Christianity has its roots in Judaism, so the two religions' belief systems overlap to some degree. The Jewish Torah is the first five books of the Christian Bible, for example, and the Jews are waiting for a Messiah to come, whom the Christians believe has already come in the form of Jesus Christ. Both Jews and Christians profess faith in the one true God, Jehovah, and both believe in the resurrection of the dead(the Christians, as a rapture concurrent with Christ's Second Coming, and the Jews, at some undesignated time as God chooses. Although both Christianity and Judaism have different denominations or branches, each religion has a core of basic beliefs.
Christianity departs from Judaism by its belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. The New Testament reports that He was born of the virgin Mary as the Son of God; His birth of a woman was necessary for Him to qualify to be the substitute on the Cross for sinful man. Christians believe "in justification by faith - that through their belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and in his death and resurrection, they can have a right relationship with God whose forgiveness was made once and for all through the death of Jesus Christ" ("The Basics of Christian Beliefs"). Christians believe in living by the principles that Jesus taught: loving one another, forgiving one another, and telling the truth. Christians celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus and Easter as His crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection from the dead.
In Judaism, it is believed that "God's will for human behavior as revealed to Moses and the Israelites at Mount [Sinai and that] the Torah, or commandments, which regulate how humans are to live their lives, were a gift from God so that they might live" according to His will (Wenner). A 12th century Spanish Jew, Moses Maimonides, distilled Judaism's basic beliefs into a 13-point creed that traditional Jews still follow (Wenner). ...