While there is hopefully a satisfactory answer to this question for you, I also want to take some time to point out the difficulty inherent in answering this question and why any answers proposed should perhaps be examined a bit critically and, in my opinion, skeptically. I will fully admit that I am agnostic myself, but I have largely endeavored to separate religion from history and historiography as much as this topic permits.

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What is the primary source that we have for the life and teachings of Jesus Christ of Nazareth? The Holy Bible. But there is great debate as to whether the Bible should be considered a historical record, a series of cultural traditions and religious teachings, or some grey area in the middle. For instance, much of our modern scientific observation seems to imply that a literal interpretation of the Creation in Genesis is not compatible with what likely actually happened. However, both the Bible itself and Jesus' own teachings (as represented through the Bible), alongside much of Jewish tradition, seem to place an emphasis on parable, allegory, and metaphor in religious teaching, such that many Biblical passages, including the Creation in Genesis, are often interpreted as symbolic representations. Therefore, when you look to the Bible as a historical document, you may run into pitfalls where what you read literally may be metaphorical or a parable, or vice versa. The existence of extensive symbolic, even poetic, literature within the Bible seems troubling to notions of scripture as historical records.

However, the Bible does produce names which are correlated in archaeological and historical accounts (such as Nebuchadnezzar), and presents the cultural traditions of the Israelites and early Christians. Therefore, completely discounting the Bible as not being of any sort of use historically or anthropologically is troublesome as well. Not to mention varying translations among early manuscripts, missing early original texts (such as the Q text), and persistent questions regarding whether or not the Gospels were primary, secondary, or more distanced sources on the life and teachings of Jesus, essentially means that we must parse Biblical scripture as historians carefully and without fully counting or discounting its material.

There is also a further issue that arose with the domination of Christianity in Europe and the dependence on clergy for scribes. Let's use a historical example of the Jewish (but likely not Christian) historian Josephus' comments regarding Jesus, the Testimonium Flavianum:

" About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. "

Now, let us ask, are these the words of a non-Christian Jew? Or are these word of a Christian? There is some debate on the authenticity of this passage, with the three main theories being: it is entirely real and authentic, it is entirely a Christian forgery, or Josephus' original texts were edited later by Christian scribes. The last option would not be unheard of. Take Beowulf, for example, which is debated to either be a Germanic oral tradition which Christian scribes later inserted Christian elements into, or a product of a convert or ethnic Anglo-Saxon Christian who added Germanic elements for cultural flair (though this is a bit simplified).

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Essentially, we are so far removed from the life of Jesus Christ that there are some (admittedly very fringe) questions regarding his existence, much less whether or not he believed or did certain things. And there are simply not enough primary sources which exist for a notable but not empire-renowned Jew in 1st century Judea which we may rely on to not have been edited by Christian scribes or authors after their original creation. So, in essence, while you should be free to examine scripture and historical records for what Jesus taught or believed, you should always (but especially in this case) consider the origins for your sources and understand the subjectivity of authors and editors.

EDIT: Allow me to clarify that this is merely the objective historical approach to the Bible. I would recommend reaching out to a different subreddit if you are looking for answers on theology and biblical interpretation.

I found a bunch of interesting threads about Jesus's life when I read Reza Aslan's Zealot (more on this subs thoughts on that book here - - I personally enjoyed it and suggest it explores some of what you're after). I'd recommend searching the sub for "Jesus" and go nuts.

While you're waiting for a fuller answer, I did find this fairly related question dealing with other Messianic claimants in Jesus's time.

Edit: edited for a more direct link to the Zealot thread (answered exhaustively by u/koine_lingua) and thanks to /u/RespectableNormie for identifying /u/sunagainstgold for the most substantial answer in the other

The way this question is answered can change depending on how much emphasis you place on successive authorship of New Testament texts. Biblical scholars often identify Mark as the first of the four gospels to be written, between 65- 70 CE, followed by Matthew and Luke around 80-85 CE. These three have enough similarities that they're known as the synoptic gospels, and there are quite a few theories thrown around about an unknown source, called Q, which may have preceeded either just Matthew and Luke or all three gospels and contributed to their stories. The author of Luke is often also attributed as the author of the Acts of the Apostles due to the similarities in writing. John came later, around 90-95 CE and it takes a far more exalted view of Jesus than the previous gospels did.

The dates for the writing of the gospels are important because as other historians have pointed out, the temple was destroyed in the year 70 CE by the Romans. So, in terms of authorship the person who wrote Mark would have been writing under the tremendous pressure of the peak threat of violence of the Roman occupation. Matthew and Luke (and later John) were both written more so in recovery mode, and for different audiences. The worst thing had already happened- the Temple was destroyed and those affected were trying to recenter themselves and their religious practices without it. Matthew was written for a largely but not completely Jewish audience, as some gentiles had started following the teachings of Jesus. He insists that Jesus wants his followers to adhere to Jewish law and he believes that Jesus is similar to Moses and can in fact be the correct interpreter of Jewish law (which would have made the sanhedrin very angry). A fun way to remember that Matthew is the book where Jesus = Moses is that the birth story where Jesus and his family flee to Egypt is not actually historical but was meant to parallel Joseph's flight and Moses's return from Egypt. Luke is far more concerned with the gentiles. Jesus is depicted as a Jewish prophet rejected by his own people and who now is to embrace the gentiles. We see this narrative continued in the Acts of the Apostles.

For these reasons, drawing conclusions about historical Jesus can be done best by investigating Mark as one of our earliest source texts, and then looking as similarities between Matthew and Luke which are not in Mark and drawing the conclusion that those similarities may have also come from an earlier source text.

It's also important to note that messiah could have multiple meanings. (So can Satan, but that's a whole other post.) Messiah stems from a Hebrew word that means "anointed one" the equivalent of the Greek term Christos. The term can be applied to the deliverer of the Jews militarily- a descendant of David who could break the Jews free from the rule of others. Other Jews thought that messiah meant the supernatural judge of earth. (This is what the Dead Sea Scroll community believed but they were also extremely fringe compared to most of society at this time.)

The term rabbi is also interesting. It means teacher but did not involve the complex ordination rituals that it would today. Jesus being a rabbi wouldn't have been a high bar if he was studying at the temple (and evidently annoying his teachers).

If we give credence to Mark as the earliest depiction of Jesus that's available, then Jesus is given the title the son of God. There is some debate of whether the terms in Mark actually mean opposite of how we would modernly attribute them- son of man meaning divine and son of God meaning man. This translation problem becomes apparent when you look at this exchange as Jesus is brought before the Sanhedrin (NIV version) 14:61-62:

"Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”

62 “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”"

So right here you see Jesus saying, yes I'm the son of God. The son of Man is sitting at the right hand of God. So how do we interpret this? Is Jesus calling himself both at once? Would the questioner in the Sanhedrin understand why Jesus was being so cryptic?

There is no equivocating Jesus to thinking that he is equal with God within the Mark text. In class we often joked about Mark as being the grumpy version of Jesus. He's very preachy and frustrated in this narrative because nobody besides the author, Jesus, God, and the reader know who he or understand his mission throughout the entire text. The disciples are starting to get it towards the end of the text, but even then we see Peter messing things up in multiple ways for Jesus. Mark is a text most likely meant for pagans who had begun worshipping an early type of Christianity, as very simple things in Judaism- washing your hands before you eat bread- had to be explained. (I'm reluctant to call Jesus following Christianity until the 120s/130s, and even then it would have looked completely different from post-Constantine Christianity but again, another topic.) Still, Mark is very much concerned with emphasizing Jesus's Jewishness and it may be because at that time, some of the followers of Jesus may have thought they needed to start following Jewish law in order to follow Jesus.

Tl;DR: Jesus was a rabbi who did piss off mainstream Jews. The Sanhedrin was angry with him for blasphemy and him complaining that temple law was corrupt. This was at a time when there was heavily factionalism in the region all together. It is unlikely Jesus wanted to start his own religion. He likely just wanted Judaism to change. He saw himself as the son of God but there's questions as to what that means.

A great reading exercise I would recommend is remember that the vast majority of christ followers in the 000s and 100s would have only been exposed to a few texts, most of them read aloud instead of written. Pretend you don't have any prior knowledge of the New Testament, and then read or listen to one of the gospels. Ask yourself what you would have derived from listening to just what you heard.

Sources:

The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 4th Edition by Bart D. Ehrman

From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus by Paula Fredriksen

The New International Version of the Bible, though I wish I still had my greek side by side laying around.

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I would love if anybody wanted to jump in with more on the Pauline letters- those are a whole other can of worms. I stayed away from them in this text, even though they're earlier, because Paul kind of seems to run by his own rules, but they certainly contribute to the narrative of historical Jesus.

There is a lot to answer here. I'll do my best to organize this, but it will honestly probably come off as all over the place.

Authorship of Our Sources:

This is a complicated/controversial question in that we have multiple accounts of Jesus' life (four accounts come from Christian scripture: the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; some accounts were not canonized as Christian scripture; and some snippets of information about Jesus comes from the Romans). Most of this response will be using texts from the canonized Christian scripture, though some other secular texts will be mentioned as well.

The Gospels were all written after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The exact date of their authorship is contested, but essentially Mark was written first in the preceding decade with Matthew and Luke being written in the decade after that and John being written last. The Apostle Paul's letters are the earliest "Christian" writings we have recorded; however, he did not know/meet Jesus, either had no knowledge or limited knowledge of Jesus' teachings, and he considered himself to be Jewish himself. This last point is honestly an entire book of a post into itself (Pamela Eisenbuam's Paul was not a Christian is my favorite book that talks about this), but it is worth noting that the earliest Christ-followers did not consider themselves to be a separate faith entity. The term "Christian" was not used until the first century in the region around Antioch. The Book of Acts uses the term "Christian" in Acts 11:26, but there is not much other textual evidence for the term in Christian scripture. Most scholars hold that the author of Luke and Acts are the same person (Many lump the two books together as one entity: Luke-Acts), so the term "Christian" does not appear in any of the Christian scripture written prior to ~80-90 CE.

Prophecies about the Destruction of the Temple and other Prophets/Messiahs:

The date of the Gospels authorship is also important to think about because the texts were all written after the destruction of the Temple. None of the Gospels were written prior to them. The writings from Christ-believers we do have which come from before 70 CE (Paul's letters and a handful of non-canon books) make no mention of the destruction of the Temple. Because of this, we cannot say for sure if Jesus preached about the destruction of the Temple; however, it should also be said that if he did say that the Temple would be destroyed, he would not have been the only one worrying about such an event. Judea was filled with prophets and messiahs during Rome's occupation of the territory. Messiah means "anointed one" and any of the Israeli/Judean monarchs could be called messiahs. Jesus gained the title of Messiah after being anointed with oils by an unnamed woman (the account occurs in Mark 14:3-9). What separated Jesus' status as "messiah" apart from other messiahs of the time was his message of what it meant to be a messiah. Jesus preached (as recorded in Mark) that the Messiah was not a conquering messiah, but a suffering one (Mark 8:27-38 gives the shortest insight into this idea without going into too much theology about the matter).

It should be said as well that Jesus was not the only messiah killed by Rome during this time. Josephus cataloged the Roman execution of the Sign Prophets in his Antiquities and while his account mentions Theudas (killed by Roman Prefect Fadus), the massacre at the Mount of Olives (ordered by the Roman Prefect Felix), and the execution of John the Baptist (Ordered by King Herod), Josephus does not mention Jesus --most likely because he did not know about Jesus' existence. The fact that Josephus did not write about Jesus does not mean that Jesus never existed but instead points to how common an occurrence it was for Rome to kill prophets/messiah figures in Judea at the time. This idea can even be seen in John 11: 42-52 wherein the reasoning behind why Jesus should be killed is that if Jesus is not handed over to Rome, and he continued to preach in Jerusalem, then Rome would destroy Jerusalem and the Temple in order to maintain order. While this account is "fictionalized" in that the author of John would not have been present in this meeting of Jewish elders and in that the account was written after 70 CE, we can still use this as textual evidence to see that an idea existed wherein Rome would kill large amounts of people to stop a prophet/messiah from spreading anti-Roman ideas.

Did Jesus Think he was the Son of God:

While I cannot say one way or the other if Jesus thought he was the son of God, I can say that Paul (and thereby most early Christ-followers) did not think Jesus was the son of God. Without going into too much of Paul's atonement theory, 1 Corinthians 8:1-6 makes a distinction between God and Jesus as separate beings, 1 Corinthians 15:23-28 places Jesus as a subordinate actor to God, Philippians 2:5-11 repeats this message of subordination where Jesus is God-like but is not God, and Galatians 1:1 again sets Jesus and God apart from one another. As another, interesting point, a growing number of Pauline scholars argue that Romans 3:22 should be translated as "the faith of Jesus" instead of "faith in Jesus" as the participle could be translated either way and the former fits better with Paul's atonement theory than the later does (Paul believed Jesus' faith saved the Gentiles). Jesus as God only really became a mainline Christian thought around 451 CE with the creation of the Chalcedon Creed. Prior to this, and for a decent bit afterward, the nature of Jesus' divinity was debated and someone could argue that the exact nature of Jesus' divinity within Christian theology is still not 100% set in stone."

Anti-Semitism in Christian Studies

The last thing to say here is that a lot of Christianity is anti-Semitic. AJ Levine has asked if it is even possible for Christianity to exist without anti-Semitism because of how ingrained such thoughts are into modern Christ-following circles. Even in academic settings that are not outwardly aiming to be anti-Semitic, there is a fairly blatant lack of respect for Judaism. The Jewish founders of Christianity are disregarded, white-washed, and/or censored; distinctions between "the law" and "the Law" are ignored; the Divine Name is written out and said without regard for why it is omitted (If you must use the Divine Name, use YHWH or another variation such as God/Divine/personalized Divine Name); and none of this is to mention the complete misreadings of Paul's letters or the unfair/anti-Semitic blame put onto people who are Jewish for Jesus' murder at the hands of Rome.

This is a complicated question, made all the more complicated by the fact that all available information on Jesus is presented to us through the lens of the Bible, an ostensibly pro-Jesus book. Every spoken word of Jesus and account of His life is recorded by His followers, so the primary source can hardly be called unbiased, but we work with what we have. For the sake of not repeating myself, let us assume that every sentence I write involving the words “Jesus ______” or the apostles ______” is followed by the addendum “assuming the Bible to be true, which it may well not be”. Okay? Okay.

As a preface, I personally am a Bible-believing Christian, born and raised in a Jewish family, with a personal belief that Jesus was in fact the Son of God, who died for our sins and rose again, so my answer will naturally carry a pro-Jesus bias as well. However, I have tried to make myself as neutral and unbiased as I can be, to the best of my limited abilities. I am a strong proponent of critical Biblical analysis, but no one is perfect. With all of that in mind, here we go.

It is broadly assumed by most mainstream scholars of Christianity, not all of them Christians themselves, that there was in fact a real man named Jesus of Nazareth who lived, preached, and attained a following in Judea circa 30-33 AD. There is a subset of scholars who argue against any and all concepts of a historical Jesus, but they are largely in the minority and most Biblical scholars, even some avowed atheists, affirm the reality of a traveling rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth. This is where the consensus ends and the controversies start. Whether Jesus was divine or human, miraculous or ordinary, prophetic or nonsensical, all of these questions hang on how much one believes the words of the New Testament can be trusted.

Beginning with the concrete facts, the Jews of Jesus’ day were living in a time later scholars have called the Intertestamental Period, a 400 year period of time between the prophet Malachi, the end of the Old Testament, and the arrival of Jesus, the beginning of the New Testament. In that time, Judea had been conquered by the Seleucid Empire, overthrown them in the Maccabean Revolt, established their own Hasmonean Dynasty, and been conquered anew by the Roman Empire. Depending on your familiarity with Judaism, you may recognize this as the basis for the holiday of Hanukkah.

Internally, Judea was divided between Hellenistic Jews, who adopted the expansive cultural changes of Greece under the Seleucids and later Rome under the Roman Empire, and the more conservative anti-Hellenistic Jews, who considered themselves stalwart defenders of the faith tasked with protecting “proper” Judaism until a new Jewish empire could be established by one of the Messiahs. Importantly, Jewish understandings of the concept of Messiah, literally “anointed”, did not include the idea of a suffering servant who would die as penance for humanity’s sins; on the contrary, there were to be several Messiahs, non-divine heroic figures who would rise up against the oppressive empires of the time (Judea dealt with a number of oppressive empires) and establish Israel anew. Some Jews before Jesus heralded Judas Maccabaeus as a Messiah for his successful revolt against the Seleucids, some Jews after Jesus heralded Simon Bar Kokhba as a Messiah until his death at the siege of Masada in 74 AD.

Judaism, both then and now, is a heritage-based faith. “Jewish” is an ethnicity as much as a faith, and the Jewish narrative of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, has always emphasized the tribal nature of Judaism and more importantly, the inherited right of Jews as descendants of Abraham down the correct lineage. People of other ethnicities were free to worship YHWH, the Jewish god, and could honor Him as the eternal God - see the Biblical story of Jonah and his preaching to the Ninevites for a crash course on that lesson - but only the faithful children of Israel were God’s chosen people. There was little to no evangelism in Judaism.

This was one of the reasons the conservative Jews of Jesus’ day were so fiercely protective of their faith. To them, Hellenization and re-interpretations of the Tanakh - Hebrew acronym for what we call the Old Testament - were not just damaging to the tenets of their faith, but to the cultural identities of Jews as a whole. A faithful Jewish man who kept the Sabbath and prayed his morning, noon, and evening rituals was still dishonoring his cultural heritage by going to the gymnasium and exercising in the nude, for example. What is also interesting to note is that many Jewish people were also not inherently opposed to the idea of being ruled by a Gentile government, so long as they were left alone. Many Jews of the day adored Julius Caesar for his defeat of Pompey - they were still angry the Roman general had desecrated the Holy of Holies during the Siege of Jerusalem in 63 BC - and for his official recognition of Judaism as a religion in Rome. But I digress.

When Jesus enters the scene, He is immediately cast into sharp relief against the rabbis, or religious teachers, of His day. According to Biblical narratives, Jesus was born as the bastard child of an unwed teenage mother and an unknown man (God, if the Bible is to be believed), raised by his mother and stepfather, a manual laborer, in the small village of Nazareth, an unremarkable town widely derided by the Jews of the time (John 1:46). Unlike the rabbis, who enjoyed a high level of schooling, Jesus is - as far as the Bible tells - self-taught, and associated with the lowest castes of society: prostitutes, drunkards, lepers, Samaritans, and tax collectors.

Jesus makes no denial when His disciples claim that He is God, blasphemy punishable by death in and of itself, and frequently derides the rabbis, the societal upper crust of First Century Palestine, for their unrighteous and unGodly behavior. He makes public scenes in the Holy Temple (John 2:13-17), lambasts the religious Pharisees and priests in stories where a Samaritan is the hero (Luke 10:25-37), and takes every opportunity to attack the powers-that-be. He breaks Sabbath laws, cleanliness laws, and laws relating to justice. He claims moral authority over the religious elite and, even more scandalously, claims authority over the words of the Tanakh itself.

Most importantly, Jesus did something that truly aggravated the Pharisees - He cut into their business model. The Pharisees, a specific conservative class of Jewish rabbis, made much of their living off the care and use of the Holy Temple, where Jews were required to bring sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. When Jesus offered the same forgiveness of sins for free, the Pharisees felt the sting in their purses. With regards to your question about the Temple, Jesus did indeed prophesy that it would fall (Mark 13:2), but compounded the insult to the Pharisees by claiming that He would return as the conquering Messiah and eliminate the need for the Temple.

Jesus’ Messianic claims and predictions, and later the writings of the New Testament, were especially threatening to the Pharisees because they challenged the idea of Jewish exceptionalism among the nations. Jesus’ frequent praising of the Samaritan people at the expense of the Pharisees and the priests was a prelude to the later writings of Paul, himself a Pharisee, who would famously write that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:28-29, ESV, emphasis mine). Jesus broke down the walls dividing Jews and Gentiles, welcoming all people into what was once Israel’s special place in God’s Kingdom, and crushing the narrative that the Jews were special in the eyes of God.

The rest of your questions are fairly simple to answer, now that we’ve waded through all of this history and context no one really asked for, but brevity was never one of my strong suits.

The difficulty with this question is that we have very limited sources on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Essentially, one can accept the accounts of the traditional Christian Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), the accounts of the alternative Gnostic Gospels (e.g., Mary, Thomas, Peter, etc., or neither.

I don't have the expertise to discuss the Gnostic Gospels as a historical source, so I will leave that to someone who does.

One might reasonably reject both, however, this leaves one with the unhappy choice of either having no means of approaching this question, depending on the testimony of early Christians (which throws us back to the Gospels and their authors' claims), or forming a construct inevitably shaped by assumptions and sensibilities two millennia removed from the figure in question and finding dubious answers at best.

Thus, everything from this point will start from the assumption that the traditional Gospels are our best historical source for the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, whatever we might make of the more supernatural claims of the authors (full disclosure: author is a Catholic).

If Jesus' words are reported faithfully, he does give several indications that he believes himself to be "Son of God," at the very least in the sense of being divine:

• He repeatedly refers to himself as "lord," i.e. "adonai," a title reserved for God
• He claims authority to forgive sins, which is reserved to God among Jews
• When challenged about knowing the long-dead Abraham, he claims, "before Abraham was, I am," which implies both being eternal (using the present tense in this way suggests timelessness) and identification with the divine name revealed to Moses (I am who/that am).

It's also notable that the traditional Gospels also report frequent accusations of blasphemy, specifically for Jesus identifying himself with God, which Jesus never appears to refute or deny, behavior most consistent with a belief that he is in some way divine, i.e., "Son of God."

The second half of the question is trickier because we have to define what we mean by breaking away from Judaism. We have to remember that Second Temple Judaism was distinct from both the Jewish and Christian traditions we know today, and both saw themselves as legitimate continuations in some sense. Many early Christians, many of whom identified as Jews and worshiped in synagogue services, didn't see themselves as breaking off, but achieving something more like a reformation (see early Christian writers identifying the Church as Israel). Indeed, many of the more historical Christian communities still show marks of that Jewish heritage in their liturgy and practices, despite centuries of development and divergence.

In short, there is a break, but it's a soft and gradual divergence rather than an outright rejection of Jewish spirituality and culture.

But the harder break suggested in the question does seem to not be envisioned by Jesus of Nazareth, again using the traditional Gospels as our best historical source. Jesus, of course, identifies as a rabbi, but also:

• Refers to Jewish altar sacrifice
• Defends the authority of the Law of Moses
• Defends the authority of Jewish religious figures
• Commands a special seder meal for his memory

But his teachings also suggest some kind of break or radical transformation:

• Prophesying the end of the Temple and its sacrifices
• Teaching that he will give his blood for true drink
• Denouncing the unique status of the Jewish people
• Expanding upon the Law of Moses, seeming to override it

So the answer to the second questions is that it appears to be more complicated than that.

Again, all this rests on accepting the traditional Christian Gospels as a mostly-valid historical source, which one might do independent of their own (ir)religion but is not obligated to do as a historian, especially given the clear agendas at work in their writing.