking them to teach him the Torah. Shammai drives him away. Hillel responds by saying, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary, go study!"
Shammai inspired revulsion toward Gentiles, while Hillel probably inspired Paul's idea of "grace." The rules proposed by the Nazarene leadership for the Gentile Christians are similar to the Seven Noahide Laws proposed by Hillel.
As "Gentile Christians" and adherents of "Hellenistic Christianity," we have often thought of our version of Christianity as the only correct version, when in theory there are other legitimate variants, not necessarily rooted in Judaism or Hellenism, but possibly Buddhism as well, or other Asian, African, aboriginal and tribal traditions. This is the arrogance of Hellenistic Christianity.
The NT Canon is an important historical document exploring the issues that arose from the intermingling of the Jewish and Gentile worlds and how it led to the spreading of knowledge of the Tanakh/Old Testament. If Muslims collectively were willing to study it, Islam might also be considered another "variant" of Christianity.
At the moment, however, most of them disregard the NT Canon and thus all the issues it contains.
