Then I think you can see why I think Jesus was a Jew trying to teach that aspect of Judaism,and later Christianity and mainly Paul turned it into something else.
I'd disagree with the idea that 'Christianity and mainly Paul' turned it into something else: after all, even Jesus had begun to expand the message and the responsibility for sharing it beyond the Jewish people - think of the Roman centurion he praised for having faith; or the way in which he spoke with the woman of Samaria (no self respecting Jew of the time would have been seen dead speaking to a Samaritan, let alone a Samaritan woman); or his dealings with those people who the Jews had rejected, either on the grounds of race or physical or mental ill-health.
That's not to say Rhiannon isn't right, he obviously did seem to think he was in the end times but much of his teaching revolved around kindness.
Not sure that Jesus ever mentions the end times as being close - though he did imply that his followers ought to live
as if they were around the corner. I think that Paul probably picked up on this element of his teaching and encouraged his readers to be alert and to be ready for the end-times should they occur during their lifetimes. Ironically, for all the mention of Paul's influence on the church, it was the author of Revelations who really got into the apocalyptic mode - a book probably written afer Paul's death.
Apparently lots of rabbis of the time taught the same, and criticised the same aspects of a few people who applied Judaism without a real meaning of kindness.
Whilst this probably the case, history only seems to highlight 2 or 3 - perhaps the most famous being Rabbi Hillel who did at about the same time as Jesus was born. His diametric opposite was probably Rabbi Shammai who died at about the same time as Jesus was starting his ministry and who, in today's terms would be regarded as a fundamentalist (a rigid interpretation of the Torah and strict separation of Jew and Gentile). The third, viewed by some as possibly the greatest rabbi of all time, is Rabbi Akiva - who lived in the latter half of the 1st century - and who seems to have leaned more to the funadmentalist way of thinking of Shammai than the more 'liberal' ideas that Hillel espoused.
Christians often teach that Jesus was criticising all Jews but he wasn't, he was criticising the behaviour of a few.
Can't say that I have ever heard any sermon, or read any book that has Christians suggesting that Jesus criticised all Jews. After all, that type of thinking and action only really became common in the middle of the 1st Millennium.
(Plus, I like the way Judaism tries to keep Abraham and Moses as human beings with faults, rather than making them faultless, like Christianity and Islam have with Jesus and Mohammed)
The problem here is that Jesus is understood to be the Messiah - God in human form - something neither Abraham, Moses or Mohammed are by their respective 'adherents'.
