Israel, the birthplace of 'Christ' is only about 4% Christian. How come that is and is that a paradox?

Question

Why are there so many muslims and wasn't Jesus a jew?

Answer 1

Not everyone believes in Jesus, people choose religions which are relevant to their lives. Many people don't identify with Christianity, whereas the teachings of Mohammed seem to attract a lot of people.

Answer 2

Israel is a holy place for the Jewishs, Christians and Muslems. the Jewish occupied the land first. Christ was a Jew and lived in Israel. Soon after his death and ressurection, the Jewish nation was destroyed by the Roman general Titus, and the Jewish were driven out of the land.

Muhhamed would come along about 400 years later and found the religion of Islam. One of their holy temples would be build on the site where the Jewish temple use to stand in Jerusalem. This would lead to centuries of war between Muslims, who had Israel, and Christian who wanted to "reclaim" it for Christianity (the Crusades). Israel (then Palestine) was an almost totally Muslim country.

Lastly, mix in the Jewish, who after World War 2 began a mass migration back to Israel, and fought a war that has given them control of the land. But it did not get all the Muslims out.

So you have a mixture of all three religions. Christian is smallest of the group because at no time have they been the "owners" of Israel.

Answer 3

The reason that the area which comprises the present-day state of Israel is only 4% Christian is due to several reasons:
1) The spread of the Gospel which began immediately after the Ascencion followed a formula that Jesus spoke about to the apostles: "... and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria (which is where the present Jewish state is located) and even to the remotest part of the earth." After an initial period of explosive growth, the contemporary authorities violently opposed the infant Church; the early Christians fled to other areas and carried the gospel there.
2) The apostle Paul (originally one of the agents used by the government to track down and eliminate those who believed in Jesus) was sent out after his conversion to Christianity to Greece and then Rome; where the gospel took root and fluorished despite savage persecution. This brought about a large influx of (previously) Gentile believers into the church who were not required to practice Jewish customs and procedures.
3) This unfortunately resulted in a polarization of the Church: Gentile believers on the one hand, who were daily growing in numbers and Jewish believers, who still practiced much of the customs handed down to them (though for a much different reason than before).
4) Between the overwhelming percentage of Gentile believers who by weight of numbers forced their lifestyles on the church and the diminishing number of Jewish believers who started to feel as outsiders (again) in their own home, the church became more and more anti-Jewish. This led to a greater reluctance on the part of the Jews to become believers in Jesus, the Messiah who was originally sent for them first, and then the Gentiles (there are many references to back this up).
5) The end result was a two-thousand year period where the Christian population in the area of Israel was greatly diminshed; especially after the Romans drove the last of the Jews out following the Bar Kochba revolt in the mid-second century AD; and the violent expulsion of those who refused to follow the Muslim religion by Mohammed and his followers in the 600's through the 800's AD.
6) However, this trend is now reversing and a great number of both Jewish and Gentile Christians are now returning to the present-day state of Israel in order to live once again where Jesus once visited the earth.

Answer 4

It is normal. Jesus was a Jew. It is after Jesus death that his followers that so far were Jews started to be called Christians, word referring to the cross. The Christians had their chances to possess Israel, but they screwed it all up. the crusaders could have cohabited peacefully with the Ottomans but decided to slaughter some of them. the result was that the Gd. Vizir Salah Adin got pissed off and attacked Jerusalem and drove the crusaders out side of Israel.

Answer 5

The muslims and the cristians were constantly fighting over the land and ended up killing so many jews, that the jews decided to leave.

Answer 6

Muslims have driven most of the Christians out.

Yes, Jesus was a Jewish settler from the West Bank.

Answer 7

Because it is the center of many religons. One of the reasons for the Israli(Judiasam)/Palestinain (Muslim) conflict is because both of them won't control of the gaza strip, the site of many holy places for both religons. At one point christians tried to get a piece of the holy-site-pie but failed miserably (the crusades)

Answer 8

Yes Jesus was a Jew. It was his followers that created Christany, he only met to improve his peoples faith.

Answer 9

that area is the birth place of three religions
Judaism/Christianity/ and Islam
o ya my mom just informed me Christan's are discriminated against in the state of Israel. they are even sometimes shot at by Israel's solders