Far from a Paul-disguised-as Jesus who preaches gospel versus law (which is a caricature of Paul to begin with), the historical Jesus turns out to be the halakic Jesus. If only older commentators had stopped for a moment to think about the matter from a truly historical perspective, they would have realized: How could it be otherwise? First-century Palestinian Judaism being what it was, how could a religiously oriented Jew who tried to lead a religious movement by competing to gain a following among