Christianity and Judaism are the largest and twelfth-largest religions in the world, with approximately 2.5 billion and 15 million adherents, respectively. Both are monotheistic Abrahamic religions that originated in the Middle East.
Christianity began as a movement within Second Temple Judaism, and the two religions gradually diverged over the first few centuries of the Christian era. Today, both religions have denominational differences, but the main distinction is that Christianity recognizes Jesus as the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew Bible, whereas Judaism maintains that the Messiah has not yet arrived and that the era of prophecy concluded early in the Second Temple period.