# Did Christ ever preach to Non-Jews?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 10, 2014, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767 "2014-07-10T14:38:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/1 "2014-07-10T14:38:31Z")
He bade His apostles and disciples to preach the Gospel to the gentiles.
But did He _Himself_ spread the Word of the Father to anyone without a Hebrew heritage?
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/2 "2014-07-10T14:53:13Z")
Yes, it is thought that He did. [(Cite](http://www.ccel.org/bible/phillips/CN160-TRAVELS.htm).) The Decapolis (the Ten Cities) were Gentile, and the Syro-Phoenician woman was a Gentile. It is thought that the “region of the Gerasenes” was a Gentile region, because of the presence of a large herd of non-kosher pigs.
And the Samaritan woman at the well, and her whole town, were not considered “real” Jews by the rest of Israel. The Samaritans were, at least in part, descended from the people who stayed behind or migrated to Palestine during the Babylonian exile.
The Church expanded greatly among the proselytes (non-Jews who admired Judaism but did not accept circumcision or kosher practices), and from direct evangelism to Gentiles, but that was not direct preaching from Jesus.
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/3 "2014-07-10T14:57:11Z")
The only episode I can think of without research involves the Gadarene (or Gerasene) guy who was possessed by demons. In that story, Jesus was across a lake from Israel and among non-Jews. I’m not sure how much preaching he did there. That’s on the 5th chapter of Mark. Oh, there’s also the Samaritan woman at the well. He laid some preaching on her.
Ninja’d by Shodan
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/4 "2014-07-10T15:13:35Z")
There was the Centurion of Capernaum who asked Jesus to heal his servant. He was presumably a Roman. He was not a Jew anyway because according to Like, he asked Jews to speak to Jesus on his behalf and they said the Centurion deserved Jesus’ help because he was a friend to “our nation”. Jesus then met the Centurion and praised him for his faith.
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### Author:  [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/5 "2014-07-10T16:11:55Z")
He preached to those demons that then fled into the herd of pigs.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/6 "2014-07-10T16:48:20Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> There was the Centurion of Capernaum who asked Jesus to heal his servant. He was presumably a Roman. He was not a Jew anyway because according to Like, he asked Jews to speak to Jesus on his behalf and they said the Centurion deserved Jesus’ help because he was a friend to “our nation”. Jesus then met the Centurion and praised him for his faith.
Beat me to it.
If we accept what Paul said, then Jesus did his most important conversion with the one formerly know as Saul of Tarsus.
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### Author:  [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/7 "2014-07-10T16:56:06Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#):
>
> Beat me to it.
>
> If we accept what Paul said, then Jesus did his most important conversion with the one formerly know as Saul of Tarsus.
But Saul was, in his own words, “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews”.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/8 "2014-07-10T17:01:02Z")
> [@Crotalus](#):
>
> But Saul was, in his own words, “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews”.
I stand corrected. Not much of a reader of the letters indeed.
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### Author:  [@common\_good](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/common_good)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/9 "2014-07-10T17:25:13Z")
He never preached to anyone. Jesus never existed. It is entirely mythical. My source is the absense of reliable sources for his existance.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/10 "2014-07-10T20:38:11Z")
> [@common\_good](#):
>
> He never preached to anyone. Jesus never existed. It is entirely mythical. My source is the absense of reliable sources for his existance.
… Wow. Apparently only a few hundred people existed in all of human history. Maybe fewer.
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### Author:  [@common\_good](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/common_good)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/11 "2014-07-10T20:45:34Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#):
>
> … Wow. Apparently only a few hundred people existed in all of human history. Maybe fewer.
How did you arrive at that ? I said Jesus is myth. Not humanity.
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### Author:  [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/12 "2014-07-10T20:57:21Z")
> [@common\_good](#):
>
> How did you arrive at that ? I said Jesus is myth. Not humanity.
The point being that most of the figures throughout history that we do accept as being real have similar levels of corroboration as Jesus does…which is to say, not much really.
Seems a bit far fetched that the entire Jesus story was created completely and the entire thing is a myth and attempting to simply state this as proven fact based on a lack of writings outside of Christian writings (which you apparently dismiss out of hand) after over 2000 years is ludicrous.
Anyway, if you want to start a thread on whether Jesus was real or not feel free…there have been many in the past.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/13 "2014-07-10T21:17:03Z")
> [@common\_good](#):
>
> How did you arrive at that ? I said Jesus is myth. Not humanity.
Besides the references in Josephus, there’s some content in the Bible that could only serve to detract from the aims of the early Christian community, a fair number of Jewish-Christian and Gnostic work which seems to come from a different set of traditions than Pauline Christianity, and there’s the Mandaeans, who decry Jesus as a charlatan who stole all of St John the Baptist’s best ideas and quotes, as well as a chunk of his followers - and again that seems to descend from a different set of traditions than Pauline Christianity.
Overall, there probably was a real Jesus. The non-magical bits of his life story are probably reasonably accurate (though the chronology of events is up for debate). But of course the magical bits are just fantasy and the teachings that have been ascribed to him, most likely are original to St Paul.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/14 "2014-07-10T21:26:19Z")
Well, not all of the teachings of Jesus we have came through Paul-- Some came from Mark and whoever wrote Q, plus bits and pieces that Matthew and Luke had independent of those. And Jesus certainly had some teachings of his own, and it’d be really quite remarkable if _none_ of those survived.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/15 "2014-07-10T21:39:03Z")
> [@common\_good](#):
>
> He never preached to anyone. Jesus never existed. It is entirely mythical. My source is the absense of reliable sources for his existance.
This is threadshitting. You are welcome to open a new thread (to join the several dozen previous ones) arguing whether the Jesus of Christian tradition was actually a real person, but you will drop that discussion, here.
That goes for EVERYONE (pro or con) on the issue. Stick to the topic of this thread and do not continue this hijack.
[/Moderating]
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/16 "2014-07-10T21:39:27Z")
Edit: Stopping highjack.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/17 "2014-07-10T21:55:34Z")
Broaches an interesting question. Of any random one hundred people roaming the streets of, say, Capernaum, how many were practicing Jews?
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2014, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/18 "2014-07-10T22:16:34Z")
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> And the Samaritan woman at the well, and her whole town, were not considered “real” Jews by the rest of Israel. The Samaritans were, at least in part, descended from the people who stayed behind or migrated to Palestine during the Babylonian exile.
I have a feeling like Jesus was himself a Samaritan or a group that would have fit under the umbrella of Samaritans, but I’ll have to Google a bit to see if I can track down the source of that little tidbit of memory.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2014, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/19 "2014-07-11T07:08:40Z")
For the record, [the Samaritans still exist.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans) Barely - there are about 800 of them left.
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### Author:  [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2014, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-christ-ever-preach-to-non-jews/692767/20 "2014-07-11T09:20:22Z")
Oops.
Just saw Tom’s note.
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